104. _Socr._ Not at all ignobly, Callicles, have you expressed your opinions, speaking freely; for you now plainly say what others think, indeed, but are unwilling to say. I beg of you, therefore, on no account to relax, in order that it may really become evident how we ought to live. Come tell me: do you say that our desires ought not to be checked, if one intends to be such as one ought, and that, suffering them to be as great as possible, one ought to provide for their satisfaction from every possible source, and that this constitutes virtue? _Cal._ I do say so. _Socr._ They, therefore, who need nothing, are not rightly said to be happy. _Cal._ For thus stones and the dead would be most happy. _Socr._ But, indeed, even as you say, life is grievous. For in truth I should not wonder if Euripides speaks the truth when he says: “Who knows whether to live is not death, and to die, life?” And we, perhaps, are really dead; as I have heard from one of the wise, that we are now dead, and that the body is our sepulchre, and that the part of the soul in which the desires are is of such a nature that it can be persuaded different ways, and change upwards and downwards; and this, some skilful man, perhaps a Sicilian, or Italian, turning into a fable, by a slight change of the word[72], called a cask, from its being credulous and easily persuaded, but the foolish he called uninitiated. He further compared that part of the soul of the uninitiated in which the desires are, namely, its intemperate and unclosed part, to a pierced cask, on account of its insatiable greediness. 105. This man, too, quite contrary to you, Callicles, shews that of those in Hades (meaning thereby the invisible world) the most miserable must be the uninitiated, and that they carry water to a perforated cask by a similarly perforated sieve. The sieve, as he who spoke to me said, is the soul. But he likened the soul of the foolish to a sieve, as being perforated and not able to retain any thing, through incredulity and forgetfulness. This probably is somewhat absurd, nevertheless it shews that by proof of which I wish, if by any means I can, to persuade you to change your opinion, and to prefer to an insatiable and intemperate life one that is well regulated, and that is satisfied and contented with the things that are from time to time present. But do I persuade you at all, and do you change your opinion, and admit that the moderate are more happy than the intemperate? or have I produced no impression, and though I tell you many such fables, will you not be any the more disposed to change your opinion? ----- Footnote 72: The English language does not enable a translator to preserve the play on the words πιθανὸν and πίθον, nor the equivoque in ἀμυήτους, which means “leaky,” as well as “uninitiated.” ----- _Cal._ In this you have spoken more truly, Socrates.