Several commentators have contended, that the doctrine which Plato here puts into the mouth of Kalliklês was taught by the Sophists at Athens: who are said to have inculcated on their hearers that true wisdom and morality consisted in acting upon the right of the strongest and taking whatever they could get, without any regard to law or justice. I have already endeavoured to show, in my History of Greece, that the Sophists cannot be shown to have taught either this doctrine, or any other common doctrine: that one at least among them (Prodikus) taught a doctrine inconsistent with it: and that while all of them agreed in trying to impart rhetorical accomplishments, or the power of handling political, ethical, judicial, matters in a manner suitable for the Athenian public — each had his own way of doing this. Kalliklês is not presented by Plato as a Sophist, but as a Rhetor aspiring to active political influence; and taking a small dose of philosophy, among the preparations for that end.[57] He depreciates the Sophists as much as the philosophers, and in fact rather more.[58] Moreover Plato represents him as adapting himself, with accommodating subservience, to the Athenian public assembly, and saying or unsaying exactly as they manifested their opinion.[59] Now the Athenian public assembly would repudiate indignantly all this pretended right of the strongest, if any orator thought fit to put it forward as over-ruling established right and law. Any aspiring or subservient orator, such as Kalliklês is described, would know better than to address them in this strain. The language which Plato puts into the mouth of Kalliklês is noway consistent with the attribute which he also ascribes to him — slavish deference to the judgments of the Athenian Dêmos.
[57] Plato, Gorgias, p. 487 C, 485.
[58] Plato, Gorgias, p. 520 A.
[59] Plato, Gorgias, p. 481-482.
Uncertainty of referring to Nature as an authority. It may be pleaded in favour of opposite theories. The theory of Kalliklês is made to appear repulsive by the language in which he expresses it.
Kalliklês is made to speak like one who sympathises with the right of the strongest, and who decorates such iniquity with the name and authority of that which he calls Nature. But this only shows the uncertainty of referring to Nature as an authority.[60] It may be pleaded in favour of different and opposite theories. Nature prompts the strong man to take from weaker men what will gratify his desires: Nature also prompts these weaker men to defeat him and protect themselves by the best means in their power. The many are weaker, taken individually — stronger taken collectively: hence they resort to defensive combination, established rules, and collective authority.[61] The right created on one side, and the opposite right created on the other, flow alike from Nature: that is, from propensities and principles natural, and deeply seated, in the human mind. The authority of Nature, considered as an enunciation of actual and wide-spread facts, may be pleaded for both alike. But a man’s sympathy and approbation may go either with the one or the other; and he may choose to stamp that which he approves, with the name of Nature as a personified law-maker. This is what is here done by Kalliklês as Plato exhibits him.[62] He sympathises with, and approves, the powerful individual. Now the greater portion of mankind are, and always have been, governed upon this despotic principle, and brought up to respect it: while many, even of those who dislike Kalliklês because they regard him as the representative of Athenian democracy (to which however his proclaimed sentiments stand pointedly opposed), when they come across a great man or so-called hero, such as Alexander or Napoleon, applaud the most exorbitant ambition if successful, and if accompanied by military genius and energy — regarding communities as made for little else except to serve as his instruments, subjects, and worshippers. Such are represented as the sympathies of Kalliklês: but those of the Athenians went with the second of the two rights — and mine go with it also. And though the language which Plato puts into the mouth of Kalliklês, in describing this second right, abounds in contemptuous rhetoric, proclaiming offensively the individual weakness of the multitude[63] — yet this very fact is at once the most solid and most respectable foundation on which rights and obligations can be based. The establishment of them is indispensable, and is felt as indispensable, to procure security for the community: whereby the strong man whom Kalliklês extols as the favourite of Nature, may be tamed by discipline and censure, so as to accommodate his own behaviour to this equitable arrangement.[64] Plato himself, in his Republic,[65] traces the generation of a city to the fact that each man individually taken is not self-sufficing, but stands in need of many things: it is no less true, that each man stands also in fear of many things, especially of depredations from animals, and depredations from powerful individuals of his own species. In the mythe of Protagoras,[66] we have fears from hostile animals — in the speech here ascribed to Kalliklês, we have fears from hostile strong men — assigned as the generating cause, both of political communion and of established rights and obligations to protect it.
[60] Aristotle (Sophist. Elench. 12, p. 173, a. 10) makes allusion to this argument of Kalliklês in the Gorgias, and notices it as a frequent point made by disputants in Dialectics — to insist on the contradiction between the Just according to Nature and the Just according to Law: which contradiction (Aristotle says) all the ancients recognised as a real one (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι πάντες ᾤοντο συμβαίνειν). It was doubtless a point on which the Dialectician might find much to say on either side.
[61] In the conversation between Sokrates and Kritobulus, one of the best in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (ii. 6, 21), respecting the conditions on which friendship depends, we find Sokrates clearly stating that the causes of friendship and the causes of enmity, though different and opposite, nevertheless both exist by nature. Ἀλλ’ ἔχει μέν, ἔφη ὁ Σωκράτης, ποικίλως πως ταῦτα: Φύσει γὰρ ἔχουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι τὰ μὲν φιλικά — δέονταί τε γὰρ ἀλλήλων, καὶ ἐλεοῦσι, καὶ συνεργοῦντες ὠφελοῦνται, καὶ τοῦτο συνιέντες χάριν ἔχουσιν ἀλλήλοις — τὰ δὲ πολεμικά — τά τε γὰρ αὐτὰ καλὰ καὶ ἡδέα νομίζοντες ὑπὲρ τούτων μάχονται καὶ διχογνωμονοῦντες ἐναντιοῦνται· πολεμικὸν δὲ καὶ ἔρις καὶ ὀργή, καὶ δυσμενὲς μὲν ὁ τοῦ πλεονεκτεῖν ἔρως, μισητὸν δὲ ὁ φθόνος. Ἀλλ’ ὅμως διὰ τούτων πάντων ἡ φιλία διαδυομένη συνάπτει τοὺς καλούς τε κἀγαθούς, &c.
We read in the speech of Hermokrates the Syracusan, at the congress of Gela in Sicily, when exhorting the Sicilians to unite for the purpose of repelling the ambitious schemes of Athens, Thucyd. iv. 61: καὶ τοὺς μὲν Ἀθηναίους ταῦτα πλεονεκτεῖν τε καὶ προνοεῖσθαι πολλὴ ξυγγνώμη, καὶ οὐ τοῖς ἄρχειν βουλομένοις μέμφομαι ἀλλὰ τοῖς ὑπακούειν ἑτοιμοτέροις οὖσι· πέφυκε γὰρ τὸ ἀνθρώπειον διὰ παντὸς ἄρχειν μὲν τοῦ εἴκοντος, φυλάσσεσθαι δὲ τὸ ἐπιόν. ὅσοι δὲ γιγνώσκοντες αὐτὰ μὴ ὀρθῶς προσκοποῦμεν, μηδὲ τοῦτό τις πρεσβύτατον ἥκει κρίνας, τὸ κοινῶς φοβερὸν ἅπαντας εὖ θέσθαι, ἁμαρτάνομεν. A like sentiment is pronounced by the Athenian envoys in their debate with the Melians, Thuc. v. 105: ἡγούμεθα γὰρ τό τε θεῖον δόξῃ, τὸ ἀνθρώπειόν τε σαφῶς διὰ παντός, ὑπὸ φύσεως ἀναγκαίας, οὖ ἂν κρατῇ, ἄρχειν. Some of the Platonic critics would have us believe that this last-cited sentiment emanates from the corrupt teaching of Athenian Sophists: but Hermokrates the Syracusan had nothing to do with Athenian Sophists.
[62] Respecting the vague and indeterminate phrases — Natural Justice, Natural Right, Law of Nature — see Mr. Austin’s Province of Jurisprudence Determined, p. 160, ed. 2nd. [Jurisp., 4th ed, pp. 179, 591-2], and Sir H. S. Maine’s Ancient Law, chapters iii. and iv.