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The ideal of statesmanship recurs as a perennial theme of Western literature, and More's classical favorite, Plato, devotes several dialogues to the subject. ' In this essay, I argue that Thomas More's Dialogue of Comfort freely imitates in both form and content Plato's treatment of statesmanship, just as More freely imitates Plato's treatment of the best regime in Utopia.
In Plato's Statesman and its companion dialogue, The Sophist, the statesman possesses two distinct attributes : he possesses true knowledge and virtue himself, and he has the ability to educate others to attain these same goods (see Statesman 309, for example). The sophist, in contrast, dissembles and uses the art of rhetoric to further himself as a hero of debate and a merchant of learned wares rather than one who implants the good seed of virtue and right opinion in the souls of his students (Sophist 231).
In A Dialogue of Comfort, Anthony shows his concern for the issues associated with Platonic statesmanship and sophistry. For example, in III. 19 Anthony and Vincent engage in the most spirited exchange of the work. While discussing the nature of imprisonment, Anthony argues that imprisonment is just thesanne as not being in prison - and actually, imprisonment is better. Vincent finds this opinion not only "strange" and hard to accept, but he calls it a "sophistical fantasy" (p. 269). 2 Although Anthony thanks Vincent for his frankness, he takes offense at this charge ; he refers to it at least seven times, and he argues until Vincent retracts his accusation and agrees that Anthony's opinion is a "very substantial truth" (273).
This distinction between truth and sophistry constitutes a central and recurring theme in A Dialogue of Comfort. Throughout the work, Anthony reveals Vincent's false imaginings, and he confirms Vincent in his true opinions. Repeatedly in these three Books, Vincent makes clear that the best comfort against tribulation is a mind and heart stabled in truth. Given this emphasis on truth and virtue, Anthony resembles Plato's statesman who possesses both true knowledge and virtue and has the ability to educate others to attain them.
In the Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger explains how and why physicians of the soul 3 must use dialectic :
They cross-examine a man's words, when...