"protagoras" - читать интересную книгу автора (Plato)

the body, and upon the good or evil of which depends the well-being of
your all,-about this never consulted either with your father or with
your brother or with any one of us who are your companions. But no
sooner does this foreigner appear, than you instantly commit your soul
to his keeping. In the evening, as you say, you hear of him, and in
the morning you go to him, never deliberating or taking the opinion of
any one as to whether you ought to intrust yourself to him or not;-you
have quite made up your mind that you will at all hazards be a pupil
of Protagoras, and are prepared to expend all the property of yourself
and of your friends in carrying out at any price this determination,
although, as you admit, you do not know him, and have never spoken
with him: and you call him a Sophist, but are manifestly ignorant of
what a Sophist is; and yet you are going to commit yourself to his
keeping.

When he heard me say this, he replied: No other inference, Socrates,
can be drawn from your words.

I proceeded: Is not a Sophist, Hippocrates, one who deals
wholesale or retail in the food of the soul? To me that appears to
be his nature.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul?

Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must
take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he
praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell
the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their
goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful:
neither do their customers know, with the exception of any trainer
or physician who may happen to buy of them. In like manner those who
carry about the wares of knowledge, and make the round of the
cities, and sell or retail them to any customer who is in want of
them, praise them all alike; though I should not wonder, O my
friend, if many of them were really ignorant of their effect upon
the soul; and their customers equally ignorant, unless he who buys
of them happens to be a physician of the soul. If, therefore, you have
understanding of what is good and evil, you may safely buy knowledge
of Protagoras or of any one; but if not, then, O my friend, pause, and
do not hazard your dearest interests at a game of chance. For there is
far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink:
the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them
away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as
food, you may deposit them at home and call in any experienced
friend who knows what is good to be eaten or drunken, and what not,
and how much, and when; and then the danger of purchasing them is
not so great. But you cannot buy the wares of knowledge and carry them
away in another vessel; when you have paid for them you must receive
them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly
benefited; and therefore we should deliberate and take counsel with