SOCRATES

You want your Good, your source of true light to be separate and pure and perfect –

PLATO

It’s like what Acastos said when in spite of all wickedness, and in all misery, we are certain that there really is goodness and that it matters absolutely.

SOCRATES

But you wouldn’t call it God.

PLATO

No, it’s not a person, we don’t have dialogues with it, it won’t reward us, we must be good for nothing, it’s an idea, it’s the closest thing [ gesture ]–

SOCRATES

And the farthest thing.

ACASTOS

What about prayer? In your picture can we pray?

PLATO

Yes, but not to a person. Learning can be praying, breathing can be praying. Prayer is keeping quiet and hoping for the light.

ANTAGORAS

Why should ultimate reality be something nice and good? It might be something thoroughly nasty. Either your Good is a thing existing outside us like God, or it’s a picture inside us which some people choose to play about with.

PLATO

Now you’re using metaphors –

ANTAGORAS

What metaphors?

PLATO

Inside and outside! Of course Good doesn’t exist like chairs and tables, it’s not [ gestures ] either outside or inside. It’s in our whole way of living, it’s fundamental like truth. If we have the idea of value we necessarily have the idea of perfection as something real.

SOCRATES

So you think everybody knows this?

PLATO

Instinctively, yes. People know that good is real and absolute, not optional and relative, all their life proves it. And when they choose false goods they really know they’re false. We can think everything else away out of life, but not value, that’s in the very – ground of things.

ACASTOS to himself, thinking

We can’t think material objects away out of life – or can we? Or causal connections? Or is that different?

SOCRATES

Is this where you distinguish morality from religion?

PLATO

Yes, except that I don’t. Religion is the love and worship of the good, and that’s the real basis of morality. Duty, that’s what we feel when we want the good but love other things more –

SOCRATES

So some people are religious without knowing it? They mightn’t like that.

PLATO

I suppose so. I don’t like the word religion actually.

TIMONAX

So after all you’re giving up?

PLATO

Nowadays people think of religion as something exotic and formal, and a bit aside from life, whereas what I mean is everywhere, like breathing.

SOCRATES thoughtfully