Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
SOCRATES: So what is love of gain? What exactly is it, and who are the people who love gain? COMPANION: To me it seems to be those who think it right to profit from things worth nothing. SOCRATES: Do you mean that they know these things are worth nothing, or that they're ignorant of it? If they're ignorant, then you're calling the gain-lovers foolish. COMPANION: No, I don't mean foolish — I mean unscrupulous and wicked, slaves to profit, people who know perfectly well that the things they dare to profit from are worth nothing, yet who dare to chase gain anyway, out of sheer shamelessness. SOCRATES: So is this the sort of thing you mean by a gain-lover — say, a farmer planting a crop, knowing the plant is worth nothing, who still expects to profit once it's grown? Is that the kind of person you mean? COMPANION: A true gain-lover, Socrates, thinks he ought to profit from absolutely anything. SOCRATES: Don't just answer me carelessly, as though someone had wronged you — pay attention and answer as if I were asking you from the beginning again. Don't you agree that the gain-lover has knowledge of the worth of the thing he expects to profit from? COMPANION: I do. SOCRATES: Then who has knowledge of the worth of plants — of the season and the soil in which they're worth planting? Let's throw in a bit of clever language ourselves, the sort skilled speakers dress up their courtroom speeches with. COMPANION: A farmer, I'd think. SOCRATES: And by 'thinking it right to profit,' do you mean anything other than believing one ought to profit? COMPANION: That's what I mean.
SOCRATES: Then don't try to deceive me — a man well along in years — while you're still so young, by answering as you just did with things you don't even believe yourself. Tell me the truth: is there anyone who, being a farmer and knowing that the plant he's planting is worth nothing, still expects to profit from it? COMPANION: No, by Zeus, not I. SOCRATES: What about this — a horseman who knows the feed he gives his horse is worthless: do you think he's unaware that he's ruining the horse? COMPANION: Not I. SOCRATES: So he doesn't expect to profit from feed that's worth nothing. COMPANION: No. SOCRATES: What about a helmsman who's fitted his ship with sails and rudder that are worthless — do you think he's unaware that he'll suffer for it, and risk losing himself, his ship, and everything it carries? COMPANION: Not I. SOCRATES: So he doesn't expect to profit from gear that's worth nothing. COMPANION: No, he doesn't. SOCRATES: And a general who knows his army is armed with worthless weapons — does he expect to profit from that, does he think it right to profit? COMPANION: Not at all. SOCRATES: Or a flute-player with worthless flutes, or a lyre-player with a worthless lyre, or an archer with a worthless bow, or anyone else at all — any craftsman, or any other sensible person — with equipment or supplies of any kind that are worthless — does he expect to profit from them? COMPANION: It doesn't look like it. SOCRATES: Then who exactly do you mean by the gain-lovers? Surely not the people we've just gone through — but people who, knowing things are worth nothing, still think they ought to profit from them. But if that's what you mean, my astonishing friend, then there's no such thing as a gain-lover among human beings at all. COMPANION: Well, Socrates, what I want to say is that the gain-lovers are people who, out of sheer insatiability, crave and chase profit from things that are very small, worth little or nothing, in an excessive way. SOCRATES: Surely not knowing that these things are worth nothing, my good man — because we've already refuted ourselves on that point and shown it's impossible. COMPANION: I think so too. SOCRATES: So if they don't know it, clearly they're ignorant, and they believe that things worth nothing are worth a great deal. COMPANION: So it seems. SOCRATES: Then isn't it true that gain-lovers love gain? COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: And by gain you mean the opposite of loss?
COMPANION: I do. SOCRATES: Is there anyone for whom being harmed is a good thing? COMPANION: For no one. SOCRATES: It's a bad thing, then? COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: So people are harmed by loss. COMPANION: They're harmed. SOCRATES: Loss, then, is a bad thing. COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: And gain is the opposite of loss. COMPANION: The opposite. SOCRATES: Gain, then, is a good thing. COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: So you call people who love the good 'gain-lovers.' COMPANION: It seems so. SOCRATES: You're not calling the gain-lovers crazy, then, my friend. But tell me — do you yourself love whatever is good, or not? COMPANION: I do. SOCRATES: And is there something good that you don't love, but rather something bad? COMPANION: No, by Zeus, not I. SOCRATES: So you love all good things, presumably. COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: Well, ask me the same question — whether I do too. I'll agree that I also love good things. But besides you and me, don't all other people seem to you to love good things and hate bad ones? COMPANION: It seems so to me. SOCRATES: And we agreed that gain is a good thing? COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: Then in this sense, everyone turns out to be a gain-lover — whereas by the way we spoke of it before, no one was a gain-lover. Which account, then, would one use without making a mistake? COMPANION: I think, Socrates, one has to grasp the gain-lover correctly. And the correct way to think of him is as someone who takes trouble over these things and thinks it right to profit from things which decent people wouldn't dare profit from. SOCRATES: But look here, my sweetest friend — we just agreed that profiting is being benefited. COMPANION: What of it? SOCRATES: Because we also agreed to this: that everyone, always, wants good things. COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: Then don't good people also want to have all the gains there are, if they really are good things? COMPANION: Not the gains they expect to be harmed by, Socrates. SOCRATES: By 'harmed,' do you mean 'suffer loss,' or something else? COMPANION: No, I mean suffer loss. SOCRATES: So are people harmed by gain, or by loss? COMPANION: By both — they're harmed by loss, and also by bad gain. SOCRATES: Does it seem to you, then, that a decent, good thing can be bad? COMPANION: Not to me.
SOCRATES: But didn't we agree a little earlier that gain, being bad, is the opposite of loss? COMPANION: I did say that. SOCRATES: And that being the opposite of something bad, it's good? COMPANION: Yes, we agreed to that. SOCRATES: You see, then, you're trying to deceive me, saying the opposite on purpose of what we just agreed. COMPANION: No, by Zeus, Socrates — it's the other way around, you're deceiving me, and I don't know how you keep twisting the argument up and down. SOCRATES: Hush — that would be a poor thing for me to do, disobeying a good and wise man. COMPANION: Who's this? And about what exactly? SOCRATES: A fellow citizen of mine and yours, the son of Peisistratus, of the deme Philaidai — Hipparchus, the eldest and wisest of the sons of Peisistratus. He accomplished many other fine feats of wisdom, and he was the first to bring Homer's poems into this land of ours, compelling the rhapsodes at the Panathenaea to recite them in relay, one picking up where the last left off, just as they still do today. He also sent a fifty-oared ship to fetch Anacreon of Teos and brought him to the city, and he kept Simonides of Ceos constantly by his side, winning him over with great fees and gifts. He did all this because he wanted to educate the citizens, so that he might rule over the best people possible — for he didn't think it right to withhold wisdom from anyone, being the fine and noble man that he was. Once the citizens in the city itself had been educated by him and admired him for his wisdom, he set out, with a further scheme, to educate those in the countryside as well: he set up herms for them along the roads, in the middle of the city and of each of the townships, and then, choosing from his own wisdom — both what he had learned and what he had discovered himself — whatever he judged wisest, he cast it into elegiac verse and inscribed it as his own compositions and displays of wisdom. His purpose was, first, so that his citizens wouldn't admire those wise sayings at Delphi — 'know thyself' and 'nothing too much' and the rest of that sort — but would think Hipparchus's own words wiser still; and second, so that as they walked back and forth reading them and getting a taste of his wisdom, they would keep coming in from the countryside for the rest of their education as well.
SOCRATES: There are two inscriptions on each herm. On the left side is written, in the voice of Hermes himself, that he stands in the middle of the city and the township; on the right side it says — 'This is the monument of Hipparchus: walk on, thinking just thoughts.' There are many other fine verses of his inscribed on other herms too. There's also this one, on the road to Steiria, which says — 'This is the monument of Hipparchus: do not deceive a friend.' Now I, since you're a friend of mine, would surely never dare to deceive you, nor distrust a man of that character — a man whose death cost the Athenians three years of tyranny under his brother Hippias, and you'd hear from everyone of the old generation that those were the only years tyranny ever existed in Athens; the rest of the time the Athenians lived very nearly as they did in the reign of Cronus. And it's said by the more refined sort of people that his death didn't happen for the reason most people think — because of the insult to his sister over carrying the ceremonial basket (that account is simply silly) — but rather that Harmodius had become the beloved of Aristogeiton and had been educated by him, and Aristogeiton took great pride in having educated him, and so came to regard Hipparchus as a rival. At that time it happened that Harmodius himself was in love with one of the young, handsome, well-born men of the day — they say his name, but I don't remember it — and this young man, who had for a while admired Harmodius and Aristogeiton as wise men, later, after spending time with Hipparchus, came to look down on them; and stung with resentment at this slight, the two of them killed Hipparchus. COMPANION: It looks, then, Socrates, as though either you don't consider me a friend, or, if you do, you're not obeying Hipparchus — because I simply cannot bring myself to believe that you aren't deceiving me in these arguments, though I can't say how you're doing it. SOCRATES: Well then, just as in a game of checkers, I'm willing to let you take back any move of our argument you like, so you won't feel deceived. Shall I grant you this — that not all people desire good things? COMPANION: Not that one. SOCRATES: Or that suffering loss and loss itself aren't bad? COMPANION: Not that one either. SOCRATES: Or that gain and profit aren't the opposite of loss and suffering loss?
COMPANION: Not that one either. SOCRATES: Or that, being the opposite of what's bad, profiting isn't good? COMPANION: Not all of it, anyway — grant me that one. SOCRATES: So it seems to you that some gain is good, and some gain is bad. COMPANION: Yes, to me. SOCRATES: Then I grant you this: let there be some gain that's good, and some other gain that's bad. But neither one is gain any more than the other — isn't that so? COMPANION: How do you mean, ask me that? SOCRATES: I'll explain. Is there such a thing as food that's good and food that's bad? COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: Is one of them any more food than the other, or are they alike in this respect — both of them food — and in that respect there's no difference between the one and the other, in being food, though one of them is good and the other bad? COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: And likewise with drink and everything else, all the things which, being the same kind of thing, turn out to be sometimes good and sometimes bad — isn't it true that neither one differs from the other in the respect in which they're the same thing? Just as a person, I suppose, is sometimes decent and sometimes wicked. COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: But a person, I think, is no more or less a person than another — neither the decent one more of a person than the wicked one, nor the wicked one more than the decent one. COMPANION: True. SOCRATES: So shouldn't we think the same way about gain — that gain is equally gain, whether it's wicked or decent? COMPANION: It must be so. SOCRATES: So the one who has decent gain doesn't gain any more than the one who has wicked gain — neither turns out to be more of a gain, as we've agreed. COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: Because neither one of them has more or less attaching to it. COMPANION: No, indeed. SOCRATES: How, then, could anyone do or undergo anything more or less with a thing like that, to which neither more nor less attaches? COMPANION: Impossible. SOCRATES: Since, then, both kinds of gain are alike gains and profitable, we need to examine this — what is it you're looking at, the same in both, that makes you call them both gain? It's just as if, when you were just now asking me why I call both good food and bad food alike food, I told you it's because both are dry nourishment for the body — that's why. That's what makes something food, and you'd surely agree with us on that. Wouldn't you? COMPANION: I would.
SOCRATES: And the same style of answer would work for drink too, wouldn't it — that whatever serves as the body's liquid nourishment, whether good or bad, is called by this name, drink. And so with the rest. Try to imitate me and answer that way yourself. You say that good profit and bad profit are both called profit — what is it you see as the same thing in them both, that makes you call this, too, profit? But if you can't answer that yourself, look at it while I put it: do you mean by profit any acquisition a person gets either by spending nothing at all, or by spending less and getting more? COMPANION: Yes, that's what I think I'd call profit. SOCRATES: And do you also mean cases like this — if someone is given a feast, and spends nothing but is well entertained, and comes away with a disease? COMPANION: No, by Zeus, not that. SOCRATES: But if he came away from the feast with good health instead, would he have gained a profit or a loss? COMPANION: A profit. SOCRATES: So this, at least, isn't what profit is — getting hold of just any acquisition whatsoever. COMPANION: No, apparently not. SOCRATES: Is it that it isn't profit if the thing is bad? Or is it that even if someone acquires something good, whatever it is, he still won't have gotten a profit? COMPANION: It looks like he will, if it's something good. SOCRATES: And if it's bad, won't he have gotten a loss? COMPANION: I think so. SOCRATES: Do you see, then, how you're circling right back to the same place? Profit turns out to be good, and loss turns out to be bad. COMPANION: I'm at a loss what to say. SOCRATES: And you're not wrong to be at a loss. Now answer me this too: if someone spends less and gets more, do you say that's profit? COMPANION: I don't mean it that way if the thing is bad — I mean if he spends less gold or silver and gets more back. SOCRATES: Well, that's exactly what I'm about to ask you about. Suppose someone spends half a pound weight of gold and gets back double that in silver — has he gotten a profit or a loss? COMPANION: A loss, surely, Socrates — because instead of gold worth twelve times as much, he ends up with something worth only twice as much. SOCRATES: And yet he's gotten more — isn't double more than half? COMPANION: Not in value, at least — not silver compared to gold. SOCRATES: So it seems this has to be added to the notion of profit — value. At any rate, right now you're saying that the silver, though it's more in quantity than the gold, isn't worth as much, while the gold, though it's less, is worth more. COMPANION: Quite so — that's exactly how it is. SOCRATES: So what has value is profitable, whether it's small or large, and what lacks value brings no profit. COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: And by 'has value' you mean nothing other than 'is worth acquiring'? COMPANION: Yes, worth acquiring. SOCRATES: And again, by 'worth acquiring' do you mean what's useless, or what's beneficial? COMPANION: What's beneficial, surely.
SOCRATES: And isn't the beneficial good? COMPANION: Yes. SOCRATES: So then, bravest of men, hasn't what's profitable turned out, for the third or fourth time now, to be simply the same thing as the good, by our own agreement? COMPANION: So it seems. SOCRATES: Do you remember, then, where this discussion of ours started? COMPANION: I think so. SOCRATES: If not, I'll remind you. You objected to my claim, insisting that good men don't want to profit from every kind of profit, but only from the good kinds, not the bad ones. COMPANION: That's right. SOCRATES: Well, hasn't the argument now forced us to agree that every profit, small or large alike, is good? COMPANION: It has forced me, Socrates — forced, rather than persuaded. SOCRATES: But perhaps it will go on to persuade you too. For now, though, whether you're persuaded or in whatever state you're in, you do at least agree with us that all profits are good, both small and large. COMPANION: Yes, I agree to that. SOCRATES: And you agree that all good men want all good things — don't they? COMPANION: I agree. SOCRATES: But you yourself said that bad men are fond of profits too, both small and large. COMPANION: I did say that. SOCRATES: So by your own account, all men would be lovers of profit, both the good and the bad. COMPANION: So it appears. SOCRATES: Then it isn't right for anyone to reproach another by calling him a lover of profit — since the very person making the accusation turns out to be that sort of person himself.