Alcibiades II | Page 8

better to apply any of these arts or in regard to whom?
ALCIBIADES: I should call such a state bad, Socrates.
SOCRATES: You certainly would when you saw each of them
rivalling the other and esteeming that of the greatest importance in the
state,
'Wherein he himself most excelled.' (Euripides, Antiope.)
--I mean that which was best in any art, while he was entirely ignorant
of what was best for himself and for the state, because, as I think, he
trusts to opinion which is devoid of intelligence. In such a case should
we not be right if we said that the state would be full of anarchy and
lawlessness?

ALCIBIADES: Decidedly.
SOCRATES: But ought we not then, think you, either to fancy that we
know or really to know, what we confidently propose to do or say?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if a person does that which he knows or supposes
that he knows, and the result is beneficial, he will act advantageously
both for himself and for the state?
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: And if he do the contrary, both he and the state will
suffer?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, and are you of the same mind, as before?
ALCIBIADES: I am.
SOCRATES: But were you not saying that you would call the many
unwise and the few wise?
ALCIBIADES: I was.
SOCRATES: And have we not come back to our old assertion that the
many fail to obtain the best because they trust to opinion which is
devoid of intelligence?
ALCIBIADES: That is the case.
SOCRATES: It is good, then, for the many, if they particularly desire
to do that which they know or suppose that they know, neither to know
nor to suppose that they know, in cases where if they carry out their
ideas in action they will be losers rather than gainers?
ALCIBIADES: What you say is very true.
SOCRATES: Do you not see that I was really speaking the truth when I
affirmed that the possession of any other kind of knowledge was more
likely to injure than to benefit the possessor, unless he had also the
knowledge of the best?
ALCIBIADES: I do now, if I did not before, Socrates.
SOCRATES: The state or the soul, therefore, which wishes to have a
right existence must hold firmly to this knowledge, just as the sick man
clings to the physician, or the passenger depends for safety on the pilot.
And if the soul does not set sail until she have obtained this she will be
all the safer in the voyage through life. But when she rushes in pursuit
of wealth or bodily strength or anything else, not having the knowledge
of the best, so much the more is she likely to meet with misfortune.

And he who has the love of learning (Or, reading polumatheian,
'abundant learning.'), and is skilful in many arts, and does not possess
the knowledge of the best, but is under some other guidance, will make,
as he deserves, a sorry voyage:-- he will, I believe, hurry through the
brief space of human life, pilotless in mid-ocean, and the words will
apply to him in which the poet blamed his enemy:--
'...Full many a thing he knew; But knew them all badly.' (A fragment
from the pseudo-Homeric poem, 'Margites.')
ALCIBIADES: How in the world, Socrates, do the words of the poet
apply to him? They seem to me to have no bearing on the point
whatever.
SOCRATES: Quite the contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is
talking in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by
nature an enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who
can interpret it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize
on a man who is of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest
his wisdom but keeps it to himself as far as he can, it does indeed
require an almost superhuman wisdom to discover what the poet would
be at. You surely do not suppose that Homer, the wisest and most
divine of poets, was unaware of the impossibility of knowing a thing
badly: for it was no less a person than he who said of Margites that 'he
knew many things, but knew them all badly.' The solution of the riddle
is this, I imagine:--By 'badly' Homer meant 'bad' and 'knew' stands for
'to know.' Put the words together;--the metre will suffer, but the poet's
meaning is clear;--'Margites knew all these things, but it was bad for
him to know them.' And, obviously, if it was bad for him to know so
many things, he must have been a good-for- nothing, unless the
argument has played us false.
ALCIBIADES: But I do not think that it has, Socrates: at least, if