Secondly, if any man will read attentively the course of the dialogue, he will see that the doctrine of Kalliklês is such as no one dared publicly to propound. So it is conceived both by Kalliklês himself, and by Sokratês. The former first takes up the conversation, by saying that his predecessor Pôlus had become entangled in a contradiction, because he had not courage enough openly to announce an unpopular and odious doctrine; but he, Kalliklês, was less shamefaced, and would speak out boldly that doctrine which others kept to themselves for fear of shocking the hearers. “Certainly (says Sokratês to him) your audacity is abundantly shown by the doctrine which you have just laid down; you set forth plainly that which other people think, but do not choose to utter.”[612] Now, opinions of which Pôlus, an insolent young man, was afraid to proclaim himself the champion, must have been revolting indeed to the sentiments of hearers. How then can any reasonable man believe, that such opinions were not only openly propounded, but seriously inculcated as truth upon audiences of youthful hearers, by the sophists? We know that the teaching of the latter was public in the highest degree; publicity was pleasing as well as profitable to them; among the many disparaging epithets heaped upon them, ostentation and vanity are two of the most conspicuous. Whatever they taught, they taught publicly; and I contend, with full conviction, that, had they even agreed with Kalliklês in this opinion, they could neither have been sufficiently audacious, nor sufficiently their own enemies, to make it a part of their public teaching; but would have acted like Pôlus, and kept the doctrine to themselves.
Thirdly, this latter conclusion will be rendered doubly certain, when we consider of what city we are now speaking. Of all places in the world, the democratical Athens is the last in which the doctrine advanced by Kalliklês could possibly have been professed by a public teacher; or even by Kalliklês himself, in any public meeting. It is unnecessary to remind the reader how profoundly democratical was the sentiment and morality of the Athenians,—how much they loved their laws, their constitution, and their political equality,—how jealous their apprehension was of any nascent or threatening despotism. All this is not simply admitted, but even exaggerated, by Mr. Mitford, Wachsmuth, and other anti-democratical writers, who often draw from it materials for their abundant censures. Now the very point which Sokratês, in this dialogue, called “Gorgias,” seeks to establish against Kalliklês, against the rhetors, and against the sophists, is, that they courted, flattered, and truckled to the sentiment of the Athenian people, with degrading subservience; that they looked to the immediate gratification simply, and not to permanent moral improvement of the people; that they had not courage to address to them any unpalatable truths, however salutary, but would shift and modify opinions in every way, so as to escape giving offence;[613] that no man who put himself prominently forward at Athens had any chance of success, unless he became moulded and assimilated, from the core, to the people and their type of sentiment[614]. Granting such charges to be true, how is it conceivable that any sophist, or any rhetor, could venture to enforce upon an Athenian public audience the doctrine laid down by Kalliklês? To tell such an audience: “Your laws and institutions are all violations of the law of nature, contrived to disappoint the Alkibiadês or Napoleon among you of his natural right to become your master, and to deal with you petty men as his slaves. All your unnatural precautions, and conventional talk, in favor of legality and equal dealing, will turn out to be nothing better than pitiful impotence[615], as soon as he finds a good opportunity of standing forward in his full might and energy, so as to put you into your proper places, and show you what privileges Nature intends for her favorites!” Conceive such a doctrine propounded by a lecturer to assembled Athenians! A doctrine just as revolting to Nikias as to Kleon, and which even Alkibiadês would be forced to affect to disapprove; since it is not simply anti-popular, not simply despotic, but the drunken extravagance of despotism. The Great man, as depicted by Kalliklês, stands in the same relation to ordinary mortals, as Jonathan Wild the Great, in the admirable parody of Fielding.
That sophists, whom Plato accuses of slavish flattery to the democratical ear, should gratuitously insult it by the proposition of such tenets, is an assertion not merely untrue, but utterly absurd. Even as to Sokratês, we know from Xenophon how much the Athenians were offended with him, and how much it was urged by the accusers on his trial, that in his conversations he was wont to cite with peculiar relish the description, in the second book of the Iliad, of Odysseus following the Grecian crowd, when running away from the agora to get on shipboard, and prevailing upon them to come back, by gentle words addressed to the chiefs, but by blows of his stick, accompanied with contemptuous reprimand, to the common people. The indirect evidence thus afforded, that Sokratês countenanced unequal dealing and ill usage towards the many, told much against him in the minds of the dikasts. What would they have felt then towards a sophist who publicly professed the political morality of Kalliklês? The truth is, not only was it impossible that any such morality, or anything of the same type even much diluted, could find its way into the educational lectures of professors at Athens, but the fear would be in the opposite direction. If the sophist erred in either way, it would be in that which Sokratês imputes, by making his lectures over-democratical. Nay, if we suppose any opportunity to have arisen of discussing the doctrine of Kalliklês, he would hardly omit to flatter the ears of the surrounding democrats by enhancing the beneficent results of legality and equal dealing, and by denouncing this “natural despot,” or undisclosed Napoleon, as one who must either take his place under such restraints, or find a place in some other city.
I have thus shown, even from Plato himself, that the doctrine ascribed to Kalliklês neither did enter, nor could have entered, into the lectures of a sophist or professed teacher. The same conclusion may be maintained respecting the doctrine of Thrasymachus in the first book of the “Republic.” Thrasymachus was a rhetorical teacher, who had devised precepts respecting the construction of an oration and the training of young men for public speaking. It is most probable that he confined himself, like Gorgias, to this department, and that he did not profess to give moral lectures, like Protagoras and Prodikus. But granting him to have given such, he would not talk about justice in the way in which Plato makes him talk, if he desired to give any satisfaction to an Athenian audience. The mere brutality and ferocious impudence of demeanor even to exaggeration, with which Plato invests him, is in itself a strong proof that the doctrine, ushered in with such a preface, was not that of a popular and acceptable teacher, winning favor in public audiences. He defines justice to be “the interest of the superior power; that rule, which, in every society, the dominant power prescribes, as being for its own advantage.” A man is just, he says, for the advantage of another, not for his own: he is weak, cannot help himself, and must submit to that which the stronger authority, whether despot, oligarchy, or commonwealth, commands.
This theory is essentially different from the doctrine of Kalliklês, as set forth back; for Thrasymachus does not travel out of society to insist upon anterior rights dating from a supposed state of nature; he takes societies as he finds them, recognizing the actual governing authority of each as the canon and constituent of justice or injustice. Stallbaum and other writers have incautiously treated the two theories as if they were the same; and with something even worse than want of caution, while they pronounce the theory of Thrasymachus to be detestably immoral, announce it as having been propounded not by him only, but by The Sophists; thus, in their usual style, dealing with the sophists as if they were a school, sect, or partnership with mutual responsibility. Whoever has followed the evidence which I have produced respecting Protagoras and Prodikus, will know how differently these latter handled the question of justice.
But the truth is, that the theory of Thrasymachus, though incorrect and defective, is not so detestable as these writers represent. What makes it seem detestable, is the style and manner in which he is made to put it forward; which causes the just man to appear petty and contemptible, while it surrounds the unjust man with enviable attributes. Now this is precisely the circumstance which revolts the common sentiments of mankind, as it revolts also the critics who read what is said by Thrasymachus. The moral sentiments exist in men’s minds in complex and powerful groups, associated with some large words and emphatic forms of speech. Whether an ethical theory satisfies the exigencies of reason, or commands and answers to all the phenomena, a common audience will seldom give themselves the trouble to consider with attention; but what they imperiously exact, and what is indispensable to give the theory any chance of success, is, that it shall exhibit to their feelings the just man as respectable and dignified, and the unjust man as odious and repulsive. Now that which offends in the language ascribed to Thrasymachus is, not merely the absence, but the reversal, of this condition; the presentation of the just man as weak and silly, and of injustice in all the prestige of triumph and dignity. And for this very reason, I venture to infer that such a theory was never propounded by Thrasymachus to any public audience in the form in which it appears in Plato. For Thrasymachus was a rhetor, who had studied the principles of his art: now we know that these common sentiments of an audience, were precisely what the rhetors best understood, and always strove to conciliate. Even from the time of Gorgias, they began the practice of composing beforehand declamations upon the general heads of morality, which were ready to be introduced into actual speeches as occasion presented itself, and in which appeal was made to the moral sentiments foreknown as common, with more or less of modification, to all the Grecian assemblies. The real Thrasymachus, addressing any audience at Athens, would never have wounded these sentiments, as the Platonic Thrasymachus is made to do in the “Republic.” Least of all would he have done this, if it be true of him, as Plato asserts of the rhetors and sophists generally, that they thought about nothing but courting popularity, without any sincerity of conviction.
Though Plato thinks fit to bring out the opinion of Thrasymachus with accessories unnecessarily offensive, and thus to enhance the dialectical triumph of Sokratês by the brutal manners of the adversary, he was well aware that he had not done justice to the opinion itself, much less confuted it. The proof of this is, that in the second book of the “Republic,” after Thrasymachus has disappeared, the very same opinion is taken up by Glaukon and Adeimantus, and set forth by both of them, though they disclaim entertaining it as their own, as suggesting grave doubts and difficulties which they desire to hear solved by Sokratês. Those who read attentively the discourses of Glaukon and Adeimantus, will see that the substantive opinion ascribed to Thrasymachus, apart from the brutality with which he is made to state it, does not even countenance the charge of immoral teaching against him, much less against the sophists generally. Hardly anything in Plato’s compositions is more powerful than those discourses. They present, in a perspicuous and forcible manner, some of the most serious difficulties with which ethical theory is required to grapple. And Plato can answer them only in one way, by taking society to pieces, and reconstructing it in the form of his imaginary republic. The speeches of Glaukon and Adeimantus form the immediate preface to the striking and elaborate description which he goes through, of his new state of society, nor do they receive any other answer than what is implied in that description. Plato indirectly confesses that he cannot answer them, assuming social institutions to continue unreformed: and his reform is sufficiently fundamental.[616]
I call particular attention to this circumstance, without which we cannot fairly estimate the sophists, or practical teachers of Athens, face to face with their accuser-general, Plato. He was a great and systematic theorist, whose opinions on ethics, politics, cognition, religion, etc., were all wrought into harmony by his own mind, and stamped with that peculiarity which is the mark of an original intellect. So splendid an effort of speculative genius is among the marvels of the Grecian world. His dissent from all the societies which he saw around him, not merely democratical, but oligarchical and despotic also, was of the deepest and most radical character. Nor did he delude himself by the belief, that any partial amendment of that which he saw around could bring about the end which he desired: he looked to nothing short of a new genesis of the man and the citizen, with institutions calculated from the beginning to work out the full measure of perfectibility. His fertile scientific imagination realized this idea in the “Republic.” But that very systematic and original character, which lends so much value and charm to the substantive speculations of Plato, counts as a deduction from his trustworthiness as critic or witness, in reference to the living agents whom he saw at work in Athens and other cities, as statesmen, generals, or teachers. His criticisms are dictated by his own point of view, according to which the entire society was corrupt, and all the instruments who carried on its functions were of essentially base metal. Whoever will read either the “Gorgias” or the “Republic,” will see in how sweeping and indiscriminate a manner he passes his sentence of condemnation. Not only all the sophists and all the rhetors,[617] but all the musicians and dithyrambic or tragic poets; all the statesmen, past as well as present, not excepting even the great Periklês, receive from his hands one common stamp of dishonor. Every one of these men are numbered by Plato among the numerous category of flatterers, who minister to the immediate gratification and to the desires of the people, without looking to their permanent improvement, or making them morally better. “Periklês and Kimon (says Sokratês in the “Gorgias”) are nothing but servants or ministers who supply the immediate appetites and tastes of the people; just as the baker and the confectioner do in their respective departments, without knowing or caring whether the food will do any real good, a point which the physician alone can determine. As ministers, they are clever enough: they have provided the city amply with tribute, walls, docks, ships, and such other follies: but I (Sokratês) am the only man in Athens who aim, so far as my strength permits, at the true purpose of politics, the mental improvement of the people.”[618] So wholesale a condemnation betrays itself as the offspring, and the consistent offspring, of systematic peculiarity of vision, the prejudice of a great and able mind.
It would be not less unjust to appreciate the sophists or the statesmen of Athens from the point of view of Plato, than the present teachers and politicians of England or France from that of Mr. Owen or Fourier. Both the one and the other class labored for society as it stood at Athens: the statesmen carried on the business of practical politics, the sophist trained up youth for practical life in all its departments, as family men, citizens, and leaders, to obey as well as to command. Both accepted the system as it stood, without contemplating the possibility of a new birth of society: both ministered to certain exigences, held their anchorage upon certain sentiments, and bowed to a certain morality, actually felt among the living men around them. That which Plato says of the statesmen of Athens is perfectly true, that they were only servants or ministers of the people. He, who tried the people and the entire society by comparison with an imaginary standard of his own, might deem all these ministers worthless in the lump, as carrying on a system too bad to be mended; but, nevertheless, the difference between a competent and an incompetent minister, between Periklês and Nikias, was of unspeakable moment to the security and happiness of the Athenians. What the sophists on their part undertook was, to educate young men so as to make them better qualified for statesmen or ministers; and Protagoras would have thought it sufficient honor to himself,—as well as sufficient benefit to Athens, which assuredly it would have been,—if he could have inspired any young Athenian with the soul and the capacities of his friend and companion Periklês.
So far is Plato from considering the sophists as the corruptors of Athenian morality, that he distinctly protests against that supposition, in a remarkable passage of the “Republic.” It is, he says, the whole people, or the society, with its established morality, intelligence, and tone of sentiment, which is intrinsically vicious; the teachers of such a society must be vicious also, otherwise their teaching would not be received; and even if their private teaching were ever so good, its effect would be washed away, except in some few privileged natures, by the overwhelming deluge of pernicious social influences.[619] Nor let any one imagine, as modern readers are but too ready to understand it, that this poignant censure is intended for Athens so far forth as a democracy. Plato was not the man to preach king-worship, or wealth-worship, as social or political remedies: he declares emphatically that not one of the societies then existing was such that a truly philosophical nature could be engaged in active functions under it.[620] These passages would be alone sufficient to repel the assertions of those who denounce the sophists as poisoners of Athenian morality, on the alleged authority of Plato.