SOCRATES: We shall be in the right, therefore, Alcibiades, if we say that all who are senseless are mad. For example, if among persons of your own age or older than yourself there are some who are senseless,--as there certainly are,--they are mad. For tell me, by heaven, do you not think that in the city the wise are few, while the foolish, whom you call mad, are many? ALCIBIADES: I do. SOCRATES: But how could we live in safety with so many crazy people? Should we not long since have paid the penalty at their hands, and have been struck and beaten and endured every other form of ill-usage which madmen are wont to inflict? Consider, my dear friend: may it not be quite otherwise? ALCIBIADES: Why, Socrates, how is that possible? I must have been mistaken. SOCRATES: So it seems to me. But perhaps we may consider the matter thus:-- ALCIBIADES: How? SOCRATES: I will tell you. We think that some are sick; do we not? ALCIBIADES: Yes. SOCRATES: And must every sick person either have the gout, or be in a fever, or suffer from ophthalmia? Or do you believe that a man may labour under some other disease, even although he has none of these complaints? Surely, they are not the only maladies which exist? ALCIBIADES: Certainly not. SOCRATES: And is every kind of ophthalmia a disease? ALCIBIADES: Yes. SOCRATES: And every disease ophthalmia? ALCIBIADES: Surely not. But I scarcely understand what I mean myself. SOCRATES: Perhaps, if you give me your best attention, 'two of us' looking together, we may find what we seek. ALCIBIADES: I am attending, Socrates, to the best of my power. SOCRATES: We are agreed, then, that every form of ophthalmia is a disease, but not every disease ophthalmia? ALCIBIADES: We are. SOCRATES: And so far we seem to be right. For every one who suffers from a fever is sick; but the sick, I conceive, do not all have fever or gout or ophthalmia, although each of these is a disease, which, according to those whom we call physicians, may require a different treatment. They are not all alike, nor do they produce the same result, but each has its own effect, and yet they are all diseases. May we not take an illustration from the artizans? ALCIBIADES: Certainly. SOCRATES: There are cobblers and carpenters and sculptors and others of all sorts and kinds, whom we need not stop to enumerate. All have their distinct employments and all are workmen, although they are not all of them cobblers or carpenters or sculptors. ALCIBIADES: No, indeed.