other, and to recognize a similar faculty of discernment in But can any one attain the knowledge of either unless he others, there would certainly have been a great advantage have a knowledge of medicine?
in being wise; for then we should never have made a mis-He cannot.
take, but have passed through life the unerring guides of No one at all, it would seem, except the physician can ourselves and of those who are under us; and we should have this knowledge; and therefore not the wise man; he not have attempted to do what we did not know, but we would have to be a physician as well as a wise man.
should have found out those who knew, and have handed Very true.
the business over to them and trusted in them; nor should Then, assuredly, wisdom or temperance, if only a science we have allowed those who were under us to do anything of science, and of the absence of science or knowledge, will which they were not likely to do well; and they would be not be able to distinguish the physician who knows from likely to do well just that of which they had knowledge; one who does not know but pretends or thinks that he and the house or state which was ordered or administered knows, or any other professor of anything at all; like any under the guidance of wisdom, and everything else of which other artist, he will only know his fellow in art or wisdom, wisdom was the lord, would have been well ordered; for and no one else.
truth guiding, and error having been eliminated, in all their That is evident, he said.
doings, men would have done well, and would have been But then what profit, Critias, I said, is there any longer happy. Was not this, Critias, what we spoke of as the great in wisdom or temperance which yet remains, if this is wis-advantage of wisdom—to know what is known and what dom? If, indeed, as we were supposing at first, the wise is unknown to us?
man had been able to distinguish what he knew and did Very true, he said.
not know, and that he knew the one and did not know the And now you perceive, I said, that no such science is to 25
“Charmides” – Plato