He will never think, he’s a dreamy poet, that’s what’s so charming. What a fierce little kitten it is, pretty pussy!

SOCRATES

Don’t torment him. [ To Plato ] I know you want to understand, perhaps you want to understand too much, you want to know too much. In philosophy we have to respect what we can’t understand, just look at it and describe it.

ACASTOS

How do you mean?

SOCRATES

Stay close to what’s obviously true, what people call common sense, what clever people may miss entirely. We’ve been told that religion is superstition, that it’s socially useful, that it’s the love of goodness, and now that it’s the harmony of good and evil. But instead let’s say something simple. The most important thing in life is virtue, and virtue isn’t a mystery, it’s truthfulness and justice and kindness and courage, things we understand. Anybody can try to be good, it’s not obscure!

ACASTOS

But isn’t religion the most important thing, if there is such a thing, mustn’t it be?

SOCRATES

Beware in philosophy of things which ‘must be so’, at least look at them with a cool eye. Religion and virtue are not always allies, religion is many things and must be subject to justice and truth. We can’t always learn virtue from loving good, we often have to live by external rules. But we are lovers and symbol–makers and that is our talent for religion, which displays the absolute charm of virtue and how we can love it. Religious symbols are a natural, holy use of art. But of course, religion mustn’t become magic. There’s no secret knowledge, no complete explanation, we must be humble and simple and see what we know and respect what we don’t know. Man is not the measure of all things, we don’t just invent our values, we live by a higher law, yet we can’t fully explain how this is so. [ To Plato ] Everything is in a way less deep and in a way deeper than you think. You want a long explanation, but in the end your explanation repeats what you knew at the start. You said yourself it was like remembering.

PLATO

But the unknown – isn’t that the end of the way?

SOCRATES