Gorgias

CALLICLES: Let this be so for you, Socrates, in this way, so that you may complete the argument. SOCRATES: And for this too, then, as it seems, we must prepare a certain power and art, so that we may not commit injustice. CALLICLES: Quite so. SOCRATES: What, then, is the art of preparing for suffering no injustice, or as little as possible? Consider if the same one seems to you as to me. For to me it seems to be this: that one must either rule oneself in the city or even be a tyrant, or be a companion of the existing constitution. CALLICLES: Do you see, Socrates, how ready I am to praise you if you say something well? This you seem to me to have said quite well. SOCRATES: Consider indeed this too, if I seem to you to speak well. Each person seems to me to be a friend to another as much as possible, the one whom the ancients and wise say: like is friend to like. Does it not seem so to you too? CALLICLES: To me indeed. SOCRATES: Therefore, where a tyrant is a wild and uneducated ruler, if someone in the city should be much better than him, the tyrant would surely fear him and would never be able to become a friend to him with all his heart? CALLICLES: That is so. SOCRATES: Nor indeed if someone should be much inferior, not even this one; for the tyrant would despise him and would never take him seriously as a friend. CALLICLES: This too is true. SOCRATES: There remains, then, only that person as a friend worthy of mention to such a one: whoever, being of like character, blaming and praising the same things, is willing to be ruled by and subject to the ruler. This person will have great power in this city, and no one will wrong him with impunity. Is it not so? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: If, then, some young person in this city should think: “In what way could I have great power and no one wrong me?” This, as it seems, is the path for him: right from youth to accustom himself to rejoice and be vexed at the same things as his master, and to prepare himself to be as like him as possible. Is it not so? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: Therefore, for this person, suffering no injustice and having great power in the city, according to your argument, will have been accomplished. CALLICLES: Quite so. SOCRATES: Is it then also the case for not committing injustice? Or is it far from it, if indeed he is to be like a ruler who is unjust and to have great power under him? Rather, I think, quite the contrary, in this way his preparation will be for being able to commit as many injustices as possible and not to pay the penalty when committing them. Is it not so? CALLICLES: So it appears.

SOCRATES: Therefore, the greatest evil will belong to him, since he is wretched in his soul and deformed through the imitation of his master and his power. CALLICLES: I do not know how you twist the arguments up and down every time, Socrates; or do you not know that this imitator will kill the non-imitator, if he wishes, and take away his possessions? SOCRATES: I know, my good Callicles, unless indeed I am deaf, since I have heard it both from you and just now from Polus many times, and from almost all the others in the city. But you also listen to me: he will indeed kill him, if he wishes, but he who is wicked will kill one who is noble and good. CALLICLES: Is this not, then, precisely the thing to be indignant about? SOCRATES: Not for someone who has sense, at least, as the argument indicates. Or do you think a person ought to prepare for this: to live for as long a time as possible, and to practice those arts which always save us from dangers, just like the rhetoric which you bid me to practice, which preserves us in the courts of law? CALLICLES: Yes, by Zeus, and I am advising you rightly. SOCRATES: What of it, my excellent friend? Does the knowledge of swimming also seem to you to be something grand? CALLICLES: No, by Zeus, not to me. SOCRATES: But indeed this too saves people from death, when they fall into some such situation where they need this knowledge. But if this seems small to you, I will tell you of a greater one than this, the art of navigation, which not only saves souls but also bodies and possessions from extreme dangers, just like rhetoric. And this art is modest and orderly, and does not put on airs, showing off as though it has performed some grand feat, but having achieved the same results as rhetoric, if it saves someone from Aegina to here, I think it charges two obols, and if from Egypt or from the Pontus, if indeed from very far, for this great benefit, having saved what I just mentioned—oneself, children, possessions, and wives—and having landed them in the harbor, it charges two drachmas, and the man who possesses the art and has achieved these things, having disembarked, walks along the shore and his ship with a modest bearing. For indeed he knows how to reason, I think, that it is unclear which of his fellow voyagers he has benefited by not letting them drown and which he has harmed, knowing that he has disembarked them in no way better than when they embarked, neither in their bodies nor in their souls.