Dialogues

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 our superior in this matter of food? Callicles Certainly. Socrates Either, then, he will have a larger share of the meats and drinks, because he is better, or he will have the distribution of all of them by reason of his authority, but he will not expend or make use of a larger share of them on his own person, or if he does, he will be punished;⁠—his share will exceed that of some, and be less than that of others, and if he be the weakest of all, he being the best of all will have the smallest share of all, Callicles:⁠—am I not right, my friend? Callicles You talk about meats and drinks and physicians and other nonsense; I am not speaking of them. Socrates Well, but do you admit that the wiser is the better? Answer “Yes” or “No.” Callicles Yes. Socrates And ought not the better to have a larger share? Callicles Not of meats and drinks. Socrates I understand: then, perhaps, of coats⁠—the skilfullest weaver ought to have the largest coat, and the greatest number of them, and go about clothed in the best and finest of them? Callicles Fudge about coats! Socrates Then the skilfullest and best in making shoes ought to have the advantage in shoes; the shoemaker, clearly, should walk about in the largest shoes, and have the greatest number of them? Callicles Fudge about shoes! What nonsense are you talking? Socrates Or, if this is not your meaning, perhaps you would say that the wise and good and true husbandman should actually have a larger share of seeds, and have as much seed as possible for his own land? Callicles How you go on, always talking in the same way, Socrates! Socrates Yes, Callicles, and also about the same things. Callicles Yes, by the Gods, you are literally always talking of cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if this had to do with our argument. Socrates But why will you not tell me in what a man must be superior and wiser in order to claim a larger share; will you neither accept a suggestion, nor offer one? Callicles I have already told you. In the first place, I mean by superiors not cobblers or cooks, but wise politicians who understand the administration of a state, and who are not only wise, but also valiant and able to carry out their designs, and not the men to faint from want of soul. Socrates See now, most excellent Callicles, how different my charge against you is from that which you bring against me, for you reproach me with always saying the same; but I reproach you with never saying the same about the same things, for at one time you were defining the better and the superior to be the stronger, then again as the wiser, and now you bring forward a new notion; the superior and the better are now declared by you to be the more courageous: I wish, my good friend, that you would tell me, once for all, whom you affirm to be the better and superior, and in what they are better? Callicles I have already told you that I mean those who are wise and courageous in the administration of a state⁠—they ought to be the rulers of their states, and justice consists in their having more than their subjects. Socrates But whether rulers or subjects will they or will they not have more than themselves, my friend? Callicles What do you mean? Socrates I mean that every man is his own ruler; but perhaps you think that there is no necessity for him to rule himself; he is only required to rule others? Callicles What do you mean by his “ruling over himself”? Socrates A simple thing enough; just what is commonly said, that a man should be temperate and master of himself, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions. Callicles What innocence! you mean those fools⁠—the temperate? Socrates Certainly:⁠—anyone may know that to be my meaning. Callicles Quite so, Socrates; and they are really fools, for how can a man be happy who is the servant of anything? On the contrary, I plainly assert, that he who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, and not to chastise them; but when they have grown to their greatest he should have courage and intelligence 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 not he be in a miserable plight whom the reputation of justice and temperance hinders from giving more to his friends than to his enemies, even though he be a ruler in