wood, or anything of that sort?

No, I do not.

Then, I said, we are giving up the doctrine that he who lives according
to knowledge is happy, for these live according to knowledge, and yet
they are not allowed by you to be happy; but I think that you mean
to confine happiness to particular individuals who live according to
knowledge, such for example as the prophet, who, as I was saying, knows
the future. Is it of him you are speaking or of some one else?

Yes, I mean him, but there are others as well.

Yes, I said, some one who knows the past and present as well as the
future, and is ignorant of nothing. Let us suppose that there is such a
person, and if there is, you will allow that he is the most knowing of
all living men.

Certainly he is.

Yet I should like to know one thing more: which of the different kinds
of knowledge makes him happy? or do all equally make him happy?

Not all equally, he replied.

But which most tends to make him happy? the knowledge of what past,
present, or future thing? May I infer this to be the knowledge of the
game of draughts?

Nonsense about the game of draughts.

Or of computation?

No.

Or of health?

That is nearer the truth, he said.

And that knowledge which is nearest of all, I said, is the knowledge of
what?

The knowledge with which he discerns good and evil.

Monster! I said; you have been carrying me round in a circle, and all
this time hiding from me the fact that the life according to knowledge
is not that which makes men act rightly and be happy, not even if
knowledge include all the sciences, but one science only, that of good
and evil. For, let me ask you, Critias, whether, if you take away this,
medicine will not equally give health, and shoemaking equally produce
shoes, and the art of the weaver clothes?--whether the art of the pilot
will not equally save our lives at sea, and the art of the general in
war?

Quite so.

And yet, my dear Critias, none of these things will be well or
beneficially done, if the science of the good be wanting.

True.

But that science is not wisdom or temperance, but a science of human
advantage; not a science of other sciences, or of ignorance, but of good
and evil: and if this be of use, then wisdom or temperance will not be
of use.

And why, he replied, will not wisdom be of use? For, however much we
assume that wisdom is a science of sciences, and has a sway over other
sciences, surely she will have this