Republic

”The nature, then, which we established for the philosopher, if, I suppose, it meets with proper learning, must of necessity grow and arrive at every virtue, but if, having been sown and planted in an improper environment, it is not nourished, it will on the contrary arrive at all the opposite states, unless some of the gods happens to help it. Or do you also believe, like the many, that there are some youth corrupted by sophists, and that there are some individual sophists who corrupt them to any extent worth mentioning, rather than that those very people who say these things are themselves the greatest sophists, who educate most perfectly and fashion both young and old, men and women, into the very kind of people they want them to be?” “When indeed?” he said. “Whenever,” I said, “many sitting gathered together in assemblies, or in courtrooms, or theaters, or camps, or any other common gathering of a crowd with much uproar, blame some of the things said or done and praise others, both in excess, shouting and clapping; and in addition to them, the rocks and the place in which they are, echoing, present a double uproar of the blame and praise. In such a situation, what kind of heart do you think the youth, as the saying goes, possesses? Or what kind of private education of his will hold out, which will not be flooded by such blame or praise and go swept away down the stream wherever this carries it, and he will say the same things are noble and shameful as they do, and practice the very things they do, and be such a person?” ”There is great necessity, Socrates,” he said. “And yet,” I said, “we have not yet spoken of the greatest necessity.” “What kind?” he said. “The one which these educators and sophists add by deed when they do not persuade by word. Or do you not know that they punish the one who is not persuaded with disenfranchisement, fines, and death?” “Very much so indeed,” he said. “What other sophist, then, do you think, or what kind of private arguments tending in the opposite direction to these, will prevail?” ”I think none,” he said. “No indeed,” I said, “but even to attempt it is great folly.

​For there is not, nor has there been, nor indeed will there ever be, a character different in respect to virtue that has been educated contrary to the education of these people—a human one, my friend; for let us exclude the divine from the argument, as the proverb says. For one must know well that whatever is saved and becomes as it ought in such a state of constitutions, you will not speak ill if you say a divine dispensation saved it.” “It does not seem otherwise to me either,” he said. “Furthermore, then,” I said, “in addition to these things, let this also be your opinion.” “What kind?” “That each of these salaried individuals, whom indeed these people call sophists and consider rivals in trade, teaches nothing other than these dogmas of the many, which they believe when they are gathered together, and they call this wisdom. Just as if someone were learning by heart the angers and desires of a great and strong beast that was being reared, how it is necessary to approach it and how to touch it, and when it is most difficult or most gentle and from what things it becomes so, and indeed the voices at which it is accustomed to utter each sound, and what kind of voices of another make it gentle or wild; and having thoroughly learned all these things by association and the passage of time, he should call it wisdom and, having systematized it as an art, turn to teaching, knowing nothing in truth of these dogmas and desires as to what is noble or shameful, or good or bad, or just or unjust, but naming all these things according to the opinions of the great animal, calling the things in which it rejoices good, and the things with which it is vexed bad, having no other account of them, but calling the necessary things just and noble, having neither seen nor being able to show to another how much the nature of the necessary and the good actually differ. Being such a person, by Zeus, does he not seem to you to be a strange educator?” “To me indeed,” he said. “Does he, then, seem to differ at all from this man, who thinks it wisdom to have understood the anger and pleasures of the many and diverse people who gather together, whether in painting, or in music, or indeed in politics? For if anyone associates with them, displaying poetry or some other product of craftsmanship or service to the city, making the many his masters, beyond what is necessary, the so-called necessity of Diomedes obliges him to produce these things which they praise; but that these things are actually good and noble in truth, have you ever yet heard any of them giving an account that is not ridiculous?” ”I think indeed,” he said, “I never shall hear.”