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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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Untitled Article
the habitual sentiments , which particular moral or intellectual qualities excited in their minds . How great would be the difficulty of making an ancient Greek understand accurately what the nations of modern Europe mean by honour ; a Frenchman , what the English mean by the feelings of a gentleman ; any foreigner , what we mean hy respectability . It is equall y difficult for an Englishman to enter into the conception of
( Tiotyporvvrii and throw himself into the feelings which that word excited in a Greek mind . Sometimes it seems as if it ought to be translated prudence , sometimes temperance , sometimes decency or decorous ? tess sometimes more vaguely , consider ateness , sometimes good sense . The French word sagesse has nearly the same ambiguities , and expresses nearly the same mixture of moral and intellectual qualities . * The connecting tie among these various attributes seems to be this : The word crLMppoarvvrj denoted , in the mind of a Greek , all the qualities or habits
which were considered most contrary to licentiousness of morals and manners , in the largest sense of the term . In a state of society in which the control of law was as yet extremely weak , in which the restraints of opinion , even in the democratic states , acted with little force upon any but those who were ambitious of public honours , and in which everywhere ( even at Athens , where person and property were far more effectually protected than in the other states of Greece ) the unbridled excesses of all sorts committed by the youth of the higher classes , endangered the personal security and comfort of every man , it is not wonderful that self-restraint , and the habits of a thoughtful , regulated life , should be held in peculiarly high esteem .
The great difficulty to an English reader , of following an argumentative discussion which turns chiefly upon the meaning of a word having no synonyme in English , will scarcely in this instance be rewarded by the intrinsic merit of the discussion itself . Socrates forces Protagoras successively to admit , that fno&pocvvr ) is the same thing with wisdom ,
that it is the same thing with justice , or at least inseparable from it , and is pressing him still further , when Protagoras flies offinto a long speech , filled with illustrations from the material universe , on a topic very distantly connected with the subject which they were discussing . At the conclusion of this oration he was loudly applauded .
Socrates hereupon observed , that he had a short memory , and if a man made a long speech to him , he always forgot what it was about . As , therefore , it" he were deaf , Protagoras would think it necessary to speak to him in a louder than his ordinary voice ; so , as he was forgetful , he hoped that Protagoras would shorten his answers , and accommodate their length to his capacity . Protagoras demurred to this , and lost his temper ; and there are several pages of excellent comic dialogue , at the end of which the matter is accommodated by the intervention of the bystanders ; and it is agreed , at the instance of Socrates , that Protagoras should interrogate and Socrates answer , in order that Socrates might afford a specimen of what he thought the P oper mode of answering . It turned out an unhappy specimen , howler , for Socrates was led by it to make as long a speech as any in the di alogue .
* The interesting dialogue of Plato , called the Charmides , of which the quality of ^{ art / ' vn is expressly the subject , affords ample illustration of all the varieties and oadts of association connected with that word .
Untitled Article
Plato ' s Dialogues ; the Protagoras . 205
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 205, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/49/
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