Classical literature; Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
SOCRATES: But, O my friend, when he draws the other into upper air,
and gets him out of his pleas and rejoinders into the contemplation of
justice and injustice in their own nature and in their difference from
one another and from all other things; or from the commonplaces about
the happiness of a king or of a rich man to the consideration of
government, and of human happiness and misery in general--what they
are, and how a man is to attain the one and avoid the other--when that
narrow, keen, little legal mind is called to account about all this, he
gives the philosopher his revenge; for dizzied by the height at which
he is hanging, whence he looks down into space, which is a strange
experience to him, he being dismayed, and lost, and stammering
broken words, is laughed at, not by Thracian handmaidens or any other
uneducated persons, for they have no eye for the situation, but by every
man who has not been brought up a slave. Such are the two characters,
Theodorus: the one of the freeman, who has been trained in liberty and
leisure, whom you call the philosopher,--him we cannot blame because
he appears simple and of no account when he has to perform some menial
task, such as packing up bed-clothes, or flavouring a sauce or fawning
speech; the other character is that of the man who is able to do all
this kind of service smartly and neatly, but knows not how to wear his
cloak like a gentleman; still less with the music of discourse can he
hymn the true life aright which is lived by immortals or men blessed of
heaven.
THEODORUS: If you could only persuade everybody, Socrates, as you do me,
of the truth of your words, there would be more peace and fewer evils
among men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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