Dialogues of Plato - MobileReference [199]
CLEINIAS: Most wretched.
ATHENIAN: Then not only an old man but also a drunkard becomes a second time a child?
CLEINIAS: Well said, Stranger.
ATHENIAN: Is there any argument which will prove to us that we ought to encourage the taste for drinking instead of doing all we can to avoid it?
CLEINIAS: I suppose that there is; you at any rate, were just now saying that you were ready to maintain such a doctrine.
ATHENIAN: True, I was; and I am ready still, seeing that you have both declared that you are anxious to hear me.
CLEINIAS: To be sure we are, if only for the strangeness of the paradox, which asserts that a man ought of his own accord to plunge into utter degradation.
ATHENIAN: Are you speaking of the soul?
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: And what would you say about the body, my friend? Are you not surprised at any one of his own accord bringing upon himself deformity, leanness, ugliness, decrepitude?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Yet when a man goes of his own accord to a doctor's shop, and takes medicine, is he not aware that soon, and for many days afterwards, he will be in a state of body which he would die rather than accept as the permanent condition of his life? Are not those who train in gymnasia, at first beginning reduced to a state of weakness?
CLEINIAS: Yes, all that is well known.
ATHENIAN: Also that they go of their own accord for the sake of the subsequent benefit?
CLEINIAS: Very good.
ATHENIAN: And we may conceive this to be true in the same way of other practices?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And the same view may be taken of the pastime of drinking wine, if we are right in supposing that the same good effect follows?
CLEINIAS: To be sure.
ATHENIAN: If such convivialities should turn out to have any advantage equal in importance to that of gymnastic, they are in their very nature to be preferred to mere bodily exercise, inasmuch as they have no accompaniment of pain.
CLEINIAS: True; but I hardly think that we shall be able to discover any such benefits to be derived from them.
ATHENIAN: That is just what we must endeavour to show. And let me ask you a question:--Do we not distinguish two kinds of fear, which are very different?
CLEINIAS: What are they?
ATHENIAN: There is the fear of expected evil.
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: And there is the fear of an evil reputation; we are afraid of being thought evil, because we do or say some dishonourable thing, which fear we and all men term shame.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: These are the two fears, as I called them; one of which is the opposite of pain and other fears, and the opposite also of the greatest and most numerous sort of pleasures.
CLEINIAS: Very true.
ATHENIAN: And does not the legislator and every one who is good for anything, hold this fear in the greatest honour? This is what he terms reverence, and the confidence which is the reverse of this he terms insolence; and the latter he always deems to be a very great evil both to individuals and to states.
CLEINIAS: True.
ATHENIAN: Does not this kind of fear preserve us in many important ways? What is there which so surely gives victory and safety in war? For there are two things which give victory--confidence before enemies, and fear of disgrace before friends.
CLEINIAS: There are.
ATHENIAN: Then each of us should be fearless and also fearful; and why we should be either has now been determined.
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And when we want to make any one fearless, we and the law bring him face to face with many fears.
CLEINIAS: Clearly.
ATHENIAN: And when we want to make him rightly fearful, must we not introduce him to shameless pleasures, and train him to take up arms against them, and to overcome them? Or does this principle apply to courage only, and must he who would be perfect in valour fight against and overcome his own natural character,--since if he be unpractised and inexperienced in such conflicts, he will not be half the man which he might have been,--and are we to suppose, that with temperance it is otherwise, and that he who has never