Euthydemus

Soc.

The sorcerer’s art is the charming of snakes and tarantulas and scorpions and other beasts and diseases, while the other is just the charming and soothing of juries, assemblies, crowds, and so forth. Or does it strike you differently? I asked. No, it appears to me, he replied, to be as you say. Which way then, said I, shall we turn now? What kind of art shall we try? For my part, he said, I have no suggestion. Why, I think I have found it myself, I said. What is it? said Cleinias. Generalship, I replied, strikes me as the art whose acquisition above all others would make one happy. I do not think so. Why not? I asked. In a sense, this is an art of hunting men. What then? I said. No part of actual hunting, he replied, covers more than the province of chasing and overcoming; and when they have overcome the creature they are chasing, they are unable to use it: the huntsmen or the fishermen hand it over to the caterers, and so it is too with the geometers, astronomers, and calculators— for these also are hunters in their way, since they are not in each case diagram-makers, but discover the realities of things[*](i.e. geometers etc. are not to be regarded as mere makers of diagrams, these being only the necessary and common machinery for their real business, the discovery of mathematical and other abstract truths.)—and so, not knowing how to use their prey, but only how to hunt, I take it they hand over their discoveries to the dialecticians to use properly, those of them, at least, who are not utter blockheads. Very good, I said, most handsome and ingenious Cleinias; and is this really so? To be sure it is; and so, in the same way, with the generals. When they have hunted either a city or an army, they hand it over to the politicians—since they themselves do not know how to use what they have hunted—just as quail-hunters, I suppose, hand over their birds to the quail-keepers. If, therefore, he went on, we are looking for that art which itself shall know how to use what it has acquired either in making or chasing, and if this is the sort that will make us blest, we must reject generalship, he said, and seek out some other.

Cri.

What is this, Socrates? Such a pronouncement from that stripling!

Soc.

You do not believe it is his, Crito?

Cri.

I should rather think not. For I am sure, if he spoke thus, he has no need of education from Euthydemus or anyone else.

Soc.

But then, Heaven help me! I wonder if it was Ctesippus who said it, and my memory fails me.