[136] I daresay it may be something of this sort that you would suggest as the effect produced by philosophy on those who make it their pursuit: they yield to those who are first-rate
136a
in an understanding of the arts, but in taking the second place they surpass the rest; and in this way the man who has studied philosophy comes just next to the top in everything. That is the kind of person whom you appear to me to indicate.
You are quite right, it seems to me, Socrates, he said, in your conception of the philosopher’s position, with your comparison of him to the all-round athlete. For it is precisely his nature not to be enslaved to any business, or to work out anything exactly, so as to let his application to that one matter make him deficient in the rest, 136b as the craftsmen do, but to have a moderate contact with all of them.
Well, after this answer I was eager to know clearly what he meant, so I inquired of him whether he conceived of good men as useful or useless.
Useful, I should say, Socrates, he replied.
Then if good men are useful, are wicked men useless?
He agreed that they were.
Again, do you consider that philosophers are useful persons or not? 136c He agreed that they were useful; nay, more, that he considered they were most useful of all.
Come now, let us make out, if what you say is true, where these second-best men are also useful to us: for clearly the philosopher is inferior to any particular adept in the arts.
He agreed.
Well now, I went on, if you yourself, or one of your friends for whom you feel great concern, should have fallen sick, would you fetch that second-best man into the house with a view to obtaining health, or would you summon a doctor? 136d For my part, I should have both, he replied.
Please do not say both, I said, but which of the two you would prefer and also summon first.
No one, he replied,would make any question but that the doctor should be preferred and also summoned first.
And again, if you were in a ship that was making rough weather, to which would you rather entrust yourself and yours, the pilot or the philosopher?
I should choose the pilot.
And so it will be in everything else: so long as there is some craftsman, the philosopher will not be useful?
Apparently, he replied. 136e So now we find that the philosopher is a useless person? For I suppose we always have craftsmen; and we have agreed that good men are useful, and bad ones useless.
He was obliged to agree to this.
Then what follows? Am I to ask you, or will it be too ill-mannered?
Ask whatever you please.
Lovers. Plato. Walter Rangeley Maitland Lamb (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1927.
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