Oration 26

As I sat for a long while listening to you, when you were spending many hours with one of the statesmen deliberating about certain matters, I asked myself and inquired what this thing is which you call deliberating, or what deliberation itself is. Does a man deliberate about that matter which he knows and understands?—It does not seem to me that a man deliberates about what he knows, but rather that he already knows it.—What then? Does he, about the things he does not know nor understand, as though by divination, inquire to learn what he does not know?—Nor does this man, it seems to me, have any power to deliberate about those things of which he has no knowledge.—

Consider, then, whether deliberation be not something of this kind: that a man knows some things but is ignorant of others, and that this is what men deliberate about. And, that we may the better follow the argument, let us set it forth by means of an image. Let us suppose that we know Charicles and Charixenus, but are ignorant where they dwell, and that we are making a conjecture about their house;

so that perhaps this is what deliberating is—to infer, from what we know, also about the things we do not yet know; just as those who play at odd-and-even know that the men who challenge them hold something in their hands, but not how much, yet sometimes chance to name it aright, and so, having won, come off victorious. May it not be, then, that deliberating is something of this kind—that we know one thing, but, as to the rest, all that we are ignorant of, we sometimes by guessing hit upon it of our own accord and with no knowledge at all.

Come now, let us see what the matter is like. The things that exist both are and have come to be and have substance; the things that do not exist neither are nor have come to be nor have substance. Now there is no need to deliberate about the things that already are—for there both is and can be no benefit in deliberating about the things that have come to be and have substance; for what should we deliberate about them? That what has come to be should not come to be? It cannot un-happen. Or that the things that are should not be? How can we make them not to be, in the way they have come to be? Or that they should not have substance? Everything that is has subsistence. But about the things that are, what could anyone deliberate?

About what, then, do we deliberate? About the things that are not, as the argument indicates; and the things that are not neither are nor have come to be nor have substance. About the things that are not, then, who can deliberate, and about the things that have no substance? For that which is not is nothing. And about that which is not no one can deliberate. No one, then, can deliberate about the things that are not. For deliberation is about something. But that which is not is not anything. Neither, then, could deliberation about the things that are not exist.

What then? Could the man who is unmusical and ignorant of harmony and melody and rhythm, and of their order and movement, deliberate well about music and the works of music?—By no means.—And again, would the man inexperienced in geometry, deliberating about a body and length and breadth and depth, deliberate well?—Nor would he.—And again, would the man who does not know how to command a ship, deliberating about the command of a ship and the works of steersmanship, deliberate adequately?—

Nor would he.—Whoever, then, has neither been adequately trained in anything nor knows anything about anything, this man is not capable of deliberating about these matters either? We ought, then, to take the greatest care for prudence and education, that it may be easy for us to deliberate about all matters and to know what is advantageous for each deliberation, and not to go astray; but, just as the musicians and the geometers and the steersmen consider the matters of their own crafts not without art, and as all who are skilled in anything are capable of understanding about them, so we too may be capable of deliberating and speaking about our own affairs.

For it is absurd that those who play at odd-and-even should display understanding, and that too when they are guessing and do not see the thing about which they pronounce, while those who deliberate about affairs display neither understanding nor knowledge nor experience—and these too sometimes the greatest of affairs, about concord and the friendship of households and cities, and about peace and war, and about the founding of settlements and their settling, and about children and about wives.