The pleasant is not the same as the good—Callicles and I are agreed
about that,—but pleasure is to be pursued for the sake of the good, and
the good is that of which the presence makes us good; we and all things
good have acquired some virtue or other. And virtue, whether of body or
soul, of things or persons, is not attained by accident, but is due to
order and harmonious arrangement. And the soul which has order is
better than the soul which is without order, and is therefore temperate
and is therefore good, and the intemperate is bad. And he who is
temperate is also just and brave and pious, and has attained the
perfection of goodness and therefore of happiness, and the intemperate
whom you approve is the opposite of all this and is wretched. He
therefore who would be happy must pursue temperance and avoid
intemperance, and if possible escape the necessity of punishment, but
if he have done wrong he must endure punishment. In this way states and
individuals should seek to attain harmony, which, as the wise tell us,
is the bond of heaven and earth, of gods and men. Callicles has never
discovered the power of geometrical proportion in both worlds; he would
have men aim at disproportion and excess. But if he be wrong in this,
and if self-control is the true secret of happiness, then the paradox
is true that the only use of rhetoric is in self-accusation, and Polus
was right in saying that to do wrong is worse than to suffer wrong, and
Gorgias was right in saying that the rhetorician must be a just man.
And you were wrong in taunting me with my defenceless condition, and in
saying that I might be accused or put to death or boxed on the ears
with impunity. For I may repeat once more, that to strike is worse than
to be stricken—to do than to suffer. What I said then is now made fast
in adamantine bonds. I myself know not the true nature of these things,
but I know that no one can deny my words and not be ridiculous. To do
wrong is the greatest of evils, and to suffer wrong is the next
greatest evil. He who would avoid the last must be a ruler, or the
friend of a ruler; and to be the friend he must be the equal of the
ruler, and must also resemble him. Under his protection he will suffer
no evil, but will he also do no evil? Nay, will he not rather do all
the evil which he can and escape? And in this way the greatest of all
evils will befall him. “But this imitator of the tyrant,” rejoins
Callicles, “will kill any one who does not similarly imitate him.”
Socrates replies that he is not deaf, and that he has heard that
repeated many times, and can only reply, that a bad man will kill a
good one. “Yes, and that is the provoking thing.” Not provoking to a
man of sense who is not studying the arts which will preserve him from
danger; and this, as you say, is the use of rhetoric in courts of
justice. But how many other arts are there which also save men from
death, and are yet quite humble in their pretensions—such as the art of