Gorgias

CALLICLES: Let it be so. SOCRATES: For I do not think it is beneficial for a human being to live with a bad condition of the body; for in that case it is necessary to live badly too. Or is it not so? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: Then, as for satisfying desires, such as eating as much as one wants when hungry, or drinking when thirsty, do doctors usually allow this when a person is healthy, but when one is sick, they almost never, so to speak, allow them to satisfy themselves with what they desire? Do you agree to this at least? CALLICLES: Yes, I do. SOCRATES: And about the soul, my excellent friend, is it not the same way? As long as it is bad, being foolish, undisciplined, unjust, and impious, one must keep it away from its desires and not permit it to do anything else except that by which it will become better. Do you say so or not? CALLICLES: I say so. SOCRATES: For is this not, I suppose, better for the soul itself? CALLICLES: Yes, indeed. SOCRATES: And is keeping it away from what it desires called disciplining it? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: Then being disciplined is better for the soul than undisciplined indulgence, just as you thought just now. CALLICLES: I do not know what you are saying, Socrates; ask someone else. SOCRATES: This man cannot bear to be benefited, and to undergo himself the very thing our discussion is about—being disciplined. CALLICLES: And indeed I do not care at all about anything you say, and I answered these things for you only for the sake of Gorgias. SOCRATES: Well, then; what shall we do? Do we break off the discussion in the middle? CALLICLES: You will decide that yourself. SOCRATES: But they say it is not lawful to leave even myths in the middle, but to put a head on them, so that they may not go about without a head. Answer the rest, then, so that our discussion may receive a head. CALLICLES: How violent you are, Socrates! But if you will listen to me, you will let this discussion go, or converse with someone else. SOCRATES: Who else then is willing? For let us not indeed leave the discussion incomplete. CALLICLES: Could you not go through the discussion yourself, either speaking by yourself or answering yourself? SOCRATES: So that Epicharmus’ saying may apply to me: “What two men used to speak before, I, being one, become sufficient for.” Yet it seems that this is most necessary. If, however, we do this, I think we all ought to be eager to know what is true about what we are saying and what is false; for it is a common good for it to become manifest to everyone.

​SOCRATES: I will go through the discussion, then, as it seems to me to be. But if I seem to any of you to agree with myself on what is not the fact, you must take me up and refute me. For indeed, I do not speak what I speak as one who knows, but I seek in common with you, so that if the person disputing with me seems to say something, I will be the first to agree. I say these things, however, if it seems that the discussion ought to be completed; but if you do not wish it, let us let it go now and depart. GORGIAS: But it does not seem to me, Socrates, that we ought to depart yet, but that you should go through the discussion; and it seems to me that the others think so too. For I myself wish to hear you go through the rest by yourself. SOCRATES: Well indeed, Gorgias, I myself would have gladly continued to converse with this Callicles, until I had paid him back the speech of Amphion in return for that of Zethus. But since you, Callicles, are not willing to help complete the discussion, at least listen to me and take me up if I seem to you to speak not well. And if you refute me, I shall not be vexed with you as you were with me, but you will be recorded as my greatest benefactor. CALLICLES: Speak on, good man, yourself, and finish it. SOCRATES: Listen then to me taking up the discussion from the beginning. Is the pleasant and the good the same? — Not the same, as Callicles and I agreed. — And should we do the pleasant for the sake of the good, or the good for the sake of the pleasant? — The pleasant for the sake of the good. — And is the pleasant that by whose arrival we are pleased, and the good that by whose presence we are good? — Yes, indeed. — And indeed, are we and all other things that are good, good by the arrival of some virtue? — It seems to me to be necessary, Callicles. — And indeed, does the virtue of each thing, whether of an implement, of a body, of a soul again, and of every animal, not arrive most beautifully by chance, but by the order, correctness, and art that is assigned to each of them? Is this so? — For I say so. — Then is the virtue of each thing that which is ordered and organized by order? — I should say so. — Does a certain order, then, arising in each thing, which is appropriate to each, make each of existing things good? — It seems so to me. — Then is a soul that has its own order better than one that is disordered? — Of necessity. — And indeed, is the one that has order orderly? — How could it not be so?