previous next
[491b] for the perfect philosopher is a rare growth among men and is found in only a few. Don't you think so?” “Most emphatically.” “Observe, then, the number and magnitude of the things that operate to destroy these few.” “What are they?” “The most surprising fact of all is that each of the gifts of nature which we praise tends to corrupt the soul of its possessor and divert it from philosophy. I am speaking of bravery, sobriety, and the entire list.1” “That does sound like a paradox,” said he.

1 Cf. Burton, Anatomy, i. 1 “This St. Austin acknowledgeth of himself in his humble confessions, promptness of wit, memory, eloquence, they were God's good gifts, but he did not use them to his glory.” Cf. Meno 88 A-C, and Seneca, Ep. v. 7 “multa bona nostra nobis nocent.”

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1903)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Seneca (New York, United States) (1)
Meno (New York, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (4 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: