Gorgias (Rhetoric) By Plato Dramatized Audiobook 🎵

gorgius in gorgius Socrates put sophistry and rhetoric under his questioning Spotlight both were standard subjects for the education of the Youth of the time gorgius himself being a leading proponent and teacher but Socrates was highly critical as this dialogue shows the art of philosophy he argues must underlay and be the guiding ethical light for demonstrations of the skill of rhetoric the so-called art of persuasion Socrates debates with gorgius himself then polus a pupil of gorius and finally with his host calicles another gorgus pupil young and argumentative persons of the dialogue Socrates kopon gorgas polus and

calices seen the house of calicles who opens the dialogue the wise man as the proverb says is late for a fry but not for a feast Socrates and are we late for a feast yes and a delightful Feast for gorgas has just been exhibiting to us many Fine Things it is not my fault calicles our friend Kiron is to blame for he would keep us loitering in the agura never mind Socrates The Misfortune of which I have been the cause I will also repair for gorgus is a friend of mine I will make him give

the exhibition again either now or if you prefer at some other time what is the matter kopon does Socrates want to hear gorgas yes that was our intention in coming come into my house then for goas is staying with me and he shall exhibit to you very good Calle but will he answer our questions for I want to hear from him what is the nature of his art and what it is which he professes and teaches he may as you Kiron suggest defer the exhibition to some other time there is nothing like asking him Socrates

and indeed to answer questions is a part of his exhibition for he was saying only just now that anyone in my house might put any question to him and that he would answer how fortunate will you ask him Kiron what shall I ask him ask him who he is what do you mean I mean such a question as would elicit from him if he had been a maker of shoes the answer that he is a cobbler you understand I understand and will ask him tell me gorgus is our friend calic is right in saying that

you undertake to answer any questions which you are asked quite right kopon I was saying as much only just now and I may add that many years have elapsed since anyone has asked me a new one then you must be very ready gorgus of that Kiron you can make trial yes indeed and if you like Kiron you may also make trial of me polus for I think that gorgius who has been talking a long time is tired and do you polus think that you can answer better than gorgus what does that matter if I answer

well enough for you not at all and you shall answer if you like ask my question is this if gorgius had the skill of his brother herodicus what ought we to call him ought he not to have the name which is given to his brother certainly then we should be right in calling him a physician yes and if he had the skill of Ariston the son of agaon or of his brother polygnotus what ought we to call him clearly a painter but now what shall we call him what is the art in which he is

skilled oh Kiron there are many Arts among mankind which are experimental and have their origin in experience for experience makes the days of men to proceed according to Art and inexperience according to chance and different persons in different ways are proficient in different arts and the best persons in the best arts and our friend gorgius is one of the best and the art in which he is a proficient is the noblest polus has been taught how to make a capital speech gorgius but he is not fulfilling the promise which he made to Kiron what do

you mean Socrates I mean that he has not exactly answered the question which he was asked then why not ask him yourself but I would much rather ask you if you are disposed to answer for I see from the few words which polus has uttered that he has attended more to the art which is called rhetoric than to dialectic what makes you say so Socrates because polus when Kiron asked you what was the art which gorgius knows you praised it as if you were answering someone who found fault with it but you never said what

the art was why did I not say that it was the noblest of Arts yes indeed but that was no answer to the question nobody asked what was the quality but what was the nature of the art and by what name we were to describe gorgus and I would still beg you briefly and clearly as you answered Kiron when he asked you at first to say what this art is and what we ought to call gorgus or rather gorgius let me turn to you and ask the same question what are we to call you and

what is the art which you profess rhetoric Socrates is my art the then I am to call you a rhetorician yes Socrates and a good one too if you would call me that which in homeric language I boast myself to be I should wish to do so then pray do and are we to say that you are able to make other men rhetoricians yes that is exactly what I profess to make them not only at Athens but in all places and will you continue to ask and answer questions gorgus as we are at present doing

and reserve for another occasion the longer mode of speech which polus was attempting will you keep your promise and answer shortly the questions which are asked of you some answerers Socrates are of necessity longer but I will do my best to make them as short as possible for a part of my profession is that I can be as short as anyone that is what is wanted gorgus exhibit the shorter method now and the longer one at some other time well I will and you will certainly say that you never heard a man use fewer words

very good then as you profess to be a rhetorician and a maker of rhetoricians let me ask you with what is rhetoric concerned I might ask with what is weaving concerned and you would reply would you not with the making of garments yes and music is concerned with the composition of Melodies it is I hear a gorus I admire the surpassing brevity of your answers yes Socrates I do think myself good at that I am glad to hear it answer me in like manner about rhetoric with what is rhetoric concerned with discourse what sort of

discourse gorgus such discourse as would teach the sick under what treatment they might get well no then rhetoric does not treat of all kinds of discourse certainly not and yet rhetoric makes men able to speak yes and to understand that about which they speak of course but does not the art of medicine which we would just now mentioning also make men able to understand and speak about the sick certainly then medicine also treats of discourse yes of discourse concerning diseases just so and does not gymnastic also treat of discourse concerning the good or evil condition

of the body very true and the same gorgus is true of the other Arts all of them treat of discourse concerning the subjects with which they severally have to do clearly then why if you call rhetoric the art which treats of discourse and all the other Arts treat of discourse do you not call them Arts of rhetoric because Socrates the knowledge of the other Arts has only to do with some sort of external action as of the hand but there is no such action of the hand in rhetoric which works and takes effect only through

the medium of discourse and therefore I'm justified in saying that rhetoric treats of discourse I am not sure whether I entirely understand you but I dare say I shall soon know better pleased to answer me a question you would allow that there are Arts yeah as to the Arts generally they are for the most part concerned with doing and require little or no speaking in painting and statuary and many other Arts the work May proceed in silence and of such Arts I suppose you would say that they do not come within the province of rhetoric

you perfectly conceive my mean meaning Socrates but there are other Arts which work wholly through the medium of language and require either no action or very little as for example the Arts of arithmetic of calculation of geometry and of playing drafts in some of these speech is pretty nearly coextensive with action but in most of them the verbal element is greater they depend wholly on words for their efficacy and power and I take your meaning to be that rhetoric is an art of this latter sort exactly and yet I do not believe that you really

mean to call any of these Arts rhetoric although the precise expression which you used was that rhetoric is an art which works and takes effect only through the medium of discourse and an adversary who wished to be captious might say and so gorgous you call arithmetic rhetoric but I do not think that you really call arithmetic rhetoric any more than geometry would be so called by you you're are quite right Socrates in your apprehension of my meaning well then let me now have the rest of my answer seeing that rhetoric is one of those Arts

which works mainly by the use of words and there are other Arts which also use words tell me what is that quality in Words with which rhetoric is concerned suppose that a person asks me about some of the Arts which I was mentioning just now he might say Socrates what is arithmetic and I should reply to him as you replied to me that arithmetic is one of those Arts which take effect through words and then he would proceed to ask words about what but I should reply words about odd and even numbers and how many

there are of each and if he asked again what is the art of calculation I should say that also is one of the Arts which is concerned holy with words and if he further said concerned with what I should say like the Clarks in the assembly as afor said of arithmetic but with a difference the difference being that the art of calculation considers not only the quantities of odd and even numbers but also their numerical relations to themselves and to one another and suppose again I were to say that astronomy is only words he would

ask words about what Socrates and I should answer that astronomy tells us about the Motions of the stars and Sun and Moon and their relative swiftness you would be quite right Socrates and now let us have from you gorgius the truth about rhetoric which you admit would you not to be one of those Arts which act always and fulfill all their ends through the medium of words true words which do what I should ask to what class of things do the words which rhetoric uses relate to the greatest Socrates and the best of human things

that that again gorgus is ambiguous I'm still in the dark for which are the greatest and best of human things I dare say that you have heard men singing at feasts the old Drinking Song in which the singers enumerate the goods of Life First Health Beauty next thirdly as the writer of the song says wealth honestly obtained yes I know the song but what is your drift I mean to say that the producers of those things which the author of the song Praises that is to say the physician the trainer the money maker will at

once come to you and first The Physician will say oh Socrates gorgus is deceiving you for my art is concerned with the greatest good of men and not his and when I ask who are you he will reply I am a physician what do you mean I shall say do you mean that your art produces the greatest good certainly he will answer for his not Health the greatest good what greater good can men have Socrates and after him the trainer will come and say I too Socrates shall be greatly surprised if gorgius can show more

good of his art than I can show of mine to him again I shall say who are you honest friend and what is your business I am a trainer he will reply and my business is to make men beautiful and strong in body when I have done with the trainer there arrives the money maker and And he as I expect will utterly despise them all consider Socrates he will say whether gorgius or anyone else can produce any greater good than wealth well you and I say to him and are you a creator of wealth yes

he replies and who are you a money maker and do you consider wealth to be the greatest good of man of course will be his reply and we shall rejoin yes but our friend gorgius contends that his art produces a greater good than yours and then he will be sure to go on and ask what good let gorgus answer now I want you gorgus to imagine that this question is asked of you by them and by me what is that which as you say is the greatest good of man and of which you are the

Creator Answer us that good Socrates which is truly the greatest being that which gives to men freedom in their own persons and to individuals the power of ruling over others in their several States and what would you consider this to be what is there greater than the word which persuades the judges in the courts or the senators in the council or the citizens in the assembly or at any other political meeting if you have the power of uttering this word you will have the physici your slave and the trainer your slave and the money maker

of whom you talk will be found to gather Treasures not for himself but for you who are able to speak and to persuade the multitude now I think gorgus that you have very accurately explained what you conceive to be the art of rhetoric and you mean to say if I'm not mistaken that rhetoric is the artificer of persuasion having this and no other business and that this is her crown and end do you know any other effect of rhetoric over and above that of producing persuasion no the definition seems to me very fair Socrates for

persuasion is the chief end of rhetoric then hear me gorus for I'm quite sure that if there ever was a man who entered on the discussion of a matter from a pure love of knowing the truth I am such a one and I should say the same of you what is coming Socrates I will tell you I am very well aware that I do not know what according to you is the exact nature or what are the topics of that persuasion of which you speak and which is given by rhetoric although I have a suspicion

about both the one and the other and I am going to ask what is this power of persuasion which is given by rhetoric and about what but why if I have a suspicion do I ask instead of telling you not for your sake but in order that the argument May proceed in such a manner as is most likely to set forth the truth and I would have You observe that I am right in asking this further question if I asked what sort of a painter is zukes and you said the painter of figures should I

not be right in asking what kind of figures and where do you find them certainly and the reason for asking this second question would be that there are other painters besides who paint many other figures true but if there had been no one but zukus who painted them then you would have answered very well quite so now I want to know about rhetoric in the same way is rhetoric the only art which brings persuasion or do other Arts have the same effect I mean to say does he who teaches anything persuade men of that which

he teaches or not he persuades Socrates there can be no mistake about that again if we take the Arts of which we were just now speaking do not arithmetic and the arithmeticians teach us the properties of numers certainly and therefore persuade us of them yes then arithmetic as well as rhetoric is an artificer of persuasion clearly and if anyone asks us what sort of persuasion and about what we shall answer persuasion which teaches the quantity of odd and even and we shall be able to show that all the other Arts of which we were just

now speaking are artifices of persuasion and of what sort and about what very true then rhetoric is not the only artificer of persuasion true seeing then that not only rhetoric works by persuasion but that other Arts do the same as in the case of the painter a question has arisen which is a very fair one of what persuasion is rhetoric the artificer and about what is not that a fair way of putting the question I think so then if you approve the question gorgus what is the answer I answer Socrates that rhetoric is the art

of persuasion in courts of Law and other assemblies as I was just now saying and about the just and unjust and that gorgus was what I was suspecting to be your notion yet I would not have you wonder if by and by I am found repeating a seemingly plain question for I ask not in order to confute you but as I was saying that the argument May proceed consecutively and that we may not get the habit of anticipating and suspecting the meaning of one another's words I would have you develop your own views in your

own way whatever may be your hypothesis I think that you're quite right Socrates then let me raise another question there is such a thing as Having learned yes and there is also having believed yes and is the Having learned the same as having believed and are learning and believing the same things in my judgment Socrates they are not the same and your judgment is right as you may ascertain in this way if a person were to say to you is the gorgius a false belief as well as a true you would reply if I'm not

mistaken that there is yes well but is there a false knowledge as well as a true no no indeed and this again proves that knowledge and belief differ very true and yet those who are have learned as well as those who have believed are persuaded just so shall we then assume two sorts of persuasion one which is the source of belief without knowledge as the other is of knowledge by all means and which sort of persuasion does rhetoric create in courts of Law and other assemblies about the just and unjust the sort of persuasion which

gives belief without knowledge or that which gives knowledge clearly Socrates that which only gives belief then rhetoric as would appear is the artificer of a persuasion which creates belief about the just and unjust but gives no instruction about them true and the rhetorician does not instruct the courts of law or other assemblies about things just and unjust but he creates belief about them for no one can be supposed to instruct such a vast multitude about such high matters in a short time certainly not come then and let us see what we really mean about rhetoric

for I do not know what my own meaning is as yet when the assembly meets to elect a physician or a ship or any other Craftsman will the rhetoric be taken into Council surely not for at every election he ought to be chosen who is most skilled and again when walls have to be built or Harbors or docks to be constructed not the rhetorician but the master Workman will advise or when generals have to be Chosen and an order of battle arranged or a position taken then the military will advise and not the rhetoricians what

do you say gorus since you profess to be a rhetorician and a maker of rhetoricians I cannot do better than learn the nature of your art from you and here let me assure you that I have your interest in view as well as my own for likely enough some one or other of the young men present might desire to become your pupil and in fact I see some and a good many too who have this wish but they would be too modest to question you and therefore when you are interrogated by me I would have

you imagine that you are interrogated by them what is the use of coming to you gorgus they will say about what will you teach us to advise the state about the just and unjust only or about those other things also which Socrates has just mentioned how will you answer them I like your way of leading us on Socrates and I will endeavor to reveal to you the whole nature of rhetoric you must have heard I think that the docks and the walls of the Athenians and the plan of the harbor were devised in accordance with

the councils partly of theistic and partly of Pericles and not at the suggestion of the builders such is the tradition gorgus about the Mystic and I myself heard the speech of Pericles when he advised us about the middle wall and you will observe Socrates that when a decision has to be given in such matters the rhetoricians are the advisers they are the men who win their point I had that in my admiring mind gorgus when I asked what is the nature of rhetoric which always appears to me when I look at the matter in this

way to be a Marvel of greatness a Marvel indeed Socrates if you only knew how rhetoric comprehends and holds under her sway all the inferior Arts let me offer you a striking example of this on several occasions I have been with my brother herodicus or some other physician to see one of his patients who would not allow the physician to give him medicine or apply the knife or hot iron to him and I have persuaded him to do for me what he would not do for the physician just by the use of rhetoric and I

say that if a rhetorician and a physician were to go to any City and had there to argue in in the Ecclesia or any other assembly as to which of them should be elected State physician The Physician would have no chance but he who could speak would be chosen if he wished and in a contest with a man of any other profession the retortion more than anyone would have the power of getting himself chosen for he can speak more persuasively to the multitude than any of them and on any subject such is the nature and

power of the art of rhetoric and yet Socrates rhetoric should be used like any other competitive art not against everybody the rhetorician ought not to abuse his strength any more than a pugilist or pancratiast or other Master offense because he has powers which are more than a match either for friend or enemy he ought not therefore to strike stab or slay his friends suppose a man to have been trained in the palestra and to be a skillful boxer he in the fullness of his strength goes and Strikes his father or mother or one of his

familiars or friends but that is no reason why the trainers or fencing Masters should be held in detestation or banished from the city surely not for they taught their art for a good purpose to be used against enemies and evildoers in self-defense not in aggression and others have perverted their instructions and turned to a bad use their own strength and skill but not on this account are the teachers bad neither is the art in fault or bad in itself I should rather say that those who make a bad use of the art are to blame

and the same argument holds Good of rhetoric for the rhetorician can speak against all men and upon any subject in short he can persuade the multitude better than any other man of anything which he pleases but he should not therefore seek to defraud the physician or any other artist of his reputation merely because he has the power he ought to use rhetoric fairly as he would also use his athletic powers and if after having become a rhetorician he makes a bad use of his strength and skill his instructor surely ought not on that account to

be held in detestation or banished for he was intended by his teacher to make a good use of his instructions but he abuses them and then therefore he is the person who ought to be held in detestation Banished and put to death and not his instructor you gorgius like myself have had great experience of disputations and you must have observed I think that they do not always terminate in mutual edification or in the definition by either party of the subjects which they are discussing but disagreements are apt to arise somebody says that another has not

spoken truly or clearly and then they get get into a passion and begin to quarrel both parties conceiving that their opponents are arguing from personal feeling only and jealousy of themselves not from any interest in the question at issue and sometimes they will go on abusing one another until the company at last are quite vexed at themselves for ever listening to such fellas why do I say this why because I cannot help feeling that you are now saying what is not quite consistent or accordant with what you were saying at first about rhetoric and I'm

afraid to point this out to you lest you should think that I have some animosity against you and that I speak not for the sake of discovering the truth but from jealousy of you now if you are one of my sort I should like to cross-examine you but if not I will let you alone and what is my sort you will ask I am one of those who are very willing to be refuted if I say anything which is not true and very willing to refute anyone else who says what is not true and quite

as ready to be refuted as to refute for I hold that this is the greater gain of the two just as the gain is greater of being cured of a very great evil than of curing another for I imagine that there is no evil which a man can endure so great as an erroneous opinion about the matters of which we are speaking and if you claim to be one of my sort let us have the discussion out but if you would rather have done no matter let us make an end of it I should say

Socrates that I I'm quite the man whom you indicate but perhaps we ought to consider the audience for before you came I had already given a long exhibition and if we proceed the argument may run on to a great length and therefore I think that we should consider whether we may not be detaining some part of the company when they are wanting to do something else you hear the audience cheering gorus and Socrates which shows their desire to listen to you and for myself heaven forbid that I should have any business on hand which would

take me away from a discussion so interesting and so ably maintained by the gods caraon although I have been present at many discussions I doubt whether I was ever so much delighted before and therefore if you go on discoursing all day I shall be the better pleased I may truly say calicles that I am willing if gorgus is after all this Socrates I should be disgraced if I refused especially as I have promised to answer all comers in accordance with the wishes of the company then do you begin and ask of me any question which

you like let me tell you then gorgius what surprises me in your words though I dare say you may be right and I may have misunderstood your meaning you say that you can make any man who will learn of you a rhetorician yes do you mean that you will teach him to gain the ears of the multitude on any subject and this not by instruction but by persuasion quite so you were saying in fact that the rhetorician will have greater powers of persuasion than the physician even in a matter of Health yes with the multitude

that is you mean to say with the ignorant for with those who know he cannot be supposed to have greater powers of persuasion very true but if he is to have more power of persuasion than the physician he will have greater power than he who knows certainly although he is not a physician is he no and he who is not a physician must obviously be ignorant of what the physician knows clearly then when the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge is not

that the inference in the case supposed yes and the same holds of the relation of rhetoric to all the other Arts the rhetorician need not know the truth about things he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know yes Socrates and is not this a great comfort not to have learned the other Arts but the art of rhetoric only and yet to be in no way inferior to the professors of them whether the rhetoric is or is not inferior on this account is a question

which we will Hereafter examine if the inquiry is likely to be of any service to us but I would rather Begin by asking whether he is or is not as ignorant of the just and unjust base and honorable good and evil as he is of medicine and the other Arts I mean to say does he really know anything of what is good and evil base or honorable just or unjust in them or has he only a way with the ignorant of persuading them that he not knowing is to be esteemed to know more about these

things than someone else who knows or must the pupil know these things and come to you knowing them before he can Acquire The Art of rhetoric if he is ignorant you who are the teacher of rhetoric will not teach him it is not your business but you will make him seem to the multitude to know them when he does not know them and seem to be a good man when he is not or will you be unable to teach him rhetoric at all unless he knows the truth of these things first what is to be

said about all this by Heavens gorgius I wish that you would reveal to me the power of rhetoric as you are saying that you would well Socrates I suppose that if the pupil does chance not to know them he will have to learn of me these things as well say no more for there you're right and so he whom you make a rhetoric must either know the nature of the just and unjust already or he must be taught by you certainly well and is not he who has learned carpentering a carpenter yes and he who

has learned music a musician yes yes and he who has learned medicine is a physician in like manner he who has learned anything whatever is that which his knowledge makes him certainly and in the same way he who has learned what is just is just to be sure and he who is just may be supposed to do what is just yes and must not the just man always desire to do what is just that is clearly the inference surely then the just man will never consent to do Injustice certainly not and according to the argument

the rhetorician must be a just man yes and will therefore never be willing to do Injustice clearly not but do you remember saying just now that the trainer is not to be accused or banished if the pugilist makes a wrong use of his pugilistic art and in like manner if the rhetorician makes a bad and unjust use of his rhetoric that is not to be laid to the charge of his teacher who is not to be banished but the wrongdoer himself who made a bad use of his rhetoric he is to be banished was not

that said yes it was but now we are affirming that the afores said rhetorician will never have done Injustice at all to and at the very outset gorgus it was said that rhetoric treated of discourse not like arithmetic about odd and even but about just and unjust was not this said yes I was thinking at the time when I heard you saying so that rhetoric which is always discoursing about Justice could not possibly be an unjust thing but when you added shortly afterwards that the rhetorician might make a bad use of rhetoric I noted with

surprise the inconsistency into which you had fallen and I said that if you thought as I did that there was a gain in being refuted there would be an advantage in going on with the question but if not I would leave off and in the course of our investigations as you will see yourself the rhetorician has been acknowledged to be incapable of making an unjust use of rhetoric or of willingness to do Injustice by the dog gorgus there will be a great deal of discussion before we get at the truth of all this and do

even you Socrates seriously believe what you are now saying about rhetoric what because gorgius was ashamed to deny that the rhetorician knew the just and The Honorable and the good and admitted that to anyone who came to him ignorant of them he could teach them and then out of this admission there arose a contradiction the thing which you dearly love and to which not he but you brought the argument by your captious questions do you seriously believe that there is any truth in all this for will anyone ever acknowledge that he does does not know

or cannot teach the nature of Justice the truth is that there is great want of manners in bringing the argument to such a pass illustrious polus the reason why we provide ourselves with friends and children is that when we get old and stumble a younger generation may be at hand to set us on our legs again in our words and in our actions and now if I and gorgus are stumbling here are you who should raise us up and I for my part engaged to retract any error into which you may think that I have

fallen upon one condition what condition that you contract polus the prolixity of speech in which you indulged at first what do you mean that I may not use as many words as I please only to think my friend that having come on a visit to Athens which is the most frees spoken state in helis you when you got there and you alone should be deprived of the power of speech that would be hard indeed but then consider my case shall not I be very hardly used if when you are making a long oration and refusing

to answer what you asked I'm compelled to stay and listen to you and may not go away I say rather if you have a real interest in the argument or to repeat my former expression have any desire to set it on its legs take back any statement which you please and in your turn ask and answer like myself and gorgus refute and be refuted for I suppose that you would claim to know what gorgus knows would you not yes and you like him invite anyone to ask you anything about which he pleases and you will

know how to answer him to be sure and now which will you do ask or answer I will ask and do you answer me Socrates the same question which gorgius as you suppose is unable to answer what is rhetoric do you mean what sort of an art yes to say the truth polus it is not an art at all in my opinion then what in your opinion is rhetoric a thing which as I was lately reading in a book of yours you say that you have made an art what thing I should say a sort

of experience does rhetoric seem to you to be an experience that is my view but but you may be of another mind an experience in what an experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification and if able to gratify others must not rhetoric be a fine thing what are you saying peus why do you ask me whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not when I have not as yet told you what rhetoric is did I not hear you say that rhetoric was a sort of experience will you who are so desirous to gratify

others afford a slight gratification to me I will will you ask me what sort of an artart is cookery what sort of an art is cookery not an art at all polus what then I should say an experience in what I wish that you would explain to me an experience in producing a sort of delight and gratification po then are cookery and rhetoric the same no they're only different parts of the same profession of what profession I'm afraid that the truth may seem discourteous and I hesitate to answer lest gorgius should imagine that I'm making

fun of his own profession for whether or no this is that art of rhetoric which gorgius practices I really cannot tell from what he was just now saying nothing appeared of what he thought of his art but the rhetoric which I mean is a part of a not very creditable whole a part of what Socrates say what you mean and never mind me in my opinion gorus the whole of which rhetoric is a part is not an art at all but the habit of a bold and ready wit which knows how to manage mankind this

habit I sum up under the word flattery and it appears to me to have many other parts one of which is cookery which may seem to be an art but as I maintain is only an experience or routine and not an art another part is rhetoric and the Art of attiring and sophistry are two others thus there are four branches and four different things answering to them and polus may ask if he likes for he has not as yet been informed what part of flattery is rhetoric he did not see that I had not yet

answered him when he proceeded to ask a further question whether I do not think rhetoric a fine thing but I shall not tell him whether rhetoric is a fine thing or not until I have first answered what is rhetoric for that would not be right perus but I shall be happy to answer if you will ask me what part of flattery is rhetoric I will ask and do you answer what part of flattery is rhetoric will you understand my answer rhetoric according to my view is the ghost or counterfeit of a part of politics and

Noble or IGN Noble IGN Noble I should say if I'm compelled to answer for I call what is bad ignoble though I doubt whether you understand what I was saying before indeed Socrates I cannot say that I understand myself I do not Wonder gorgus for I have not as yet explained myself and our friend polus Colt by name and cult by nature is apt to run away never mind him but explain to me what you mean by saying that rhetoric is the counterfeit of a part of politics I will try then to explain my notion

of rhetoric and if I'm mistaken my friend polus shall refute me we may assume the existence of bodies and of Souls of course you would further admit that there is a good condition of either of them yes which condition may not be really good but good only in appearance I mean to say that there are many persons who appear to be in good health and whom only a physician or trainer will discern at First Sight not to be in good health true and this applies not only to the body but also to the soul in

either there may be that which gives the appearance of health and not the reality yeah certainly and now I will endeavor to explain to you more clearly what I mean the soul and body being two have two Arts corresponding to them there is the art of politics attending on the cell and another art attending on the body of which I know no single name but which may be described as having two divisions one of them gymnastic and the other medicine and in politics there is a legislative part which answers to gymnastic as Justice does to

medicine and the two parts run into one another Justice having to do with the same subject as legislation and medicine with the same subject as gymnastic but with a difference now seeing that there are these four Arts two attending on the body and two on the soul for their highest good flattery knowing or rather guessing their Natures has distributed herself into four Shams or simulations of them she puts on the likeness of some one or other of them and pretends to be that which she simulates and having no regard for men's highest interests is ever

making pleasure the bait of the uny and deceiving them into the belief that she is of the highest value to them cookery simulates the disguise of medicine and pretends to know what food is the best for the body and if the physician and the cook had to enter into a competition in which children were the judges or men who had no more sense than children as to which of them best understands the goodness or Badness of food The Physician would be starved to death a flattery I deem this to be and of an ignoble sort

polus for to you I am now addressing myself because it aims AT Pleasure without any thought of the best an art I do not call it but only an experience because it is unable to explain or to give a reason of the nature of its own application and I do not call any irrational thing an art but if you dispute my words I am prepared to argue in defense of them cookery then I maintained to be a flattery which takes the form of medicine and tiring in like manner is a flattery which takes the form

of gymnastic and is navish false ignoble illiberal working deceitfully by the help of lines and colors and enamels and garments and making men effect a spurious Beauty to the neglect of the true beauty which is given by gymnastic I would rather not be tedious and therefore I will only say after the manner of geometricians for I think that by this time you will be able to follow as gymnastic is to physical training so sophistry is to legislation and as cookery is to medicine so rhetoric is to Justice and this I say is the natural difference

between the rhetorician and the sophist but by reason of their near connection they are apt to be jumbled up together neither do they know what to make of themselves nor do other men know what to make of them for if the body presided over itself and were not under the guidance of the soul and the Soul did not discern and discriminate between cookery and medicine but the body was made the judge of them and the rule of judgment was the bodily Delight which was given by them then the word of anaxagoras that word with which

you friend polus are so well acquainted would Prevail far and wide chaos would come again and cookery health and Medicine would mingle in an indiscriminate mass and now I have told you my notion of rhetoric which is in relation to the soul what cookery is to the body I may have been inconsistent in making a long speech when I would not allow you to discourse at length but I think that I may be excused because you did not understand me and could make no use of my answer when I spoke shortly and therefore I had

to enter into an explanation and if I show an equal inability to make use of yours I hope that you will speak at equal length but if I'm able to understand you let me have the benefit of your brevity as is only fair and now you may do what you please with my answer what do you mean do you think that rhetoric is flattery nay I said a part of flattery if at your age polus you cannot remember what will you do by and by when you get older and are the good rhetoricians meanly regarded

in States under the idea that they are flatterers is that a question or the beginning of a speech I am asking a question then my answer is that they are not regarded at all how not regarded have they not very great power in States not if you mean to say that power is a good to the possessor and that is what I do mean to say then if so I think that they have the least power of all the citizens what are they not like tyrants they kill and despoil and Exile anyone whom they please

by the dog polers I cannot make out at each Deliverance of yours whether you're giving an opinion of your own or asking a question of me I am asking a question of you yes my friend but you ask two questions at once how two questions why did you not say just now that the rhetoricians are like Tyrant and that they kill and despoil or Exile anyone whom they please I did well then I say to you that here are two questions in one and I will answer both of them and I tell you peus that

rhetoricians and tyrants have the least possible power in States as I was just now saying for they do literally nothing which they will but only what they think best and is not that that a great power polus has already said the reverse said the reverse nay that is what I assert no by the great what do you call him not you for you say that power is a good to him who has the power I do and would you maintain that if a fool does what he thinks best this is a good and would you

call this great power I should not then you must prove that the rhetoric is not a fool and that rhetoric is an art and not a flattery and so you will have refuted me but if you leave me unrefuted why the rhetoricians who do what they think best in States and the tyrants will have nothing upon which to congratulate themselves if as you say power be indeed a good admitting at the same time that what is done without sense is an evil yes I admit that how then can the rhetoricians or the tyrants have great

power in States unless polus can refute Socrates and prove to him that they do as they will this fellow I say that they do not do as they will now refute me why have you not already said that they do as they think best and I say so still then surely they do as they will I deny it but they do what they think best I that Socrates is monstrous and absurd good words good peus as I may say in your own peculiar style but if you have any questions to ask of me either prove

that I am in error or give the answer yourself very well I am willing to answer that I may know what you mean do men appear to you to will that which they do or to will that further end for the sake of which they do a thing when they take medicine for example at the bidding of a physician do they will the drinking of the medicine which is painful or the health for the sake of which they drink clearly the health and when men go on a voyage or engage in business they do not

will that which they are doing at the time for who would desire to take the risk of a voyage or the trouble of business but they will to have the wealth for the sake of which they go on a voyage certainly and is not this universally true if a man does something for the sake of something else he Wills not that which he does but that for the sake of which he does it yes and are not all things either good or evil or intermediates and IND different to be sure Socrates wisdom and health and

wealth and the like you would call goods and their opposites evils I should and the things which are neither good nor evil and which partake sometimes of the nature of good and at other times of evil or of neither are such as sitting walking running sailing or again Woods stones and the like these are the things which you would call neither good nor evil exactly so are these indifferent things done for the sake of the good or the good for the sake of the indifferent clearly the indifferent for the sake of the good when we

walk we walk for the sake of the good and under the idea that it is better to walk and when we stand We Stand equally for the sake of the good yes and when we kill a man we kill him or Exile him or despoil him of his Goods because as we think it will conduce to our good certainly men who do any of these things do them for the sake of the good yes and did we not admit that in doing something for the sake of something else we do not will those things which

we do but that other thing for the sake of which we do them most true then we do not will simply to kill a man or to Exile him or to despoil him of his Goods but we will to do that which conduces to our good and if the ACT is not conducive to our good we do not will it for we will as you say that which is our good but that which is neither good nor evil or simply evil we do not will why are you silent POS am I not right you are

right hence we may infer that if anyone whether he be a tyrant or a rhetorician kills another or Exiles another or deprives him of his property under the idea that the ACT is for his own interests when really not for his own interests he may be said to do what seems best to him yes but does he do what he Wills if he does what is evil why do you not answer well I suppose not then if great power is a good as you allow will such a one have great power in the state he

will not then I was right in saying that a man may do What seems good to him in a state and not have great power and not do what he Wills as though you Socrates would not like to have the power of doing what seemed good to you in the state rather than not you would not be jealous when you saw anyone killing or despoiling or imprisoning whom he pleased oh no justly or unjustly do you mean in either case is he not equally to be envied forbear polus why forbear because you ought not to

Envy wretches who are not to be envied but only to pity them and are those of whom I spoke wretches yes certainly they are and so you think that he who slays anyone whom he pleases and justly slays him is pitiable and wretched no I do not say that of him but neither do I think that he is to be envied were you not saying just now that he is wretched yes my friend if he killed another unjustly in which case he is also to be pied and he is not to be envied if he

killed him justly at any rate you will allow that he who is unjustly put to death is wretched and to be pied not so much polus as he who kills him and not so much as he who is justly killed how can that be Socrates that may very well be in as much as doing Injustice is the greatest of evils but is it the greatest is not suffering Injustice a greater evil certainly not then would you rather suffer than do Injustice I should not like either but if I must choose between them I would rather

suffer than do then you would not wish to be a tyrant not if you mean by tyranny what I mean I mean as I said before the power of doing whatever seems good to you in a state killing banishing doing in all things as you like well then illustrious friend when I have said my say do you reply to me suppose that I go into a crowded agura and take a dagger under my arm polus I say to you I have just acquired a rare power and become a tyrant for if I think that any

of these men whom you see ought to be put to death the man whom I have a mind to kill is as good as dead and if I'm disposed to break his head or tear His Garment he will have his head broken or His Garment torn in an instant such is my great power in this city and if you do not believe me and I show you the dagger you would probably reply Socrates in that sort of way anyone may have great power he may burn any house which he pleases and the docks and the

tries of the Athenians and all their other vessels whether public or private but can you believe that this mere doing as you think best is great power certainly not doing as this but can you tell me why you disapprove of such a power I can why then why because he who did do you say would be certain to be punished and punishment is an evil certainly and you would admit once more my good sir that great power is a benefit to a man if his actions turn out to his advantage and that this is the

meaning of great power and if not then his power is an evil and is no power but let us look at the matter in another way do we not acknowledge that the things of which we were speaking the infliction of death Exile and the deprivation of property are something sometimes a good and sometimes not a good certainly about that you and I may be supposed to agree yes tell me then when do you say that they are good and when that they are evil what principle do you lay down I would rather Socrates that you

should answer as well as ask that question well po since you would rather have the answer from me I say that they are good when they are just and evil when they are unjust you are hard of reputation Socrates but might not a child refute that statement then I shall be very grateful to the child and equally grateful to you if you will refute me and Deliver Me from my foolishness and I hope that refute me you will and not weary of doing good to a friend yes Socrates and I need not go far or

appeal to Antiquity events which happened only a few days ago are enough to refute you and to prove that many men who do strong are happy what event you see I presume that arilus the son of picus is now the ruler of Macedonia at any rate I hear that he is and do you think that he is happy or miserable I cannot say polus for I have never had any acquaintance with him and cannot you tell at once and without having an acquaintance with him whether a man is happy most certainly not then clearly Socrates

you would say that you did not even know whether the great king was a happy man and I should speak the truth for I do not know how he stands in the matter of education and Justice what and does all happiness consist in this yes indeed polus that is my Doctrine the men and women who are gentle and good are also happy as I maintain and the unjust and evil are miserable then according to your Doctrine the said arus is miserable yes my friend if he is wicked that he is wicked I cannot deny for

he had no title at all to the throne which he now occupies he being only the son of a woman who was the slave of alatus the brother of picus he himself therefore in strict right was the slave of alatus and if he had meant to do rightly he would have remained his slave and then according to your Doctrine he would have been happy but now he is unspeakably miserable for he has been guilty of the greatest crimes in the first place he invited his uncle and master alitus to come to him under the pretense

that he would restore to him the throne which picus has usurped and after entertaining him and his son Alexander who was his own cousin and nearly of an age with him and making them drunk he threw them into a wagon and carried them off by night and slew them and got both of them out of the way and when he had done all this wickedness he never did discovered that he was the most miserable of all men and was very far from repenting shall I tell you how he showed his remorse he had a younger

brother a child of 7 years old who was the legitimate son of picus and to him of right the kingdom belonged archelus however had no mind to bring him up as he ought and restore the kingdom to him that was not his notion of happiness but not long afterwards he threw him into a well and drowned him and declared to his mother Cleopatra that he had fallen in while running after a goose and had been killed and now as he is the greatest criminal of all the macedonians he may be supposed to be the most

miserable and not the happiest of them and I dare say that there are many Athenians and you would be at the head of them who would rather be any other Macedonian than arus I praised you at first polus for being a rhetorician rather than a Reasoner and this as I suppose is the sort of argument with which you fancy that a child might refute me and by which I stand refuted when I say that the unjust man is not happy but my good friend where is the reputation I cannot admit a word which you have

been saying that is because you will not for you surely must think as I do not so my sister simple friend but because you will refute me after the manner which rhetoricians practice in courts of law for there the one party think that they refute the other when they bring forward a number of witnesses of good repute in proof of their allegations and their adversary has only a single one or none at all but this kind of proof is of no value where truth is the aim a man May often be sworn down by a

multitude of false Witnesses who have a great air of respectability and and in this argument nearly everyone Athenian and stranger alike would be on your side if you should bring Witnesses in disproof of my statement you may if you will summon nissus the son of narus and let his brothers who gave the row of tripods which stand in the precincts of dianis come with him or you may summon aristocrates the son of celius who is The Giver of that famous offering which is at Deli summon if you will the whole house of Pericles or any

other great Athenian family whom you choose they will all agree with you I only am left alone and cannot agree for you do not convince me although you produce many false Witnesses against me in the hope of depriving me of my inheritance which is the truth but I consider that nothing worth speaking of will have been affected by me unless I make you the one witness of my words nor by you unless you make me the one witness of yours no matter about the rest of the world for for there are two ways of reputation

one which is yours and that of the world in general but mine is of another sort let us compare them then and see in what they differ for indeed we are at issue about matters which to know is Honorable and not to know disgraceful to know or not to know happiness and misery that is the chief of them and what knowledge can be nobler or what ignorance more disgraceful than this and therefore I will Begin by asking you whether you do not think that a man who is unjust and doing Injustice can be happy seeing

that you think araus unjust and yet happy may I assume this to be your opinion certainly but I say that this is an impossibility here is one point about which we are at issue very good and do you mean to say also that if he meets with retribution and Punishment he will still be happy certainly not in that case he will be most miserable on the other hand if the unjust be not punished then according to you he will be happy yes but in my opinion polus the unjust or doer of unjust actions is miserable

in any case more miserable however if he be not punished and does not meet with retribution and less miserable if he be punished and meets with retribution at the hands of Gods and Men you are maintaining a strange Doctrine Socrates I shall try to make you agree with me oh my friend for as a friend I regard you then these are the points at issue between us are they not I was saying that to do is worse than to suffer Injustice exactly so and you said the opposite yes I said also that the wicked are

miserable and you refuted me by Zeus I did in your own opinion po yes and I rather suspect that I was in the right you further said that the wrongdoer is happy if he be unpunished certainly and I affirm that he is most miserable and that those who are punished are less miserable are you going to refute this proposition also a proposition which is harder of reputation than the other Socrates say rather PE is impossible for who can refute the truth what do you mean if a man is detected in an unjust attempt to make

himself a tyrant and when detected is racked mutilated has his eyes burned out and after having had all sorts of great injuries inflicted on him and having seen his wife and children suffer the like is at last impaled or tarred and burnt alive will he be happier than if he escape and become a tyrant and continue all through life doing what he likes and holding the Reigns of government the envy and admiration both of citizens and strangers is that the Paradox which as you say cannot be refuted there again Noble polus you're raising hobgoblins instead

of refuting me just now you were calling Witnesses against me but pleased to refresh my memory a little did you say in an unjust attempt to make himself a tyrant yes I did then I say that neither of them will be happier than the other neither he who unjustly acquires a tyranny nor he who suffers in the attempt for of two Miserables One cannot be the happier but that he who escapes and becomes a tyrant is the more miserable of the two do you laugh polus well this is a new kind of reputation when anyone

says anything instead of refuting him to laugh at him but do you not think Socrates that you have been sufficiently refuted when you say that which no human being will allow ask the company oh polus I am not a public man and only last year when my tribe were serving as pranis and it became my duty as their president to take the votes there was a laugh at me because I was unable to take them and as I failed then you must must not ask me to count the suffrages of the company now but if

as I was saying you have no better argument than numbers let me have a turn and do you make trial of the sort of proof which as I think is required for I shall produce one witness only of the truth of my words and he is the person with whom I am arguing his suffrage I know how to take but with the many I have nothing to do and to not even address myself to them may I ask then whether you will answer in turn and have your words put to the proof for I certainly

think that I and you and every man do really believe that to do is a greater evil than to suffer Injustice and not to be punished than to be punished and I should say neither I nor any man would you yourself for example suffer rather than do Injustice yes and you too I or any man would quite the reverse neither you nor I nor any man but will you answer to be sure I will for I'm curious to hear what you can have to say tell me then and you will know and let us suppose

that I am beginning at the beginning which of the two polus in your opinion is the worst to do Injustice or to suffer I should say that suffering was worst and which is the greater disgrace answer to do and the greater disgrace is the greater evil certainly not I understand you to say if I'm not mistaken that The Honorable is not the same as the good or the disg graceful as the evil certainly not let me ask a question of you when you speak of beautiful things such as bodies colors figures sounds institutions do you

not call them beautiful in reference to some standard bodies for example are beautiful in proportion as they are useful or as the sight of them gives pleasure to The Spectator can you give any other account of personal Beauty I cannot and you would say of figures or colors generally that they were beautiful either by reason of the pleasure which they give or of their use or of both yes I should and you would call sounds and music Beautiful for the same reason I should laws and institutions also have no Beauty in them except in so

far as they are useful or Pleasant or both I think not and may not the same be said of the beauty of knowledge to be sure Socrates and I very much approve of your measuring Beauty by the standard of pleasure and utility and deformity or disgrace may be equally measured by the opposite standard of pain and evil certainly then when of two beautiful things one exceeds in Beauty the measure of the excess is to be taken in one or both of these that is to say in pleasure or utility or both very true and of

two deform things that which exceeds in deformity or disgrace exceeds either in pain or evil must it not be so yes but then again what was the observation which you just now made about doing and suffering wrong did you not say that suffering wrong was more evil and doing wrong more disgraceful I did then if doing wrong is more disgraceful than suffering the more disgraceful must be more painful and must exceed in pain or in evil or both does not that also follow of course first then let us consider whether the doing of Injustice exceeds

the suffering in the consequent pain do the injurers suffer more than the injured no Socrates certainly not then they do not exceed in pain no but if not in pain then not in both certainly not then they can only exceed in the other yes that is to say in evil true then doing Injustice will have an excess of evil and will therefore be a greater evil than suffering Injustice clearly but have not you and the world already agreed that to do Injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer yes and that is now discovered to be

more evil true and would you prefer a greater evil or a greater dishonor to a less one answer polus and fear not for you will come to no harm if you nobly resign yourself into The Healing Hand of the argument as to a physician without shrinking and either say yes or no to me I should say no would any other man prefer a greater to a less evil no not according to this way of putting the case Socrates then I say truly polus that neither you nor I or any man would rather do than suffer

Injustice for to do Injustice is the greater evil of the two that is the conclusion you see polus when you compare the two kinds of reputations how unlike they are all men with the exception of myself are of your way of thinking but your single ascent and witness are enough for me I have no need of any other I take your suffrage and am regardless of the rest enough of this and now let us proceed to the next question which is whether the greatest of evils to a guilty man is to suffer punishment as you

supposed or whether to escape punishment is not a greater evil as I supposed consider you would say that to suffer punishment is another name for being justly corrected when you do wrong I should and would you not allow that all just things are Honorable in so far as they are just please to reflect and tell me your opinion yes Socrates I think that they are consider again where there is an agent must there not also be a patient I should say so and will not the patient suffer that which the agent does and will not

the suffering have the quality of the action I mean for example that if a man strikes there must be something which is stricken yes and if the striker strikes violently or quickly that that which is struck will be struck violently or quickly true and the suffering to him who is stricken is of the same nature as the act of him who strikes yes and if a man burns there is something which is burned certainly and if he burns in excess or so as to cause pain the thing burned will be burned in the same way

truly and if he cuts the same argument holds there will be something cut yes and if the cutting be great or deep or such as will cause pain the cut will be of the same nature that is evident then you would agree generally to the universal proposition which I was just now asserting that the affection of the patient answers to the affection of the agent I agree then as this is admitted let me ask whether being punished is suffering or acting suffering Socrates there can be no doubt of that and suffering implies an agent certainly

Socrates and he is the Punisher and he who punishes rightly punishes justly yes and therefore he acts justly justly then he who is punished and suffers retribution suffers justly that is evident and that which is just has been admitted to be honorable certainly then the Punisher does what is Honorable and the punished suffers what is Honorable true and if what is Honorable then what is good for the honorable is either Pleasant or useful certainly then he who is punished suffers what is good that is true then he is benefited yes do I understand you to

mean what I mean by the term benefited I mean that if he be justly punished his soul is improved surely then he who is punished is delivered from the evil of his soul yes and is he not then delivered from the greatest evil look at the matter in this way in respect of a man's estate do you see any greater evil than poverty there is no greater evil again in a man's bodily frame you would say that the evil is weakness and disease and deformity I should and do you not imagine that the soul likewise

has some evil of her own of course and this you would call Injustice and ignorance and cowardice and the like certainly so then in mind body and estate which are three you have pointed out three corresponding evils Injustice disease poverty true and which of the evils is the most disgraceful is not the most disgraceful of them Injustice and in general the evil of the Soul by far the most and if the most disgraceful then also the worst what do you mean Socrates I mean to say that is most disgraceful has been already admitted to be

most painful or hurtful or both certainly and now Injustice and all evil in the soul has been admitted by us to be most disgraceful it has been admitted and most disgraceful either because most painful and causing excessive pain or most hurtful or both certainly and therefore to be unjust and intemperate and cowardly and ignorant is more painful than to be poor and sick nay Socrates the painfulness does not appear to me to follow from your premises but then if as you would argue not more painful the evil of the soul is of all evils the

most disgraceful and the excess of disgrace must be caused by some preternatural greatness or extraordinary hurtfulness of the evil clearly and that which exceeds most in hurtfulness will be the greatest of evils yes then Injustice and intemperance and in general the depravity of the Soul are the greatest of evils that is evident now what art is there which delivers us from poverty does not the art of making money yes and what Arts frees us from disease does not the art of medicine very true and what from Vice and Injustice if you are not able to

answer at once ask yourself whether we go with the sick and to whom we take them to the Physicians Socrates and to whom do we go with the unjust and intemperate to the judges you mean who are to punish them yes and do not those who rightly punish others punish them in accordance with a certain rule of Justice clearly then the art of moneymaking frees a man from poverty medicine from disease and Justice from intemperance and Injustice that is evident which then is the best of these three will you enumerate them moneymaking medicine and justice

justice Socrates far excels the two others and Justice if the best gives the greatest pleasure or advantage or both yes but is the being healed a pleasant thing and are those who are being healed pleased I think not a useful thing then yes yes because the patient is deliver from a great evil and this is the advantage of enduring the pain that you get well certainly and would he be the happier man in his bodily condition who is healed or who was never out of Health clearly he who was never out of Health yes for

happiness surely does not consist in being delivered from evils but in never having had them true and suppose the case of two persons who have some evil in their bodies and that one of them is healed and delivered from evil and another is not healed but retains the evil which of them is the most miserable clearly he who is not healed and was not punishment said by us to be a deliverance from the greatest of evils which is vice true and Justice punishes us and makes us more just and is the medicine of our vice

true he then has the first place in the scale of Happiness who has never had Vice in his soul for this has been shown to be the greatest of evils clearly and he has the second place who is delivered from Vice true that is to say he who receives admonition and rebuke and Punishment yes then he lives worst who having been unjust has no deliverance from Injustice certainly that is he lives worst who commits the greatest crimes and who being the most unjust of men succeeds in escaping rebuke or correction or punishment and this as

you say has been accomplished by accelus and other tyrants and rhetoricians and potentates true may not there way proceeding my friend be compared to the conduct of a person who is Afflicted with the worst of diseases and yet contrives not to pay the penalty to The Physician for his sins against his Constitution and will not be cured because like a child he is afraid of the pain of being burned or cut is not that a parallel case yes truly he would seem as if he did not know the nature of health and bodily Vigor and

if we are right polus in our previous conclusions they are in a likee case who strive to evade Justice which they see to be painful but are blind to the advantage which ensues from it not knowing how far more miserable a companion a diseased soul is than a diseased body a soul I say which is corrupt and unrighteous and Unholy and hence they do all that they can to avoid punishment and to avoid being released from the greatest of evils they provide themselves with money and friends and cultivate to the utmost their powers of persuasion

but if we polus are right do you see what follows or shall we draw out the consequences in form if you please is it not a fact that Injustice and the doing of Injustice is the greatest of evils that is quite clear and further that to suffer punishment is the way to be released from this evil true and not to suffer is to perpetuate the evil yes to do wrong then is second only in the scale of evils but to do wrong and not to be punished is first and greatest of all that is true

well and was not this the point in dispute my friend you deemed Aral happy because he was a very great criminal and unpunished I on the other hand make maintain that he or any other who like him has done wrong and has not been punished is and ought to be the most miserable of all men and that the doer of Injustice is more miserable than the sufferer and he who escapes punishment more miserable than he who suffers was not that what I said yes and it has been proved to be true certainly well polus but

if if this is true where is the Great use of rhetoric if we admit what has been just now said every man ought in every way to guard himself against doing wrong for he will thereby suffer great evil true and if he or anyone about whom he cares does wrong he ought of his own accord to go where he will be immediately punished he will run to the judge as he would to the physician in order that the disease of Injustice may not be rendered chronic and become the incurable cancer of the Soul must we

not allow this consequence polus if our former admissions are to sand is any other inference consistent with them to that Socrates there can be but one answer then rhetoric is of no use to us polus in helping a man to excuse his own Injustice that of his parents or friends or children or country but may be of use to anyone who holds that instead of excusing he ought to accuse himself above all and in the next degree his family or any of his friends who may be doing wrong he should bring to light the iniquity

and not conceal it that so the wrongdoer may suffer and be made whole and he should even force himself and others not to shrink but with closed eyes like brave men to let the physician operate with knife or searing iron not regarding the pain in the hope of attaining the good and the honorable let him who has done things worthy of Stripes allow himself to be scourged if of bonds to be bound if of a fine to be fined if of Exile to be exiled if of death to die himself being the first to accuse

himself and his own relations and using retoric to this end that his and their unjust actions may be made manifest and that they themselves may be delivered from Injustice which is the greatest evil then polus retoric would indeed be useful do you say yes or no to that to me Socrates what you are saying appears very strange though probably in agreement with your premises is not this the conclusion if the premises are not disproven yes it certainly is and from the opposite point of view even indeed it be our duty to harm another whether an

enemy or not I accept the case of self-defense then I have to be upon my guard but if my enemy injures a third person then in every sort of way by word as well as deed I should try to prevent his being punished or appearing before the judge and if he appears I should contrive that he should escape and not suffer punishment if he has stolen a sum of money let him keep what he has stolen and spend it on him and his regardless of religion and Justice and if he have done things worthy of

death let him not die but rather be immortal in his wickedness or if this is not possible let him at any rate be allowed to live as long as he can for such purposes polus rhetoric may be useful but is of small if of any use to him who was not intending to commit Injustice at least there was no such use discovered by us in the previous discussion tell me kopon is Socrates in Earnest or is he joking I should say carus that he is in most profound Earnest but you may well ask him by

the gods and I will tell me Socrates are you in Earnest or only in just for if you are in Earnest and what you say is true is not the whole of human life turned upside down and are we not doing as would appear in everything the opposite of what we ought to be doing oh calicles if there were not some community of feelings among mankind however varying in different persons I mean to say if every man's feelings were peculiar to himself and were not shared by the rest of his species I do not see

how we could ever communicate our Impressions to one another I make this remark because I perceive that you and I have a common feeling for we are lovers both and both of us have two loves a piece I am the lover of alabes the son of cleen and of philosophy and you of the Athenian Deus and of deus the son of pampies now I observe that you with all your cleverness do not venture to contradict your favorite in any word or opinion of his but as he changes you change backwards and forwards when the Athenian

Deus denies anything that you are saying in the assembly you go over to his opinion and you do the same with Deus the fair young son of pil for you have not the power to resist the words and ideas of your loves and if a person were to express surprise at the strangeness of what you say from time to time when under their influence you would probably reply to him if you are honest that you cannot help saying what your loves say unless they are prevented and that you can only be silent when they are

now you must understand that my words are an echo too and therefore you need not Wonder at me but if you want to silence me silence philosophy who is my love for she is always telling me what I am now telling you my friend neither is she capricious like my other love for the son of cenus says one thing today and another thing tomorrow but philosophy is always true she is the teacher at whose words you are now wondering and you have heard her yourself her you must refute and either show as I was saying

that to do Injustice to escape punishment is not the worst of all evils or if you leave her word unrefuted by the dog the god of Egypt I declare o calicles that calicles will never be at one with himself but that his whole life will be a Discord and yet my friend I would rather that my liar should be inharmonious and that there should be no music in the chorus which I provided I or that the whole world should be at odds with me and oppose me rather than that I myself myself should be at

odds with myself and contradict myself oh Socrates you are a regular declaimer and seem to be running riot in the argument and now you are declaiming in this way because polus has fallen into the same error himself of which he accused gorgas for he said that when gorgius was asked by you whether if someone came to him who wanted to learn rhetoric and did not know Justice he would teach him Justice gogas in his modesty replied that he would because he thought that mankind in general would be displeased if he answered no and then in

consequence of this admission gorgius was compelled to contradict himself that being just the sort of thing in which you Delight whereupon polus laughed at you deservedly as I think but now he has himself fallen into the same trap I cannot say very much for his wit when he conceded to you that to do is more dish honorable than to suffer Injustice for this was the admission which led to his being entangled by you and because he was too modest to say what he thought he had his mouth stopped for the truth is Socrates that you

who pretend to be engaged in The Pursuit Of Truth are appealing now to the popular and vulgar Notions of right which are not natural but only conventional convention and nature are generally at variance with one another and hence if a person is too modest to say what he thinks he is compelled to contradict himself and you in your Ingenuity perceiving the advantage to be thereby gained slightly ask of him who is arguing conventionally a question which is to be determined by the rule of Nature and if he is talking of the rule of nature you

slip away to custom as for instance you did in this this very discussion about doing and suffering Injustice when polus was speaking of the conventionally dishonorable you assailed him from the point of view of nature for by the rule of nature to suffer Injustice is the greater disgrace because the greater evil but conventionally to do evil is the more disgraceful for the suffering of Injustice is not the part of a man but of a Slave who indeed had better die than live since when he is wronged and trampled upon he is unable to help himself

or any other about whom he cares the reason as I conceive is that the makers of laws are the majority who are weak and they make laws and distribute praises and censures with a view to themselves and to their own interests and they terrify the stronger sort of men and those who are able to get the better of them in order that they may not get the better of them and they say that dishonesty is shameful and unjust meaning by the word injustice the desire of a man to have more than his neighbors for knowing

their own inferiority I suspect they are too glad of equality and therefore the Endeavor to have more than the many is conventionally said to be shameful and unjust and is called Injustice whereas nature herself Intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the worse the more powerful than the weaker and in many ways she shows among men as well as among animals and indeed among whole cities and races that Justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior for on what principle of Justice did xerses invade helas

or his father the C but not to speak of numberless other examples n but these are the men who act according to Nature yes by heaven and according to the law of nature not perhaps according to that artificial law which we invent and impose Upon Our fellows of whom we take the best and strongest from their youth upwards and tame them like Young Lions Charming them with the sound of the voice and saying to them that with equality they must be content and that the equal is the honorable and the just but if there were

a man who had sufficient Force he would shake off and break through and escape from all this he would trample underfoot all our formulas and spells and charms and all our laws which are against nature the slave would rise in rebellion and be Lord over us and the light of natural Justice would shine forth and this I take to be the sentiment of Pinda when he says in his poem that law is the king of all of Mortals as well as of Immortals this as he says makes might to be right doing violence with highest

hand as I infer from the Deeds of Heracles for without buying them I do not remember the exact words but the meaning is that without buying them and without there being given to him he carried off The Oxen of gion according to the law of natural right and that the oxen and other possessions of the weaker and inferior properly belong to the stronger and Superior and this is true as you may ascertain if you will leave philosophy and go on to higher things for philosophy Socrates if pursued in moderation and at the proper age is

an elegant accomplishment but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life even if a man has good parts still if he carries philosophy into later life he is necessarily ignorant of all those things which a gentleman and a person of Honor ought to know he is inexperienced in the laws of the state and in the language which ought to be used in the dealings of man with man whether private or public and utterly ignorant of the pleasures and desires of mankind and of human character in general and people of this sort when they betake

themselves to politics or business are as ridiculous as I imagine the politicians to be when they make their appearance in the arena of philosophy for as Ides says every man shines in that and pursues that and devotes the greatest portion of the day to that in which he most excels but anything in which he is in inferior he avoids and depreciates and praises the opposite from partiality to himself and because he thinks that he will thus praise himself the true principle is to unite them philosophy as a part of education is an excellent thing and

there is no disgrace to a man while he is young in pursuing such a study but when he is more advanced in years the thing becomes ridiculous and I feel towards philosophers as I do towards those who lisp and imitate children but I love to see a little child who is not of an age to speak plainly lisping at his play there is an appearance of Grace and freedom in his utterance which is natural to his childish years but when I hear some small creature carefully articulating its words I am offended the sound is disagreeable

and has to my ears the twang of slavery so when I hear a man lisping or see him playing like a child his behavior appears to me ridiculous and unmanly and worthy of stripes and I have the same feeling about students of philosophy when I see a youth thus engaged the study appears to me to be in character and becoming a man of liberal education and him who neglects philosophy I regard as an inferior man who will never aspire to anything great or Noble but if if I see him continuing the study in later life

and not leaving off I should like to beat him Socrates for as I was saying such a one even though he have good natural Parts becomes effeminate he flies from The Busy Center in the marketplace in which as the poet says men become distinguished he creeps into a corner for the rest of his life and talks in a whisper with three or four admiring youths but never speaks out like a free man in a satisfactory manner now I Socrates am very well inclined towards you and my feeling may be compared with that of Zeus towards

Aon in the play of ureides whom I was mentioning just now for I am disposed to say to you much what Zeus said to his brother that you Socrates are careless about the things of which you ought to be careful and that you who have a soul so Noble are remarkable for a pural exterior neither in a court of justice could you state a case or give any reason or proof or offer Valiant Counsel on another's behalf and you must not be offended my dear Socrates for I am speaking out of Goodwill towards you if

I ask whether you are not ashamed of being thus defenseless which I affirm to be the condition not of you only but of all those who will carry the study of philosophy too far for suppose that someone were to take you or anyone of your sort off to prison declaring that you had done wrong when you had done no wrong you must allow that you would not know what to do there you would stand Giddy and gaping and not having a word to say and when you went up before the court even if the accuser

were a poor creature and not good for much you would die if he were disposed to claim the penalty of death and yet Socrates what is the value of an art which converts a man of sense into a fool who is helpless and has no power to save either himself or others when he is in the greatest danger and is going to be despoiled by his enemies of all his goods and has to live simply deprived of his rights of citizenship he being a man who if I may use the Expression may be boxed on

the ears with impunity then my my good friend take my advice and refute no more learn the philosophy of business and acquire the reputation of wisdom but leave to others these niceties whether they are to be described as Follies or absurdities for they will only give you poverty for the inmate of your dwelling cease then emulating these poultry Splitters of words and emulate only the man of substance and honor who is well to do if my soul calicles were made of gold should I not rejoice to discover one of those stones with which they test

gold and the very best possible one to which I might bring my soul and if the stone and I agreed in approving of her training then I should know that I was in a satisfactory State and that no other test was needed by me what is your meaning Socrates I will tell you I think that I have found in you the desired Touchstone why because I'm sure that if you agree with me in any of my 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 he ought to have three qualities knowledge goodwi outspokenness which are all possessed by you many who my 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 gorgius and polus are undoubtedly wise men and my very good friends but they are not outspoken enough and they're too modest why their modesty

is so great that they're 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 educ ation to this many Athenians can testify and you are my friend shall I tell you why I think so I know that you calicles and isander of affid and andron the son of andron and nisses of the Dee of kages 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 cautioning one another not to be otherwise you are 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 good will 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 inquiry calicles 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 matur years and in Youth for be assured that if I ER in my own conduct I do not ER 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

practice and how I may acquire it and if you find me assenting to your words and Hereafter not doing that to which I ascented call me do and deem me Unworthy of receiving further instruction once more then tell me what you and Pinda 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 yes that is what I was saying and so I still a 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 seem 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 also be 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 I say unequivocally that they are the same then the many are by Nature superior to the one against whom as you were saying they make the laws certainly then the laws of the many are the laws of the superior very true then they are the laws of the better for the superior class are far better as you were saying yes and since they are superior the laws which are made by

them are by Nature good yes and are not the many of opinion as you were lately saying that Justice is equality and that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer Injustice is that so or not answer calicles 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 ascent of so competent an authority yes the opinion of the many is what you say 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 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 oh my philosopher is that your line certainly I was thinking calicles 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 aent pleaseed 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 you are I ironical no by the hero zus calicles by whose age you are just now saying many ironical things against me I am not tell me then whom you mean by the better I mean the more excellent do you not see

that you are yourself using words which have no meaning and that you're explaining nothing will you tell me whether you mean by the better and Superior the wiser or if not whom most assuredly I do mean the wiser according to you one wise man May often be superior to 10,000 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'm word catching if you allow that the one is superior

to the 10,000 yes that is what I mean and that is what I conceive to be natural Justice that the better and wiser should Rule and have more than the the inferior 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 a 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 are superior in this matter of food certainly 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 other others and if he be the weakest of all he being the best of all will have the smallest share of all calicles am I not right my friend you talk about meats and drinks and Physicians and other nonsense I am not speaking of them well but do you admit that the wiser is the better answer yes or no yes and ought not the better to have a larger share not of meats and drinks I understand then perhaps of coats

the skillful EST Weaver ought to have the largest coat and the greatest number of them and go about clothed in the best and finest of them fudge about coats then the skillest and best in making shoes ought to have the advantage in shoes the shoe maker clearly should walk about in the largest shoes and have the greatest number of them fudge about shoes what nonsense are you talking or is this not your meaning perhaps you would say that the wise and good and true husbandman should actually have a larger a share of seeds and have

as much seed as possible for his own land how you go on always talking in the same way Socrates yes calicles and also about the same things 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 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 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 see now most excellent calicles 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 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 and for all whom you affer to be the better and Superior and in what they are better 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 but with a rulers or subjects will

they or will they not have more than themselves my friend what do you mean 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 what do you mean by his ruling over himself 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 what innocence you mean those fools the temperate certainly anyone may know that to be my meaning 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 to 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 he not 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 n Socrates for you profess to be a voter of the truth and the truth is this that luxury and intemperance and license if they be provided with means are virtue and happiness all the rest is a mere bble agreements contrary to Nature foolish talk of

men nothing worth there is a noble freedom calicles 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 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 yes I do then those who want

nothing are not truly said to be happy no indeed for then stones and dead men would be the happiest of all but surely life according to your view is an awful thing and indeed I think that ureides may have been right in saying who knows if life be not death and death life and that we are very likely dead I have heard a philosopher say that at this moment we are actually dead and that the body is our tomb 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 calicles for he declares that

of all the souls in Hades meaning the invisible World these uninitiated or leak key 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 the latter Socrates is more like the truth well I will tell you another image which comes out of the same

school let me request you to consider how far you would accept this as an account of the two lives of the temperate and intemperate in a figure there are two men both of whom have a number of casks the one man has his Cas sound and full one of wine another of honey and a third of milk besides others filled with other liquids and the streams which fill them are few and scanty and he can only obtain them with a great deal of toil and difficulty but when his cks are once filled he has no

need to feed them anymore and has no further trouble with them or care about them the other in a like manner can procure streams though not without difficulty but his vessels are leaky and unsound and night and day he is compelled to be filling them and if he pauses for a moment he is in an Agony of pain such are their respective lives and now would you say that the life of the intemperate is happier than that of the temperate do I not convince you that the opposite is the truth you do not convince me

Socrates for the one who has filled himself has no longer any pleasure left and this as I was just now saying is the life of a stone he has neither Joy nor sorrow after he is once filled but the pleasure depends on the super abundance of the influx but the more you pour in the greater the waste and the holes must be large for the liquid to escape certainly the life which you are now depicting is not that of a dead man or of a stone but of a corant you mean that he is to

be hungering and eating yes and he is to be thirsting and drinking yes that is what I mean he is to have all his desires about him and to be able to live happily in the gratification of them Capital excellent go on and you have begun and have no shame I too must disencumber myself of Shame and first will you tell me whether you include itching and scratching provided you have enough of them and pass your life in scratching in your notion of Happiness what a strange being you are Socrates a regular mob orator that

was the reason calicles why I scared polus and gorgus until they were too modest to say what they thought but you will not be too modest and will not be scared for you are a brave man and now answer my question I answer that even the scratcher would live pleasantly and if pleasantly then also happily to be sure but what if the itching is not confined to the Head shall I pursue the question and here calicles I would have you consider how you would reply if consequences are pressed upon you especially if in The Last

Resort you are asked whether the life of a catamite is not terrible foul miserable or would you venture to say say that they too are happy if they only get enough of what they want are you not ashamed Socrates of introducing such topics into the argument well my fine friend but am I the introducer of these topics or he who says without any qualification that all who feel pleasure in whatever manner are happy and who admits of no distinction between good and bad pleasures and I would still ask whether you say that pleasure and good

are the same or whether there is pleasure which is not a good well then for the sake of consistency I will say that they are the same you are breaking the original agreement calicles and will no longer be a satisfactory companion in the search after truth if you say what is contrary to your real opinion why that is what you are doing too Socrates then we are both doing wrong still my dear friend I would ask you to consider whether pleasure from whatever Source derived is the good for if this be true then the disagreeable

consequences which have been Darkly intimated must follow and many others that Socrates is only your opinion and do you calicles seriously maintain what you are saying indeed I do then as you are in Earnest shall we proceed with the argument by all means well if you are willing to proceed determine this question for me there is something I presume which you would call not knowledge there is and were you not saying just now that some courage implied knowledge I was and you were speaking of courage and knowledge as two things different from one another certainly

I was and would you say that pleasure and knowledge are the same or not the same not the same oh man of wisdom and would you say that courage differed from pleasure certainly well then let us remember that calicles the aranan says that pleasure and good are the same but that knowledge and courage are not the same either with one another or with the good and what does our friend Socrates or Foxton say does he Ascent to this or not he does not Ascent neither will calicles when he sees himself truly you will admit I

suppose that good and evil Fortune are opposed to each other yes and if they are opposed to each other then like health and disease they exclude one another a man cannot have them both or or be without them both at the same time what do you mean take the case of any bodily Affliction a man may have the complaint in his eyes which is called opalia to be sure but he surely cannot have the same eyes well and sound at the same time certainly not and when he's got rid of his opthalmia has he got

rid of the health of his eyes too is the final result that he gets rid of them both together certainly not that would surely be marvelous and absurd very I suppose that he is affected by them and gets rid of them in turns yes and he may have strength and weakness in the same way by fits yes or swiftness and slowness certainly and does he have and not have good and happiness and their opposites evil and misery in a similar alternation certainly he has if then there be anything which a man has and has not

at the same time clearly that cannot be good and evil do we agree please not to answer without consideration I in entirely agree go back now to our former admissions did you say that to hunger I mean the mere state of hunger was pleasant or painful I said painful but that to eat when you are hungry is Pleasant I know but still the actual hunger is painful am I not right yes and thirst too is painful yes very need I aduce any more instances or would you agree that all wants or desires are painful I

agree and therefore you need not aduce any more instances very good and you would admit that to drink when you are thirsty is Pleasant yes and in the sentence which you have just uttered the word thirsty implies pain yes and the word drinking is expressive of pleasure and of the satisfaction of the want yes there is pleasure in drinking certainly when you are thirsty and in pain yes do you see the inference that Pleasure and Pain are simultaneous when you say that being thirsty you drink for are they not simultaneous and do they not affect

at the same time the same part whether of the Soul or the body which of them is affected cannot be supposed to be of any consequence is not this true it is you said also that no man could have good and evil Fortune at the same time yes I did but you admitted that when in pain a man might also have pleasure clearly then pleasure is not the same as good fortune or pain the same as evil Fortune and therefore the good is not the same as the pleasant I wish I knew Socrates what your

quibbling means you know calicles but you affect not to know well get on and don't keep fooling then you will know what a Wise Acre you are and your admonition of me does not a man cease from his thirst and from his pleasure in drinking at the same time I do not understand what you are saying nay Carles answer if only for our sakes we should like to hear the argument out yes goras but I must complain of the habitual trifling of Socrates he is always arguing about little and unworthy questions what matter your reputation

calicles is not at stake let Socrates argue in his own fashion well then Socrates you shall ask these little pedling questions since gorgas wishes to have them I envy you calices for having been initiated into the great Mysteries before you were initiated into the Lesser I thought that this was not allowable but to return to our argument does not a man cease from thirsting and from the pleasure of drinking at the same moment true and if he is hungry or has any other desire does he not cease from the desire and the pleasure at the

same moment very true then he ceases from Pain and pleasure at the same moment yes but he does not cease from Good and Evil at the same moment as you have admitted do you still adhere to what you said yes I do but what is the inference why my friend the inference is that the good is not the same as the pleasant or the evil the same as the painful there is a sensation of Pleasure and Pain at the same moment but not of Good and Evil for they are different how then can pleasure be

the same as good or pain as evil and I would have you look at the matter in another light which could hardly I think have been considered by you when you identified them are not the good good because they have good present with them as the beautiful are those who have Beauty present with them yes and do you call the fools and cowards good men for you were saying just now that the courageous and the wise are the good would you not say so certainly and did you never see a foolish child rejoicing yes I

have and a foolish man too yes certainly but what is your drift nothing particular if you'll only answer yes I have and did you ever see a sensible man rejoicing or more Sorrowing yes which rejoice and sorrow most the wise or the foolish they are much upon a par I think in that respect enough and did you ever see a coward in battle to be sure and which rejoiced most at the departure of the enemy the coward or the brave I should say most of both or at any rate they rejoiced about equally no matter

then the cowards and not only the brave Rejoice greatly and the foolish so it would seem yes and are only the cowards pained at the approach of their enemies or Are The Brave also pained both are pained and are they equally pained I should imagine that the cowards are more pained and are they not better pleased at the enemy's departure I dare say then are the foolish and the wise and the cowards and the brave all pleased and pained as you are saying in nearly equal degree but are the cowards more pleased and pain than

the brave yes but surely the wise and the brave are the good and the fo and the Cowardly are the bad yes then the good and the bad are pleased and pained in nearly equal degree yes then are the good and bad good and bad in a nearly equal degree or have the bad the advantage both in good and evil that is in having more pleasure and more pain I really do not know what you mean why do you not remember saying that the good were good because good was present with them and the evil

because evil and that Pleasures were goods and pains evils yes I remember and are not these Pleasures or Goods present to those who Rejoice if they do Rejoice certainly then those who Rejoice are good when goods are present with them yes and those who are in pain have evil or sorrow present with them yes and would you still say that the evil are evil by reason of the presence of evil I should then those who Rejoice are good and those who are in pain evil yes the degrees of Good and Evil vary with the degrees

of pleasure and of pain yes have the wise man and the fool the Brave and the coward Joy and Pain in nearly equal degrees or would you say that the coward has more I should say that he has help me then to draw out the conclusion which follows from our admissions for it is good to repeat and review what is good twice and Thrice over as they say both the wise man and the brave man we allow to be good yes and the foolish man and the coward to be evil certainly and he who has

Joy is good yes and he who is in pain is evil certainly the good and evil both have joy and pain but perhaps the evil has more of them yes then must we not infer that the bad man is as good and bad as the good or perhaps even better is not this a further inference which follows equally with the proceeding from the assertion that the good and the pleasant are the same can this be denied galac I have been listening and making admissions to you Socrates and I remark that if a person grants you

anything in play you like a child want to keep hold and will not give it back but do you really suppose that I or any other human being denies that some Pleasures are good and others bad alas calicles how unfair you are you certainly treat me as if I were a child sometimes saying one thing and then another as if you were meaning to deceive me and yet I thought at first that you were my friend and would not have deceived me if you could have helped but I see that I was mistaken and now

I suppose that I must make the best of a bad business as they said of old and take what I can get out of you well then as I understand you to say I may assume that some Pleasures are good and others evil yes the beneficial are good and the hurtful are evil to be sure and the beneficial are those which do some good and the hurtful are those which do some evil yes take for example the bodily pleasures of eating and drinking which we were just now mentioning you mean to say that those which

promote health or any other bodily Excellence are good and their opposites evil certainly and in the same way there are good pains and there are evil pains to be sure and ought we not to choose and use the good pleasures and pains certainly but not the evil clearly because if you remember polus and I have agreed that all our actions are to be done for the sake of the good and will you agree with us in saying that the good is the end of all our actions and that all our actions are to be done

for the sake of the good and not the good for the sake of them well will you add a third vote to R2 I will then pleasure like everything else is to be sought for the sake of that which is good and not that which is good for the sake of pleasure to be sure but can every man choose what Pleasures are good and what are evil or must he have art or knowledge of them in detail he must have art Let Me Now remind you of what I was saying to gorgius and polus I

was saying as you will not have forgotten that there were some processes which aim only at pleasure and know nothing of a better and worse and there are other processes which know good and evil and I considered that cookery which I do not call an art but only an experience was of the former class which is concerned with pleasure and that the art of medicine was of the class which is concerned with the good and now by the god of friendship I must beg you calicles not to Gest or to imagine that I am jesting

with you do not answer at random and contrary to your real opinion for you'll observe that we are arguing about the way of human life and to a man who has any sense at all what question can be more serious than this whether he should follow after that way of life to which you exalt me and act what you call the manly part of speaking in the assembly and cultivating rhetoric and engaging in public affairs according to the principle now in Vogue or whether he should pursue the life of philosophy and in what the latter

way differs from the former but perhaps we had better first try to distinguish them as I did before and when we have come to an agreement that they are distinct we may proceed to consider in what they differ from one another and which of them we should choose perhaps however you do not even now understand what I mean no I do not then I will explain myself more clearly seeing that you and I have agreed that there is such a thing as good and that there is such a thing as pleasure and that pleasure is

not the same as good and that the pursuit and process of acquisition of the one that is pleasure is different from the pursuit and process of acquisition of the other which is good I wish that you would tell me whether you agree with me thus far or not do you agree I do then I will proceed and ask whether you also agree with me and whether you you think that I spoke the truth when I further said to gorgius and polus that cookery in my opinion is only an experience and not an art at all

and that's whereas medicine is an art and attends to the nature and Constitution of the patient and has principles of action and reason in each case cookery in attending upon pleasure never regards either the nature or Reason of that pleasure to which she devotes herself but goes straight to her end nor ever considers or calculates anything but works by experience and routine and just preserves the recollection of what she has usually done when producing pleasure and first I would have you consider whether I've proved what I was saying and then whether there are not other

similar processes which have to do with the soul some of them processes of art making a provision for the Soul's highest interest others despising the interest and as in the previous case considering only the pleasure of the soul and how this may be acquired but not considering what Pleasures are good or bad and having no other aim but to afford gratification whether good or bad in my opinion calic there are such processes and this is the sort of thing which I term flattery whether concerned with the body or the soul or whenever employed with a

view to pleasure and without any consideration of Good and Evil and and now I wish that you would tell me whether you agree with us in this notion or whether you differ I do not differ on the contrary I agree for in that way I shall soonest bring the argument to an end and shall oblige my friend ggas and is this notion true of one Soul or of two or more equally true of two or more then a man May Delight a whole assembly and yet have no regard for their true interests yes can you

tell me the Pursuits which Delight mankind or rather if you would prefer let me ask and do you answer which of them belong to the pleasurable class and which of them not in the first place what say you of flute playing does that not appear to be an art which seeks only pleasure calicles and thinks of nothing else I ascent and is not the same true of all similar Arts as for example the art of playing the liar at festivals yes and what do you say of the coral art and of damic poetry are not

they of the same nature do you imagine that kius the son of mes cares about what will tend to the moral Improvement of his hearers or about what will give pleasure to the multitude there can be no mistake about kius Socrates and what do you say of his father meley the heart player did he perform with any view to the good of his hearers could he be said to regard even their pleasure for his singing was an infliction to his audience and of harp playing and dither Amic poetry in general what would you say have

they not been invented holy for the sake of pleasure that is my notion of them and as for the Muse of tragedy that solemn and AUST personage what are her aspirations is all her aim and desire only to give pleasure to The Spectators or does she fight against them and refuse to speak of their Pleasant vices and willingly Proclaim in word and song truths welcome and unwelcome which in your judgment is her character there can be no doubt Socrates that tragedy has her face turned towards pleasure and the gratification of the audience and is not

that sort of thing calicles which we were just now describing as flattery quite true well now suppose that we strip all poetry of song and Rhythm and meter there will remain speech to be sure and this speech is addressed to a crowd of people yes then poetry is a sort of rhetoric true and do not the poets in the theater seem to you to be rhetoricians yes then now we have discovered a sort of rhetoric which is addressed to a crowd of men women and children free men and slaves and this is not much to

our taste for we have described it as having the nature of flattery quite true very good and what do you say of that other rhetoric which addresses the Athenian assembly and the Assemblies of freemen in other states do the rhetoricians appear to you always to aim at what is best and do they seek to improve the citizens by their speeches or are they too like the rest of mankind bent upon giving them pleasure forgetting the public good in the thought of their own interest playing with the people as with children and trying to amuse them

but never considering whether they are better or worse for this I must distinguish there are some who have a real care of the public and what they say While others are such as you describe I am contented with the admission that rhetoric is of two sorts one which is mere flat Y and disgraceful declamation the other which is noble and aims at the training and Improvement of The Souls of the citizens and strives to say what is best whether welcome or unwelcome to the audience but have you ever known such a rhetoric or if you

have and can point out any rhetorician who is of this stamp who is he but indeed I am afraid that I cannot tell you of any such among the orators who are at present living well then can you mention anyone of a former generation who may be said to have improved the Athenians who found them worse and made them better from the day that he began to make speeches for indeed I do not know such a man what did you never hear that theist was a good man and kimon and miltiadis and Pericles who is

just lately dead and whom you heard yourself yes calicles they were good men if as you said at first true virtue consists only in the satisfaction of our desires and those of others but if not and if as we were afterwards compelled to acknowledge the satisfaction of some desires makes us better and of others worse and we ought to gratify the one and not the other and there is an art in distinguishing them can you tell me of any of these Statesmen who did distinguish them no indeed I cannot yet surely calicles if you look

you will find such a one suppose that we just calmly consider whether any of these was such as I have described will not the good man who says whatever he says with a view to the best speak with a reference to some standard and not at random just as all other artists whether the painter the Builder the shipwright or any other look all of them to their own work and do not select and apply at random what they apply but strive to give a definite form to it the artist disposes all things in order and

compels the one part to harmonize and Accord with the other part until he is constructed a regular and systematic ho and this is true of all artists and in the same way the trainers and Physicians of whom we spoke before give order and regularity to the body do you deny this no I am ready to admit it then the house in which order and regularity Prevail is good that in which there is disorder evil yes and the same is true of a ship yes and the same may be said of the human body yes and

what would you say of the soul will the good Soul be that in which disorder is prevalent or that in which there is Harmony and order the latter follows from our previous admissions what is the name which is given to the effect of Harmony and order in the body I suppose that you mean health and strength yes I do and what is the name which you would give to the effect of Harmony and order in the soul try and discover a name for this as well as for the other why not give the name yourself

Socrates well if you had rather that I should I will and you shall say whether you agree with me and if not you shall refute and answer me healthy as I conceive is the name which is given to the regular order of the body whence comes health and every other bodily Excellence is that true or not true and lawful and law are the names which are given to the regular order and action of the soul and these make men lawful and orderly and so we have Temperance and Justice have we not granted and will not

the true rhetorician who is honest and understands his art have his eye fixed upon these in all the words which he addresses to The Souls of men and in all his actions both in what he gives and in what he takes away will not his aim be to implant Justice in The Souls of his citizens and take away Injustice to implant Temperance and take away in Temperance to implant every virtue and take away every Vice do you not agree I agree for what use is there calicles in giving to the body of a sick man

who is in a bad state of health a quantity of the most delightful food or drink or any other Pleasant thing which may be really as bad for him as if you gave him nothing or even worse if rightly estimated is not that true I will not say no to it for in my opinion there is no profit in a man's life if his body is in an evil plight in that case his life also is evil am I not right yes when a man is in health the Physicians will generally allow him to eat

when he is hungry and drink when he is thirsty and to satisfy his desires as he likes but when he is sick they hardly suffer him to satisfy his desires at all even you will admit that yes and does not the same argument hold of the soul my good sir while she is in a bad State and is senseless and intemperate and unjust and Unholy her desires ought to be controlled and she ought to be prevented from doing anything which does not tend to her own Improvement yes such treatment will be better for the soul

herself to be sure and to restrain her from her appetites is to chastise her yes then restraint or chastisement is better for the soul than intemperance or the absence of control which you were just now preferring I do not understand you Socrates and I wish that you would ask someone who does here is a gentleman who cannot endure to be improved or to subject himself to that very chastisement of which the argument speaks I do not heed a word of what you are saying and have only answered hither to out of Civility to gorgas what

are we to do then shall we break off in the middle you shall judge for yourself well but people say that a tail should have a head and not break off in the middle and I should not like to have the argument going about without a head please then to go on a little longer and put the head on how tyrannical you are Socrates I wish that you and your argument would rest or that you would get someone else to argue with you but who else is willing I want to finish the argument well can

you not finish without my help either talking straight on or questioning and answering yourself must I then say with epih harus two men spoke before but now one shall be enough I suppose that there is absolutely no help but if I to carry on the inquiry by myself I will first of all remark that not only I but all of us should have an ambition to know what is true and what is false in this matter for the discovery of the truth is a common good and now I will proceed to argue according to my

own notion but if any of you think that I arrive at conclusions which are untrue you must interpose and refute me for I do not speak from any knowledge of what I am saying I am an Inquirer like yourselves and therefore if my opponent says anything which is of force I shall be the first to agree with him I am speaking on the supposition that the argument ought to be completed but if you think otherwise let us leave off and go our ways I think Socrates that we should not go our ways until you have

completed the argument and this appears to me to be the wish of the rest of the company I myself should very much like to hear what more you have to say I too gorus should have liked to continue the argument with calicles and then I might have given him an ampon in return for his zethus but since you calicles are unwilling to continue I hope that you will listen and interrupt me if I seem to you to be an error and if you refute me I shall not be angry with you as you are with

me but I shall inscribe you as the greatest of benefactors on the tablets of my soul my good fellow never mind me but get on listen to me then while I recapitulate the argument is the pleasant the same as the good not the same calicles and I are agreed about this and is the pleasant to be pursued for the sake of the good or the good for the sake of the pleasant the pleasant is to be pursued for the sake of the good and that is Pleasant at the presence of which we are pleased and

that is good good at the presence of which we are good to be sure and we are good and all good things whatever are good when some virtue is present in us or them that calicles is my conviction but the virtue of each thing whether body or Soul instrument or creature when given to them in the best way comes to them not by chance but as a result of the order and truth and art which are imparted to them am I not right I maintain that I am and it's not the virtue of each thing

dependent on order or Arrangement yes I say and that which makes a thing good is the proper order in hearing in each thing such is my view and is not the soul which has an order of her own better than that which has no order certainly and the Soul which has order is orderly of of course and that which is orderly is temperate assuredly and the temperate soul is good no other answer can I give calicles dear have you any go on my good fellow then I shall proceed to add that if the temperate soul

is the good soul the soul which is in the opposite condition that is the foolish and intemperate is the bad Soul very true and will not the temperate man do do what is proper both in relation to the gods and to men for he would not be temperate if he did not certainly he will do what is proper in his relation to other men he will do what is just and in his relation to the gods he will do what is Holy and he who does what is just and holy must be just and holy

very true and must he not be courageous for the duty of a temperate man is not to follow or to avoid what he ought not but what he ought whether things or men or Pleasures or pains and patiently to endure when he ought and therefore calicles the temperate man being as we have described also just and courageous and holy cannot be other than a perfectly good man nor can the good man do otherwise than well and perfectly whatever he does and he who does well must of necessity be happy and blessed and the evil man

who does evil Miserable Now this latter is he whom you were applauding the intemperate who is the opposite of the temperate such is my position and these things I affirm to be true and if they are true then I further affirm that he who desires to be happy must pursue and practice Temperance and run away from intemperance as fast as his legs will carry him he had better order his life so as not to need punishment but if either he or any of his friends whether a private individual or city are in need of punishment

then Justice must be done and he must suffer punishment if he would be happy this appears to me to be the aim which a man ought to have and towards which he ought to direct all the energies both of himself and of the State acting so that he may have Temperance and Justice present with him and be happy not suffering his lusts to be unrestrained and in The NeverEnding desire satisfy them leading a robber's life such a one is the friend neither of God nor man for he is incapable of communion and he who is

incapable of communion is also incapable of friendship and philosophers tell us calicles that communion and friendship and orderliness and Temperance and Justice bind together Heaven and Earth and Gods and Men and that this universe is therefore called Cosmos or order not disorder or misrule my friend but although you are a philosopher you seem to me never to have observed that geometrical equality is mighty both among Gods and Men you think that you ought to cultivate inequality or excess yes and do not care about geometry well then either the principle that the happy are made Happy

by the possession of justice and Temperance and the miserable miserable by the possession of Vice must be refuted or if it is granted what will be the consequences all the consequences which I drew before calicles and about which you asked me whether I was in Earnest when I said that a man ought to accuse himself and his son and his friend if he did anything wrong and that to this end he should use his rhetoric all those consequences are true and that which you thought that polus was led to admit out of modesty is true

viz that to do Injustice if more disgraceful than to suffer is in that degree worse and the other position which according to polus gordius admitted out of modesty that he who would truly be a rhetorician ought to be just and have a knowledge of justice has also turned out to be true and now these things being as we have said let us proceed in the next place to consider whether you were right in throwing in my teeth that I'm unable to help myself or any of my friends or Kinsmen or to save them in the

extremity of danger and that I am in the power of another Like An Outlaw to whom anyone may do what he likes he may box my ears which was a brave saying of yours or take away my goods or banish me or even do his worst and kill me a condition which as you say is the height of disgrace my answer to you is one which has been already often repeated but may as well be repeated once more I tell you calicles that to be boxed on the ears wrongfully is not the worst evil which

can befall a man nor to have my purse or my body cut open but that to Smite and slay me and mine wrongfully is far more disgraceful and more evil I and to despoil and enslave and pillage or in any way at all to wrong me and mine is far more disgraceful and evil to the doer of the wrong than to me who am the sufferer these truths which have been already set forth as I State them in the previous discussion would seem now to have been fixed and riveted by us if I may use

an expression which is certainly bold in Words which are like bonds of iron and adamant and unless you or some other still more enterprising hero shall break them there is no possibility of denying what I say for my position has always been that I myself am ignorant how these things are but that I have never met anyone who could say otherwise any more than you can and not appear ridiculous this is my position still and if what I'm saying is true and Injustice is the greatest of evils to the doer of Injustice and yet there

is if possible a greater than this greatest of evils in an unjust man not suffering retribution what is that defense of which the want will make a man truly ridiculous must not the defense be one which will avert the greatest of human evils and will not the worst of all defenses be that with which a man is unable to defend himself or his family or his friends and next will come that which is unable to avert the next greatest evil thirdly that which is unable to avert the third greatest evil and so of other evils

as is the greatness of evil so is the honor of being able to avert them in their several degrees and the disgrace of not being able to avert them am I not right calicles yes quite right seeing then that there are these two evils the doing in in Justice and the suffering Injustice and we affirm that to do Injustice is a greater and to suffer Injustice a lesser Evil by what devices can a man succeed in obtaining the two advantages the one of not doing and the other of not suffering Injustice must he have the

power or only the will to obtain them I mean to ask whether a man will escape Injustice if he has only the will to escape or or must he have provided himself with the power he must have provided himself with the power that is clear and what do you say of doing Injustice is the will only sufficient and will that prevent him from doing Injustice or must he have provided himself with power and art and if he have not studied and practiced will he be unjust still surely you might say calicles whether you think that

polus and I were right in admitting the conclusion that no one does wrong voluntarily but that all do wrong against their will granted Socrates if you will only have done then as would appear power and art have to be provided in order that we may do no Injustice certainly and what art will protect us from suffering Injustice if not holy yet as far as possible I want to know whether you agree with me for I think that such an art is the art of one who is either a ruler or even Tyrant himself or the

equal and companion of the ruling power well said Socrates and pleased to observe how ready I am to praise you when you talk sense think and tell me whether you would approve of another view of mine to me every man appears to be most the friend of him who is most like him like to like as ancient sages say would you not agree to this I should but when the Tyrant is rude and uneducated he may be expected to fear anyone who is his Superior in virtue and will never be able to be perfectly friendly

with him that is true neither will he be the friend of anyone who is greatly his inferior for the Tyrant will despise him and will never seriously regard him as a friend that again is true then the only friend worth mentioning whom the tyrants can have will be one who is of the same character and has the same likes and dislikes and is at the same time willing to be subject and subservient to him he is the man who will have power in the state and no one will injure him with impunity is not that

so yes and if a young man begins to ask how he may become great and formidable this would seem to be the way he will accustom himself from his youth upward to feel sorrow and joy on the same occasions as his master and will contrive to be as like him as possible yes and in this way he will have accomplished as you and your friends would say the end of becoming a great man and not suffering injury very true but will he also escape from doing injury must not the very opposite be true if he

is to be like the tyrant in his Injustice and to have influence with him will he not rather contrive to do as much wrong as possible and not be punished true and by the imitation of his master and by the power which he thus acquires will not his soul become bad and corrupted and will not this be the greatest evil to him you always contrive somehow or other Socrates to invert everything do you not know that he who imitates the Tyrant will if he has a mind kill him who does not imitate him and take

away his Goods excellent calicles I am not deaf and I've heard that a great many times from you and from polus and from nearly every man in the city but I wish that you would hear me too I dare say that he will kill him if he has a mind the bad man will kill the good and true and is not that just the provoking thing nay not to a man of sense as the argument shows do you think that all our cares should be directed to prolonging life to the uttermost and to the study

of those Arts which secure us from danger always like that art of rhetoric which saves men in courts of Law and which you advise me to cultivate yes truly and very good at viice too well my friend but what do you think of swimming is that an art of any great pretensions no indeed and yet surely swimming saves a man from death and there are occasions on which he must know how to swim and if you despise the swimmers I will tell you of another and greater art the art of the pilot who not only

Saves The Souls of men but also their bodies and properties from the extremity of danger just like rhetoric yet his art is mod modest and unpresumptuous [Music] this is the payment which he asks in return for so great a boon and he who is the master of the art and has done all this gets out and walks about on the seashore by his ship in an unassuming way for he is able to reflect and is aware that he cannot tell which of his fellow passengers he has benefited and which of them he has injured in

not allowing them to be drowned he knows that they are just the same when he has disembarked them as when they embarked and not a wi better either in their bodies or in their souls and he considers that if a man who is afflicted by great and incurable bodily diseases is only to be pied for having escaped and is in no way benefited by him in having been saved from drowning much less he who has great and incurable diseases not of the body but of the Soul which is the more valuable part of him neither

is life worth having nor of any profit to the bad man whether he be delivered from the sea or the law courts or any other Devourer and so he reflects that such a one had better not live for he cannot live well and this is the reason why the pilot although he is our savior is not usually conceited any more than the engineer who is not at all behind either the general or the pilot or anyone else in his saving power for he sometimes saves whole cities is there any comparison between him and the pleader

if he were to talk calicles in your grandio style he would bury you under a mountain of words declaring and insisting that we ought all of us to be engine makers and that no other profession is worth thinking about he would have plenty to say nevertheless you despise him and his art and sneeringly call him an engine maker and you will not allow your daughters to marry his son or marry your son to his daughters and yet on your principle what Justice or Reason is there in your refusal what right have you to despise the

engine maker and the others whom I was just now mentioning I know that you will say I am better and better born but if the better is not what I say and virtue consists only in a man saving himself and his whatever may be his character then your censure of the engine maker and of the physician and of the other Arts of Salvation is ridiculous oh my friend I want you to see that the noble and the good may possibly be something different from saving and being saved may not he who is truly a man

cease to care about living a certain time he knows as women say that no man can escape fate and therefore he is not fond of life he leaves all that with God and considers in what way he can best spend his appointed term whether by assimilating himself to the Constitution under which he lives as you at this moment have to consider how you may become as like as possible to the Athenian people if you mean to be in their good graces and to have power in the state whereas I want you to think and see

whether this is for the interest of either of us I would not have us risk that which is dearest on the acquisition of this power like the thesan enchantresses who as they say bring down the Moon from Heaven at the risk of their own poition but if you suppose that any man will show you the art of becoming great in the city and yet not conforming yourself to the ways of the city whether for better or worse then I can only say that you mistaken calicles for he who would deserve to be the true natural

friend of the Athenian Deus I or of pamp's darling who is called after them must be by Nature like them and not an imitator only then he who will make you most like them will make you as you desire a Statesman and orator for every man is pleased when he is spoken to in his own language and spirit and dislikes any other but perhaps you sweet calicles may be of another mind what do you say somehow or other your words Socrates always appear to me to be good words and yet like the rest of the

world I am not quite convinced by them the reason is calicles that the love of deus which abides in your soul is an adversary to me but I dare say that if we recur to these same matters and consider them more thoroughly you may be convinced for all that please then to remember that there are two processes of training all things including body and soul in the one as we said we treat them with a view to pleasure and in the other with a view to the highest good and then we do not indulge but

resist them was not that the distinction which we drew very true and the one which had pleasure in view was just a vulgar flattery was not that another of our conclusions be it so if you will have it and the other had in view the greatest Improvement of that which was ministered to with body or Soul quite true and must we not have the same end in view in the treatment of our City and citizens must we not try and make them as good as possible for we have already discovered that there is no use

in imparting to them any other good unless the mind of those who are to have the good with money or office or any other sort of power be gentle and good shall we say that yes certainly if you like well then if you and I calicles were intending to set about some public business and were advising one another to undertake buildings such as walls dock or temples of the largest size ought we not to examine ourselves first as to whether we know or do not know the art of building and who taught us would not

that be necessary calicles true in the second place we should have to consider whether we had ever constructed any private house either of our own or for our friends and whether this building of ours was a success or not and if upon consideration we found that we had had good and eminent Masters and had been successful in constructing many fine buildings not only with their assistance but without them by our own unaided skill in that case Prudence would not dissuade us from proceeding to the construction of Public Works but if we had no master to

show and only a number of worthless buildings or none at all then surely it would be ridiculous in us to attempt public works or to advise one another to undertake them is not this true well certainly and does not the same hold in all other cases if you and I were Physicians and were advising one another that we were competent to practice as state Physicians should I not ask about you and would you not ask about me well but how about Socrates himself has he good health and was anyone else ever known to be cured

by him with a slave or Freeman and I should make the same inquiries about you and if we arrive to the conclusion that no one whether citizen or stranger man or woman had ever been any the better for the medical skill of either of us then by Heaven calic what an absurdity to think that we or any human being should be so silly as to set up as state Physicians and advise others like ourselves to do the same without having first practiced in private whether successfully or not and acquired experience of the art is not

this as they say to begin with the big jar when you are learning The Potter's art which is a foolish thing true and now my friend as you are already beginning to be a public character and are admonishing and reproaching me for not being one suppose that we ask a few questions of one another tell me then Cal how about making any of the citizens better was there ever a man who was once vicious or unjust or intemperate or foolish and became by the help of cicles good and Noble was there ever such a man

whether citizen or stranger slave or Freeman tell me Cal if a person were to ask these questions of you what would you answer whom would you say that you had improved by your conversation there may have been good deeds of this sort which were done by you as a private person before you came forward in public why will you not answer you are contentious Socrates N I ask you not from a love of contention but because I really want to know in what way you think that Affairs should be administered among us whether when you

come to the administration of them you have any other aim but the Improvement of the citizens have we not already admitted many times over that such is the duty of a public man nay we have surely said so for if you will not answer for yourself I must answer for you but if this is what the good man ought to affect for the benefit of his own State allow me to recall to you the names of Those whom you were just now mentioning Pericles and kimon and miltiadis and theistic and ask whether you still think

that they were good citizens I do but if they were good then clearly each of them must have made the citizens better instead of worse yes and therefore when Pericles first began to speak in the assembly the Athenians were not so good as when he spoke last very likely n my friend likely is not the word for if he was a good citizen the inference is certain and what difference does that make none only I should like further to know whether the Athenians are supposed to have been made better by Pericles or on the contrary

to have been corrupted by him for I hear that he was the first who gave the people pay and made them idle and cowardly and encouraged them in the love of talk and money you heard that Socrates from the laiz set who bruise their ears but what I'm am going to tell you now is Not Mere hearsay but well known both to you you and me that at first Pericles was glorious and his character unimpeached by any verdict of the Athenians this was during the time when they were not so good yet afterwards when they

had been made good and gentle by him at the very end of his life they convicted him of theft and almost put him to death clearly under the notion that he was a malactor well but how does that prove pericle Badness why surely you would say that he was a bad manager of ass or horses or oxen who had received them originally neither kicking nor butting nor biting him and implanted in them all these Savage tricks would he not be a bad manager of any animals who received them gentle and made them fiercer than they

were when he received them what do you say I will do you the favor of saying yes and will you also do me the favor of saying whether a man is an animal certainly he is and was not Pericles a shepherd of men yes and if he was a good political Shepherd ought not the animals who were his subjects as we were just now acknowledging to have become more just and not more unjust quite true and are not just men gentle as Homer says or are you of another mind I agree and yet he really

did make them more Savage than he received them and their savageness was shown towards himself which she must have been very far from Desiring do you want me to agree with you yes yes if I seem to you to speak the truth granted then and if they were more Savage must they not have been more unjust and inferior granted again then upon this view Pericles was not a good Statesman that is upon your view nay the view is yours after what you have admitted take the case of kimon again did not the very persons whom

he was serving ostracize him in order that they might not hear his voice for 10 years and they did just the same to theistic adding the penalty of Exile and they voted that miltiadis the hero of marathon should be thrown into the pit of death and he was only saved by the pranis and yet if they had been really good men as you say these things would never have happened to them for the good charioteers are not those who at first keep their place and then when they have broken in their horses and themselves become

better charioteers are thrown out that is not the way either enant carering or in any profession what do you think I should think not well but if so the truth is as I have said already that in the Athenian State no one has ever shown himself to be a good Statesman you admitted that this was true of our present Statesmen but not true of former ones and you prefer them to the others yet they have turned out to be no better than our present ones and therefore if they were rhetoricians they did not use the

true art of rhetoric or a flattery or they would not have fallen out of favor but surely Socrates no living man ever came near any one of them in his performances oh my dear friend I say nothing against them regarded as the serving men of the state and I do think that they were certainly more serviceable than those who are living now and better able to gratify the wishes of the state but as to transforming those desires and not allowing them to have their way and using the powers which they had whether of persuasion or

of force in the Improvement of their fellow citizens which is the prime object of the truly good citizen I do not see that in these respects they were a wit Superior to our present Statesmen although I do admit that they were more clever at providing ships and walls and docks and all that you and I have a ridiculous way for during the whole time that we are arguing we're always going round and round to the same point and constantly misunderstanding one another if I'm not mistaken you have admitted and acknowledged more than once that there

are two kinds of operations which have to do with the body and two which have to do with the soul one of the two is ministerial and if our bodies are hungry provides food for them and if they are thirsty gives them drink or if they are cold supplies them with garments blankets shoes and all that they crave I use the same images as before intentionally in order that you may understand me the better the purveyor of the Articles May provide them either wholesale or retail or he may be the maker of any of them

the baker or the Cook or the weaver or the shoe maker or The Courier and in doing so being such as he is he is naturally supposed by himself and everyone to minister to the body for none of them know that there is another art an art of gymnastic and Medicine which is the true minister of the body and ought to be the mistress of all the rest and to use their results according to the knowledge which she has and they have not of the real good or bad effects of meats and drinks on the

body all other Arts which have to do with the body are servile and menial and illiberal and Gymnastic and Medicine are as they ought to be their Mistresses now when I say that all this is equally true of the Soul you seem at first to know and understand and Ascent to my words and then a little little while afterwards you come repeating has not the state had good and Noble citizens and when I ask you who they are you reply seemingly quite in Earnest as if I had asked who are or have been good trainers

and you had replied theum the Baker and metus who wrote The Sicilian cookery book sambus The ventner these are ministers of the body First Rate in their art for the first makes admirable loaves the second excellent dish and the third Capital wine to me these appear to be the exact parallel of the Statesman whom you mention now you would not be altogether pleased if I said to you my friend you know nothing of gymnastics those of whom you are speaking to me are only the ministers and pveers of luxury who have no good or Noble

Notions of their art and may very likely be filling and fattening men's bodies and gaining their approval although the result is that they lose their original flesh in the long run and become thinner than they were before and yet they in their Simplicity will not attribute their diseases and loss of Flesh to their entertainers but when in after years the unhealthy surfit brings the attendant penalty of disease he who happens to be near them at the time and offers them advice is accused and blamed by them and if they could they would do him some

harm while they proceed to eulogize the men who have been the real authors of the mischief and that calicles is just what you are now doing you praise the men who feasted the citizens and satisfied their desires and people say that they have made the city great not seeing that the swollen and ulcerated condition of the state is to be attributed to these Elder Statesmen for they have filled the City full of harbors and docks and walls and revenues and all that and have left no room for justice and temperance and when the crisis of

the disorder comes the people will blame the advisers of the hour and applaud theistic and kimon and Pericles who are the real authors of their calamities and if you not careful they may assale you and my friend alabes when they are losing not only their new acquisitions but also their original possessions not that you are the authors of these misfortunes of theirs although you may perhaps be accept iies to them a great piece of work is always being made as I see and am told now as of old about our Statesmen when the state treats

any of them as malactor I observe that there's a great uproar and indignation at the supposed wrong which is done to them after all their many services to the state that they should unjustly perish so the tale runs but the cry is all a lie for no Statesman ever could be unjustly put to death by the city of which he is the head the case of the professed Statesman is I believe very much like that of the professed sophist for the sophists although they are wise men are nevertheless guilty of a strange piece of folly

professing to be teachers of virtue they will often accuse their Disciples of wronging them and defrauding them of their pay and showing no gratitude for Services yet what can be more absurd than that men who have become just and good and whose Injustice has been taken away from them and who have had justice implanted in them by their teachers should act unjustly by reason of the Injustice which is not in them can anything be more irrational my friends than this you calicles compel me to be a mob orator because you will not answer and you

are the man who cannot speak unless there is someone to answer I suppose that I can just now at any rate the speeches which I making a long enough because you refuse to answer me but I adure you by the god of friendship my good sir do tell me whether there does not appear to you to be a great inconsistency in saying that you have made a man good and then blaming him for being bad yes it appears so to me do you never hear our professors of Education speaking in this in consistent manner yes

but why talk of men who are good for nothing I would rather say why talk of men who profess to be rulers and declare that they are devoted to the Improvement of the city and nevertheless upon occasion de claim against the utter vess of the city do you think that there is any difference between one and the other my good friend the sophist and the rhetorician as I was saying to polus are the same or nearly the same but you ignorantly fancy that rhetoric is a perfect thing and sophistry a thing to be despised whereas

the truth is that sophistry is as much Superior to rhetoric as legislation is to the practice of law or gymnastic to Medicine the orators and sophists as I'm inclined to think are the only class who cannot complain of the Mischief ensuing to themselves from that which they teach others without in the same breath accusing themselves of having done no good to Those whom they profess to benefit is not this a fact certainly it is if they were right in saying that they make men better then they are the only class who can afford to leave

their remuneration to those who have been benefited by them whereas if a man has been benefited in any other way if for example he has been taught to run by a trainer he might possibly defraud him of his pay if the trainer left the matter to him and made no agreement with him that he should receive money as soon as he had given him the utmost speed for not because of Any deficiency of speed do men act unjustly but by reason of Injustice very true and he who removes Injustice can be in no danger of

being treated unjustly he alone can safely leave the honorarium to his pupils if he be really able to make them good am I not right yes then we have found the reason why there is no dishonor in a man receiving pay who is called in to advise about building or any other art yes we have found the reason but when the point is how a man may become best himself and best govern his family and state then to say that you will give no advice Gratis is held to be dishonorable true and why because only

such benefits call forth a desire to requite them and there is evidence that a benefit has been conferred when the benefactor receives a return otherwise not is this true it is then to which service of the state do you invite me determine for me am I to be the physician of the state who will strive and struggle to make the Athenians as good as possible or am I to be the servant and flatterer of the state speak out my good friend freely and fairly as you did at first and ought to do again and tell

me your entire mind I say then that you should be the servant of the state the flatterer well sir that is a noble invitation the Myan Socrates or or what you please for if you refuse the con consquences will be do not repeat the old story that he who likes will kill me and get my money for then I shall have to repeat the old answer that he will be a bad man and will kill the good and that the money will be of no use to him but that he will wrongly use that which

he wrongly took and if wrongly basely and if basely hurtfully how confident you are Socrates that you will never come to harm you seem to think that you are living in another country and can never be brought into a court of justice as you very likely may be brought by some miserable and mean person then I must indeed be a fool calicles if I do not know that in the Athenian State any man may suffer anything and if I am brought to trial and incur the dangers of which you speak he will be a villain

who brings me to trial of that I'm very sure for no good man would accuse the innocent nor shall I be surprised if I'm put to Death Shall I tell you why I anticipate this by all means I think that I am the only or almost the only Athenian living who practices the true art of politics I am the only politician of my time now seeing that when I speak my words are not uttered with any view of gaining favor and that I look to what is best and not to what is most Pleasant having

no mind to use those arts and Graces which you recommend I shall have nothing to say in the Justice Court and you might argue with me as I was arguing with polus I shall be tried just as a physician would be tried in a court of little boys at the indictment of the cook what would he reply under such circumstances if someone were to accuse him saying oh my boys many evil things has this man done to you he is the death of you especially of the younger ones among you cutting and burning and starving

and suffocating you until you know not what to do he gives you the bitterest potions and compels you to hunger and thirst how unlike the variety of Meats and Sweets on which I feasted you what do you suppose that the physician would be able to reply when he found himself in such a predicament if he told the truth he could say all these evil things my boys I did for your health and then would there not just be a clamor among a jury like that how they would cry out I dare say would he not

be utterly at a loss for a reply he certainly would and I too shall be treated in the same way as I well know if I am brought before the court for I shall not be able to rehearse to the people the pleasures which I have procured for them and which although I'm not disposed to Envy either the procurers or enjoyers of them are deemed by them to be benefits and advantages and if anyone says that I corrupt young men and perplex their minds or that I speak evil of old men and use bitter words

towards them whether in private or public it is useless for me to reply as I truly might all this I do for the sake of justice and with a view to your interest my judges and to nothing else and therefore there is no saying what may happen to me and do you think Socrates that a man who is thus defenseless is in a good position yes calicles it if he have that defense which as you have often acknowledged he should have if he be his own defense and have never said or done anything wrong either

in respect of gods or men and this has been repeatedly acknowledged by us to be the best sort of defense and if anyone could convict me of inability to defend myself or others after this sort I should blush for shame whether I was convicted before many or before few or by myself alone and if I died from want of ability to do so that would indeed grieve me but if I died because I have no powers of flattery or rhetoric I'm very sure that you would not find me repining at death for no man who

is not an utter fool and coward is afraid of death itself but he is afraid of doing wrong for to go to the world below having one's Soul full of Injustice Justice is the last and worst of all evils and in proof of what I say if you have no objection I should like to tell you a story very well proceed and then we shall have done listen then as story tellers say to a very pretty tale which I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as a fable only but which as I

believe is a true tale for I mean to speak the truth Homer tells us how Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto divided the empire which they inherited from their father now in the days of Kronos there existed a law respecting the destiny of man which has always been and still continues to be in heaven that he who has lived all his life in Justice and Holiness shall go when he is dead to the islands of the blessed and dwell there in perfect happiness out of the reach of evil but that he who has lived unjustly and

impiously shall go to the house of Vengeance and Punishment which is called Tartarus and in the time of cronis and even quite lately in the reign of Zeus the Judgment was given on the very day on which the men were to Die the judges were alive and the men were alive and the consequence was that the judgments were not well given then Pluto and the authorities from the islands of the Blessed came to Zeus and said that the souls found their way to the wrong places Zeus said I shall put a stop to this the

judgments are not well given because the persons who are judged have their clothes on for they are alive and there are many who having evil souls are Apparel in Fair bodies or encased in wealth or Rank and when the day of judgment arrives numerous Witnesses come forward and testify on their behalf that they have lived righteously the judges are AED by them and they themselves too have their clothes on when judging their eyes and ears and their whole bodies are interposed as a veil before their own Souls all this is a hindrance to them there

are the clothes of the judges and the clothes of the judged what is to be done I will tell you in the first place I will deprive men of the forn knowledge of death which they possess at present this power which they have Prometheus has already received my orders to take from them in the second place they shall be entirely stripped before they are judged for they shall be judged when they are dead and the judged too shall be naked that is to say dead he with his naked Soul shall pierce into the other naked

souls and they shall die suddenly and be deprived of all their Kindred and leave their Brave attire strewn upon the Earth conducted in this manner manner the judgment will be just I knew all about the matter before any of you and therefore I have made my sons judges two from Asia MOS and rhadamanthus and one from Europe IUS and these when they are dead shall give judgment in the meadow at The Parting of the ways whence the two roads lead one to the islands of the blessed and the other to Tartarus radamanthys shall judge those

who come from Asia and IUS those who come from Europe and to Minos I shall give the Primacy and he shall hold a court of appeal in case either of the two others are in any doubt then the Judgment respecting the last journey of men will be as just as possible from this tale calicles which I have heard and believe I draw the following inferences death if I am right is in the first place the separation from one another of two things soul and body nothing else and after they are separated they retain their several

Natures as in life the body keeps the same habit and the results of treatment or accident are distinctly visible in it for example he who by nature or training or both was a tall man while he was alive will remain as he was after he is dead and the fat man will remain fat and so on and the dead man who in life had a fancy to have flowing hair will have flowing hair and if he was marked with the whip and had the prince of the scourge or of wounds in him when he was

alive you might see the same in the dead body and if his limbs were broken or misshapen when he was alive the same appearance would be visible in the dead and in a word whatever was the habit of the body during the life would be distinguishable after death either perfectly or in a great measure and for a certain time and I should imagine that this is equally true of the Soul cicles when a man is stripped of the body all the natural or acquired affections of the Soul are laid open to view and when they

come to the judge as those from Asia come to radamanthys he places them near him and inspects them quite impartially not knowing who the soul is perhaps he may lay hands on the soul of the great king or of some other king or potentate who has no soundness in him but his soul is marked with the whip and is full of the prints and scars of purries and crimes with which each action has Stained him and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture and has no straightness because he has lived without truth him rhadamanthus

beholds full of all deformity and disproportion which is caused by license and luxury and insolence and incontinence and dispatches him him ignominiously to his prison and there he undergoes the punishment which he deserves now the proper office of punishment is twofold he who is rightly punished ought either to become better and profit by it or he ought to be made an example to his fellows that they may see what he suffers and fear and become better those who are improved when they are punished by gods and men are those whose sins are curable and they

are improved as in the world so also in another by pain and suffering for there is no other way in which they can be delivered from their evil but they who have been guilty of the worst crimes and are incurable by reason of their crimes are made examples for as they are incurable the time has passed at which they can receive any benefit they get no good themselves but others get good when they behold them enduring forever the most terrible and painful and fearful sufferings as the penalty of their sins there they are hanging up

as examples in the prison House of the world below a spectacle and a warning to all unrighteous men who come thither and among them as I confidently affirm will be found arilus if polus truly reports of him and any other Tyrant who is like him of these fearful examples most as I believe are taken from the class of tyrants and kings and potentates and public men for they are the authors of the greatest and most impious crimes because they have the power and Homer witnesses to the truth of this for they are always Kings and

potentates whom he has described as suffering Everlasting punishment in the world below such were Tantalus and Copus and titius but no one has ever described the sites or any private person who was a villain as suffering Everlasting punishment or as incurable to commit the worst crimes as I am inclined to think was not in his power and he was happier than those who had the power no calicles the very bad men come from the class of those who have power and yet in that very class there may arise good men and worthy of all admiration

they are for where there is great power to do wrong to live and to die justly is a hard thing and greatly to be praised and few there are who attain to this such good and true men however there have been and will be again at Athens and in other states who have fulfilled their trust righteously and there is one who is quite famous all over helis aristedes the son of lysimachus but in general great men are also bad my friend as I was saying Romanus when he gets a soul of the bad kind knows

nothing about him neither who he is nor who his parents are he knows only that he has got hold of a villain and seeing this he stamps him as curable or incurable and sends him away to Tartarus whether he goes and receives his proper recompense or again he looks with admiration on the soul of some just one who has lived in Holiness and Truth he may have been a private man or not and I should say calicles that he is most likely to have been a philosopher who has done his own work and not troubled

himself with the doings of other men in his lifetime him rhadamanthus sends to the islands of the Blessed IUS does the same and they both have scepters and judge but Minos alone has a golden scepter and is seated looking on as odyusa declares that he saw him holding a scepter of gold and giving laws to the dead now I calicles am persuaded of the truth of these things and I consider how I shall present my soul whole and undefiled before the judge in that day renouncing the honors at which the world aims I desire only

to know the truth and to live as well as I can and when I die to die as well as I can and to the outmost of my power I exort all other men to do the same and in return for your exhortation of me I exhort you also to take part in the great combat which is the combat of life and greater than every other Earthly conflict and I retort your reproach of me and say that you will not be able to help yourself when the day of trial and Judgment of which I was

speaking comes upon you you will go before the judge the son of EA and when he's got you in his grip and is carrying you off you will gape and your head will swim round just as mine would in the courts of this world and very likely someone will shamefully box you on the ears and put upon you any sort of insult perhaps this may appear to you to be only an old wife's tale which you will condemn and there might be reason in your condemning such Tales if by searching we could find out anything

better or truer but now you see that you and polus and gorgus who are the three wisest of the Greeks of our day are not able to show that we ought to live any life which does not profit in another world as well as in this and of all that has been said nothing remains unshaken but the saying that to do Injustice is more to be avoided than to suffer Injustice and that the reality and not the appearance of vertue is to be followed above all things as well as in public as in private life

and that when anyone has been wrong in anything he is to be chastised and the next best thing to a man being just is that he should become just and be chastised and punished also that he should avoid all flattery of himself as well as of others of the few or of the many and rhetoric and any other art should be used by him and all his actions should be done always with a view to Justice f me then and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and after death as the

argument shows and never mind if someone despises you as a fool and insults you if he has a mind let him strike you by Zeus and do you be of good cheer and do not mind the insulting blow for you will never come to any harm in the practice of virtue if you are a really good and true man when we have practiced virtue together we will apply ourselves to politics if that seems desirable or we will advise about whatever else may seem good to us for we shall be better able to judge then in

our present condition we ought not to give ourselves hes for even on the most important subjects we are always changing our minds so utterly stupid are we let us then take the argument as our guide which which has revealed to us that the best way of life is to practice Justice and every virtue in life and death this way let us go and in this exhort all men to follow not in the way to which you trust and in which you exhort me to follow you for that way calicles is nothing worth [Music] [Music] [Music]

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