[539a]
will he be likely
to adopt any other way of life than that which flatters his desires1?” “He will
not,” he said. “He will, then, seem to have become a rebel
to law and convention instead of the conformer that he was.”
“Necessarily.” “And is not this experience of
those who take up dialectics in this fashion to be expected and, as I just now
said, deserving of much leniency?” “Yes, and of pity
too,” he said. “Then that we may not have to pity thus your
thirty-year-old disciples, must you not take every precaution when you introduce
them to the study of dialectics?” “Yes, indeed,”
he said. “And is it not
1 Cf. Laws 633 E and 442 A-B. Others render it, “than the life of the flatterers (parasites).” Why not both?
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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