Note 79 — Chapter VIII · PLATONIC COMPOSITIONS GENERALLY.

This antithesis and reciprocal repulsion — between the speculative reason of the philosopher who thinks for himself, and the established traditional convictions of the public — is nowhere more strikingly enforced than by Plato in the sixth and seventh books of the Republic; together with the corrupting influence exercised by King Nomos, at the head of his vehement and unanimous public, over those few gifted natures which are competent to philosophical speculation. See Plato, Rep. vi. 492-493.

The unfavourable feelings with which the attempts to analyse morality (especially when quite novel, as such attempts were in the time of Sokrates) are received in a community — are noticed by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his tract on Utilitarianism, ch. iii. pp. 38-39:—

“The question is often asked, and properly so, in regard to any supposed moral standard, What is its sanction? What are the motives to obey it? or more specifically, What is the source of its obligation? Whence does it derive its binding force? It is a necessary part of moral philosophy to provide the answer to this question: which though frequently assuming the shape of an objection to the utilitarian morality, as if it had some special applicability to that above others, really arises in regard to all standards. It arises in fact whenever a person is called on to adopt a standard, or refer morality to any basis on which he has not been accustomed to rest it. For the customary morality, that which education and opinion have consecrated, is the only one which presents itself to the mind with the feeling of being in itself obligatory: and when a person is asked to believe that this morality derives its obligation from some general principle round which custom has not thrown the same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox. The supposed corollaries seem to have a more binding force than the original theorem: the superstructure seems to stand better without than with what is represented as its foundation.… The difficulty has no peculiar application to the doctrine of utility, but is inherent in every attempt to analyse morality, and reduce it to principles: which, unless the principle is already in men’s minds invested with as much sacredness as any of its applications, always seems to divest them of a part of their sanctity.”

Epiktêtus observes that the refined doctrines acquired by the self-reasoning philosopher, often failed to attain that intense hold on his conviction, which the “rotten doctrines” inculcated from childhood possessed over the conviction of ordinary men. Διὰ τί οὖν ἐκεῖνοι (οἱ πολλοὶ, οἱ ἰδιῶται) ὑμῶν (των φιλοσόφων) ἰσχυρότεροι; Ὅτι ἐκεῖνοι μὲν τὰ σαπρὰ ταῦτα ἀπὸ δογμάτων λαλοῦσιν; ὑμεῖς δὲ τὰ κομψὰ ἀπὸ τῶν χειλῶν.… Οὕτως ὑμᾶς οἱ ἰδιῶται νικῶσι· Πανταχοῦ γὰρ ἰσχυρὸν τὸ δόγμα· ἀνίκητον τὸ δόγμα. (Epiktêtus, iii. 16.)