Note 47 — Chapter XXIV · GORGIAS.

This portion of the Gorgias may receive illustration from the third chapter (pp. 99-101) of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, entitled, “Of the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by the disposition to admire the rich and great, and to neglect or despise persons of poor and mean condition”. He says — “The disposition to admire and almost to worship the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or at least to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.… They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly — a select, though I am afraid, a small party — who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of mankind are the admirers and worshippers — and what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers — of wealth and greatness.…. It is scarce agreeable to good morals, or even to good language, perhaps, to say that mere wealth and greatness, abstracted from merit and virtue, deserve our respect. We must acknowledge, however, that they almost constantly obtain it: and that they may therefore in a certain sense be considered as the natural objects of it.”

Now Archelaus is a most conspicuous example of this disposition of the mass of mankind to worship and admire, disinterestedly, power and greatness: and the language used by Adam Smith in the last sentence illustrates the conversation of Sokrates, Polus, and Kalliklês. Adam Smith admits that energetic proceedings, ending in great power, such as those of Archelaus, obtain honour and worship from the vast majority of disinterested spectators: and that, therefore they are in a certain sense the natural objects of such a sentiment (κατὰ φύσιν). But if the question be put to him, Whether such proceedings, with such a position, are worthy of honour, he is constrained by good morals (κατὰ νόμον) to reply in the negative. It is true that Adam Smith numbers himself with the small minority, while Polus shares the opinion of the large majority. But what is required by King Nomos must be professed even by dissentients, unless they possess the unbending resolution of Sokrates.