BOOK II. XVII. 5-10
multitude are under the same misapprehension as was Theopompus, the orator,[1] who actually censures Plato for wishing to define every term. Well, what does he say? "Did none of us before your time ever use the words 'good' or 'just'? Or, without understanding what each of these terms severally mean, did we merely utter them as vague and empty sounds?" Why, who tells you, Theopompus, that we did not have a natural conception of each term, that is, a preconceived idea of it? But it is impossible to adjust our preconceived ideas to the appropriate facts without having first systematized them and having raised precisely this question—what particular fact is to be classified under each preconception. Suppose, for example, that you make the same sort of remark to the physicians: "Why, who among us did not use terms 'healthy' and 'diseased' before Hippocrates was born? Or were we merely making an empty noise with these sounds?" For, of course, we have a certain preconception of the idea "healthy." But we are unable to apply it. That is why one person says, "Keep abstaining from food," and another, "Give nourishment"; again, one says, "Cut a vein," and another says, "Use the cupping-glass." What is the reason? Is it really anything but the fact that a person is unable properly to apply the preconceived idea of "healthy" to the specific instances?
10So it stands here also, in the affairs of life. Who among us has not upon his lips the words "good" and "evil," "advantageous" and "disadvantageous"? For who among us does not have a preconceived
- ↑ Almost certainly the same as Theopompus of Chios, the pupil of Isocrates, more generally known to us as an historian, but also famous in his own time in his declamations (ἐπιδεικτικοὶ λόγοι). The following quotation is probably from the Diatribe against Plato (Athen. XI, 508C).
