Part 41
[Sidenote: Yet even these famous men had no ideal or standard.]
_Soc._ Yes, Callicles, they were good men, if, as you said at first, true virtue consists only in the satisfaction of our own desires and those of others; but if not, and if, as we were afterwards compelled to acknowledge, the satisfaction of some desires makes us better, and of others, worse, and we ought to gratify the one and not the other, and there is an art in distinguishing them,—can you tell me of any of these statesmen who did distinguish them?
[Sidenote: _The good man, like the good artist, a lover of order._]
_Cal._ No, indeed, I cannot.
[Sidenote: Some standard needed other than a man’s interest.]
_Soc._ Yet, surely, Callicles, if you look you will find such a one. Suppose that we just calmly consider whether any of these was such as I have described. Will not the good man, who says whatever he says with a view to the best, speak with a reference to some standard and not at random; just as all other artists, whether the painter, the builder, the shipwright, or any other look all of them to their own work, and do not select and apply at random what they apply, but strive to give a definite form to it? The artist disposes all things in order, and compels the one part to harmonize and 504 accord with the other part, until he has constructed a regular and systematic whole; and this is true of all artists, and in the same way the trainers and physicians, of whom we spoke before, give order and regularity to the body: do you deny this?
_Cal._ No; I am ready to admit it.
[Sidenote: Order is good, disorder evil, in a ship, in a human body, in a human soul.]
_Soc._ Then the house in which order and regularity prevail is good; that in which there is disorder, evil?
_Cal._ Yes.
_Soc._ And the same is true of a ship?
_Cal._ Yes.
_Soc._ And the same may be said of the human body?
_Cal._ Yes.
_Soc._ And what would you say of the soul? Will the good soul be that in which disorder is prevalent, or that in which there is harmony and order?
_Cal._ The latter follows from our previous admissions.
_Soc._ What is the name which is given to the effect of harmony and order in the body?
_Cal._ I suppose that you mean health and strength?
_Soc._ Yes, I do; and what is the name which you would give to the effect of harmony and order in the soul? Try and discover a name for this as well as for the other.
_Cal._ Why not give the name yourself, Socrates?
_Soc._ Well, if you had rather that I should, I will; and you shall say whether you agree with me, and if not, you shall refute and answer me. ‘Healthy,’ as I conceive, is the name which is given to the regular order of the body, whence comes health and every other bodily excellence: is that true or not?
[Sidenote: _Callicles again turns restive._]
_Cal._ True.
[Sidenote: From order and law spring temperance and justice.]
_Soc._ And ‘lawful’ and ‘law’ are the names which are given to the regular order and action of the soul, and these make men lawful and orderly:—and so we have temperance and justice: have we not?
_Cal._ Granted.
[Sidenote: The true rhetorician will seek to implant these virtues, to implant justice and take away injustice.]
_Soc._ And will not the true rhetorician who is honest and understands his art have his eye fixed upon these, in all the words which he addresses to the souls of men, and in all his actions, both in what he gives and in what he takes away? Will not his aim be to implant justice in the souls of his citizens and take away injustice, to implant temperance and take away intemperance, to implant every virtue and take away every vice? Do you not agree?
_Cal._ I agree.
_Soc._ For what use is there, Callicles, in giving to the body of a sick man who is in a bad state of health a quantity of the most delightful food or drink or any other pleasant thing, which may be really as bad for him as if you gave him 505 nothing, or even worse if rightly estimated. Is not that true?
_Cal._ I will not say No to it.
[Sidenote: The body of the sick and the soul of the wicked must be chastised and improved.]
_Soc._ For in my opinion there is no profit in a man’s life if his body is in an evil plight—in that case his life also is evil: am I not right?
_Cal._ Yes.
_Soc._ When a man is in health the physicians will generally allow him to eat when he is hungry and drink when he is thirsty, and to satisfy his desires as he likes, but when he is sick they hardly suffer him to satisfy his desires at all: even you will admit that?
_Cal._ Yes.
_Soc._ And does not the same argument hold of the soul, my good sir? While she is in a bad state and is senseless and intemperate and unjust and unholy, her desires ought to be controlled, and she ought to be prevented from doing anything which does not tend to her own improvement.
_Cal._ Yes.
[Sidenote: _Then ‘One man must do for two.’_]
_Soc._ Such treatment will be better for the soul herself?
_Cal._ To be sure.
_Soc._ And to restrain her from her appetites is to chastise her?
_Cal._ Yes.
_Soc._ Then restraint or chastisement is better for the soul than intemperance or the absence of control, which you were just now preferring?
_Cal._ I do not understand you, Socrates, and I wish that you would ask some one who does.
[Sidenote: Callicles does not wish to be improved.]
_Soc._ Here is a gentleman who cannot endure to be improved or to subject himself to that very chastisement of which the argument speaks!
_Cal._ I do not heed a word of what you are saying, and have only answered hitherto out of civility to Gorgias.
_Soc._ What are we to do, then? Shall we break off in the middle?
_Cal._ You shall judge for yourself.
_Soc._ Well, but people say that ‘a tale should have a head and not break off in the middle,’ and I should not like to have the argument going about without a head[43]; please then to go on a little longer, and put the head on.
_Cal._ How tyrannical you are, Socrates! I wish that you and your argument would rest, or that you would get some one else to argue with you.
_Soc._ But who else is willing?—I want to finish the argument.
_Cal._ Cannot you finish without my help, either talking straight on, or questioning and answering yourself?
[Sidenote: _Recapitulation of the argument._]
_Soc._ Must I then say with Epicharmus, ‘Two men spoke before, but now one shall be enough’? I suppose that there is absolutely no help. And if I am to carry on the enquiry by myself, I will first of all remark that not only I but all of us should have an ambition to know what is true and what is false in this matter, for the discovery of the truth is a common good. And now I will proceed to argue according to my own notion. But if any of you think that I arrive at 506 conclusions which are untrue you must interpose and refute me, for I do not speak from any knowledge of what I am saying, I am an enquirer like yourselves, and therefore, if my opponent says anything which is of force, I shall be the first to agree with him. I am speaking on the supposition that the argument ought to be completed; but if you think otherwise let us leave off and go our ways.
_Gor._ I think, Socrates, that we should not go our ways until you have completed the argument; and this appears to me to be the wish of the rest of the company; I myself should very much like to hear what more you have to say.
_Soc._ I too, Gorgias, should have liked to continue the argument with Callicles, and then I might have given him an ‘Amphion’ in return for his ‘Zethus’[44]; but since you, Callicles, are unwilling to continue, I hope that you will listen, and interrupt me if I seem to you to be in error. And if you refute me, I shall not be angry with you as you are with me, but I shall inscribe you as the greatest of benefactors on the tablets of my soul.
_Cal._ My good fellow, never mind me, but get on.
[Sidenote: The pleasant not the same as the good, and is to be sought only for the sake of the good: and we are good when good is present in us, and good is the effect of order and truth and art.]
_Soc._ Listen to me, then, while I recapitulate the argument:—Is the pleasant the same as the good? Not the same. Callicles and I are agreed about that. And is the pleasant to be pursued for the sake of the good? or the good for the sake of the pleasant? The pleasant is to be pursued for the sake of the good. And that is pleasant at the presence of which we are pleased, and that is good at the presence of which we are good? To be sure. And we are good, and all good things whatever are good when some virtue is present in us or them? That, Callicles, is my conviction. But the virtue of each thing, whether body or soul, instrument or creature, when given to them in the best way comes to them not by chance but as the result of the order and truth and art which are imparted to them: Am I not right? I maintain that I am. And is not the virtue of each thing dependent on order or arrangement? Yes, I say. And that which makes a thing good is the proper order inhering in each thing? Such is my view. And is not the soul which has an order of her own better than that which has no order? Certainly. And the soul which has order is orderly? Of course. And that which is orderly is temperate? Assuredly. And the 507 temperate soul is good? No other answer can I give, Callicles dear; have you any?
[Sidenote: _The intercommunion of the virtues._]
_Cal._ Go on, my good fellow.
_Soc._ Then I shall proceed to add, that if the temperate soul is the good soul, the soul which is in the opposite condition, that is, the foolish and intemperate, is the bad soul. Very true.
[Sidenote: The temperate soul is the good soul, just in relation to men, and holy in relation to gods, and is therefore happy; and the intemperate is the reverse of all this.]
[Sidenote: If it be admitted that virtue is happiness and vice misery, then what Socrates said about the use of rhetoric in self-accusation turns out to be true.]
[Sidenote: _Geometry in both worlds._]
And will not the temperate man do what is proper, both in relation to the gods and to men;—for he would not be temperate if he did not? Certainly he will do what is proper. In his relation to other men he will do what is just; and in his relation to the gods he will do what is holy; and he who does what is just and holy must be just and holy? Very true. And must he not be courageous? for the duty of a temperate man is not to follow or to avoid what he ought not, but what he ought, whether things or men or pleasures or pains, and patiently to endure when he ought; and therefore, Callicles, the temperate man, being, as we have described, also just and courageous and holy, cannot be other than a perfectly good man, nor can the good man do otherwise than well and perfectly whatever he does; and he who does well must of necessity be happy and blessed, and the evil man who does evil, miserable: now this latter is he whom you were applauding—the intemperate who is the opposite of the temperate. Such is my position, and these things I affirm to be true. And if they are true, then I further affirm that he who desires to be happy must pursue and practise temperance and run away from intemperance as fast as his legs will carry him: he had better order his life so as not to need punishment; but if either he or any of his friends, whether private individual or city, are in need of punishment, then justice must be done and he must suffer punishment, if he would be happy. This appears to me to be the aim which a man ought to have, and towards which he ought to direct all the energies both of himself and of the state, acting so that he may have temperance and justice present with him and be happy, not suffering his lusts to be unrestrained, and in the never-ending desire to satisfy them leading a robber’s life. Such a one is the friend neither of God nor man, for he is incapable of communion, and he who is incapable of communion is also incapable of friendship. And philosophers tell us, Callicles, that communion and friendship and orderliness and temperance and justice bind together 508 heaven and earth and gods and men, and that this universe is therefore called Cosmos or order, not disorder or misrule, my friend. But although you are a philosopher you seem to me never to have observed that geometrical equality is mighty, both among gods and men; you think that you ought to cultivate inequality or excess, and do not care about geometry.—Well, then, either the principle that the happy are made happy by the possession of justice and temperance, and the miserable miserable by the possession of vice, must be refuted, or, if it is granted, what will be the consequences? All the consequences which I drew before, Callicles, and about which you asked me whether I was in earnest when I said that a man ought to accuse himself and his son and his friend if he did anything wrong, and that to this end he should use his rhetoric—all those consequences are true. And that which you thought that Polus was led to admit out of modesty is true, viz. that, to do injustice, if more disgraceful than to suffer, is in that degree worse; and the other position, which, according to Polus, Gorgias admitted out of modesty, that he who would truly be a rhetorician ought to be just and have a knowledge of justice, has also turned out to be true.
[Sidenote: _The paradoxes are proven._]
[Sidenote: The greatest evil to do injustice, but there is a greater still, not to be punished for doing injustice.]
And now, these things being as we have said, let us proceed in the next place to consider whether you are right in throwing in my teeth that I am unable to help myself or any of my friends or kinsmen, or to save them in the extremity of danger, and that I am in the power of another like an outlaw to whom any one may do what he likes,—he may box my ears, which was a brave saying of yours; or take away my goods or banish me, or even do his worst and kill me; a condition which, as you say, is the height of disgrace. My answer to you is one which has been already often repeated, but may as well be repeated once more. I tell you, Callicles, that to be boxed on the ears wrongfully is not the worst evil which can befall a man, nor to have my purse or my body cut open, but that to smite and slay me and mine wrongfully is far more disgraceful and more evil; aye, and to despoil and enslave and pillage, or in any way at all to wrong me and mine, is far more disgraceful and evil to the doer of the wrong than to me who am the sufferer. These truths, which have been already set forth as I state 509 them in the previous discussion, would seem now to have been fixed and riveted by us, if I may use an expression which is certainly bold, in words which are like bonds of iron and adamant; and unless you or some other still more enterprising hero shall break them, there is no possibility of denying what I say. For my position has always been, that I myself am ignorant how these things are, but that I have never met any one who could say otherwise, any more than you can, and not appear ridiculous. This is my position still, and if what I am saying is true, and injustice is the greatest of evils to the doer of injustice, and yet there is if possible a greater than this greatest of evils[45], in an unjust man not suffering retribution, what is that defence of which the want will make a man truly ridiculous? Must not the defence be one which will avert the greatest of human evils? And will not the worst of all defences be that with which a man is unable to defend himself or his family or his friends?—and next will come that which is unable to avert the next greatest evil; thirdly that which is unable to avert the third greatest evil; and so of other evils. As is the greatness of evil so is the honour of being able to avert them in their several degrees, and the disgrace of not being able to avert them. Am I not right, Callicles?
_Cal._ Yes, quite right.
_Soc._ Seeing then that there are these two evils, the doing injustice and the suffering injustice—and we affirm that to do injustice is a greater, and to suffer injustice a lesser evil—by what devices can a man succeed in obtaining the two advantages, the one of not doing and the other of not suffering injustice? must he have the power, or only the will to obtain them? I mean to ask whether a man will escape injustice if he has only the will to escape, or must he have provided himself with the power?
_Cal._ He must have provided himself with the power; that is clear.
[Sidenote: _The tyrant and his satellites._]
_Soc._ And what do you say of doing injustice? Is the will only sufficient, and will that prevent him from doing injustice, or must he have provided himself with power and art; and if he have not studied and practised, will he be unjust still? Surely you might say, Callicles, whether you think that Polus and I were right in admitting the conclusion that no one does wrong voluntarily, but that all do wrong against their will?
_Cal._ Granted, Socrates, if you will only have done. 510
_Soc._ Then, as would appear, power and art have to be provided in order that we may do no injustice?
_Cal._ Certainly.
_Soc._ And what art will protect us from suffering injustice, if not wholly, yet as far as possible? I want to know whether you agree with me; for I think that such an art is the art of one who is either a ruler or even tyrant himself, or the equal and companion of the ruling power.
_Cal._ Well said, Socrates; and please to observe how ready I am to praise you when you talk sense.
_Soc._ Think and tell me whether you would approve of another view of mine: To me every man appears to be most the friend of him who is most like to him—like to like, as ancient sages say: Would you not agree to this?
_Cal._ I should.
[Sidenote: The tyrant naturally hates both his superiors and inferiors: he likes only those who resemble him in character.]
_Soc._ But when the tyrant is rude and uneducated, he may be expected to fear any one who is his superior in virtue, and will never be able to be perfectly friendly with him.
_Cal._ That is true.
_Soc._ Neither will he be the friend of any one who is greatly his inferior, for the tyrant will despise him, and will never seriously regard him as a friend.
_Cal._ That again is true.
_Soc._ Then the only friend worth mentioning, whom the tyrant can have, will be one who is of the same character, and has the same likes and dislikes, and is at the same time willing to be subject and subservient to him; he is the man who will have power in the state, and no one will injure him with impunity:—is not that so?
_Cal._ Yes.
[Sidenote: _The bad man will kill the good._]
_Soc._ And if a young man begins to ask how he may become great and formidable, this would seem to be the way—he will accustom himself, from his youth upward, to feel sorrow and joy on the same occasions as his master, and will contrive to be as like him as possible?
_Cal._ Yes.
[Sidenote: And the way to be a great man and not to suffer injury is to become like him. And there can be no greater evil to him than this.]
_Soc._ And in this way he will have accomplished, as you and your friends would say, the end of becoming a great man and not suffering injury?
_Cal._ Very true.
_Soc._ But will he also escape from doing injury? Must not the very opposite be true, if he is to be like the tyrant in his injustice, and to have influence with him? Will he not 511 rather contrive to do as much wrong as possible, and not be punished?
_Cal._ True.
_Soc._ And by the imitation of his master and by the power which he thus acquires will not his soul become bad and corrupted, and will not this be the greatest evil to him?
_Cal._ You always contrive somehow or other, Socrates, to invert everything: do you not know that he who imitates the tyrant will, if he has a mind, kill him who does not imitate him and take away his goods?
[Sidenote: But how provoking that the bad man should slay the good!]
_Soc._ Excellent Callicles, I am not deaf, and I have heard that a great many times from you and from Polus and from nearly every man in the city, but I wish that you would hear me too. I dare say that he will kill him if he has a mind—the bad man will kill the good and true.
_Cal._ And is not that just the provoking thing?
[Sidenote: Nay, but we should not always study the arts which save us from death;—the art of swimming, the art of the pilot, &c.]
_Soc._ Nay, not to a man of sense, as the argument shows: do you think that all our cares should be directed to prolonging life to the uttermost, and to the study of those arts which secure us from danger always; like that art of rhetoric which saves men in courts of law, and which you advise me to cultivate?
_Cal._ Yes, truly, and very good advice too.
_Soc._ Well, my friend, but what do you think of swimming; is that an art of any great pretensions?
_Cal._ No, indeed.
_Soc._ And yet surely swimming saves a man from death, and there are occasions on which he must know how to swim.