|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: is, Socrates, that you, who pretend to be engaged in the pursuit of truth,
are appealing now to the popular and vulgar notions of right, which are not
natural, but only conventional. Convention and nature are generally at
variance with one another: and hence, if a person is too modest to say
what he thinks, he is compelled to contradict himself; and you, in your
ingenuity perceiving the advantage to be thereby gained, slyly ask of him
who is arguing conventionally a question which is to be determined by the
rule of nature; and if he is talking of the rule of nature, you slip away
to custom: as, for instance, you did in this very discussion about doing
and suffering injustice. When Polus was speaking of the conventionally
dishonourable, you assailed him from the point of view of nature; for by
|
