Platos Gorgias
SOCRATES: Yes, Callicles, and also about the same things.
CALLICLES: I have already told you that I mean those who are wise and courageous in the administration of a CALLICLES: Yes, by the Gods, you are literally always statethey ought to be the rulers of their states, and justice talking of cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if consists in their having more than their subjects.
this had to do with our argument.
SOCRATES: But whether rulers or subjects will they or SOCRATES: But why will you not tell me in what a man will they not have more than themselves, my friend?
must be superior and wiser in order to claim a larger share; will you neither accept a suggestion, nor offer one?
CALLICLES: What do you mean?
CALLICLES: I have already told you. In the first place, I SOCRATES: I mean that every man is his own ruler; but mean by superiors not cobblers or cooks, but wise politi-perhaps you think that there is no necessity for him to rule cians who understand the administration of a state, and who himself; he is only required to rule others?
are not only wise, but also valiant and able to carry out their designs, and not the men to faint from want of soul.
CALLICLES: What do you mean by his ruling over himself?
SOCRATES: See now, most excellent Callicles, how different my charge against you is from that which you bring SOCRATES: A simple thing enough; just what is commonly against me, for you reproach me with always saying the same; said, that a man should be temperate and master of him-but I reproach you with never saying the same about the self, and ruler of his own pleasures and passions.
same things, for at one time you were defining the better and the superior to be the stronger, then again as the wiser, CALLICLES: What innocence! you mean those fools,
and now you bring forward a new notion; the superior and the temperate?
the better are now declared by you to be the more courageous: I wish, my good friend, that you would tell me, once SOCRATES: Certainly:any one may know that to be my for all, whom you affirm to be the better and superior, and meaning.
in what they are better?