_Cal._ You are right, by the gods, and I desire to do it. Tell me, Socrates, whether we must say that you are now speaking seriously, or jesting? For, if you are speaking seriously, and if what you say is true, is not our human life altogether subverted, and are not all our actions, as it seems, contrary to what they ought to be? _Socr._ If there were not a certain passion, Callicles, common to men, to some, one, to others, another, but each of us had a peculiar passion different from others, it would not be easy for one to make known one’s own affection to another. 82. I speak thus because I perceive that you and I are now affected in the same manner; for, being two, we each of us love two things: I, Alcibiades, son of Clinias, and philosophy, you, the Demus[67] of the Athenians, and the son of Pyrilampes. Now I continually perceive that you, eloquent as you are, are unable to contradict the objects of your love, in whatever they may say, and in whatever manner they may assert a thing takes place, but you are changed by them upwards and downwards. For, in the assembly, if, when you say any thing, the Athenian people say that it is not so, you, changing your opinion, say what they wish; and you are affected in the same manner towards that beautiful youth, the son of Pyrilampes; for you cannot bring yourself to oppose the wishes and discourses of the objects of your love: so that, if any one, when from time to time you say what you do to please them, should wonder at its absurdity, perhaps you would say to him, if you wished to speak the truth, that unless some one shall cause the objects of your love to desist from such discourses, neither can you desist from saying what you do. Think, therefore, that you need to hear the like from me; and do not wonder that I speak thus, but cause philosophy, my favourite, to desist from speaking so. For, my dear friend, she always says what you now hear from me, and is much less fickle than my other loves. 83. For the son of Clinias, here, says different things at different times; but philosophy always the same. And she says the things that you now wonder at; and you have just heard what she said. Either, therefore, confute her, as to what I just now said, and prove that to act unjustly, and when one has acted unjustly not to suffer punishment, is not the worst of all evils; or, if you suffer this to remain unconfuted, then, by the dog, the deity of the Egyptians, Callicles will not agree with you, but will differ from you, Callicles, through the whole of his life. However, I think, my excellent friend, that it would be better for me that my lyre should be out of tune and discordant, and the choir of which I might be the leader, and that most men should not agree with me, but oppose what I say, rather than that I, being one, should be discordant with and contradict myself. ----- Footnote 67: