"Is not painting," said he, "a representation of all we see? For with a few colours you represent on a canvas mountains and caverns, light and obscurity; you cause to be observed the difference between soft things and hard, between things smooth and rough; you give youth and old age to bodies; and when you would represent a perfect beauty, it being impossible to find a body but what has some defect, your way is to regard several, and taking what is beautiful from each of them, you make one that is accomplished in all its parts." "We do so," said Parrhasius. "Can you represent likewise," said Socrates, "what is most charming and most lovely in the person, I mean the inclination?" "How think you," answered Parrhasius, "we can paint what cannot be expressed by any proportion, nor with any colour, and that has nothing in common with any of those things you mentioned, and which the pencil can imitate; in a word, a thing that cannot be seen?" "Do not the very looks of men," replied Socrates, "confess either hatred or friendship?" "In my opinion they do," said Parrhasius. "You can then make hatred and friendship appear in the eyes?" "I own we can." "Do you think likewise," continued Socrates, "that they who concern themselves either in the adversity or prosperity of friends, keep the same look with those who are wholly unconcerned for either?" "By no means," said he, "for during the prosperity of our friends, our looks are gay and full of joy, but in their adversity we look cloudy and dejected." "This, then, may be painted likewise?" "It may." "Besides," said Socrates, "magnificence, generosity, meanness of mind, cowardice, modesty, prudence, insolence, rusticity, all appear in the looks of a man, whether sitting or standing." "You say true." "And cannot the pencil imitate all this likewise?" "It may." "And in which do you take most pleasure," said Socrates, "in regarding the picture of a man whose external appearance discovereth a good natural disposition, and bespeaks an honest man, or of one who wears in his face the marks of a vicious inclination?" "There is no comparison between them," said Parrhasius.