P L A T O N I S

"useless?" "Useful," he said, "O Socrates." "If good men are useful, then," I asked, "will the bad be useless?" He agreed. "What then, do you think philosophers are useful or useless men?" To this, he asserted that philosophers are the most useful of all. "Come then, that I may discern if you indeed speak the truth, in what way these men of the second rank are useful to us. For it is manifest that the philosopher is inferior to every artisan." He nodded. "Come," I said, "if either you, or one of your dearest friends were ill, would you bring that secondary philosopher to the care of health, or a doctor?" "Either." "Do not tell me 'either', but which one rather?" "No one," he said, "would doubt: the doctor, and more so, and first." "What about in a ship tossed by the waves, would you entrust yourself and your things to the captain or to the philosopher?" "To the captain," he said. "And in all other things, as long as an artisan is present, will there be no place for the philosopher?" "It appears so," he said. "The philosopher, therefore, is useless when artisans are not lacking. Yet we confessed that good men are indeed useful, and bad men useless." He was forced at last to confess. "What, then, shall I ask of you after this? Or is it perhaps inhumane to inquire further?" "Whatever you please," he said. "I seek nothing else, unless the things already said be conceded again; they are in this manner: We confessed that philosophy is good, and that there are philosophers, and that they themselves are good; and that good men are useful, and bad men, on the contrary, useless. Then we conceded that while artisans are present, philosophers are useless, and that artisans are always present. Were these things not conceded?" "They were." "We confess, therefore, as it seems according to your speech, since to philosophize..."