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    94 Plato *s Dialogues; the Protagoras.

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    are about to give your soul to be trained into the hands of this man , whom you call a Sophist ; but what a Sophist is , I should be much surprised if you knew ; and yet , if you do not , you must be ignorant whether you are doing a wise act or a foolish one . What do you suppose a Sophist is?—As the word implies , a man who knows wisdom . —You

    might say as much of a painter or an architect—he knows wisdom ; but if we were asked what wisdom , we should answer , the wisdom which relates to the taking of likenesses , and so forth . What is the wisdom which the Sophist knows ? What can he teach you to do?—He can teach me to speak well . —This may be a true answer , but not a sufficient one . On what subject can he teach you to speak well ? for a musician can teach you to speak well on the subject which he knows , viz . music .

    What can a Sophist teach you to speak well upon ? Upon that wliicli he knows ?—Certainly . —And what is it which he knows ?—Hippocrates confessed that he could not tell . * See , then , to what a danger you expose yourself . If you meditated putting your body into the hands of any one , at the risk of its well-being , you would consider for a long time before you made your resolution , and would take counsel with your friends and relations ; but what you value much more than your

    body—your spiritual nature *—on the good or bad condition of which your well or ill-doing entirely depends , you are going to put under the care of a man whom you only know to be a Sophist , not knowing , as it appears , what a Sophist is , and this without taking * even an hour ' s time for consideration , or asking the advice of anybody . Is not a Sophist a dealer in those wares which the mind subsists upon ?—And what does the mind subsist upon ?—Upon instruction . Let us not , then , suffer the

    Sophist to impose upon us by praising the quality of his wares . Other dealers praise their wares , although they are no judges what is good for the sustenance of the body , wor their customers either , unless such as happen to be physicians or gymnasts . So these men , who hawk their instructions from city to city , praise all they sell , and yet some of these may very likely be quite ignorant whether what they offer is good or bad for the mind , and the purchasers equally so , unless some of them happen to understand the medicine of the mind . If , therefore , you are

    a judge of good and bad instruction , you may safely buy instruction of Protagoras or any other person ; but if not , take care that you do not endanger what is dearest to you . You risk much more in buying instruction than food . Food you may take home in another vessel , and have it examined by qualified persons before you take it into your stomach ; but instruction is taken at once into the mind , and the benefit is reaped , or the injury incurred , on the spot . After this conversation , they proceed together to the house where Protagoras is living , and find him there with two other Sophists—Prodicu& of Ceos , and Ilippias of Elis—who are several times introduced as personages in the drama , though not called to participate in the discuBsion . It may be gathered from what is said q /' these persons , and by them , in the course of the work , that Hippias taught physics more particularly than morals or politics , and that the science of Prodicus consisted chiefly in drawing frivolous and hair-breadth distinctions between the significations of terms which were commonly considered synonymous . * ^ "X *) * mind , not in the sense of intellect , but in the largest souse—all which is not body .

    94 Plato *S Dialogues; The Protagoras.

    94 Plato * s Dialogues ; the Protagoras .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 94, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/6/