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. CALLICLES: That, Socrates, is only your opinion. SOCRATES: And do you, Callicles, seriously maintain what you are saying? CALLICLES: Indeed I do. SOCRATES: Then, as you are in earnest, shall we proceed with the argument? CALLICLES: By all means. (Or, “I am in profound earnest.”) SOCRATES: Well, if you are willing to proceed, determine this question for me:—There is something, I presume, which you would call knowledge? CALLICLES: There is. SOCRATES: And were you not saying just now, that some courage implied knowledge? CALLICLES: I was. SOCRATES: And you were speaking of courage and knowledge as two things different from one another? CALLICLES: Certainly I was. SOCRATES: And would you say that pleasure and knowledge are the same, or not the same? CALLICLES: Not the same, O man of wisdom. SOCRATES: And would you say that courage differed from pleasure? CALLICLES: Certainly. SOCRATES: Well, then, let us remember that Callicles, the Acharnian, 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. CALLICLES: And what does our friend Socrates, of Foxton, say—does he assent to this, or not? SOCRATES: He does not assent; neither will Callicles, when he sees himself truly. You will admit, I suppose, that good and evil fortune are opposed to each other? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: And if they are opposed to each other, then, like health and disease, they exclude one another; a man cannot have them both, or be without them both, at the same time? CALLICLES: What do you mean? SOCRATES: Take the case of any bodily affection:—a man may have the complaint in his eyes which is called ophthalmia? CALLICLES: To be sure. SOCRATES: But he surely cannot have the same eyes well and sound at the same time? CALLICLES: Certainly not. SOCRATES: And when he has got rid of his ophthalmia, has he got rid of the health of his eyes too? Is the final result, that he gets rid of them both together? CALLICLES: Certainly not. SOCRATES: That would surely be marvellous and absurd? CALLICLES: Very. SOCRATES: I suppose that he is affected by them, and gets rid of them in turns? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: And he may have strength and weakness in the same way, by fits? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: Or swiftness and slowness? CALLICLES: Certainly. SOCRATES: And does he have and not have good and happiness, and their opposites, evil and misery, in a similar alternation? (Compare Republic.) CALLICLES: Certainly he has. SOCRATES: 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.