ALCIBIADES II
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been struck and beaten and endured every other form of ill-usage which
madmen are wont to inflict? Consider, my dear friend: may it not be quite
otherwise?

ALCIBIADES: Why, Socrates, how is that possible? I must have been
mistaken.

SOCRATES: So it seems to me. But perhaps we may consider the matter
thus:--

ALCIBIADES: How?

SOCRATES: I will tell you. We think that some are sick; do we not?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And must every sick person either have the gout, or be in a
fever, or suffer from ophthalmia? Or do you believe that a man may labour
under some other disease, even although he has none of these complaints?
Surely, they are not the only maladies which exist?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: And is every kind of ophthalmia a disease?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And every disease ophthalmia?

ALCIBIADES: Surely not. But I scarcely understand what I mean myself.

SOCRATES: Perhaps, if you give me your best attention, 'two of us' looking
together, we may find what we seek.

ALCIBIADES: I am attending, Socrates, to the best of my power.

SOCRATES: We are agreed, then, that every form of ophthalmia is a disease,
but not every disease ophthalmia?

ALCIBIADES: We are.

SOCRATES: And so far we seem to be right. For every one who suffers from
a fever is sick; but the sick, I conceive, do not all have fever or gout or
ophthalmia, although each of these is a disease, which, according to those
whom we call physicians, may require a different treatment. They are not
all alike, nor do they produce the same result, but each has its own
effect, and yet they are all diseases. May we not take an illustration
from the artizans?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: There are cobblers and carpenters and sculptors and others of
all sorts and kinds, whom we need not stop to enumerate. All have their
distinct employments and all are workmen, although they are not all of them
cobblers or carpenters or sculptors.

ALCIBIADES: No, indeed.

SOCRATES: And in like manner men differ in regard to want of sense. Those
who are most out of their wits we call 'madmen,' while we term those who