Platos Gorgias
CALLICLES: Quite so, Socrates; and they are really fools, bauble, agreements contrary to nature, foolish talk of men, for how can a man be happy who is the servant of any-nothing worth. (CompareRepublic.) thing? On the contrary, I plainly assert, that he who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax to the uttermost, SOCRATES: There is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your and not to chastise them; but when they have grown to their way of approaching the argument; for what you say is what greatest he should have courage and intelligence to minis-the rest of the world think, but do not like to say. And I ter to them and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm must beg of you to persevere, that the true rule of human to be natural justice and nobility. To this however the many life may become manifest. Tell me, then:you say, do you cannot attain; and they blame the strong man because they not, that in the rightly-developed man the passions ought are ashamed of their own weakness, which they desire to not to be controlled, but that we should let them grow to conceal, and hence they say that intemperance is base. As I the utmost and somehow or other satisfy them, and that have remarked already, they enslave the nobler natures, this is virtue?
and being unable to satisfy their pleasures, they praise temperance and justice out of their own cowardice. For if a CALLICLES: Yes; I do.
man had been originally the son of a king, or had a nature capable of acquiring an empire or a tyranny or sovereignty, SOCRATES: Then those who want nothing are not truly what could be more truly base or evil than temperanceto said to be happy?
a man like him, I say, who might freely be enjoying every good, and has no one to stand in his way, and yet has ad-CALLICLES: No indeed, for then stones and dead men mitted custom and reason and the opinion of other men to would be the happiest of all.
be lords over him?must not he be in a miserable plight whom the reputation of justice and temperance hinders SOCRATES: But surely life according to your view is an from giving more to his friends than to his enemies, even awful thing; and indeed I think that Euripides may have though he be a ruler in his city? Nay, Socrates, for you been right in saying,
profess to be a votary of the truth, and the truth is this:that luxury and intemperance and licence, if they be provided
Who knows if life be not death and death life;
with means, are virtue and happinessall the rest is a mere 112
Platos Gorgias
and that we are very likely dead; I have heard a philoso-has a due provision for daily needs. Do I make any impres-pher say that at this moment we are actually dead, and that sion on you, and are you coming over to the opinion that the body (soma) is our tomb (sema (compare Phaedr.)), the orderly are happier than the intemperate? Or do I fail and that the part of the soul which is the seat of the desires to persuade you, and, however many tales I rehearse to is liable to be tossed about by words and blown up and you, do you continue of the same opinion still?
down; and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an Italian, playing with the word, invented a tale in which CALLICLES: The latter, Socrates, is more like the truth.
he called the soulbecause of its believing and make-believe naturea vessel (An untranslatable pun,dia to SOCRATES: Well, I will tell you another image, which pithanon te kai pistikon onomase pithon.), and the igno-comes out of the same school:Let me request you to con-rant he called the uninitiated or leaky, and the place in the sider how far you would accept this as an account of the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated, be-two lives of the temperate and intemperate in a figure:
ing the intemperate and incontinent part, he compared to There are two men, both of whom have a number of casks; a vessel full of holes, because it can never be satisfied. He is the one man has his casks sound and full, one of wine, not of your way of thinking, Callicles, for he declares, that another of honey, and a third of milk, besides others filled of all the souls in Hades, meaning the invisible world with other liquids, and the streams which fill them are few (aeides), these uninitiated or leaky persons are the most and scanty, and he can only obtain them with a great deal miserable, and that they pour water into a vessel which is of toil and difficulty; but when his casks are once filled he full of holes out of a colander which is similarly perforated.
has no need to feed them any more, and has no further The colander, as my informer assures me, is the soul, and trouble with them or care about them. The other, in like the soul which he compares to a colander is the soul of the manner, can procure streams, though not without difficulty; ignorant, which is likewise full of holes, and therefore in-but his vessels are leaky and unsound, and night and day he continent, owing to a bad memory and want of faith. These is compelled to be filling them, and if he pauses for a monotions are strange enough, but th ey show the principle ment, he is in an agony of pain. Such are their respective which, if I can, I would fain prove to you; that you should lives:And now would you say that the life of the intemper-change your mind, and, instead of the intemperate and inate is happier than that of the temperate? Do I not con-satiate life, choose that which is orderly and sufficient and vince you that the opposite is the truth?