His illustrations are poetry and his
jests illustrations. Socrates' profession of obstetric art is good
philosophy; and his finding that word "cookery," and "adulatory art,"
for rhetoric, in the Gorgias, does us a substantial service still. No
orator can measure in effect with him who can give good nicknames.
What moderation, and understatement, and checking his thunder in mid
volley! He has good-naturedly furnished the courtier and citizen with
all that can be said against the schools. "For philosophy is an elegant
thing, if any one modestly meddles with it; but, if he is conversant
with it more than is becoming, it corrupts the man." He could well
afford to be generous,--he, who from the sunlike centrality and reach
of his vision, had a faith without cloud. Such as his perception, was
his speech: he plays with the doubt, and makes the most of it: he
paints and quibbles; and by and by comes a sentence that moves the sea
and land. The admirable earnest comes not only at intervals, in the
perfect yes and no of the dialogue, but in bursts of light. "I,
therefore, Callicles, am persuaded by these accounts, and consider how
I may exhibit my soul before the judge in a healthy condition.
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