Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3034

Two typed pages from Socrates, The Phaedrus, with no explanation but perhaps considered important by Heath for its content.

No date

 

p 70

      All the higher arts require, over and above their immediate discipline, a subtle and speculative acquaintance with physical science; it being, I imagine, by some such door as this that there enters that elevation of thought and universal mastery over the sub­ject in hand.

Well, I heard that in the neighborhood of Maucratis, in Egypt, there lived one of the ancient gods of that country; the same to whom that holy bird is consecrated which they call, as you know, Ibis, and whose own name was Thuth. He, they proceed, was the first to invent numbers and arithmetic, and geometry and astronomy; draughts, moreover, and dice, and, above all, letters. N₀w the whole of Egypt was at that time under the sway of the god Thamus, who resided near the capital city of the upper region, which the Greeks call Egyptian Thebes. The god himself they call Ammon. To him, therefore, Thuth repaired: and, displaying his inventions, recommended their general diffusion among the Egyptians. The king asked him the use of each, and received his explanations, as he thought them good or bad, with praise or censure. Now on each of the arts Thamus is reported to have said a great deal to Thuth, both in its favor and disfavor. It would take a long story to repeat it all. But when they came to the letters, Thuth began: “This invention, 0 king, will make the Egyptians wiser, and better able to remember, it being a medicine which I have discovered both for memory and wisdom.”  The king replied: “Most ingenious Thuth, one man is capable of giving birth to an art, another of estimating the amount of good or harm it will do to those who are intended to use it. And so now you, as being the father of letters, have ascribed to them, in your fondness, exactly the reverse of their real effects. For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory, inasmuch as, from their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery, therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection, — for recalling to, not for keeping in mind. And you are providing for your disciples a show of wisdom without the reality. For, acquiring by your means much information unaided by instruction, they will appear to possess much knowledge, while, in fact, they will, for the most part, know nothing at all; and, moreover, be disagreeable people to deal with, as having become wise in their own conceit, instead of truly wise.”

                                                                                   …..

      We are told, my friend, that the voice of an oak, in the holy ground of Zeus of Dodona, was the first ever gifted with prophecy. The men of those days, not being clever like you moderns, were content, in their simplicity, to listen to an oak or a stone, if only it spake the truth. But to you, it seems, it makes a difference who the speaker is, and from what country he comes; you do not merely consider whether the fact be, or be not, as he states it.

                 …..

      He, therefore, who leaves behind him, and he again who receives an art in writing, with the idea that anything clear or fixed is to proceed from the writing, must be altogether a foolish minded person, and, in truth, ignorant of Ammon’s prediction, as he must suppose that written words can do something ten words can do something more than recall the things of which they treat to the mind of one who knows them already.

                                   . . . . .

      For this, I conceive, Phaedrus, is the evil of writing, and herein it closely resembles painting. The creatures of the latter art stand before you as if they were alive, but if you ask them a question, they look very solemn, and say not a word. And so it is with written discourses. You could fancy they speak as though they were possessed of sense, but if you wish to understand something they say, and question them about it, you find them ever repeating but one and the selfsame story. Moreover, every discourse, once written, is tossed about from hand to hand, equally among those who understand it, and those for whom it is nowise fitted; and it does not know to whom it ought, and to whom it ought not, to speak. And when misunderstood and unjustly attacked, it always needs its father to help it; for, unaided, it can neither retaliate, nor defend itself.

 

p 79

      There are two forms of method which would well repay our attention:

      The first consists in comprehending at a glance, whenever a subject is proposed, all the widely scattered particulars connected with it, and bringing them together under one general idea, in order that, by a precise definition, we may make everyone understand what it is at the time we are intending to discuss.

 

p 64

      The second method, on the other hand, enables us to separate a general idea into its subordinate elements, by dividing it at the joints, as nature directs, and not attempting to break any limb in half, after the fashion of a bungling carver. … Just as from one body there proceed two sets of members, called by the same name, but distinguished as right and left, so when my speeches had formed the general conception of mental derangement, as constituting by nature one class within us, the speech which had to divide the left-hand portion desisted not from dividing it into smaller, and again smaller parts, till it found among them a kind of left-handed love, which it railed at with well-deserved severity; while the other led us to the right-hand side of madness, where it discovered a love bearing indeed the same name as the former, but of an opposite and godly sort, which it held up to be gazed at and lauded as the author of our great­est blessings.

 

p 65

Suppose a man were to call upon your friend Eryimachus, or his father Acumenus, and say, I know how to make such applications to the body as will create either heat or cold, as I please; and if I think proper, I can produce vomitings, and purgings, and a great variety of similar effects. And, on the strength of this knowledge, I flatter myself that I am a physician, and able to make a physician of any one to whom I may communicate the knowledge of these matters.  What do you think would be their answer on hearing this?

Phaedrus: Why, they would, of course, ask him whether he also knew to what objects, at what times, and to what extent, these modes of treatment ought severally to be applied.

Socrates: And if he were to answer, 0, I know nothing of the kind; but I expect that my pupil will be able to act in all these matters for himself, as soon as he had learnt the secrets I mentioned.

Phaedrus: Why then they would doubtless say, The man is mad; he has been hearing some book read, or he has fallen with some nostrum or other, and fancies himself, in consequence, a made physician.