Argument of Sokrates resumed — multifarious arts of flattery, aiming at immediate pleasure.
We have now established (continues Sokrates) that pleasure is essentially different from good, and pain from evil: also, that to obtain good and avoid evil, a scientific choice is required — while to obtain pleasure and avoid pain, is nothing more than blind imitation or irrational knack. There are some arts and pursuits which aim only at procuring immediate pleasure — others which aim at attaining good or the best;[94] some arts, for a single person, — others for a multitude. Arts and pursuits which aim only at immediate pleasure, either of one or of a multitude, belong to the general head of Flattery. Among them are all the musical, choric, and dithyrambic representations at the festivals — tragedy as well as comedy — also political and judicial rhetoric. None of these arts aim at any thing except to gratify the public to whom they are addressed: none of them aim at the permanent good: none seek to better the character of the public. They adapt themselves to the prevalent desires: but whether those desires are such as, if realised, will make the public worse or better, they never enquire.[95]
[94] The Sokrates of the Protagoras would have admitted a twofold distinction of aims, but would have stated the distinction otherwise. Two things (he would say) may be looked at in regard to any course of conduct: first, the immediate pleasure or pain which it yields; secondly, this item, not alone, but combined with all the other pleasures and pains which can be foreseen as its conditions, consequences, or concomitants. To obey the desire of immediate pleasure, or the fear of immediate pain, requires no science; to foresee, estimate, and compare the consequences, requires a scientific calculation often very difficult and complicated — a τέχνη or ἐπιστήμη μετρητική.
Thus we are told not only in what cases the calculation is required, but what are the elements to be taken into the calculation. In the Gorgias, we are not told on what elements the calculation of good and evil is to be based: we are told that there must be science, but we learn nothing more.
[95] Plato, Gorgias, pp. 502-503.
The Rhetors aim at only flattering the public — even the best past Rhetors have done nothing else — citation of the four great Rhetors by Kallikles.
Sokr. — Do you know any public speakers who aim at anything more than gratifying the public, or who care to make the public better? Kall. — There are some who do, and others who do not. Sokr. — Which are those who do? and which of them has ever made the public better?[96] Kall. — At any rate, former statesmen did so; such as Miltiades, Themistokles, Kimon, Perikles. Sokr. — None of them. If they had, you would have seen them devoting themselves systematically and obviously to their one end. As a builder labours to construct a ship or a house, by putting together its various parts with order and symmetry — so these statesmen would have laboured to implant order and symmetry in the minds and bodies of the citizens: that is, justice and temperance in their minds, health and strength in their bodies.[97] Unless the statesman can do this, it is fruitless to supply the wants, to fulfil the desires and requirements, to uphold or enlarge the power, of the citizens. This is like supplying ample nourishment to a distempered body: the more such a body takes in, the worse it becomes. The citizens must be treated with refusal of their wishes and with punishment, until their vices are healed, and they become good.[98]
[96] Plato, Gorgias, p. 503 C.
[97] Plato, Gorgias, p. 504 D.