I might compare them
to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong
beast who is fed by him-he would learn how to approach and handle him,
also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse,
and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds,
when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you
may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him,
he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom,
and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach,
although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles
or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable
and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust,
all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute.
Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and evil to be
that which he dislikes; and he can give no other account of them except
that the just and noble are the necessary, having never himself seen,
and having no power of explaining to others the nature of either,
or the difference between them, which is immense. By heaven,
would not such an one be a rare educator?
Indeed, he would.
And in what way does he who thinks that wisdom is the discernment
of the tempers and tastes of the motley multitude, whether in painting
or music, or, finally, in politics, differ from him whom I have been
describing? For when a man consorts with the many, and exhibits
to them his poem or other work of art or the service which he has
done the State, making them his judges when he is not obliged,
the so-called necessity of Diomede will oblige him to produce whatever
they praise.
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