I believe, on my soul, you absolutely cannot ever stop talking of cobblers and fullers, cooks and doctors, as though our discussion had to do with them.

Then will you tell me in what things the superior and wiser man has a right to the advantage of a larger share? Or will you neither put up with a suggestion from me nor make one yourself?

Why, I have been making mine for sometime past. First of all, 491b by “the superior” I mean, not shoemakers or cooks, but those who are wise as regards public affairs and the proper way of conducting them, and not only wise but manly, with ability to carry out their purpose to the full; and who will not falter through softness of soul.

Do you perceive, my excellent Callicles, that your count against me is not the same as mine against you? For you say I am ever repeating the same things, and reproach me with it, whereas I charge you, on the contrary, with never saying the same thing on the same subject; 491c but at one moment you defined the better and superior as the stronger, and at another as the wiser, and now you turn up again with something else: “the manlier” is what you now tell us is meant by the superior and better. No, my good friend, you had best say, and get it over, whom you do mean by the better and superior, and in what sphere.

But I have told you already: men of wisdom and manliness in public affairs. 491d These are the persons who ought to rule our cities, and justice means this—that these should have more than other people, the rulers than the ruled.

How so? Than themselves, my friend?

What do you mean?

I mean that every man is his own ruler; or is there no need of one’s ruling oneself, but only of ruling others?

What do you mean by one who rules himself?

Nothing recondite; merely what most people mean—one who is temperate and self-mastering, ruler of the pleasures and desires 491e that are in himself.

You will have your pleasantry! You mean “the simpletons” by “the temperate.”

How so? Nobody can fail to see that I do not mean that.

Oh, you most certainly do, Socrates. For how can a man be happy if he is a slave to anybody at all? No, natural fairness and justice, I tell you now quite frankly, is this—that he who would live rightly should let his desires be 492aas strong as possible and not chasten them, and should be able to minister to them when they are at their height by reason of his manliness and intelligence, and satisfy each appetite in turn with what it desires. But this, I suppose, is not possible for the many; whence it comes that they decry such persons out of shame, to disguise their own impotence, and are so good as to tell us that licentiousness is disgraceful, thus enslaving—as I remarked before—the better type of mankind; and being unable themselves to procure 492b achievement of their pleasures they praise temperance and justice by reason of their own unmanliness. For to those who started with the advantage of being either kings’ sons or able by their own parts to procure some authority or monarchy or absolute power, what in truth could be fouler or worse than temperance and justice in such cases? Finding themselves free to enjoy good things, with no obstacle in the way, they would be merely imposing on themselves a master in the shape of the law, the talk and the rebuke of the multitude. Or how could they fail to be sunk in wretchedness 492c by that “fairness” of justice and temperance, if they had no larger portion to give to their own friends than to their enemies, that too when they were rulers in their own cities? No, in good truth, Socrates—which you claim to be seeking—the fact is this: luxury and licentiousness and liberty, if they have the support of force, are virtue and happiness, and the rest of these embellishments—the unnatural covenants of mankind—are all mere stuff and nonsense.

Far from ignoble, at any rate, Callicles, is the frankness with which you develop your thesis: for you are now stating in clear terms what the rest of the world think indeed, but are loth to say. So I beg you not to give up on any account, that it may be made really evident how one ought to live. Now tell me: do you say the desires are not to be chastened if a man would be such as he ought to be, but he should let them be as great as possible and provide them with satisfaction from some source or other, and this is virtue?

Yes, I say that.

Then it is not correct to say, as people do, that those who want nothing are happy.

No, for at that rate stones and corpses would be extremely happy.

Well, well, as you say, life is strange. For I tell you I should not wonder if Euripides’ words were true, when he says:Who knows if to live is to be dead,And to be dead, to live?¹² 493aand we really, it may be, are dead; in fact I once heard sages say that we are now dead, and the body is our tomb,³ and the part of the soul in which we have desires is liable to be over-persuaded and to vacillate to and fro, and so some smart fellow, a Sicilian, I daresay, or Italian,⁴ made a fable in which—by a play of words⁵—he named this part, as being so impressionable and persuadable, a jar, and the thoughtless he called uninitiate:⁶ 493b in these uninitiate that part of the soul where the desires are, the licentious and fissured part, he named a leaky jar in his allegory, because it is so insatiate. So you see this person, Callicles, takes the opposite view to yours, showing how of all who are in Hades—meaning of course the invisible—these uninitiate will be most wretched, and will carry water into their leaky jar with a sieve which is no less leaky. And then by the sieve, 493c as my story-teller said, he means the soul: and the soul of the thoughtless he likened to a sieve, as being perforated, since it is unable to hold anything by reason of its unbelief and forgetfulness. All this, indeed, is bordering pretty well on the absurd; but still it sets forth what I wish to impress upon you, if I somehow can, in order to induce you to make a change, and instead of a life of insatiate licentiousness to choose an orderly one that is set up and contented with what it happens to have got. 493d Now, am I at all prevailing upon you to change over to the view that the orderly people are happier than the licentious or will no amount of similar fables that I might tell you have any effect in changing your mind?

The latter is more like the truth, Socrates.

Come now, let me tell you another parable from the same school⁷ as that I have just told. Consider if each of the two lives, the temperate and the licentious, might be described by imagining that each of two men had a number of jars, 493e and those of one man were sound and full, one of wine, another of honey, a third of milk, and various others of various things, and that the sources of each of these supplies were scanty and difficult and only available through much hard toil:

well, one man, when he has taken his fill, neither draws off any more nor troubles himself a jot, but remains at ease on that score; whilst the other finds, like his fellow, that the sources are possible indeed, though difficult, but his vessels are leaky and decayed, 494aand he is compelled to fill them constantly, all night and day, or else suffer extreme distress. If such is the nature of each of the two lives, do you say that the licentious man has a happier one than the orderly? Do I, with this story of mine, induce you at all to concede that the orderly life is better than the licentious, or do I fail?

You fail, Socrates. For that man who has taken his fill can have no pleasure any more; in fact it is what I just now called living like a stone, when one has filled up and no longer feels any joy or pain. 494b But a pleasant life consists rather in the largest possible amount of inflow.

Well then, if the inflow be large, must not that which runs away be of large amount also, and must not the holes for such outflow be of great size?

Certainly.

Then it is a plover’s life⁸ you are describing this time, not that of a corpse or a stone. Now tell me, is the life you mean something like feeling hunger and eating when hungry?

Yes, it is.

And feeling thirst and drinking when thirsty?

Yes, and having all the other desires, and being able to satisfy them, and so with these enjoyments leading a happy life.

Bravo, my fine fellow! Do go on as you have begun, and mind you show no bashfulness about it. I too, it seems, must try not to be too bashful. First of all, tell me whether a man who has an itch and wants to scratch, and may scratch in all freedom, can pass his life happily in continual scratching.

What an odd person you are, Socrates—a regular stump-orator!

Why, of course, Callicles, that is how I upset Polus and Gorgias, and struck them with bashfulness; but you, I know, will never be upset or abashed; you are such a manly fellow. Come, just answer that.

Then I say that the man also who scratches himself will thus spend a pleasant life.

And if a pleasant one, a happy one also?

Certainly.

Is it so if he only wants to scratch his head? Or what more am I to ask you? See, Callicles, what your answer will be, if you are asked everything in succession that links on to that statement; and the culmination of the case, as stated—the life of catamites—is not that awful, shameful, and wretched? Or will you dare to assert that these are happy if they can freely indulge their wants?

Are you not ashamed, Socrates, to lead the discussion into such topics?