Superphysics Superphysics
Part 11b

Becoming Good Versus Being Good

by Plato Icon
6 minutes  • 1137 words

‘O my friends,’ says Pittacus, ‘hard is it to be good,’

Simonides says:

‘Pittacus, you are mistaken. The difficulty is not to be good, but to become good, four-square in hands and feet and mind, without a flaw—that is hard truly.’

This way of reading the passage accounts for the insertion of (Greek) ‘on the one hand,’ and for the position at the end of the clause of the word ’truly’.

All that follows shows this to be the meaning.

A great deal might be said in praise of the details of the poem, which is a charming piece of workmanship, and very finished, but such minutiae would be tedious.

The intention of the poem is to refute Pittacus.

Pittacus says that becoming good is difficult.

Yet this difficulty only happens before one is actually good.

After becoming good, to remain in a good state and be good, as you, Pittacus, affirm, is not possible, and is not granted to man;

God only has this blessing; ‘but man cannot help being bad when the force of circumstances overpowers him.’

Now whom does the force of circumstance overpower in the command of a vessel?—not the private individual, for he is always overpowered;

A man who is already fallen cannot fall anymore.

A man who is standing upright can be made to fall.

but not he who is prostrate can be laid prostrate, so the force of circumstances can only overpower him who, at some time or other, has resources, and not him who is at all times helpless.

The descent of a great storm may make the pilot helpless. The good may become bad.

‘The good are sometimes good and sometimes bad.’

But the bad does not become bad. He is always bad.

When the force of circumstances overpowers the man of resources, skill, and virtue, he will become bad.

Pittacus is saying, ‘Hard is it to be good.’

Now there is a difficulty in becoming good; and yet this is possible: but to be good is an impossibility—

‘For he who does well is the good man, and he who does ill is the bad.’

But what sort of doing is good in letters? and what sort of doing makes a man good in letters? Clearly the knowing of them.

And what sort of well-doing makes a man a good physician? Clearly the knowledge of the art of healing the sick. ‘But he who does ill is the bad.’

A bad physician is a good physician that becomes bad.

The good may become deteriorated by time, or toil, or disease, or other accident. The only real doing ill is to be deprived of knowledge.

But the bad man will never become bad, for he is always bad.

If he were to become bad, he must previously have been good.

Thus, the poem shows that a man:

  • cannot be continuously good
  • may become good
  • may become bad

‘They are the best for the longest time whom the gods love.’

‘Therefore I will not throw away my span of life to no purpose in searching after the impossible, hoping in vain to find a perfectly faultless man among those who partake of the fruit of the broad-bosomed earth: if I find him, I will send you word.’

(this is the vehement way in which he pursues his attack upon Pittacus throughout the whole poem):

‘But I voluntarily I praise and love him who does no evil—not even the gods war against necessity.’

All this has a similar drift, for Simonides was not so ignorant as to say that he praised those who did no evil voluntarily, as though there were some who did evil voluntarily.

No wise man, as I believe, will allow that any human being errs voluntarily, or voluntarily does evil and dishonourable actions.

But they are very well aware that all who do evil and dishonourable things do them against their will. And Simonides never says that he praises him who does no evil voluntarily;

The word ‘voluntarily’ applies to himself. For he was under the impression that a good man might often compel himself to love and praise another, and to be the friend and approver of another; and that there might be an involuntary love, such as a man might feel to an unnatural father or mother, or country, or the like.

Bad men, when their parents or country have any defects, look on them with malignant joy, and find fault with them and expose and denounce them to others, under the idea that the rest of mankind will be less likely to take themselves to task and accuse them of neglect;

They blame their defects far more than they deserve, in order that the odium which is necessarily incurred by them may be increased:

But the good man dissembles his feelings, and constrains himself to praise them; and if they have wronged him and he is angry, he pacifies his anger and is reconciled, and compels himself to love and praise his own flesh and blood.

Simonides, as is probable, considered that he himself had often had to praise and magnify a tyrant or the like, much against his will, and he also wishes to imply to Pittacus that he does not censure him because he is censorious.

‘For I am satisfied’ he says, ‘when a man is neither bad nor very stupid; and when he knows justice (which is the health of states), and is of sound mind, I will find no fault with him, for I am not given to finding fault, and there are innumerable fools’

(implying that if he delighted in censure he might have abundant opportunity of finding fault).

‘All things are good with which evil is unmingled.’

He does not mean that all good things have no evil in them.

He means that he accepts and finds no fault with the moderate or intermediate state.

(‘I do not hope’ he says, ’to find a perfectly blameless man among those who partake of the fruits of the broad-bosomed earth (if I find him, I will send you word); in this sense I praise no man. But he who is moderately good, and does no evil, is good enough for me, who love and approve every one’)

(and here observe that he uses a Lesbian word, epainemi (approve), because he is addressing Pittacus,

‘Who love and APPROVE every one VOLUNTARILY, who does no evil:’

and that the stop should be put after ‘voluntarily’); ‘but there are some whom I involuntarily praise and love.

You, Pittacus, I would never have blamed, if you had spoken what was moderately good and true.

But I do blame you because, putting on the appearance of truth, you are speaking falsely about the highest matters.’

This is the meaning of Simonides in this poem.

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