The dialogues of Plato in five volumes, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Translated into English with analyses and introductions
Plato · en
him from danger; and this, as you say, is the use of rhetoric in
courts of justice. But how many other arts are there which also
save men from death, and are yet quite humble in their
pretensions—such as the art of swimming, or the art of the pilot?
Does not the pilot do men at least as much service as the
rhetorician, and yet for the voyage from Aegina to Athens he does
not charge more than two obols, and when he disembarks is quite
unassuming in his demeanour? The reason is that he is not certain 512
whether he has done his passengers any good in saving them from
death, if one of them is diseased in body, and still more if he is
diseased in mind—who can say? The engineer too will often
save whole cities, and yet you despise him, and would not
allow your son to marry his daughter, or his son to marry yours.
But what reason is there in this? For if virtue only means the
saving of life, whether your own or another’s, you have no right to
despise him or any practiser of saving arts. But is not virtue
something different from saving and being saved? I would have 513
you rather consider whether you ought not to disregard length of
life, and think only how you can live best, leaving all besides to
the will of Heaven. For you must not expect to have influence
either with the Athenian Demos or with Demos the son of Pyrilampes,
unless you become like them. What do you say to this?
[Sidenote: _Analysis 511-515._]
‘There is some truth in what you are saying, but I do not
entirely believe you.’
[Sidenote: _Analysis 515-520._]