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The dialogue opens very beautifully. There has been a festal procession at
the Piraeus, the harbour of Athens, and
Socrates with a companion
is wending his way homeward, when he is recalled by other companions, who
induce him to visit the house of an aged friend of his, Cephalus, whom he
does not visit too often. Him he finds seated in his court, crowned, as the
custom was, for the celebration of a family sacrifice, and beholds beaming
on his face the peace of a life well spent and reconciled.
They talk of the happiness that comes in old age to those who have done good
and not evil, and who are not too severely tried in the matter of worldly
cares. Life to this good old man seems a very simple matter; duty to God,
duty to one’s neighbours, each according to what is prescribed and orderly;
this is all, and this is sufficient.
Then comes in the questioning Socrates, with his doubts and difficulties as
to what is one’s duty in special circumstances; and the discussion is taken
up, not by the good old man, “who goes away to the sacrifice,” but by his
son, who can quote the authorities; and by Thrasymachus, the Sophist, who
will have nothing to do with authority, but maintains that interest
is the only real meaning of justice, and that Might is Right.
Socrates, by analogy of the arts, shows that Might absolutely without
tincture of justice is mere weakness, and that there is honour even among
thieves. Yet the exhibition of the ‘law working in the members’ seems to
have its weak side so long as we look to individual men, in whom there are
many conflicting influences, and many personal chances and difficulties,
which obscure the relation between just action and happiness.
A History of Greek Philosophy /
PLATO
