5: PLATO AND THE SOPHISTS

Now the Sophist and the popular moralist, in that preliminary attempt to define the nature of Justice--what is right, are both alike trying, first in this formula, then in that, to occupy, by a thought, and by a definition which may convey that thought into the mind of another--to occupy, or cover, a certain area of the phenomena of experience, as the Just. And what happens thereupon is this, that by means of a certain kind of casuistry, by the allegation of certain possible cases of conduct, the whole of that supposed area of the Just is occupied by definitions of Injustice, from this centre or that. Justice therefore- -its area, the space of experience which it covers, dissolves away, literally, as the eye is fixed upon it, like Heraclitean water: it is and is not. And if this, and the like of this, is to the last all that can be known or said of it, Justice will be no current coin, at least to the acute philosophic mind. But has some larger philosophy perhaps something more to say of it? and the power of defining an area, upon which no definition of Injustice, in any conceivable case of act or feeling, can infringe? That is the question upon which the essential argument of The Republic starts--upon a voyage of discovery. It is Plato's own figure.

There, clearly enough, may be seen what the difference, the difference of aim, between Socrates [115] and the Sophists really was, amid much that they had in common, as being both alike distinguished from that older world of opinion of which Simonides is the mouthpiece.

The quarrel of Socrates with the Sophists was in part one of those antagonisms which are involved necessarily in the very conditions of an age that has not yet made up its mind; was in part also a mere rivalry of individuals; and it might have remained in memory only as a matter of historical interest. It has been otherwise. That innocent word "Sophist" has survived in common language, to indicate some constantly recurring viciousness, in the treatment of one's own and of other minds, which is always at variance with such habits of thought as are really worth while. There is an every-day "sophistry," of course, against which we have all of us to be on our guard--that insincerity of reasoning on behalf of sincere convictions, true or false in themselves as the case may be, to which, if we are unwise enough to argue at all with each other, we must all be tempted at times. Such insincerity however is for the most part apt to expose itself. But there is a more insidious sophistry of which Plato is aware; and against which he contends in the Protagoras, and again still more effectively in the Phaedrus; the closing pages of which discover the essential point of that famous quarrel between the Sophists and Socrates or Plato, in regard to a matter which is [116] of permanent interest in itself, and as being not directly connected with practical morals is unaffected by the peculiar prejudices of that age. Art, the art of oratory, in particular, and of literary composition,--in this case, how one should write or speak really inflammatory discourses about love, write love- letters, so to speak, that shall really get at the heart they're meant for--that was a matter on which the Sophists had thought much professionally. And the debate introduced in the Phaedrus regarding the secret of success in proposals of love or friendship turns properly on this: whether it is necessary, or even advantageous, for one who would be a good orator, or writer, a poet, a good artist generally, to know, and consciously to keep himself in contact with, the truth of his subject as he knows or feels it; or only with what other people, perhaps quite indolently, think, or suppose others to think, about it. And here the charge of Socrates against those professional teachers of the art of rhetoric comes to be, that, with much superficial aptitude in the conduct of the matter, they neither reach, nor put others in the way of reaching, that intellectual ground of things (of the consciousness of love for instance, when they are to open their lips, and presumably their souls, about that) in true contact with which alone can there be a real mastery in dealing with them. That you yourself must have an inward, carefully ascertained, measured, instituted hold [117] over anything you are to convey with any real power to others, is the truth which the Platonic Socrates, in strongly convinced words, always reasonable about it, formulates, in opposition to the Sophists' impudently avowed theory and practice of the superficial, as such. Well! we all always need to be set on our guard against theories which flatter the natural indolence of our minds.

"We proposed then just now," says Socrates in the Phaedrus, "to consider the theory of the way in which one would or would not write or speak well."--"Certainly!"--"Well then, must there not be in those who are to speak meritoriously, an understanding well acquainted with the truth of the things they are to speak about?"--"Nay!" answers Phaedrus, in that age of sophistry, "It is in this way I have heard about it:-- that it is not necessary for one who would be a master of rhetoric to learn what really is just, for instance; but rather what seems just to the multitude who are to give judgment: nor again what is good or beautiful; but only what seems so to them. For persuasion comes of the latter; by no means of a hold upon the truth of things."

Whether or not the Sophists were quite fairly chargeable with that sort of "inward lie," just this, at all events, was in the judgment of Plato the essence of sophistic vice. With them [118] art began too precipitately, as mere form without matter; a thing of disconnected empiric rules, caught from the mere surface of other people's productions, in congruity with a general method which everywhere ruthlessly severed branch and flower from its natural root--art from one's own vivid sensation or belief. The Lacedaemonian (ho Lakôn)+ Plato's favourite scholar always, as having that infinite patience which is the note of a sincere, a really impassioned lover of anything, says, in his convinced Lacedaemonian way, that a genuine art of speech (tou legein etumos technê)+ unless one be in contact with truth, there neither is nor can be. We are reminded of that difference between genuine memory, and mere haphazard recollection, noted by Plato in the story he tells so well of the invention of writing in ancient Egypt.-- It might be doubted, he thinks, whether genuine memory was encouraged by that invention. The note on the margin by the inattentive reader to "remind himself," is, as we know, often his final good-bye to what it should remind him of. Now this is true of all art: Logôn ara technên, ho tên alêtheian mê eidôs, doxas te tethêreukôs, geloion tina kai atexnon parexetai.+ --It is but a kind of bastard art of mere words (texnê atexnos)+ that he will have who does not know the truth of things, but has tried to hunt out what other people think about it. "Conception," observed an intensely personal, deeply stirred, poet and artist of our own generation: [119] "Conception, fundamental brainwork,- -that is what makes the difference, in all art."

Against all pretended, mechanically communicable rules of art then, against any rule of literary composition, for instance, unsanctioned by the facts, by a clear apprehension of the facts, of that experience, which to each one of us severally is the beginning, if it be not also the end, of all knowledge, against every merely formal dictate (their name is legion with practising Sophists of all ages) Peri brachylogias, kai eleeinologias, kai deinôseôs,+ concerning freedom or precision, figure, emphasis, proportion of parts and the like, exordium and conclusion:--against all such the Platonic Socrates still protests, "You know what must be known before harmony can be attained, but not yet the laws of harmony itself,"--ta pro tragôdias,+ Sophocles would object in like case, ta pro tragôdias, all' ou tragika.+ Given the dynamic Sophoclean intention or conviction, and the irresistible law of right utterance, (anankê logographikê)+ how one must write or speak, will make itself felt; will assuredly also renew many an old precept, as to how one shall write or speak, learned at school. To speak pros doxan+ only, as towards mere unreasoned opinion, might do well enough in the law-courts with people, who (as is understood in that case) do not really care very much about justice itself, desire only that a friend should be acquitted, or an enemy convicted, irrespectively of it; but [120]

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