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Untitled Article
Protagoras , who appeared anxious to change the subject , said , that Jo thought criticism on poetry to be one of the most important parts of instruction , and he would interrogate him concerning poetry , keeping however , on the subject which tfcey were discussing , that of virtue .
Simpnides , in one of his poems , says , ' It is difficult to become a good man . In the same poem he afterwards expresses his dissent from a saying of Pittacus , XaXevov ka&Kov { f / i ^ evai , ( it is difficult to be a good man ) . Is not this inconsistent with what he had himself affirmed in the previous passage ?
Socrates pretends at first to be puzzled by this question , and calls in Prodicus , with his nice distinctions , to help him in finding a difference between yevto-dai ( to become ) and hvoct ( to be ) , and in finding a double meaning for the word xaKeirov ' . After playing with the subject for some time , he gives his own account of the matter thus : — The scope and object , says he , of the poem of Simonides , is obviously to overthrow the dictum of Pittacus , ' It is difficult to be a gopd man . The wisdom of the ancients , continues he . wag couched in these little
pithy sentences , like those of the Lacedaemonians in our own day , of whose institutions and mode of education the sages of old were great admirers . This sentence of Pittacus , among others , was much quoted and praised , and Simonides thought that if he could demolish it , he would obtain the same sort of reputation which is obtained by defeating a celebrated athlete .
Socrates then adduces some philological proofs , that the sense of Simonides was as follows : —It is difficult to be becoming a good man , — to be in progress towards it ; but it is not , aa Pittacus says , merely difficult to be a good man—it is impossible ; the gods alone are capable of actually realizing the conception of goodness . He adduces subsequent passages of the poem in support of this interpretation . They are to this effect : —* Every man upon whom an irretrievable misfortune falls ,
becomes bad . I will not seek for that impossible thing , an entirely blame * less man : I praise and love those ( willingly ) who do not commit any thing evil . ' Here , says Socrates , he cannot mean , according to the ordinary collocation , I praise and love those who do not willingly commit any thing evil . Simonides was too wise to suppose that any man willingly commits evil : he knew that they who commit evil commit it
involuntarily . He meant , I praise and love willingly those only , who do not commit any thing evil : meaning that a good man sometimes forces himself to praise and love those whom he doea not love willingly ; as for instance , an ill-doing parent , or his country when ill doing : and the poet accordingly adds , — ' I am satisfied when I find a man not wicked , nor entirely inactive , and well versed in civil justice . I will not blame him : there are enough of fools to blame . '
Socrates having made this commentary upon the poem of Simonides , invites Protagoras to resume the former diftcusaion ; saying , that to converse on poems seems to him like the resource of men of vulgar minds , who , at their social meetings , being unable , from ignorance , to converse with their own voices , call in singing" women and musical instruments , and use their voices in the room of conversation . But men such as moat
of us profess to be , do n < ri freed the voices of others , nor poets , whom we cannot interrogate about their meaning , and may dispute about it for ever . Let us rather discuss with each other , a . u 4 make trial of our
Untitled Article
806 Plato 9 Dialogue ; thepraUtgora * .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 206, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/50/
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