Misanthropists and Misologists

We should both shave our locks today.

If I were you and I could not hold my ground against Simmias and Cebes, I would myself take an oath, like the Argives, not to wear hair any more until I had renewed the conflict and defeated them.

That will do as well, he said. But first let us take care that we avoid a danger.

Lest we become misologists no worse thing can happen to a man than this. Misanthropists are haters of people. Misologists are haters of ideas. Both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world.

Misanthropy comes from the overconfidence of inexperience. You trust a man and think him true, sound, and faithful. Then, he turns out to be false and knavish. Then another and another.

When this happens several times, especially when done by one’s trusted and familiar friends, he will hate everyone in the end. He believes that no one has any good in them.

The feeling is discreditable. It happens to people who has no experience of human nature. Experience would teach him the truth that few are the good, few the evil. The great majority are in between them.

Likewise, there are very large and very small men. But most men are in between.

If there were a competition in evil, the worst would be found to be very few.

Likewise, when a simple man has no skill in dialectics, he believes an argument to be true. Afterwards, he imagines it to be false. Then another and another, until he has no longer any faith left. Great disputers then think at last that they have become the wisest of mankind*.

They alone perceive the utter unsoundness and instability of all arguments of all things which are going up and down in never-ceasing ebb and flow, like the currents in the Euripus.

It would be sad if there were such a thing as truth, certainty, or possibility of knowledge.

A man should have lighted upon some argument or other which at first seemed true and then turned out to be false, and instead of blaming himself and his own want of wit, because he is annoyed, should at last be too glad to transfer the blame from himself to arguments in general= and for ever afterwards should hate and revile them, and lose truth and the knowledge of realities.

Let us then be careful of allowing or of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no health or soundness in any arguments at all.

Rather say that we have not yet attained to soundness in ourselves, and that we must struggle manfully and do our best to gain health of mind—you and all other men having regard to the whole of your future life, and I myself in the prospect of death.

For at this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a philosopher; like the vulgar, I am only a partisan.

When the partisan is engaged in a dispute, he cares nothing about the rights of the question. Instead, he is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.

The difference between him and me now is that he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is true. But I am rather seeking to convince myself. Convincing my hearers is a secondary matter with me.

See how much I gain by the argument. If what I say is true, then I am persuaded of the truth. But if there were nothing after death, I shall not distress my friends with lamentations. My ignorance will not last, but will die with me.

Therefore no harm will be done. This is the state of mind in which I approach the argument.

Simmias believes that the soul is fairer and diviner than the body since it is in the form of harmony.

But he doubts whether it may not perish first.

On the other hand, Cebes believes that the soul is more lasting than the body. But he thinks that no one could know whether the soul, after having worn out many bodies, might not perish herself after her last body.

They denied a part of the preceding argument.

But I said that knowledge was recollection. This means that the soul must have previously existed somewhere else before she was enclosed in the body.