Alcibiades II

Soc: Alcibiades, are you on your way to offer a prayer to the god?

Alc: I am, certainly, Socrates.

Soc: You seem, let me say, to have a gloomy look, and to keep your eyes on the ground, as though you were pondering something.

Alc: And what might one ponder, Socrates?

Soc: The greatest of questions, Alcibiades, as I believe. For tell me, in Heaven’s name, do you not think that the gods sometimes grant in part, but in part refuse, what we ask of them in our private and public prayers, and gratify some people, but not others?

Alc: I do, certainly.

Soc: Then you would agree that one should take great precautions against falling unawares into the error of praying for great evils in the belief that they are good, while the gods happen to be disposed to grant freely what one is praying for? Just as Oedipus, they say, suddenly prayed that his sons might divide their patrimony with the sword: it was open to him to pray that his present evils might by some means be averted, but he invoked others in addition to those which he had already. Wherefore not only were those words of his accomplished, but many other dread results therefrom, which I think there is no need to recount in detail.

Alc: But you have instanced a madman, Socrates: why, do you suppose that anyone could bring himself, while he was in a sound state, to utter such a prayer?

Soc: Do you regard madness as the opposite of wisdom?

Alc: Certainly I do.

Soc: And there are some men whom you regard as unwise, and others as wise?

Alc: Why, yes.

Soc: Come then, let us consider who these people are. We have admitted that some are unwise, some wise, and others mad.

Alc: Yes, we have.

Soc: And again, there are some in sound health?

Alc: There are.

Soc: And others also who are in ill-health?

Alc: Quite so.

Soc: And they are not the same?

Alc: No, indeed.

Soc: And are there any others besides, who are found to be in neither state?

Alc: No, to be sure.

Soc: For a human being must needs be either sick or not sick.

Alc: I agree.

Soc: Well then, do you hold the same view about wisdom and unwisdom?

Alc: How do you mean?

Soc: Tell me, do you think it is only possible to be either wise or unwise, or is there some third condition between these, which makes a man neither wise nor unwise?

Alc: No, there is not.

Soc: So he must needs be in one or the other of these two conditions.

Alc: I agree.

Soc: And you remember that you admitted that madness is the opposite of wisdom?

Alc: I do.

Soc: And further, that there is no third condition between these, which makes a man neither wise nor unwise?

Alc: Yes, I admitted that.