HIPPIAS (major) by Plato - Complete text

Page 36

Soc.: "Then tell us again," he will say, "from the beginning, since you failed this time ; what do you say that this ‘beautiful', belonging to both the pleasures, is, on account of which you honored them before the rest and called them beautiful?" It seems to me, Hippias, inevitable that we say that these are the most harmless and the best of pleasures, both of them collectively and each of them individually ; or have you anything else to suggest, by which they excel the rest?

Hip.: Not at all ; for really they are the best.

Soc.: "This, then," he will say, "you say is the beautiful, beneficial pleasure?" "It seems that we do," I shall say ; and you?

Hip.: I also.

Soc.: "Well, then," he will say, "beneficial is that which creates the good, but that which creates and that which is created were just now seen to be different, and our argument has come round to the earlier argument, has it not? For neither could the good be beautiful nor the beautiful good, if each of them is different from the other." "Absolutely true," we shall say, if we are reasonable ; for it is inadmissible to disagree with him who says what is right.

Hip.: But now, Socrates, what do you think all this amounts to? It is mere scrapings and shavings of discourse, as I said a while ago, divided into bits ; but that other ability is beautiful and of great worth, the ability to produce a discourse well and beautifully in a court of law or a council-house or before any other public body before which the discourse may be delivered, to convince the audience and to carry off, not the smallest, but the greatest of prizes, the salvation of oneself, one's property, and one's friends. For these things, therefore, one must strive, renouncing these petty arguments, that one may not, by busying oneself, as at present, with mere talk and nonsense, appear to be a fool.

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Plato : HIPPIAS (major)

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