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Well now, I went on, if you yourself, or one of your friends for whom you feel great concern, should have fallen sick, would you fetch that second-best man into the house with a view to obtaining health, or would you summon a doctor? For my part, I should have both, he replied.
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Please do not say both, I said, but which of the two you would prefer and also summon first.
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No one, he replied,would make any question but that the doctor should be preferred and also summoned first.
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And again, if you were in a ship that was making rough weather, to which would you rather entrust yourself and yours, the pilot or the philosopher?
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I should choose the pilot.
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And so it will be in everything else: so long as there is some craftsman, the philosopher will not be useful?
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Apparently, he replied. So now we find that the philosopher is a useless person? For I suppose we always have craftsmen; and we have agreed that good men are useful, and bad ones useless.
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He was obliged to agree to this.
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Then what follows? Am I to ask you, or will it be too ill-mannered?
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Ask whatever you please.
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Well, my aim, I said, is merely to recall our agreements upon what has been stated. The matter stands somewhat like this. We agreed that philosophy is an honorable thing, and that philosophers are good; and that good men are useful, and wicked men useless: but then again we agreed that philosophers, so long as we have craftsmen, are useless, and that we always do have craftsmen. Has not all this been agreed?
