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[439a]
“will you not class it with the
things1 that are
of something and say that it is what it is2 in relation to something—and it is,
I presume, thirst?” “I will,” said he,
“—namely of drink.” “Then if the
drink is of a certain kind, so is the thirst, but thirst that is just thirst
is neither of much nor little nor good nor bad, nor in a word of any kind,
but just thirst is naturally of just drink only.” “By
all means.” “The soul of the thirsty then, in so far as
it thirsts, wishes nothing else than to drink, and
[439b]
yearns for this and its impulse is towards
this.” “Obviously.” “Then if
anything draws it back3 when thirsty it
must be something different in it from that which thirsts and drives it like
a beast4 to drink. For it cannot be, we
say, that the same thing with the same part of itself at the same time acts
in opposite ways about the same thing.” “We must admit
that it does not.” “So I fancy it is not well said of
the archer5 that his hands at the same time thrust away
the bow and draw it nigh, but we should rather say that there is one hand
that puts it away and another that draws it to.”
[439c]
“By all means,” he said.
“Are we to say, then, that some men sometimes though thirsty
refuse to drink?” “We are indeed,” he said,
“many and often.” “What then,” said
I, “should one affirm about them?” “Is it not
that there is6
something in the soul that bids them drink and a something that forbids, a
different something that masters that which bids?” “I
think so.” “And is it not the fact that that which
inhibits such actions arises when it arises from the calculations of reason,
[439d]
but the impulses which draw and drag
come through affections7 and
diseases?” “Apparently.” “Not
unreasonably,” said I, “shall we claim that they are two
and different from one another, naming that in the soul whereby it reckons
and reasons the rational8 and that with which it loves, hungers,
thirsts, and feels the flutter9 and titillation of other desires, the irrational and
appetitive—companion10 of various
repletions and pleasures.” “It would not be unreasonable
but quite natural,”
[439e]
he said,
“for us to think this.” “These two forms,
then, let us assume to have been marked off as actually existing in the
soul. But now the Thumos11 or principle of high spirit, that with which we feel
anger, is it a third, or would it be identical in nature with one of
these?” “Perhaps,” he said, “with
one of these, the appetitive.” “But,” I said,
“I once heard a story12 which I believe, that Leontius the son of Aglaion, on his
way up from the Peiraeus under the outer side of the northern wall,13 becoming aware
of dead bodies14 that lay at the
place of public execution at the same time felt a desire to see them and a
repugnance and aversion, and that for a time
1 τῶν τινὸς εἶναι: if the text is sound,εἶναι seems to be taken twice, (1) with τοῦτο etc., (2)τῶν τινός as predicates. This is perhaps no harsher than τὸ δοκεῖν εἶναι in Aeschylus Agamemnon 788. Cf. Tennyson's “How sweet are the looks that ladies bend/ On whom their favors fall,” and Pope's “And virgins smiled at what they blushed before.” Possibly θήσεις τῶν τινός is incomplete in itself (cf. 437 B) and εἶναι τοῦτο etc. is a loose epexegesis. The only emendation worth notice is Adam's insertion of καὶ τινὸς between τινὸς and εἶναι, which yields a smooth, but painfully explicit, construction.
2 Cf. further Sophist 255 D, Aristotle Met. 1021 a 27. Aristotle Cat. v., Top. vi. 4. So Plotinus vi. 1. 7 says that relative terms are those whose very being is the relation καὶ τὸ εἶναι οὐκ ἄλλο τι ἢ τὸ ἀλλήλοις εἶναι.
3 Cf. on 437 C, Aristotle, De anima 433 b 8, Laws 644 E, 604 B, Phaedrus 238 C. The practical moral truth of this is independent of our metaphysical psychology. Plato means that the something which made King David refuse the draught purchased by the blood of his soldiers and Sir Philip Sidney pass the cup to a wounded comrade is somehow different than the animal instinct which it overpowers. Cf. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1102 b 24, Laws 863 E.
4 Cf. 589, Epistle 335 B. Cf. Descartes, Les Passions de l'âme, article xlvii: “En quoi consistent les combats qu'on a coutume d'imaginer entre la partie inférieure et la supérieure de l'âme.” He says in effect that the soul is a unit and the “lower soul” is the body. Cf. ibid. lxviii, where he rejects the “concupiscible” and the “irascible.”
5 Cf. Unity of Plato's Thought, p. 68: “Plato . . . delights to prick the bubbles of imagery, rhetoric, and antithesis blown by his predecessors. Heraclitus means well when he says that the one is united by disunion (Symposium 187 A) or that the hands at once draw and repel the bow. But the epigram vanishes under logical analysis.” For the conceit cf. Samuel Butler's lines: “He that will win his dame must do/ As love does when he bends his bow,/ With one hand thrust his lady from/ And with the other pull her home.”
6 ἐνεῖναι μὲν . . . ἐνεῖναι δέ: the slight artificiality of the anaphora matches well with the Gorgian jingle κελεῦον . . . κωλῦον. Cf. Iambl.Protrept. p. 41 Postelli ἔστι γὰρ τοιοῦτον ὃ κελεύει καὶ κωλύει.
7 The “pulls” are distinguished verbally from the passions that are their instruments.νοσημάτων suggests the Stoic doctrine that passions are diseases. Cf. Cicero Tusc. iii. 4perturbationes, and passim, and Philebus 45 C.
8 λογιστικόν is one of Plato's many synonyms for the intellectual principle. Cf. 441 C, 571 C, 587 D, 605 B. It emphasizes the moral calculation of consequences, as opposed to blind passion. Cf. Crito 46 B (one of the passages which the Christian apologists used to prove that Socrates knew the λόγος), Theaetetus 186 Cἀναλογίσματα πρός τε οὐσίαν καὶ ὠφέλειαν, and Laws 644 D. Aristotle Eth. 1139 a 12 somewhat differently.
9 ἐπτόηται: almost technical, as in Sappho's ode, for the flutter of desire.ἀλόγιστον, though applied here to the ἐπιθυμητικόν only, suggests the bipartite division of Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1102 a 28.
10 So the bad steed which symbolizes the ἐπιθυμητικόν in Phaedrus 253 E is ἀλαζονείας ἑταῖρος.
11 We now approach the distinctively Platonic sense of θυμός as the power of noble wrath, which, unless perverted by a bad education, is naturally the ally of the reason, though as mere angry passion it might seem to belong to the irrational part of the soul, and so, as Glaucon suggets, be akin to appetite, with which it is associated in the mortal soul of the Timaeus 69 D. In Laws 731 B-C Plato tells us again that the soul cannot combat injustice without the capacity for righteous indignation. The Stoics affected to deprecate anger always, and the difference remained a theme of controversy between them and the Platonists. Cf. Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, ii. pp. 321 ff., Seneca, De ira, i. 9, and passim. Moralists are still divided on the point. Cf. Bagehot, Lord Brougham: “Another faculty of Brougham . . . is the faculty of easy anger. The supine placidity of civilization is not favorable to animosity [Bacon's word for θυμός].” Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, pp. 60 ff. and p. 62, seems to contradict Plato: “The supposed conflict between reason and passion is, as I hold, meaningless if it is taken to imply that the reason is a faculty separate from the emotions,” etc. But this is only his metaphysics. On the practical ethical issue he is with Plato.
12 Socrates has heard and trusts a, to us, obscure anecdote which shows how emotion may act as a distinct principle rebuking the lower appetites or curiosities. Leontius is unknown, except for Bergk's guess identifying him with the Leotrophides of a corrupt fragment of Theopompus Comicus, fr. 1 Kock, p. 739.
13 He was following the outer side of the north wall up the city. Cf. Lysis 203 A, Frazer, Paus. ii. 40, Wachsmuth, Stadt Athen, i. p. 190.
14 The corpses were by, near, or with the executioner (ὁ ἐπὶ τῷ ὀρύγματι) whether he had thrown them into the pit (βάραθρον) or not.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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