CALLICLES: You do not convince me, Socrates, for the one who has filled himself has no longer any pleasure left; and this, as I was just now saying, is the life of a stone: he has neither joy nor sorrow after he is once filled; but the pleasure depends on the superabundance of the influx. SOCRATES: But the more you pour in, the greater the waste; and the holes must be large for the liquid to escape. CALLICLES: Certainly. SOCRATES: The life which you are now depicting is not that of a dead man, or of a stone, but of a cormorant; you mean that he is to be hungering and eating? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: And he is to be thirsting and drinking? CALLICLES: Yes, that is what I mean; he is to have all his desires about him, and to be able to live happily in the gratification of them. SOCRATES: Capital, excellent; go on as you have begun, and have no shame; I, too, must disencumber myself of shame: and first, will you tell me whether you include itching and scratching, provided you have enough of them and pass your life in scratching, in your notion of happiness? CALLICLES: What a strange being you are, Socrates! a regular mob-orator. SOCRATES: That was the reason, Callicles, why I scared Polus and Gorgias, until they were too modest to say what they thought; but you will not be too modest and will not be scared, for you are a brave man. And now, answer my question. CALLICLES: I answer, that even the scratcher would live pleasantly. SOCRATES: And if pleasantly, then also happily? CALLICLES: To be sure. SOCRATES: But what if the itching is not confined to the head? Shall I pursue the question? And here, Callicles, I would have you consider how you would reply if consequences are pressed upon you, especially if in the last resort you are asked, whether the life of a catamite is not terrible, foul, miserable? Or would you venture to say, that they too are happy, if they only get enough of what they want? CALLICLES: Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of introducing such topics into the argument? SOCRATES: Well, my fine friend, but am I the introducer of these topics, or he who says without any qualification that all who feel pleasure in whatever manner are happy, and who admits of no distinction between good and bad pleasures? And I would still ask, whether you say that pleasure and good are the same, or whether there is some pleasure which is not a good? CALLICLES: Well, then, for the sake of consistency, I will say that they are the same. SOCRATES: You are breaking the original agreement, Callicles, and will no longer be a satisfactory companion in the search after truth, if you say what is contrary to your real opinion. CALLICLES: Why, that is what you are doing too, Socrates.