Question put by Sokrates, in the name of a friend in the background, who has just been puzzling him with it — What is the Beautiful?

I shall come willingly (replied Sokrates). But first answer me one small question, which will rescue me from a present embarrassment. Just now, I was shamefully puzzled in conversation with a friend, to whom I had been praising some things as honourable and beautiful, — blaming other things as mean and ugly. He surprised me by the interrogation — How do you know, Sokrates, what things are beautiful, and what are ugly? Come now, can you tell me, What is the Beautiful? I, in my stupidity, was altogether puzzled, and could not answer the question. But after I had parted from him, I became mortified and angry with myself; and I vowed that the next time I met any wise man, like you, I would put the question to him, and learn how to answer it; so that I might be able to renew the conversation with my friend. Your coming here is most opportune. I entreat you to answer and explain to me clearly what the Beautiful is; in order that I may not again incur the like mortification. You can easily answer: it is a small matter for you, with your numerous attainments.

Hippias thinks the question easy to answer.

Oh — yes — a small matter (replies Hippias); the question is easy to answer. I could teach you to answer many questions harder than that: so that no man shall be able to convict you in dialogue.12

Sokrates then proceeds to interrogate Hippias, in the name of the absentee, starting one difficulty after another as if suggested by this unknown prompter, and pretending to be himself under awe of so impracticable a disputant.

Justice, Wisdom, Beauty must each be something. What is Beauty, or the Beautiful?

Hippias does not understand the question. He answers by indicating one particularly beautiful object.

Hippias does not conceive the question. Does the man want to know what is a beautiful thing? Sokr. — No; he wants to know what is The Beautiful. Hip. — I do not see the difference. I answer that a beautiful maiden is a beautiful thing. No one can deny that.13

Sokr. — My disputatious friend will not accept your answer. He wants you to tell him, What is the Self-Beautiful? — that Something through which all beautiful things become beautiful. Am I to tell him, it is because a beautiful maiden is a beautiful thing? He will say — Is not a beautiful mare a beautiful thing also? and a beautiful lyre as well? Hip. — Yes; — both of them are so. Sokr. — Ay, and a beautiful pot, my friend will add, well moulded and rounded by a skilful potter, is a beautiful thing too. Hip. — How, Sokrates? Who can your disputatious friend be? Some ill-taught man, surely; since he introduces such trivial names into a dignified debate. Sokr. — Yes; that is his character: not polite, but vulgar, anxious for nothing else but the truth. Hip. — A pot, if it be beautifully made, must certainly be called beautiful; yet still, all such objects are unworthy to be counted as beautiful, if compared with a maiden, a mare, or a lyre.

Cross-questioning by Sokrates — Other things also are beautiful; but each thing is beautiful only by comparison, or under some particular circumstances — it is sometimes beautiful, sometimes not beautiful.

Sokr. — I understand. You follow the analogy suggested by Herakleitus in his dictum — That the most beautiful ape is ugly, if compared with the human race. So you say, the most beautiful pot is ugly, when compared with the race of maidens. Hip — Yes. That is my meaning. Sokr. — Then my friend will ask you in return, whether the race of maidens is not as much inferior to the race of Gods, as the pot to the maiden? whether the most beautiful maiden will not appear ugly, when compared to a Goddess? whether the wisest of men will not appear an ape, when compared to the Gods, either in beauty or in wisdom.14 Hip. — No one can dispute it. Sokr. — My friend will smile and say — You forget what was the question put. I asked you, What is the Beautiful? — the Self-Beautiful: and your answer gives me, as the Self-Beautiful, something which you yourself acknowledge to be no more beautiful than ugly? If I had asked you, from the first, what it was that was both beautiful and ugly, your answer would have been pertinent to the question. Can you still think that the Self-Beautiful, — that Something, by the presence of which all other things become beautiful, — is a maiden, or a mare, or a lyre?

Second answer of Hippias — Gold, is that by the presence of which all things become beautiful — scrutiny applied to the answer. Complaint by Hippias about vulgar analogies.

Hip. — I have another answer to which your friend can take no exception. That, by the presence of which all things become beautiful, is Gold. What was before ugly, will (we all know), when ornamented with gold, appear beautiful. Sokr. — You little know what sort of man my friend is. He will laugh at your answer, and ask you — Do you think, then, that Pheidias did not know his profession as a sculptor? How came he not to make the statue of Athênê all gold, instead of making (as he has done) the face, hands, and feet of ivory, and the pupils of the eyes of a particular stone? Is not ivory also beautiful, and particular kinds of stone? Hip. — Yes, each is beautiful, where it is becoming. Sokr. — And ugly, where it is not becoming.15 Hip. — Doubtless. I admit that what is becoming or suitable, makes that to which it is applied appear beautiful: that which is not becoming or suitable, makes it appear ugly. Sokr. — My friend will next ask you, when you are boiling the beautiful pot of which we spoke just now, full of beautiful soup, what sort of ladle will be suitable and becoming — one made of gold, or of fig-tree wood? Will not the golden ladle spoil the soup, and the wooden ladle turn it out good? Is not the wooden ladle, therefore, better than the golden? Hip. — By Hêraklês, Sokrates! what a coarse and stupid fellow your friend is! I cannot continue to converse with a man who talks of such matters. Sokr. — I am not surprised that you, with your fine attire and lofty reputation, are offended with these low allusions. But I have nothing to spoil by intercourse with this man; and I entreat you to persevere, as a favour to me. He will ask you whether a wooden soup-ladle is not more beautiful than a ladle of gold, — since it is more suitable and becoming? So that though you said — The Self-Beautiful is Gold — you are now obliged to acknowledge that gold is not more beautiful than fig-tree wood?

Third answer of Hippias — questions upon it — proof given that it fails of universal application.

Hip. — I acknowledge that it is so. But I have another answer ready which will silence your friend. I presume you wish me to indicate as The Beautiful, something which will never appear ugly to any one, at any time, or at any place.16 Sokr. — That is exactly what I desire. Hip. — Well, I affirm, then, that to every man, always, and everywhere, the following is most beautiful. A man being healthy, rich, honoured by the Greeks, having come to old age and buried his own parents well, to be himself buried by his own sons well and magnificently. Sokr. — Your answer sounds imposing; but my friend will laugh it to scorn, and will remind me again, that his question pointed to the Beautiful itself17 — something which, being present as attribute in any subject, will make that subject (whether stone, wood, man, God, action, study, &c.) beautiful. Now that which you have asserted to be beautiful to every one everywhere, was not beautiful to Achilles, who accepted by preference the lot of dying before his father — nor is it so to the heroes, or to the sons of Gods, who do not survive or bury their fathers. To some, therefore, what you specify is beautiful — to others it is not beautiful but ugly: that is, it is both beautiful and ugly, like the maiden, the lyre, the pot, on which we have already remarked. Hip. — I did not speak about the Gods or Heroes. Your friend is intolerable, for touching on such profanities.18 Sokr. — However, you cannot deny that what you have indicated is beautiful only for the sons of men, and not for the sons of Gods. My friend will thus make good his reproach against your answer. He will tell me, that all the answers, which we have as yet given, are too absurd. And he may perhaps at the same time himself suggest another, as he sometimes does in pity for my embarrassment.

Farther answers, suggested by Sokrates himself — 1. The Suitable or Becoming — objections thereunto — it is rejected.

1. The suitable or becoming (which had before been glanced at). It is the suitable or becoming which constitutes the Beautiful.19

To this Sokrates objects: The suitable, or becoming, is what causes objects to appear beautiful — not what causes them to be really beautiful. Now the latter is that which we are seeking. The two conditions do not always go together. Those objects, institutions, and pursuits which are really beautiful (fine, honourable) very often do not appear so, either to individuals or to cities collectively; so that there is perpetual dispute and fighting on the subject. The suitable or becoming, therefore, as it is certainly what makes objects appear beautiful, so it cannot be what makes them really beautiful.20

2. The useful or profitable — objections — it will not hold.

2. The useful or profitable. — We call objects beautiful, looking to the purpose which they are calculated or intended to serve: the human body, with a view to running, wrestling, and other exercises — a horse, an ox, a cock, looking to the service required from them — implements, vehicles on land and ships at sea, instruments for music and other arts all upon the same principle, looking to the end which they accomplish or help to accomplish. Laws and pursuits are characterised in the same way. In each of these, we give the name Beautiful to the useful, in so far as it is useful, when it is useful, and for the purpose to which it is useful. To that which is useless or hurtful, in the same manner, we give the name Ugly.21

Now that which is capable of accomplishing each end, is useful for such end: that which is incapable, is useless. It is therefore capacity, or power, which is beautiful: incapacity, or impotence, is ugly.22

Most certainly (replies Hippias): this is especially true in our cities and communities, wherein political power is the finest thing possible, political impotence, the meanest.

Yet, on closer inspection (continues Sokrates), such a theory will not hold. Power is employed by all men, though unwillingly, for bad purposes: and each man, through such employment of his power, does much more harm than good, beginning with his childhood. Now power, which is useful for the doing of evil, can never be called beautiful.23

You cannot therefore say that Power, taken absolutely, is beautiful. You must add the qualification — Power used for the production of some good, is beautiful. This, then, would be the profitable — the cause or generator of good.24 But the cause is different from its effect: the generator or father is different from the generated or son. The beautiful would, upon this view, be the cause of the good. But then the beautiful would be different from the good, and the good different from the beautiful? Who can admit this? It is obviously wrong: it is the most ridiculous theory which we have yet hit upon.25

3. The Beautiful is a variety of the Pleasurable — that which is received through the eye and the ear.

3. The Beautiful is a particular variety of the agreeable or pleasurable: that which characterises those things which cause pleasure to us through sight and hearing. Thus the men, the ornaments, the works of painting or sculpture, upon which we look with admiration,26 are called beautiful: also songs, music, poetry, fable, discourse, in like manner; nay even laws, customs, pursuits, which we consider beautiful, might be brought under the same head.27

Objections to this last — What property is there common to both sight and hearing, which confers upon the pleasures of these two senses the exclusive privilege of being beautiful?

The objector, however, must now be dealt with. He will ask us — Upon what ground do you make so marked a distinction between the pleasures of sight and hearing, and other pleasures? Do you deny that these others (those of taste, smell, eating, drinking, sex) are really pleasures? No, surely (we shall reply); we admit them to be pleasures, — but no one will tolerate us in calling them beautiful: especially the pleasures of sex, which as pleasures are the greatest of all, but which are ugly and disgraceful to behold. He will answer — I understand you: you are ashamed to call these pleasures beautiful, because they do not seem so to the multitude: but I did not ask you, what seems beautiful to the multitude — I asked you, what is beautiful.28 You mean to affirm, that all pleasures which do not belong to sight and hearing, are not beautiful: Do you mean, all which do not belong to both? or all which do not belong to one or the other? We shall reply — To either one of the two — or to both the two. Well! but, why (he will ask) do you single out these pleasures of sight and hearing, as beautiful exclusively? What is there peculiar in them, which gives them a title to such distinction? All pleasures are alike, so far forth as pleasures, differing only in the more or less. Next, the pleasures of sight cannot be considered as beautiful by reason of their coming through sight — for that reason would not apply to the pleasures of hearing: nor again can the pleasures of hearing be considered as beautiful by reason of their coming through hearing.29 We must find something possessed as well by sight as by hearing, common to both, and peculiar to them, — which confers beauty upon the pleasures of both and of each. Any attribute of one, which does not also belong to the other, will not be sufficient for our purpose.30 Beauty must depend upon some essential characteristic which both have in common.31 We must therefore look out for some such characteristic, which belongs to both as well as to each separately.

Answer — There is, belonging to each and to both in common, the property of being innocuous and profitable pleasures — upon this ground they are called beautiful.

Now there is one characteristic which may perhaps serve. The pleasures of sight and hearing, both and each, are distinguished from other pleasures by being the most innocuous and the best.32 It is for this reason that we call them beautiful. The Beautiful, then, is profitable pleasure — or pleasure producing good — for the profitable is, that which produces good.33

This will not hold — the Profitable is the cause of Good, and is therefore different from Good — to say that the beautiful is the Profitable, is to say that it is different from Good but this has been already declared inadmissible.

Nevertheless the objector will not be satisfied even with this. He will tell us — You declare the Beautiful to be Pleasure producing good. But we before agreed, that the producing agent or cause is different from what is produced or the effect. Accordingly, the Beautiful is different from the good: or, in other words, the Beautiful is not good, nor is the Good beautiful — if each of them is a different thing.34 Now these propositions we have already pronounced to be inadmissible, so that your present explanation will not stand better than the preceding.

Remarks upon the Dialogue — the explanations ascribed to Hippias are special conspicuous examples: those ascribed to Sokrates are attempts to assign some general concept.

Thus finish the three distinct explanations of Τὸ καλὸν, which Plato in this dialogue causes to be first suggested by Sokrates, successively accepted by Hippias, and successively refuted by Sokrates. In comparing them with the three explanations which he puts into the mouth of Hippias, we note this distinction: That the explanations proposed by Hippias are conspicuous particular exemplifications of the Beautiful, substituted in place of the general concept: as we remarked, in the Dialogue Euthyphron, that the explanations of the Holy given by Euthyphron in reply to Sokrates, were of the same exemplifying character. On the contrary, those suggested by Sokrates keep in the region of abstractions, and seek to discover some more general concept, of which the Beautiful is only a derivative or a modification, so as to render a definition of it practicable. To illustrate this difference by the language of Dr. Whewell respecting many of the classifications in Natural History, we may say — That according to the views here represented by Hippias, the group of objects called beautiful is given by Type, not by Definition:35 while Sokrates proceeds like one convinced that some common characteristic attribute may be found, on which to rest a Definition. To search for Definitions of general words, was (as Aristotle remarks) a novelty, and a valuable novelty, introduced by Sokrates. His contemporaries, the Sophists among them, were not accustomed to it: and here the Sophist Hippias (according to Plato’s frequent manner) is derided as talking nonsense,36 because, when asked for an explanation of The Self-Beautiful, he answers by citing special instances of beautiful objects. But we must remember, first, that Sokrates, who is introduced as trying several general explanations of the Self-Beautiful, does not find one which will stand: next, that even if one such could be found, particular instances can never be dispensed with, in the way of illustration; lastly, that there are many general terms (the Beautiful being one of them) of which no definitions can be provided, and which can only be imperfectly explained, by enumerating a variety of objects to which the term in question is applied.37 Plato thought himself entitled to objectivise every general term, or to assume a substantive Ens, called a Form or Idea, corresponding to it. This was a logical mistake quite as serious as any which we know to have been committed by Hippias or any other Sophist. The assumption that wherever there is a general term, there must also be a generic attribute corresponding to it — is one which Aristotle takes much pains to negative: he recognises terms of transitional analogy, as well as terms equivocal: while he also especially numbers the Beautiful among equivocal terms.38

Analogy between the explanations here ascribed to Sokrates, and those given by the Xenophontic Sokrates in the Memorabilia.

We read in the Xenophontic Memorabilia a dialogue between Sokrates and Aristippus, on this same subject — What is the Beautiful, which affords a sort of contrast between the Dialogues of Search and those of Exposition. In the Hippias Major, we have the problem approached on several different sides, various suggestions being proposed, and each successively disallowed, on reasons shown, as failures: while in the Xenophontic dialogue, Sokrates declares an affirmative doctrine, and stands to it — but no pains are taken to bring out the objections against it and rebut them. The doctrine is, that the Beautiful is coincident with the Good, and that both of them are resolvable into the Useful: thus all beautiful objects, unlike as they may be to the eye or touch, bear that name because they have in common the attribute of conducing to one and the same purpose — the security, advantage, or gratification, of man, in some form or other. This is one of the three explanations broached by the Platonic Sokrates, and afterwards refuted by him, in the Hippias: while his declaration (which Hippias puts aside as unseemly) — that a pot and a wooden soup-ladle conveniently made are beautiful is perfectly in harmony with that of the Xenophontic Sokrates, that a basket for carrying dung is beautiful, if it performs its work well.39 We must moreover remark, that the objections whereby the Platonic Sokrates, after proposing the doctrine and saying much in its favour, finds himself compelled at last to disallow it — these objections are not produced and refuted, but passed over without notice, in the Xenophontic dialogue, wherein Sokrates affirms it decidedly.40 The affirming Sokrates, and the objecting Sokrates, are not on the stage at once.

The concluding observations of this dialogue, interchanged between Hippias and Sokrates, are interesting as bringing out the antithesis between rhetoric and dialectic — between the concrete and exemplifying, as contrasted with the abstract and analytical. Immediately after Sokrates has brought his own third suggestion to an inextricable embarrassment, Hippias remarks —

Concluding thrust exchanged between Hippias and Sokrates.

“Well, Sokrates, what do you think now of all these reasonings of yours? They are what I declared them to be just now, — scrapings and parings of discourse, divided into minute fragments. But the really beautiful and precious acquirement is, to be able to set out well and finely a regular discourse before the Dikastery or the public assembly, to persuade your auditors, and to depart carrying with you not the least but the greatest of all prizes — safety for yourself, your property, and your friends. These are the real objects to strive for. Leave off your petty cavils, that you may not look like an extreme simpleton, handling silly trifles as you do at present.”41

“My dear Hippias,” (replies Sokrates) “you are a happy man, since you know what pursuits a man ought to follow, and have yourself followed them, as you say, with good success. But I, as it seems, am under the grasp of an unaccountable fortune: for I am always fluctuating and puzzling myself, and when I lay my puzzle before you wise men, I am requited by you with hard words. I am told just what you have now been telling me, that I busy myself about matters silly, petty, and worthless. When on the contrary, overborne by your authority, I declare as you do, that it is the finest thing possible to be able to set out well and beautifully a regular discourse before the public assembly, and bring it to successful conclusion — then there are other men at hand who heap upon me bitter reproaches: especially that one man, my nearest kinsman and inmate, who never omits to convict me. When on my return home he hears me repeat what you have told me, he asks, if I am not ashamed of my impudence in talking about beautiful (honourable) pursuits, when I am so manifestly convicted upon this subject, of not even knowing what the Beautiful (Honourable) is. How can you (he says), being ignorant what the Beautiful is, know who has set out a discourse beautifully and who has not — who has performed a beautiful exploit and who has not? Since you are in a condition so disgraceful, can you think life better for you than death? Such then is my fate — to hear disparagement and reproaches from you on the one side, and from him on the other. Necessity however perhaps requires that I should endure all these discomforts: for it will be nothing strange if I profit by them. Indeed I think that I have already profited both by your society, Hippias, and by his: for I now think that I know what the proverb means — Beautiful (Honourable) things are difficult.”42