y deem to be their adversaries, do, in fact, teach nothing
but the opinion of the many, that is to say, the opinions of their
assemblies; and this is their wisdom. I might compare them to a man who
should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is
fed by him--he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what
times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what
is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another
utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further,
that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in
all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or
art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what
he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but
calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just
or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great
brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and
evil to be that which he dislikes; and he can give no other account
of them except that the just and noble are the necessary, having never
himself seen, and having no power of explaining to others the nature
of either, or the difference between them, which is immense. By heaven,
would not such an one be a rare educator?

Indeed he would.

And in what way does he who thinks that wisdom is the discernment of
the tempers and tastes of the motley multitude, whether in painting
or music, or, finally, in politics, differ from him whom I have been
describing? For when a man consorts with the many, and exhibits to
them his poem or other work of art or the service which he has done
the State, making them his judges when he is not obliged, the so-called
necessity of Diomede will oblige him to produce whatever they
praise. And yet the reasons are utterly ludicrous which they give in
confirmation of their own notions about the honourable and good. Did you
ever hear any of them which were not?

No, nor am I likely to hear.

You recognise the truth of what I have been saying? Then let me ask you
to consider further whether the world will ever be induced to believe in
the existence of absolute beauty rather than of the many beautiful, or
of the absolute in each kind rather than of the many in each kind?

Certainly not.

Then the world cannot possibly be a philosopher?

Impossible.

And therefore philosopher