the
meaning of them as I will explain them. Remember what has been already
said,--that to the sick man his food appears to be and is bitter, and to
the man in health the opposite of bitter. Now I cannot conceive that one
of these men can be or ought to be made wiser than the other: nor can
you assert that the sick man because he has one impression is foolish,
and the healthy man because he has another is wise; but the one state
requires to be changed into the other, the worse into the better. As
in education, a change of state has to be effected, and the sophist
accomplishes by words the change which the physician works by the aid
of drugs. Not that any one ever made another think truly, who previously
thought falsely. For no one can think what is not, or, think anything
different from that which he feels; and this is always true. But as the
inferior habit of mind has thoughts of kindred nature, so I conceive
that a good mind causes men to have good thoughts; and these which the
inexperienced call true, I maintain to be only better, and not truer
than others. And, O my dear Socrates, I do not call wise men tadpoles:
far from it; I say that they are the physicians of the human body, and
the husbandmen of plants--for the husbandmen also take away the evil and
disordered sensations of plants, and infuse into them good and healthy
sensations--aye and true ones; and the wise and good rhetoricians
make the good instead of the evil to seem just to states; for whatever
appears to a state to be just and fair, so long as it is regarded as
such, is just and fair to it; but the teacher of wisdom causes the good
to take the place of the evil, both in appearance and in reality. And in
like manner the Sophist who is able to train his pupils in this spirit
is a wise man, and deserves to be well paid by them. And so one man is
wiser than another; and no one thinks falsely, and you, whether you will
or not, must endure to be a measure. On these foundations the argument
stands firm, which you, Socrates, may, if you please, overthrow by an
opposite argument, or if you like you may put questions to me--a method
to which no intelligent person will object, quite the reverse. But I
must beg you to put fair questions: for there is great inconsistency
in saying that you have a zeal for virtue, and then always behaving
unfairly in argument. The unfairness of which I complain is that you do
not distinguish between mere disputation and dialectic: th