The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (41 page)

CHAEREPHON
: [
through the door
] Sorry to wake you, old chap, but I hear that unless we vacate these rooms before the house slaves arrive to clean them, they’re liable to charge us for another day.

SOCRATES
: [
Emerges, and motions
CHAEREPHON’S SLAVE
into the room to pack
SOCRATES
’
modest travelling bag.
] Chaerephon – our trip hasn’t been wasted after all! I met Hermes.

CHAEREPHON
: What?

SOCRATES
: Yes, the god. In a dream, or maybe in person. Or maybe I just dreamed I met him. But it doesn’t matter, because, as he pointed out, it makes no difference.

CHAEREPHON
: [
Confused
.] What? Why not?

SOCRATES
: Because I learned a whole new branch of philosophy – and more!

[
A group of Socrates’
COMPANIONS
is approaching. Sprinting eagerly ahead of the rest is the teenage poet Aristocles, whom his friends call
PLATO
(‘the Broad’) because of his wrestler’s build.
]

PLATO
: Socrates! Good morning! Thank you again a thousandfold for letting me come on this pilgrimage! [
Launches straight into philosophy without waiting for a reply.
] But I was thinking last night: does it really count as a
revelation
if the Oracle tells us only what we already know? We already knew that there’s no one wiser than you, so I thought: shouldn’t we go back and demand a free question? But then I thought –

CHAEREPHON
: Aristocles, Socrates has –

PLATO
: No, wait! Don’t tell me the answer. Let me tell you my best guess first. So I thought: yes, we already knew he’s the wisest. And that he’s modest. But we didn’t know quite
how
modest. So that’s what the god revealed to us! That Socrates is so modest that he’d contradict even a god saying he’s wise.

COMPANIONS
: [
Laugh.
]

PLATO
: And another thing:
we
knew of Socrates’ excellence, but now Apollo has revealed it to
the whole world
.

CHAEREPHON
: [
under his breath
] Then I wish ‘the whole world’ had chipped in for the fee.

PLATO
: What was that? Did I get it right?

[
SOCRATES
draws breath to answer, but
PLATO
again continues
.]

Oh, and Socrates, may I call you ‘Master’?

SOCRATES
: No.

PLATO
: Yes, yes, of course. Sorry. It’s just that I’ve been hanging out with some Spartan kids at the gymnasium, and they talk like that all the time. ‘My master says this. My master says that. My master does not permit . . . ’ and so on and so on. It got so that I became a bit envious that I don’t have a master myself, so –

COMPANION NO. 1
: Eww, Plato!

PLATO
: Yeah, but –

CHAEREPHON
: [
catching up
]
Spartan
kids? Aristocles, that is most improper. We are at war!

PLATO
: Not here in Delphi we’re not. They’d
never
violate the sacred truce of the Oracle. They’re very devout, you know. Nice kids, despite their funny accents. We spoke a lot about wrestling – in between actual wrestling, that is. We were up all night, wrestling by candlelight. I’ve never done that before. They’re really good! Though they do sometimes cheat as well. [
Smiles indulgently in recollection
.] But, even so, I wasn’t going to let our city be humiliated. I won a few bouts for Athens, you’ll be glad to know. That was intense! They taught me some great moves. I can’t wait to try them out back home. For some reason none of them are much into poetry, though.

SOCRATES
: They don’t honour poets in Sparta. Not living ones, anyway.

PLATO
: Oh! Pity. I dashed off a poem in commemoration of our wrestling competition. Or rather, between the lines, it’s really about why Athens is better than Sparta. It’s a mathematical argument . . . Anyway, I’ve just sent a slave over to their compound to recite it to them, but if they don’t honour poets perhaps they won’t appreciate it. Oh well. It goes like this –

CHAEREPHON
: Aristocles – last night Socrates was visited by the god Hermes!

PLATO
: Wow! Why didn’t you call us, Socrates? That would have trumped even wrestling with Spartans!

SOCRATES
: I couldn’t call anyone because it happened in a dream – or something. I’m not even sure that it was really the god. But, as he pointed out to me, it doesn’t matter.

PLATO
: Why not? Oh, I guess that, once the experience is over, all that matters is what you learned from it. So, what did he want? I bet he wanted to poach you away from the cult of Apollo. Don’t do it, Socrates! Apollo is much better. Not that there’s anything
wrong
with Hermes, but he has no Oracle. And he’s not as cool –

CHAEREPHON
: [
shocked
] Show some respect, Aristocles – to Socrates
and
to the gods!

SOCRATES
: He
is
showing respect, Chaerephon, in his own way.

PLATO
: [
mystified
] Of course I respect them, Chaerephon. And you know I’d literally worship Socrates if he’d let me. Oh, and I respect you too, old man. Greatly. I beg you to forgive me if I have offended you: I know I get too enthusiastic sometimes. [
Pauses briefly
.] But, Socrates – what did you ask the god and what did he reply?

SOCRATES
: It wasn’t quite like that. He came to reveal to me a new branch of philosophy:
epistemology
– knowledge about knowledge, which also has implications for morality and other fields. Much of it I already knew, or partially knew in various special cases. But he gave me a god’s-eye overview, which was breathtaking. Interestingly, he mainly did this by asking
me
questions, and inviting
me
to think about certain things. It seems an effective technique – I may try it sometime.

PLATO
: Tell us everything, Socrates! Start with the most interesting thing he asked, and your reply.

SOCRATES
: Well – one thing he asked me to do was to imagine a ‘Spartan Socrates’.

PLATO
: A Spartan
what
? Oh! I see!
That
must be whom the Oracle meant. How sneaky Apollo is! It’s the
Spartan
Socrates who’s the wisest man in the world – though only by the breadth of a hair, I’ll bet! But, being Spartan, he’s probably the greatest warrior as well. Awesome! Of course I know you were a great warrior in your day too, Socrates. But still – a
Spartan
Socrates! So are we going to Sparta to see him right away? Please!

CHAEREPHON:
Aristocles –
the war!

SOCRATES
: Sorry to disappoint you,
Aristocles, but it was a purely intellectual exercise. There is no ‘Spartan Socrates’. In fact I know of no Spartan philosophers at all. In a way, that is what much of my conversation with Hermes was about.

PLATO
: Please tell us more.

[
While saying this,
PLATO
gestures to his own
SLAVE
,
who, well trained, tosses him a wax-covered writing tablet from a stack that he is carrying
.
PLATO
catches it in one hand and pulls out a stylus
.]

SOCRATES
: At one stage, Hermes made me aware of the fundamental distinction between the Athenian approach to life and the Spartan. It is that –

PLATO
: Wait! Let’s all guess! This sounds fascinating.

I’ll start – because this is basically what my poem was about. Well, the Spartan half of the riddle is easy: Sparta glories in
war
. And she values all the associated virtues such as courage, endurance and so on.

[
The other
COMPANIONS
of Socrates murmur their assent
.] We, on the other hand – well, we value
everything
, don’t we! Everything good, that is.

COMPANION NO. 1
: Everything good? That seems a bit circular, Plato, unless you’re going to define ‘good’ in some way that’s independent of ‘what we Athenians value’. I think I can put it more elegantly:
fighting
, versus
having something to fight for
.

COMPANION NO. 2
: Nice. But that’s basically ‘War versus Philosophy’, isn’t it?

PLATO
: [
taking mock offence
] And
poetry
.

COMPANION NO. 3
: Could it be that Athens, whose patron deity is female, represents the creative spirit in the world, while Sparta favours Ares, the god of bloodlust and slaughter, whom Athena defeated and humbled –

PLATO
: No, no, they’re actually not that keen on Ares. They prefer Artemis. And, strangely enough, they also revere Athena. Did you know that?

CHAEREPHON
: Speaking as an Athenian who is older than all of you and who has seen plenty of war, may I just say that it seems to me that Athens, despite all its glorious martial achievements, would be just as happy to lead a quiet life and be friends with all the Greeks, and not least with the Spartans. But unfortunately the Spartans like nothing better than to annoy us whenever they possibly can. Though
I must admit that in that respect they are not especially worse than anyone else. Including our allies!

SOCRATES
: Those are very interesting conjectures, all of which I think do capture aspects of the differences between the cities. And yet I suspect – and I may of course be mistaken –

PLATO
: A Spartan Socrates wouldn’t be
modest
. Is that the difference?

SOCRATES
: No. (By the way, I think that if anything, he
would
be.)

I suspect that we have all been labouring under a misconception about Sparta. Could it be that the Spartans do not seek war, as such, at all? At least, not since they conquered their neighbours, centuries ago, and made them helots. Perhaps, since then, they have acquired an entirely different concern that is of overriding importance to them; and perhaps they fight
only
when that concern is under threat.

COMPANION NO. 2
: What is it? Keeping the helots down?

SOCRATES
: No, that would be only a means, not the end in itself. I think that the god told me what their overarching concern is. And he also told me what ours is – though alas
we
also fight for all sorts of other reasons, of which we often repent.

Those two overarching concerns are these: we Athenians are concerned above all with
improvement
; the Spartans seek only –
stasis
. Two opposite objectives. If you think about it, I believe you’ll soon agree that
this
is the single source of all the myriad differences between the two cities.

PLATO
: I never thought of it that way before, but I think I do agree. Let me try out the theory. Here’s one difference between the cities: Sparta has no philosophers. That’s because the job of a philosopher is to understand things better, which is a form of change, so they don’t want it. Another difference: they don’t honour living poets, only dead ones. Why? Because dead poets don’t write anything new, but live ones do. A third difference: their education system is insanely harsh; ours is famously lax. Why? Because they don’t want their kids to dare to question anything, so that they won’t ever think of changing anything. How am I doing?

SOCRATES
: You are quick on the uptake as usual, Aristocles. However –

CHAEREPHON
: Socrates, I think I know plenty of Athenians who do
not seek improvement! We have many politicians who think they’re perfect. And many sophists who think they know everything.

SOCRATES
: But what, specifically, do those politicians believe to be perfect? Their own grandiose plans for how to
improve
the city. Similarly, each sophist believes that everyone should adopt his ideas, which he sees as an
improvement
over everything that has been believed before. The laws and customs of Athens are set up to accommodate all these many rival ideas of perfection (as well as more modest proposals for improvement), to subject them to criticism, to winnow out from them what may be the few tiny seeds of truth, and to test out those that seem the most promising. Thus those myriad individuals who can conceive of no improvement of themselves nevertheless add up to a
city
that relentlessly seeks nothing else for itself, day and night.

CHAEREPHON
: Yes, I see.

SOCRATES
: In Sparta there are no such politicians, and no such sophists. And no gadflies such as me, because any Spartan who did doubt or disapprove of the way things have always been done would keep it to himself. What few new ideas they have are intended to sustain the city more securely in its current state. As for war, I know that there are Spartans who glory in war, and would love to conquer and enslave the whole world, just as they once set out to conquer their neighbours. Yet the institutions of their city, and the deep assumptions that are built into the minds of even the hotheads, embody a visceral fear of any such step into the unknown. Perhaps it is significant that the statue of Ares that stands outside Sparta represents him
chained
, so that he will always be there to protect the city. Is that not the same as preventing the god of violence from breaking discipline? From being loosed upon the world to cause random mayhem, with its terrifying risk of change?

CHAEREPHON
: Perhaps it is. In any case, I understand now, Socrates, how a city can have ‘overarching concerns’ that are not shared by all its citizens. However, I’m afraid I still don’t see how your theory accounts for the
enmity
between our cities. First of all, I cannot recall the Spartans ever objecting to our propensity to improve ourselves. Instead, they cite all sorts of specific grievances about how we are allegedly violating treaties, undermining their allies, plotting to build
an empire on the mainland and so on. Second – not that I want to criticize the god, of course! –