Section 492 · The Republic

Then the nature which we assumed in the philosopher, if it receives the proper teaching, must needs grow and attain to consummate excellence, but, if it be sown and planted and grown in the wrong environment, the outcome will be quite the contrary unless some god comes to the rescue. Or are you too one of the multitude who believe that there are young men who are corrupted by the sophists, and that there are sophists in private life who corrupt to any extent worth mentioning, and that it is not rather the very men who talk in this strain who are the chief sophists and educate most effectively and mould to their own heart’s desire young and old, men and women? When? said he. Why, when, I said, the multitude are seated together in assemblies or in court-rooms or theaters or camps or any other public gathering of a crowd, and with loud uproar censure some of the things that are said and done and approve others, both in excess, with full-throated clamor and clapping of hands, and thereto the rocks and the region round about re-echoing redouble the din of the censure and the praise. In such case how do you think the young man’s heart, as the saying is, is moved within him? What private teaching do you think will hold out and not rather be swept away by the torrent of censure and applause, and borne off on its current, so that he will affirm the same things that they do to be honorable and base, and will do as they do, and be even such as they? That is quite inevitable, Socrates, he said. And, moreover, I said, we have not yet mentioned the chief necessity and compulsion. What is it? said he. That which these educators and sophists impose by action when their words fail to convince. Don’t you know that they chastise the recalcitrant with loss of civic rights and fines and death? They most emphatically do, he said. What other sophist, then, or what private teaching do you think will prevail in opposition to these? None, I fancy, said he. No, said I, the very attempt is the height of folly.