He half raised himself in haste, awakening from his reverie, and looking round, saw Sokrates. A deep flush came on the boy’s face when he found himself alone before the man he had so often, sometimes for fun indeed, but often in earnest, declared that he would know. As he felt his gaze fall full upon him—a look in which he saw love, pity, admiration, all together—he blushed with a sense of happiness, and felt a consciousness of shame he had never known before. ‘Oh, son of Kleinias and Deinomaché, have I thus come upon you wondering when you will get wings to fly away beyond the clouds, and thinking you can make them for yourself, and teach yourself to use them? Oh, foolish Daidalos, have I not found out your thoughts?’ ‘Indeed you have, Sokrates!’ ‘And if I tell you how you may make these wings to grow, what will you do for me?’ ‘I think, Sokrates, I would do anything you asked.’ ‘But if, when you have got your wings, you know not how to fly with them: what then?’ ‘I would do still more for you if you will teach me how to use them.’ ‘But if the way to use them is so difficult it would take you days and nights to learn it, and require you to give up many things you love, and make you work and toil to get this learning, could you do all that, think you?’ ‘Indeed I do, if it be not too hard for me to learn.’ ‘Which, now, gives you greater pleasure to look upon—Perikles’ marble statue of Apollo, or a heap of dirt?’ ‘Why, how could it be but to look upon the statue, Sokrates?’ ‘And you would rather gaze on Aspasia’s face than on the wrinkled skin of your old paidagogos?’ ‘Of course I would.’ ‘Then tell me, is it not because in Aspasia’s face and in the statue of Apollo you see more beauty than in Zopyros or in the dirt?’ ‘Yes, by Zeus, it is!’ ‘And for the soldier—is it more beautiful in him to die fighting for his country, or to run away and live?’ ‘To die, of course. I would gladly do that, if that is all.’ ‘And for the statesman—is it not more beautiful in him to endeavour to persuade the people to make wise laws, and to induce them to do wise things, though he knows they will not love him for it, but perhaps turn on him, and thrust him from his power, and destroy him? Or is it better to let them do those foolish things he knows they love, and will admire him for advising, and so perhaps keep him a long time in power?’ ‘By Herakles! the first seems to me to be more beautiful.’ ‘And these things that seem beautiful, are they not good things too to do?’ ‘They must be good as well as beautiful. And if I had the power I would make the people do what is wise and beautiful.’ ‘Yet you have said the statesman who would rather lose his power than persuade the people to the worse course was good.’ ‘I know I did.’ ‘Then the beautiful and the good are one?’ ‘It seems so, Sokrates.’