Page:The works of Plato, A new and literal version, (vol 1) (Cary, 1854).djvu/146

134 a city. He adds that it is just that the governors should have more than the governed. Socrates, hereupon, asks whether they ought not to govern themselves also and be temperate, which elicits from Callicles the shameless avowal that a man should have as large desires as he can, and indulge them with out restraint.

Socrates having in vain endeavoured to persuade Callicles to change his opinion by two similitudes of a perforated cask, and a full and an empty one, to which he compares the soul, proceeds to combat his assertion that a happy life consists in having and indulging as large desires as possible. If happiness consists in being hungry and eating, thirsty and drinking, it must follow that to be scabby and itch and scratch one's self is to live happily. Callicles is forced to admit that this is to live pleasantly, and then if pleasantly, happily; and at length is driven to assert that the pleasant and the good are the same. In order to confute this opinion, Socrates leads him to maintain that science and courage differ from each other and from the good; and then by a series of most subtle questions, too minute to be abbreviated, forces him to this absurd conclusion, that if the pleasant and the good are the same, a bad man, inasmuch as he oftentimes receives more pleasure than a good man, must be accounted better than a good one.

Callicles to evade this absurdity is compelled to admit that some pleasures are better than others. From this concession Socrates shews that the end of all human actions is the good and not the pleasant; for that so far is it from being the case that we do any thing merely for the sake of pleasure, that we pursue pleasure itself for the sake of the good.

Having established this point, Socrates brings back the discussion to the original subject, and proposes to enquire whether it is better to live in such a manner as Callicles advises, namely to devote one's self to public business and to study rhetoric, or in such a manner as philosophy persuades. He recurs there-