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witness against him . Who ? asked Phaedrus . I cannot say , rejoined Socrates , but I must have read something in Sappho , or Anacreon , or some other writer , for I find myself quite full of matter which I could repeat to you on the subject , nowise inferior Jo what you have just now read . Knowing my own ignorance , I am certain that I could not have thought of all this by myself , I must therefore have learnt it from
somebody else , but from my silliness I have even forgotten from whom . Phaedrus insisted that he should prove his assertion , by speaking as much on the same subject as was in the manuscript , and better in quality . Do-not suppose , said Socrates , that I affirm Lysias to have missed the mark altogether , or pretend that it is possible to treat the subject omitting every thing which he has said . How , do you suppose , would it be possible to argue that one who is not in love should be
favoured in preference to a lover , abstaining altogether from praising reasonableness and sanity of mind , and from blaming the want of it . This , any one who treats the subject cannot avoid saying , and nothing could be said to the purpose without it . But this kind of things must be taken for granted , and of such we must not praise the invention , but
the arrangement ; while of those things which , instead of be ing'impossible to miss , are difficult to find , we may praise the invention and the arrangement too . —Phaedrus assents , and says he will allow him to make use of that one principle of Lysias , that a lover is in a less sane state of mind than one who is not in love : but insists that he shall
compose a discourse , all the rest of which shall be longer and better than the rest of the discourse of Lysias . Socrates now pretends to have been in jest , and after playfully refusing for some time , which gives rise to some very amusing conversation , he in a mock heroic manner invokes the Muses , and begins to relate the following as a discourse actually held on an occasion of the kind supposed : —
• There is but one mode of beginning for those who would deliberate well ; viz . to know what the thing , about which they are to deliberate , really is . The vulgar are not aware that they are ignorant of the essence of every thing : conceiving themselves , therefore , to know the inmost nature of the thing which they are about to discuss , they do not come to a mutual explanation respecting it at the commencement of their inquiry ,
but pass it over , and proceed to employ merely probable arguments . That we may not fall into the error which we condemn in others , let uswho have to inquire whether a lover , or one who is not a lover , should be preferably indulged—begin by ascertaining what love is , and what is its operation ; that we may keep this in view , when we subsequently examine whether it produces good or hurt . 4
That love is a kind of desire , is clear to all ; on the other hand , that persons who are not in love may have physical desire , we know . How then do we distinguish the lover from him who is not in love ? We must consider that in each of us there are two principles * which lead and govern us ; the one , a natural desire for pleasure ; the other , an acquired judgment , which seeks that which is best These two principles sometimes are in harmony with each other , sometimes in opposition ; and in the latter case sometimes one is the stronger , sometimes the other . Now , Judgment , which guides us , by means of reason , to the U » « 4 Uw ftU .
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PlaUft Dialogue ; the Pluednu . 40 »
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 409, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/27/
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