Explanation given. Kleitophon expresses gratitude and admiration for the benefit which he has derived from long companionship with Sokrates.
As your frequent companion, Sokrates, I have often listened to you with profound admiration. I thought you superior to all other speakers when you proclaimed your usual strain of reproof, like the God from a dramatic machine, against mankind.[2] You asked them, “Whither are you drifting, my friends? You do not seem aware that you are doing wrong when you place all your affections on the gain of money, and neglect to teach your sons and heirs the right use of money. You do not provide for them teachers of justice, if justice be teachable; nor trainers of it, if it be acquirable by training and habit; nor indeed have you studied the acquisition of it, even for yourselves. Since the fact is obvious that, while you, as well as your sons, have learnt what passes for a finished education in virtue (letters, music, gymnastic), you nevertheless yield to the corruptions of gain — how comes it that you do not despise your actual education, and look out for teachers to correct such disorder? It is this disorder, not the want of accomplishment in the use of the lyre, which occasions such terrible discord, and such calamitous war, between brother and brother — between city and city.[3] You affirm that men do wrong wilfully, not from ignorance or want of training: yet nevertheless you are bold enough to say, that wrong-doing is dishonourable and offensive to the Gods. How can any one, then, choose such an evil willingly? You tell us it is because he is overcome by pleasures: well then, that again comes to unwillingness — if victory be the thing which every man wishes: so that, whichever way you turn it, reason shows you that wrong-doing is taken up unwillingly, and that greater precautions ought to be taken upon the subject, both by individuals and by cities.”[4]
[2] Plato, Kleitoph. p. 407 A. ἐγὼ γάρ, ὦ Σώκρατες, σοὶ συγγιγνόμενος, πολλάκις ἐξεπληττόμην ἀκούων· καί μοι ἐδόκεις παρὰ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους κάλλιστα λέγειν, ὁπότε ἐπιτιμῶν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ μηχανῆς τραγικῆς θεός, ὑμεῖς, λέγων, ποῖ φερεσθε, ἄνθρωποι; &c.
[3] Plato, Kleitoph. p. 407 B-C.
[4] Plato, Kleitoph. p. 407 D-E. ὥστε ἐκ παντὸς τρόπου τό γε ἀδικεῖν ἀκούσιον ὁ λόγος αἱρεῖ, καὶ δεῖν ἐπιμέλειαν τῆς νῦν πλείω ποιεῖσθαι πάντ’ ἄνδρα ἰδίᾳ θ’ ἅμα καὶ δημοσίᾳ ξυμπάσας τὰς πόλεις.
The observations made by Sokrates have been most salutary and stimulating in awakening ardour for virtue. Arguments and analogies commonly used by Sokrates.
Such, Sokrates (continues Kleitophon), is the language which I often hear from you; and which I always hear with the strongest and most respectful admiration. You follow it up by observing, that those who train their bodies and neglect their minds, commit the mistake of busying themselves about the subordinate and neglecting the superior. You farther remark, that if a man does not know how to use any object rightly, he had better abstain from using it altogether: if he does not know how to use his eyes, his ears, or his body — it will be better for him neither to see, nor to hear, nor to use his body at all: the like with any instrument or article of property — for whoever cannot use his own lyre well, cannot use his neighbour’s lyre better. Out of these premisses you bring out forcibly the conclusion — That if a man does not know how to use his mind rightly, it is better for him to make no use of it:— better for him not to live, than to live under his own direction. If he must live, he had better live as a slave than a freeman, surrendering the guidance of his understanding to some one else who knows the art of piloting men: which art you, Sokrates, denominate often the political art, sometimes the judicial art or justice.[5]
[5] Plato, Kleitoph. p. 408 B. ἦν δὴ σὺ πολιτικήν, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὀνομάζεις πολλάκις, τὴν αὐτὴν δὴ ταύτην δικαστικήν τε καὶ δικαιοσύνην ὡς ἔστι λέγων.
But Sokrates does not explain what virtue is, nor how it is to be attained. Kleitophon has had enough of stimulus, and now wants information how he is to act.
These discourses of yours, alike numerous and admirable — showing that virtue is teachable, and that a man should attend to himself before he attends to other objects — I never have contradicted, and never shall contradict. I account them most profitable and stimulating, calculated to wake men as it were out of sleep. I expected anxiously what was to come afterwards. I began by copying your style and asking, not yourself, but those among your companions whom you esteemed the most[6] — How are we now to understand this stimulus imparted by Sokrates towards virtue? Is this to be all? Cannot we make advance towards virtue and get full possession of it? Are we to pass our whole lives in stimulating those who have not yet been stimulated, in order that they in their turn may stimulate others? Is it not rather incumbent upon us, now that we have agreed thus far, to entreat both from Sokrates and from each other, an answer to the ulterior question, What next? How are we to set to work in regard to the learning of justice?[7] If any trainer, seeing us careless of our bodily condition, should exhort us strenuously to take care of it, and convince us that we ought to do so — we should next ask him, which were the arts prescribing how we should proceed? He would reply — The gymnastic and medical arts. How will Sokrates or his friends answer the corresponding question in their case?