Now when we were at this point in the argument and at our wits’ end, the bystanders were ready to fall upon the man and to cry that the argument had circled round to the same point as at first; and they declared that: Medicine also is a kind of
Finally, Socrates, I put these questions to you yourself also, and you told me that it belonged to justice to injure one’s enemies and to do well to one’s friends. But later on it appeared that the just man never injures anyone, for in all his acts he aims at benefiting all. So after repeated questionings—not once only or twice but spending quite a long time at it—I gave it up, concluding that though you were better than any man at the task of exhorting men to devote themselves to virtue, yet of these two alternatives one must be true: either you are capable of effecting thus much only and nothing more,—a thing which might happen also in respect of any other art whatsoever, as for example a man who was no steersman might practice composing an eulogy of that art as one of high value to mankind, and so too with all the other arts; so against you too one might perhaps bring the same charge in regard to justice, that you are none the more an expert about justice because you eulogize it finely. Not that this is the complaint I make myself; but it must be one or other of these two alternatives,—either you do not possess the knowledge or else you refuse to let me share it. Consequently, methinks I will betake myself, in my perplexity, to Thrasymachus and to everyone else I can. However, if you are really willing to refrain at last from addressing to me these hortatory discourses, and just as you would have followed up the hortatory discourse, suppose you had been exhorting me in respect of gymnastics that I should not neglect my body, by explaining the nature of the body and the nature of the treatment it requires—so let the same course be followed in the present case. Assume that Cleitophon agrees that it is ridiculous to expend care on everything else and to neglect the soul, for the sake of which all the other labour is incurred; and suppose also that I have made all the other subsequent statements which I rehearsed just now. And I entreat you, as I speak, by no means to act otherwise, lest I should do, as I do now, praise you in part to Lysias and to the others, and also in part blame you. For I shall maintain, Socrates, that while you are of untold value to a man who has not been exhorted, to him who has been exhorted you are almost an actual hindrance in the way of his attaining the goal of virtue and becoming a happy man.unanimity,
as are all the arts, and they are able to explain what it is they deal with; but as for the justice
or unanimity
which you talk of, it has no comprehension of what its own aim is, and what the effect of it is remains quite obscure.