Dialogue

2003  Gorg|               may give Plato too much system, and alter the natural form
2004  Gorg|             constructed a regular and systematic whole; and this is true
2005  Gorg|         utilitarian or transcendental systems of moral philosophy, he
2006  Gorg|      CALLICLES: Well, get on, and don’t keep fooling: then you will
2007  Gorg|        greatest of benefactors on the tablets of my soul.~CALLICLES: My
2008  Gorg|             the rest of his life, and talks in a whisper with three
2009  Gorg|               training or both, was a tall man while he was alive,
2010  Gorg|              their youth upwards, and tame them like young lions,—
2011  Gorg|              surely he would be a bad tamer of animals who, having received
2012  Gorg|             right.’ And we are always taming down the nobler spirits
2013  Gorg|              convenient to them.’ The tangle of good and evil can no
2014  Gorg|            the world below: such were Tantalus and Sisyphus and Tityus.
2015  Gorg|           like, is at last impaled or tarred and burned alive, will he
2016  Gorg|           lofty aims has undertaken a task which will call forth all
2017  Gorg|            man. And you were wrong in taunting me with my defenceless condition,
2018  Gorg|   untranslatable pun,—dia to pithanon te kai pistikon onomase pithon.),
2019  Gorg|         disposed to break his head or tear his garment, he will have
2020  Gorg|               right in throwing in my teeth that I am unable to help
2021  Gorg|           result of that study of the tempers of the Great Beast, which
2022  Gorg|               such as walls, docks or temples of the largest size, ought
2023  Gorg|          everywhere, if they were not tempted by interest or passion,
2024  Gorg|    Introduction to the Phaedrus.)~Two tendencies seem to have beset the interpreters
2025  Gorg|              improve, has in others a tendency to degenerate, as institutions
2026  Gorg|               of them in a deeper and tenderer way than they are ordinarily
2027  Gorg|             party interest in certain tenets. There is the sophistry
2028  Gorg|               that they do not always terminate in mutual edification, or
2029  Gorg|               own interests; and they terrify the stronger sort of men,
2030  Gorg|             or riches or extension of territory, but on an ideal state,
2031  Gorg|           will have been sufficiently tested by us, and will not require
2032  Gorg|             to the indications of the text.~Like the Phaedrus, the
2033  Gorg|     grasshoppers, and (7) the tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the
2034  Gorg|               himself may be ready to thank God that he was thought
2035  Gorg|               do not the poets in the theatres seem to you to be rhetoricians?~
2036  Gorg|            life they convicted him of theft, and almost put him to death,
2037  Gorg|             of what may be called the theme or proem (beginning ‘The
2038  Gorg|             secular age succeeds to a theocratical. In this fanciful tale Plato
2039  Gorg|        influence on mankind. Into the theological import of this, or into
2040  Gorg|          blend with the more familiar theories of modern philosophers.
2041  Gorg|             mankind. He is not a mere theorist, nor yet a dealer in expedients;
2042  Gorg|             in a simple form the main theses of the dialogue.~First Thesis:—~
2043  Gorg|               of this power, like the Thessalian enchantresses, who, as they
2044  Gorg|             the tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the Phaedrus: (
2045  Gorg|            and stingless (paupers and thieves) in the Eighth Book of the
2046  Gorg|             men fat only to make them thin. And those whom they have
2047      | thine
2048  Gorg|              the long run, and become thinner than they were before; and
2049  Gorg|              unrighteous men who come thither. And among them, as I confidently
2050  Gorg|                and consider them more thoroughly, you may be convinced for
2051  Gorg|          concession made by him. Like Thrasymachus in the Republic, though
2052  Gorg|              another by the slightest threads; and have thus been led
2053  Gorg|            waves nearer the shore are threatening him. He acknowledges that
2054  Gorg|         sister art of review writing, threatens to absorb all literature,
2055      | throughout
2056  Gorg|              by their names. (Compare Thucyd.)~Who is the true poet?~
2057  Gorg|             carried away by the great tide of public opinion. Socrates
2058  Gorg|      pauperism by almsgiving; when we tie up property without regard
2059  Gorg|       fragment only, commenced in the Timaeus and continued in the Critias: (
2060  Gorg|      generated in the transition from timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which
2061  Gorg|              that you, Callicles, and Tisander of Aphidnae, and Andron
2062  Gorg|            cannot deny; for he had no title at all to the throne which
2063  Gorg|             them with a great deal of toil and difficulty; but when
2064  Gorg|             abstract right or duty of toleration, or advantage to be derived
2065  Gorg|             use that which he wrongly took, and if wrongly, basely,
2066  Gorg|              for he is ‘fooled to the top of his bent’ by the worldliness
2067  Gorg|            head broken or his garment torn in an instant. Such is my
2068  Gorg|               desires is liable to be tossed about by words and blown
2069  Gorg|               the Nicomachean Ethics. Traces of a ‘robust sophistry’
2070  Gorg|            ventured out of the beaten track in their meditations on
2071  Gorg|           arts which heal these evils—trading, medicine, justice—and the
2072  Gorg|            Suppose a man to have been trained in the palestra and to be
2073  Gorg|               from all this; he would trample under foot all our formulas
2074  Gorg|          since when he is wronged and trampled upon, he is unable to help
2075  Gorg|         reassert his original rights, trampling under foot all our formularies,
2076  Gorg|              during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide
2077  Gorg|         mythology; abstract ideas are transformed into persons, figures of
2078  Gorg|               of the State; but as to transforming those desires and not allowing
2079  Gorg|          himself fallen into the same trap. I cannot say very much
2080  Gorg|              up with the incidents of travel, and mythological personages
2081  Gorg|             perpetrators of an act of treachery or of tyranny. Reason tells
2082  Gorg|               will be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for
2083  Gorg|         prominent than in most modern treatises on ethics.~The idealizing
2084  Gorg|            has the ‘savoir faire,’ or trick of writing, but he has not
2085  Gorg|              in them all these savage tricks? Would he not be a bad manager
2086  Gorg|              truths; and in which the trifles of courtesy and the familiarities
2087  Gorg|            replies, that when old men trip, the young set them on their
2088  Gorg|         brothers, who gave the row of tripods which stand in the precincts
2089  Gorg|            pleases, and the docks and triremes of the Athenians, and all
2090  Gorg|             others, and which at last triumphs, if not here, at any rate
2091  Gorg|            done his own work, and not troubled himself with the doings
2092  Gorg|             in the Gorgias. He hardly troubles himself to answer seriously
2093  Gorg|           find out anything better or truer: but now you see that you
2094  Gorg|             express not that which is truest, but that which is strongest.
2095  Gorg|            suit of clothes, Tale of a Tub). The fiction seems to have
2096  Gorg|                and has to my ears the twang of slavery. So when I hear
2097  Gorg|             attentive reader that the twelve days during which Er lay
2098  Gorg|             Pericles, who really died twenty-four years previously (429 B.C.)
2099  Gorg|               and review what is good twice and thrice over, as they
2100  Gorg|              truth, seen first in the twilight of ethical philosophy, but
2101  Gorg|           seeing that the swollen and ulcerated condition of the State is
2102  Gorg|              prepared to maintain the ultimate triumph of truth and right,
2103  Gorg|               certain extent they are un-Greek; at any rate there is hardly
2104  Gorg|              without them, by our own unaided skill—in that case prudence
2105  Gorg|              is generally regarded as unattainable, and that mankind will by
2106  Gorg|               reason being that he is uncertain whether to live or die is
2107  Gorg|            that too much wisdom might unconsciously to yourselves be the ruin
2108  Gorg|              two classes of souls who undergo punishment—the curable and
2109  Gorg|              his prison, and there he undergoes the punishment which he
2110  Gorg|               supposed by Homer to be undergoing everlasting punishment.
2111  Gorg|             to what may be termed the underground religion in all ages and
2112  Gorg|             paradoxical to the common understanding as Plato’s conception of
2113  Gorg|          himself these lofty aims has undertaken a task which will call forth
2114  Gorg|           will neither exaggerate nor undervalue the power of a statesman,
2115  Gorg|       therefore the doubt must remain undetermined.~To the first there succeeds
2116  Gorg|            and their judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both
2117  Gorg|            seeing that they cannot be undone, and have become a part
2118  Gorg|                Gorgias and Polus, are undoubtedly wise men and my very good
2119  Gorg|              history. Mankind have an uneasy feeling that they ought
2120  Gorg|           when the tyrant is rude and uneducated, he may be expected to fear
2121  Gorg|           different?~CALLICLES: I say unequivocally that they are the same.~
2122  Gorg|        SOCRATES: Alas, Callicles, how unfair you are! you certainly treat
2123  Gorg|               There is some degree of unfairness in opposing the principle
2124  Gorg|          death? The first question is unfamiliar to us, and therefore seems
2125  Gorg|           reversed; all those things ‘unfit for ears polite’ which Callicles
2126  Gorg|              philosopher is naturally unfitted for political life; his
2127  Gorg|           after all his services, the ungrateful city banished him, or condemned
2128  Gorg|               when in after years the unhealthy surfeit brings the attendant
2129  Gorg|        characters, and he passes them unheeded by. The contemplation of
2130  Gorg|            glorious and his character unimpeached by any verdict of the Athenians—
2131  Gorg|          might be expected, is wholly unintelligible, both to Gorgias and Polus;
2132  Gorg|              which men too often fall unintentionally, are absorbed in the consciousness
2133  Gorg|             of Plato are a phenomenon unique in literature. There are
2134  Gorg|            language in which they are united; which gives a fitting expression
2135  Gorg|             SOCRATES: And is not this universally true? If a man does something
2136  Gorg|               all good things, may be unlawfully used. Neither is the teacher
2137  Gorg|          appears to me ridiculous and unmanly and worthy of stripes. And
2138  Gorg|        dissatisfied at the length and unmeaningness of the answer; he tells
2139  Gorg|           subject, and begs Polus not unnecessarily to retaliate on him.~‘Do
2140  Gorg|               right, may be pushed to unpleasant consequences. Nor can Plato
2141  Gorg|            sails gallantly along. But unpopularity soon follows him. For men
2142  Gorg|             Yet his art is modest and unpresuming: it has no airs or pretences
2143  Gorg|             and evil can no longer be unravelled; and although they know
2144  Gorg|          other man ever was, with the unreality and untruthfulness of popular
2145  Gorg|               is heard, which is most unreasonable; for the people, who have
2146  Gorg|              difficulty which remains unsolved, and has not altogether
2147  Gorg|             his vessels are leaky and unsound, and night and day he is
2148  Gorg|             been happy. But now he is unspeakably miserable, for he has been
2149  Gorg|              at conclusions which are untrue you must interpose and refute
2150  Gorg|                with the unreality and untruthfulness of popular opinion, and
2151  Gorg|              pleasure the bait of the unwary, and deceiving them into
2152  Gorg|              intention of fighting an uphill battle; he keeps the roadway
2153  Gorg|              occurs to Plato that the upper atmosphere is an earth and
2154  Gorg|         observe that there is a great uproar and indignation at the supposed
2155  Gorg|               himself, from his youth upward, to feel sorrow and joy
2156  Gorg|            strongest from their youth upwards, and tame them like young
2157  Gorg|          direct evidence which can be urged in support of them. When
2158  Gorg|               time, viz. the ‘recent’ usurpation of Archelaus, which occurred
2159  Gorg|            throne which Perdiccas has usurped, and after entertaining
2160  Gorg|      Archelaus, son of Perdiccas, the usurper of Macedonia. Does not Socrates
2161  Gorg|              can we suppose that such utterances have any healing or life-giving
2162  Gorg|             dialogues of Plato, he is vain and boastful, yet he has
2163  Gorg|               soul, which is the more valuable part of him; neither is
2164  Gorg|           child an infant, the infant vanished into the earth. The connection
2165  Gorg|             ideal. And so partly from vanity and egotism, but partly
2166  Gorg|               nature are generally at variance with one another: and hence,
2167  Gorg|              degrees of good and evil vary with the degrees of pleasure
2168  Gorg|       feelings among mankind, however varying in different persons—I mean
2169  Gorg|           supposed to instruct such a vast multitude about such high
2170  Gorg|               argument personified as veiling her face (Republic), as
2171  Gorg|              half-serious, half-comic vein of reflection. ‘Who knows,’
2172  Gorg|          Christian thinkers, who have ventured out of the beaten track
2173  Gorg|            teacher of politics, as he ventures to call himself, cannot
2174  Gorg|             together, their ipsissima verba are laws?~SOCRATES: Ho!
2175  Gorg|          character unimpeached by any verdict of the Athenians—this was
2176  Gorg|     retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of Proverbs, ‘Therefore
2177  Gorg|             company at last are quite vexed at themselves for ever listening
2178  Gorg|               ever a man who was once vicious, or unjust, or intemperate,
2179  Gorg|            have you develope your own views in your own way, whatever
2180  Gorg|           nature of health and bodily vigour; and if we are right, Polus,
2181  Gorg|             declaim against the utter vileness of the city: —do you think
2182  Gorg|               of punishment is partly vindictive, partly corrective. In the
2183  Gorg|              laws of the state only a violation of the order of nature,
2184  Gorg|                Symp.). At first he is violent and ill-mannered, and is
2185  Gorg|              like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences
2186  Gorg|              in the conviction that a virtuous life is the only good, whether
2187  Gorg|              regarded as dreamers and visionaries by their own contemporaries.
2188  Gorg|         friend, that having come on a visit to Athens, which is the
2189  Gorg|              not forgotten their high vocation of teachers; and the two
2190  Gorg|              to the principles now in vogue; or whether he should pursue
2191  Gorg|     conclusion that no one does wrong voluntarily, but that all do wrong against
2192  Gorg|             he tells the disconcerted volunteer that he has mistaken the
2193  Gorg|            penalty of exile; and they voted that Miltiades, the hero
2194  Gorg|               to-morrow.’ Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to Orissa.)~
2195  Gorg|           drunk, he threw them into a waggon and carried them off by
2196  Gorg|           soul and body have two arts waiting upon them, first the art
2197  Gorg|         neither, are such as sitting, walking, running, sailing; or, again,
2198  Gorg|           done all this, gets out and walks about on the sea-shore by
2199  Gorg|          paltry image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws),
2200  Gorg|             the company when they are wanting to do something else.~CHAEREPHON:
2201  Gorg|          himself, cannot safely go to war with the whole world, and
2202  Gorg|             approaches his antagonist warily from a distance, with a
2203  Gorg|              pour in, the greater the waste; and the holes must be large
2204  Gorg|              shows when supported and watched by public opinion. And on
2205  Gorg|               in all his opinions; he watches the countenance of both
2206  Gorg|            That men drink more of the waters of forgetfulness than is
2207  Gorg|               first, second and third wave:—on these figures of speech
2208  Gorg|               he is borne up when the waves nearer the shore are threatening
2209  Gorg|              others, and if he be the weakest of all, he being the best
2210  Gorg|               walk in the ways of the wealthy and be wise.~Socrates professes
2211  Gorg|               regards as an excellent weapon of attack and defence. He
2212  Gorg|               be pierced by them. The weapons of ridicule are taken out
2213  Gorg|                All of these disguises wear the appearance of the truth;
2214  Gorg|              who, like Odysseus, have wearied of ambition and have only
2215  Gorg|           refute me you will, and not weary of doing good to a friend.~
2216  Gorg|               popularity, and in fair weather sails gallantly along. But
2217  Gorg|              I might ask with what is weaving concerned, and you would
2218  Gorg|              the consequences are not weighed and foreseen, are of this
2219  Gorg|             are always tending to the well-being of states—better administration,
2220  Gorg|          themselves. But Callicles is well-educated; and he is not too modest
2221  Gorg|               men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say in a
2222  Gorg|            would be assured here in a well-ordered state. But in the actual
2223  Gorg|             word to say; and when you went up before the Court, even
2224      | whenever
2225      | Whereupon
2226  Gorg|              his life, and talks in a whisper with three or four admiring
2227  Gorg|            men, and skulk in corners, whispering to a few admiring youths,
2228  Gorg|               may provide them either wholesale or retail, or he may be
2229  Gorg|     acquainted, would prevail far and wide: ‘Chaos’ would come again,
2230  Gorg|            then again comprehending a wider range and soaring to the
2231  Gorg|            Odysseus in Homer saw him~‘Wielding a sceptre of gold, and giving
2232  Gorg|           charge of man only made him wilder, and more savage and unjust,
2233  Gorg|    misunderstanding arises out of the wildness of his humour; he is supposed
2234  Gorg|             the first to-morrow.’ Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to Orissa.)~
2235  Gorg|             their pleasant vices, and willingly proclaim in word and song
2236  Gorg|         unjust use of rhetoric, or of willingness to do injustice. By the
2237  Gorg|            the storm descends and the winds blow, though he knows not
2238  Gorg|               purpose, the poet lends wings to his fancy and exhibits
2239  Gorg|             then you will know what a wiseacre you are in your admonition
2240  Gorg|             think that this is an old wives’ fable. But you, who are
2241  Gorg|       advantages which he has already won:—~The pleasant is not the
2242  Gorg|               whose words you are now wondering, and you have heard her
2243  Gorg|          running, sailing; or, again, wood, stones, and the like:—these
2244  Gorg|            must not suppose that I am word-catching), if you allow that the
2245  Gorg|               accuses of trifling and word-splitting; he is scandalized that
2246  Gorg|              times, such as Goethe or Wordsworth, who have not forgotten
2247  Gorg|            rhetorician but the master workman will advise; or when generals
2248  Gorg|               top of his bent’ by the worldliness of Callicles. But he is
2249  Gorg|            and to the Orphic modes of worship. To a certain extent they
2250  Gorg|            drive me away. ‘I mean the worthier, the wiser.’ You mean to
2251  Gorg|            ideals as they may be more worthily called): (1) that to do
2252  Gorg|            show, and only a number of worthless buildings or none at all,
2253  Gorg|              of the world, and of the wretch who, having been detected
2254  Gorg|           than live; since when he is wronged and trampled upon, he is
2255  Gorg|             accuse their disciples of wronging them, and defrauding them
2256  Gorg|             the baker, Mithoecus, who wrote the Sicilian cookery-book,
2257  Gorg|              principle of justice did Xerxes invade Hellas, or his father
2258  Gorg|            examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether such a use of
2259  Gorg|           compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether such
2260  Gorg|           These are not ‘of to-day or yesterday,’ but are the same in all
2261  Gorg|           cutting in dealing with the youthful Polus, ironical and sarcastic