and wife.' Then, when husbands and wives perform their own special duties,
there can be no unanimity between them; nor can a city be well ordered when
each citizen does his own work only. Alcibiades, having stated first that
goodness consists in the unanimity of the citizens, and then in each of
them doing his own separate work, is brought to the required point of self-
contradiction, leading him to confess his own ignorance.

But he is not too old to learn, and may still arrive at the truth, if he is
willing to be cross-examined by Socrates. He must know himself; that is to
say, not his body, or the things of the body, but his mind, or truer self.
The physician knows the body, and the tradesman knows his own business, but
they do not necessarily know themselves. Self-knowledge can be obtained
only by looking into the mind and virtue of the soul, which is the diviner
part of a man, as we see our own image in another's eye. And if we do not
know ourselves, we cannot know what belongs to ourselves or belongs to
others, and are unfit to take a part in political affairs. Both for the
sake of the individual and of the state, we ought to aim at justice and
temperance, not at wealth or power. The evil and unjust should have no
power,--they should be the slaves of better men than themselves. None but
the virtuous are deserving of freedom.

And are you, Alcibiades, a freeman? 'I feel that I am not; but I hope,
Socrates, that by your aid I may become free, and from this day forward I
will never leave you.'

The Alcibiades has several points of resemblance to the undoubted dialogues
of Plato. The process of interrogation is of the same kind with that which
Socrates practises upon the youthful Cleinias in the Euthydemus; and he
characteristically attributes to Alcibiades the answers which he has
elicited from him. The definition of good is narrowed by successive
questions, and virtue is shown to be identical with knowledge. Here, as
elsewhere, Socrates awakens the consciousness not of sin but of ignorance.
Self-humiliation is the first step to knowledge, even of the commonest
things. No man knows how ignorant he is, and no man can arrive at virtue
and wisdom who has not once in his life, at least, been convicted of error.
The process by which the soul is elevated is not unlike that which
religious writers describe under the name of 'conversion,' if we substitute
the sense of ignorance for the consciousness of sin.

In some respects the dialogue differs from any other Platonic composition.
The aim is more directly ethical and hortatory; the process by which the
antagonist is undermined is simpler than in other Platonic writings, and
the conclusion more decided. There is a good deal of humour in the manner
in which the pride of Alcibiades, and of the Greeks generally, is supposed
to be taken down by the Spartan and Persian queens; and the dialogue has
considerable dialectical merit. But we have a difficulty in supposing that
the same writer, who has given so profound and complex a notion of the
characters both of Alcibiades and Socrates in the Symposium, should have
treated them in so thin and superficial a manner in the Alcibiades, or that
he would have ascribed to the ironical Socrates the rather unmeaning boast
that Alcibiades could not attain the objects of his ambition without his
help; or that he should have imagined that a mighty nature like his could
have been reformed by a few not very conclusive words of Socrates. For the
arguments by which Alcibiades is reformed are not convincing; the writer of
the dialogue, whoever he was, arrives at his idealism by crooked and
tortuous paths, in which many pitfalls are concealed. The anachronism of
making Alcibiades about twenty years old during the life of his uncle,
Pericles, may be noted; and the repetition of the favourite observation,
which occurs also in the Laches and Protagoras, that great Athenian
statesmen, like Pericles, failed in the education of their sons. There is
none of the undoubted dialogues of Plato in which there is so little
dramatic verisimilitude.


ALCIBIADES I

by

Plato (see Appendix I above)

Translated by Benjamin Jowett


PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Alcibiades, Socrates.


SOCRATES: I dare say that you may be surprised to find, O son of Cleinias,
that I, who am your first lover, not having spoken to you for many years,
when the rest of the world were wearying you with their attentions, am the
last of your lovers who still speaks to you. The cause of my silence has
been that I was hindered by a power more than human, of which I will some
day explain to you the nature; this impediment has now been removed; I
therefore here present myself before you, and I greatly hope that no
similar hindrance will again occur. Meanwhile, I have observed that your
pride has been too much for the pride of your admirers; they were numerous
and high-spirited, but they have all run away, overpowered by your superior
force of character; not one of them remains. And I want you to understand
the reason why you have been too much for them. You think that you have no
need of them or of any other man, for you have great possessions and lack
nothing, beginning with the body, and ending with the soul. In the first
place, you say to yourself that you are the fairest and tallest of the
citizens, and this every one who has eyes may see to be true; in the second
place, that you are among the noblest of them, highly connected both on the
father's and the mother's side, and sprung from one of the most
distinguished families in your own state, which is the greatest in Hellas,
and having many friends and kinsmen of the best sort, who can assist you
when in need; and there is one potent relative, who is more to you than all
the rest, Pericles the son of Xanthippus, whom your father left guardian of
you, and of your brother, and who can do as he pleases not only in this
city, but in all Hellas, and among many and mighty barbarous nations.


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