Greater Hippias

However, my friend, let us not yet give it up, for I still have hopes that what the beautiful is will be made clear.

Certainly, to be sure, Socrates, for it is not hard to find. Now I know that if I should go away into solitude and meditate alone by myself, I could tell it to you with the most perfect accuracy.

Ah, don’t boast, Hippias. You see how much trouble it has caused us already; I’m afraid it may get angry and run away more than ever. And yet that is nonsense; for you, I think, will easily find it when you go away by yourself. But for Heaven’s sake, find it in my presence, or, if you please, join me, as you are now doing, in looking for it. And if we find it, that will be splendid, but if we do not, I shall, I suppose, accept my lot, and you will go away and find it easily. And if we find it now, I shall certainly not be a nuisance to you by asking what that was which you found by yourself; but now once more see if this is in your opinion the beautiful: I say, then, that it is—but consider, paying close attention to me, that I may not talk nonsense—for I say, then, whatever is useful shall be for us beautiful. But I said it with this reason for my thought; beautiful eyes, we say, are not such as seem to be so, which are unable to see, but those which are able and useful for seeing. Is that right?

Yes.

Then, too, in the same way we say that the whole body is beautiful, part of it for running, part for wrestling; and again all the animals, a beautiful horse or cock or quail and all utensils and land vehicles, and on the sea freight-ships and ships of war; and all instruments in music and in the other arts, and, if you like, customs and laws also—pretty well all these we call beautiful in the same way looking at each of them—how it is formed by nature, how it is wrought, how it has been enacted—the useful we call beautiful, and beautiful in the way in which it is useful, and for the purpose for which it is useful, and at the time when it is useful; and that which is in all these aspects useless we say is ugly. Now is not this your opinion also, Hippias?

It is.Soc, Then are we right in saying that the useful rather than everything else is beautiful?

We are right, surely, Socrates.

Now that which has power to accomplish anything is useful for that for which it has power, but that which is powerless is useless, is it not?

Certainly.

Power, then, is beautiful, and want of power is disgraceful or ugly.