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Plato s Dialogues; the Protagoras * 97
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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benefit of alL Jupiter ordered him to give them to all ; for if a few only possessed them , political society would be impossible ; and bade him establish a law , as from Jupiter , that he who was incapable of shame and justice should , as a disease in the state , be extirpated . 4 4
For this reason / continued Protagoras , the Athenians and others , who on architecture or any other manual art will hear only the few who possess it , are ready , when the subject is social virtue , which depends wholly upon justice and prudence , to listen to all advisers ; because of this virtue all should be partakers , or states cannot exist . 4
And to prove that in reality all men do believe that justice and the other social virtues ought to belong to all , observe this : If a man pretends to be a good musician , and is not so , all men ridicule him , and his friends admonish him as a man out of his senses . But when justice and the social virtues are the matter in . question , although they well know
that a man is unjust , yet if he tells the truth and publicly avows it , what in the other case they considered to be good sense , is here thought madness ; they maintain that all men should profess to be just , whether they are so or not , and that he who does not profess it is a madman , because the man who does not , in some degree , partake of the quality of justice , is unfit to live amongst mankind .
' It seems , then , that mankind in general think all persons qualified to advise concerning these virtues , since all are required to possess them . But further , they think that these virtues are not natural and spontaneous , but the result of study and of teaching . For those evils which are supposed to come upon men by nature or ill fortune , no man ever thinks of reproaching another for : who ever reprimanded , much less punished , another , for being of low stature , weak , or deformed ? such evils are regarded as an object only of pity . Men admonish , and censure , and
punish one another , for the absence of those good qualities only , which they deem to be acquired by study and art ; and for this reason only it is that they so deal with the unjust . Let us but consider what punishment does , and we shall see that , in the opinion of mankind , virtue may be acquired . No man punishes another because he has done wrong ; this would be the blind vengeance of the irrational animals . Rational punishment is not on account of the past act , which , having been done , cannot be undone ; it is for the sake of the future ; it is in order that this
offender , and those who witness his punishment , may be warned against offending hereafter . The Athenians , therefore , and others , since they do punish the unjust man , do so with this intent ; they do so because they think that virtue may be acquired , and that punishment is a means whereby men are induced to acquire it . 4 To the other argument of Socrates , that good men , although they teach to their children other things , fail of teaching them to be good , the following is the answer : —If it be true that there is something which ,
unless every member of the state possesses , the state cannot exist ; and if this something be not architecture or pottery , or any mechanical art , but justice , prudence , holiness , in short , manly virtue ; if all men , and women too , and children , whatever else they have , must have this , or be punished until they acquire it , or , if incapable of acquiring it , must be sent out of the country or put to death ; and if , nevertheless , good men , teaching their children other things , do not teach them thi » , they are unworthy the name of good men . For that it can be taught we have
Plato S Dialogues; The Protagoras * 97
Plato s Dialogues ; the Protagoras * 97
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 97, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/9/
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