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Section 89

"Becoming misologues (haters of arguments)," he said, "just as some people become misanthropes (haters of men). For no greater evil can happen to a man than to hate arguments. Misology and misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes from trusting someone implicitly without any skill, believing the man to be entirely true, sound, and trustworthy, and then later finding him to be wicked and untrustworthy. When this happens repeatedly, especially with those one considered closest friends, a man eventually hates everyone and believes there is no soundness in anyone. Have you not noticed this happening?" "Certainly," I said. "Is it not shameful?" he asked. "Is it not clear that such a man attempts to deal with human beings without the skill of human affairs? For if he had that skill, he would know the truth: that the very good and the very wicked are few in number, while the vast majority are somewhere in the middle." "How do you mean?" I asked. "Just as with very large and very small things," he said. "Do you think anything is rarer than finding a very large or very small man, or dog, or anything else? Or something very swift or slow, ugly or beautiful, white or black? Do you not perceive that in all these things the extremes are rare and few, while the middle states are abundant and many?" "Certainly," I said. "If a contest for wickedness were held, don't you think the first prizes would go to a very few?" "Likely," I said. "Very likely," he said. "But arguments are not like humans in that respect—I was just following your lead. The similarity lies here: when a man without skill in arguments trusts an argument to be true, and soon after thinks it is false (whether it is or not), and then does this with another and another—you know that especially those who spend their time in contradicting arguments end up thinking they are the wisest of men, having alone recognized that there is nothing sound or stable in any fact or in any argument. They think everything simply flips up and down like the currents in the Euripus, never staying still for any time." "You speak the exact truth," I said.