Socrates Because I am sure that if you agree with me in any of the opinions which my soul forms, I have at last found the truth indeed. For I consider that if a man is to make a complete trial of the good or evil of the soul, 487he ought to have three qualities-knowledge, good-will, outspokenness, which are all possessed by you. Many whom I meet are unable to make trial of me, because they are not wise as you are; others are wise, but they will not tell me the truth, because they have not the same interest in me which you have; and these two strangers, Gorgias and Polus, are undoubtedly wise men and my very good friends, but they are not outspoken enough, and they are too modest. Why, their modesty is so great that they are driven to contradict themselves, first one and then the other of them, in the face of a large company, on matters of the highest moment. But you have all the qualities in which these others are deficient, having received an excellent education; to this many Athenians can testify. And are my friend. Shall I tell you why I think so? I know that you, Callicles, and Tisander of Aphidnae, and Andron the son of Androtion, and Nausicydes of the deme of Cholarges, studied together: there were four of you, and I once heard you advising with one another as to the extent to which the pursuit of philosophy should be carried, and, as I know, you came to the conclusion that the study should not be pushed too much into detail. You were cautioning one another not to be overwise; you were afraid that too much wisdom might unconsciously to yourselves be the ruin of you. And now when I hear you giving the same advice to me which you then gave to your most intimate friends, I have a sufficient evidence of your real goodwill to me. And of the frankness of your nature and freedom from modesty I am assured by yourself, and the assurance is confirmed by your last speech. Well then, the inference in the present case clearly is, that if you agree with me in an argument about any point, that point will have been sufficiently tested by us, and will not require to be submitted to any further test. For you could not have agreed with me, either from lack of knowledge or from superfluity of modesty, nor yet from a desire to deceive me, for you are my friend, as you tell me yourself. And therefore when you and I are agreed, the result will be the attainment of perfect truth. Now there is no nobler enquiry, Callicles, than that which you censure me for making,-What ought the character of a man to be, and what his pursuits, and how far is he to go, both in maturer years and in youth? 488For be assured that if I err in my own conduct I do not err intentionally, but from ignorance. Do not then desist from advising me, now that you have begun, until I have learned clearly what this is which I am to practise, and how I may acquire it. And if you find me assenting to your words, and hereafter not doing that to which I assented, call me "dolt," and deem me unworthy of receiving further instruction. Once more, then, tell me what you and Pindar mean by natural justice: Do you not mean that the superior should take the property of the inferior by force; that the better should rule the worse, the noble have more than the mean? Am I not right in my recollection?
Callicles Yes; that is what I was saying, and so I still aver.
Socrates And do you mean by the better the same as the superior? for I could not make out what you were saying at the time-whether you meant by the superior the stronger, and that the weaker must obey the stronger, as you seemed to imply when you said that great cities attack small ones in accordance with-natural right, because they are superior and stronger, as though the superior and stronger and better were the same; or whether the better may be also the inferior and weaker, and the superior the worse, or whether better is to be defined in the same way as superior: this is the point which I want to have cleared up. Are the superior and better and stronger the same or different?
Callicles I say unequivocally that they are the same.
Socrates Then the many are by nature to the one, against whom, as you were saying, they make the laws?
Callicles Certainly.
Socrates Then the laws of the many are the laws of the superior?
Callicles Very true.
Socrates Then they are the laws of the better; for the superior class are far better, as you were saying?
Callicles Yes.
Socrates And since they are superior, the laws which are made by them are by nature good?
Callicles Yes.
Socrates And are not the many of opinion, as you were lately saying, that justice is equality, 489and that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice?-is that so or not? Answer, Callicles, and let no modesty be: found to come in the way; do the many think, or do they not think thus?-I must beg of you to answer, in order that if you agree with me I may fortify myself by the assent of so competent an authority.
Callicles Yes; the opinion of the many is what you say.
Socrates Then not only custom but nature also affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality; so that you seem to have been wrong in your former assertion, when accusing me you said that nature and custom are opposed, and that I, knowing this, was dishonestly playing between them, appealing to custom when the argument is about nature, and to nature when the argument is about custom?
Callicles This man will never cease talking nonsense. At your age, Socrates, are you not ashamed to be catching at words and chuckling over some verbal slip? do you not see-have I not told you already, that by superior I mean better: do you imagine me to say, that if a rabble of slaves and nondescripts, who are of no use except perhaps for their physical strength, get together their ipsissima verba are laws?
Socrates Ho! my philosopher, is that your line?
Callicles Certainly.
Socrates I was thinking, Callicles, that something of the kind must have been in your mind, and that is why I repeated the question-What is the superior? I wanted to know clearly what you meant; for you surely do not think that two men are better than one, or that your slaves are better than you because they are stronger? Then please to begin again, and tell me who the better are, if they are not the stronger; and I will ask you, great Sir, to be a little milder in your instructions, or I shall have to run away from you.
Callicles You are ironical.
Socrates No, by the hero Zethus, Callicles, by whose aid you were just now saying many ironical things against me, I am not:-tell me, then, whom you mean, by the better?
Callicles I mean the more excellent.
Socrates Do you not see that you are yourself using words which have no meaning and that you are explaining nothing?-will you tell me whether you mean by the better and superior the wiser, or if not, whom?
490Callicles Most assuredly, I do mean the wiser.
Socrates Then according to you, one wise man may often be superior to ten thousand fools, and he ought to rule them, and they ought to be his subjects, and he ought to have more than they should. This is what I believe that you mean (and you must not suppose that I am word-catching), if you allow that the one is superior to the ten thousand?
Callicles Yes; that is what I mean, and that is what I conceive to be natural justice-that the better and wiser should rule have more than the inferior.
Socrates Stop there, and let me ask you what you would say in this case: Let us suppose that we are all together as we are now; there are several of us, and we have a large common store of meats and drinks, and there are all sorts of persons in our company having various degrees of strength and weakness, and one of us, being physician, is wiser in the matter of food than all the rest, and he is probably stronger than some and not so strong as others of us-will he not, being wiser, be also better than we are, and our superior in this matter of food?
Callicles Certainly.
Socrates Either, then, he will have a larger share of the meats and drinks, because he is better, or he will have the distribution of all of them by reason of his authority, but he will not expend or make use of a larger share of them on his own person, or if he does, he will be punished-his share will exceed that of some, and be less than that of others, and if he be the weakest of all, he being the best of all will have the smallest share of all, Callicles:-am I not right, my friend?
Callicles You talk about meats and drinks and physicians and other nonsense; I am not speaking of them.
Socrates Well, but do you admit that the wiser is the better? Answer "Yes" or "No."
Callicles Yes.
Socrates And ought not the better to have a larger share?
Callicles Not of meats and drinks.
Socrates I understand: then, perhaps, of coats -the skilfullest weaver ought to have the largest coat, and the greatest number of them, and go about clothed in the best and finest of them?
Callicles Fudge about coats!
Socrates Then the skilfullest and best in making shoes ought to have the advantage in shoes; the shoemaker, clearly, should walk about in the largest shoes, and have the greatest number of them?
Callicles Fudge about shoes! What nonsense are you talking?
Socrates Or, if this is not your meaning, perhaps you would say that the wise and good and true husbandman should actually have a larger share of seeds, and have as much seed as possible for his own land?
Callicles How you go on, always talking in the same way, Socrates!
491Socrates Yes, Callicles, and also about the same things.
Callicles Yes, by the Gods, you are literally always talking of cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if this had to do with our argument.
Socrates But why will you not tell me in what a man must be superior and wiser in order to claim a larger share; will you neither accept a suggestion, nor offer one?
Callicles I have already told you. In the first place, I mean by superiors not cobblers or cooks, but wise politicians who understand the administration of a state, and who are not only wise, but also valiant and able to carry. out their designs, and not the men to faint from want of soul.
Socrates See now, most excellent Callicles, how different my charge against you is from that which you bring against me, for you reproach me with always saying the same; but I reproach you with never saying the same about the same things, for at one time you were defining the better and the superior to be the stronger, then again as the wiser, and now you bring forward a new notion; the superior and the better are now declared by you to be the more courageous: I wish, my good friend, that you would tell me once for all, whom you affirm to be the better and superior, and in what they are better?
Callicles I have already told you that I mean those who are wise and courageous in the administration of a state-they ought to be the rulers of their states, and justice consists in their having more than their subjects.
Socrates But whether rulers or subjects will they or will they not have more than themselves, my friend?
Callicles What do you mean?
Socrates I mean that every man is his own ruler; but perhaps you think that there is no necessity for him to rule himself; he is only required to rule others?
Callicles What do you mean by his "ruling over himself"?
Socrates A simple thing enough; just what is commonly said, that a man should be temperate and master of himself, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions.
Callicles What innocence! you mean those fools-the temperate?
Socrates Certainly:-any one may know that to be my meaning.
Callicles Quite so, Socrates; and they are really fools, for how can a man be happy who is the servant of anything? On the contrary, I plainly assert, that he who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, and not to chastise them; but when they have grown to their greatest he should have courage and intelligence 492to minister to them and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm to be natural justice and nobility. To this however the many cannot attain; and they blame the strong man because they are ashamed of their own weakness, which they desire to conceal, and hence they say that intemperance is base. As I have remarked already, they enslave the nobler natures, and being unable to satisfy their pleasures, they praise temperance and justice out of their own cowardice. For if a man had been originally the son of a king, or had a nature capable of acquiring an empire or a tyranny or sovereignty, what could be more truly base or evil than temperance--to a man like him, I say, who might freely be enjoying every good, and has no one to stand in his way, and yet has admitted custom and reason and the opinion of other men to be lords over him?-must not he be in a miserable plight whom the reputation of justice and temperance hinders from giving more to his friends than to his enemies, even though he be a ruler in his city? Nay, Socrates, for you profess to be a votary of the truth, and the truth is this:-that luxury and intemperance and licence, if they be provided with means, are virtue and happiness-all the rest is a mere bauble, agreements contrary to nature, foolish talk of men, nothing worth.
Socrates There is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your way of approaching the argument; for what you say is what the rest of the world think, but do not like to say. And I must beg of you to persevere, that the true rule of human life may become manifest. Tell me, then:-you say, do you not, that in the rightly-developed man the passions ought not to be controlled, but that we should let them grow to the utmost and somehow or other satisfy them, and that this is virtue?
Callicles Yes; I do.
Socrates Then those who want nothing are not truly said to be happy?
Callicles No indeed, for then stones and dead men would be the happiest of all.
Socrates But surely life according to your view is an awful thing; and indeed I think that Euripides may have been right in saying,
Who knows if life be not death and death life;
and that we are very likely dead; 493I have heard a philosopher say that at this moment we are actually dead, and that the body (soma) is our tomb (sema), and that the part of the soul which is the seat of the desires is liable to be tossed about by words and blown up and down; and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an Italian, playing with the word, invented a tale in which he called the soul-because of its believing and make-believe nature-a vessel, and the ignorant he called the uninitiated or leaky, and the place in the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated, being the intemperate and incontinent part, he compared to a vessel full of holes, because it can never be satisfied. He is not of your way of thinking, Callicles, for he declares, that of all the souls in Hades, meaning the invisible world these uninitiated or leaky persons are the most miserable, and that they pour water into a vessel which is full of holes out of a colander which is similarly perforated. The colander, as my informer assures me, is the soul, and the soul which he compares to a colander is the soul of the ignorant, which is likewise full of holes, and therefore incontinent, owing to a bad memory and want of faith. These notions are strange enough, but they show the principle which, if I can, I would fain prove to you; that you should change your mind, and, instead of the intemperate and insatiate life, choose that which is orderly and sufficient and has a due provision for daily needs. Do I make any impression on you, and are you coming over to the opinion that the orderly are happier than the intemperate? Or do I fail to persuade you, and, however many tales I rehearse to you, do you continue of the same opinion still?
Callicles The latter, Socrates, is more like the truth.
