Charmides (161-164)

I think so. Well then, I said, are you not convinced that Homer is right in saying—

Modesty, no good mate for a needy man?

Hom. Od. 17.347 I am, he said. Then it would seem that modesty is not good, and good.Apparently. But temperance is good, if its presence makes men good, and not bad. It certainly seems to me to be as you say. So temperance cannot be modesty, if it is in fact good, while modesty is no more good than evil.Why, I think, he said, Socrates, that is correctly stated; but there is another view of temperance on which I would like to have your opinion. I remembered just now what I once heard someone say, that temperance might be doing one’s own business. I ask you, then, do you think he is right in saying this? You rascal, I said, you have heard it from Critias here, or some other of our wise men! Seemingly, said Critias, from some other; for indeed he did not from me.But what does it matter, Socrates, said Charmides, from whom I heard it? Not at all, I replied; for in any case we have not to consider who said it, but whether it is a true saying or no. Now you speak rightly, he said. Yes, on my word, I said: but I shall be surprised if we can find out how it stands; for it looks like a kind of riddle. Why so? he asked. Because, I replied, presumably the speaker of the words temperance is doing one’s own business did not mean them quite as he spoke them. Or do you consider that the scribe does nothing when he writes or reads? I rather consider that he does something, he replied. And does the scribe, in your opinion, write and read his own name only, and teach you boys to do the same with yours? Or did you write your enemies’ names just as much as your own and your friends’? Just as much. Well, were you meddlesome or intemperate in doing this? Not at all.And you know you were not doing your own business, if writing and reading are doing something. Why, so they are. And indeed medical work, my good friend, and building and weaving and producing anything whatever that is the work of any art, I presume is doing something. Certainly.

Well then, I went on, do you think a state would be well conducted under a law which enjoined that everyone should weave and scour his own coat, and make his own shoes, and his own flask and scraper, [*] and everything else on the same principle of not touching the affairs of others but performing and doing his own for himself? I think not, he replied. But still, I said, a state whose conduct is temperate will be well conducted. Of course, he said. Then doing one’s own business in that sense and in that way will not be temperance.Apparently not. So that person was riddling, it seems, just as I said a moment ago, when he said that doing one’s own business is temperance. For I take it he was not such a fool as all that: or was it some idiot that you heard saying this, Charmides? Far from it, he replied, for indeed he seemed to be very wise. Then it is perfectly certain, in my opinion, that he propounded it as a riddle, in view of the difficulty of understanding what doing one’s own business can mean. I daresay, he said. Well, what can it mean, this doing one’s own business? Can you tell me? I do not know, upon my word, he replied: but I daresay it may be that not even he who said it knew in the least what he meant. And as he said this he gave a sly laugh and glanced at Critias. Now Critias for some time had been plainly burning with anxiety to distinguish himself in the eyes of Charmides and the company, and having with difficulty restrained himself heretofore, he now could do so no longer; for I believe that what I had supposed was perfectly true—that Charmides had heard this answer about temperance from Critias. And so Charmides, wishing him to make answer instead of himself, sought to stir him up in particular, and pointed out that he himself had been refuted; but Critias rebelled against it, and seemed to me to have got angry with him, as a poet does with an actor who mishandles his verses on the stage: so he looked hard at him and said: Do you really suppose, Charmides, that if you do not know what can have been the meaning of the man who said that temperance was doing one’s own business, he did not know either? Why, my excellent Critias, I said, no wonder if our friend, at his age, cannot understand; but you, I should think, may be expected to know, in view of your years and your studies. So if you concede that temperance is what he says, and you accept the statement, for my part I would greatly prefer to have you as partner in the inquiry as to whether this saying is true or not.Well, I quite concede it, he said, and accept it.That is good, then, I said. Now tell me, do you also concede what I was asking just now—that all craftsmen make something? I do. And do you consider that they make their own things only, or those of others also?

Those of others also. And are they temperate in not making their own things only?Yes: what reason is there against it? he said.None for me, I replied; but there may be for him who, after assuming that temperance is doing one’s own business, proceeds to say there is no reason against those also who do others’ business being temperate. And have I, pray, he said, admitted that those who do others’ business are temperate? Or was my admission of those who make [*] things? Tell me, I said, do you not call making and doing the same? No indeed, he replied, nor working and making the same either: this I learnt from Hesiod, who said,

Work is no reproach.

Hes. WD 309 Now, do you suppose that if he had given the names of working and doing to such works as you were mentioning just now, he would have said there was no reproach in shoe-making or pickle-selling or serving the stews? It is not to be thought, Socrates; he rather held, I conceive, that making was different from doing and working, and that while a thing made might be a reproach if it had no connection with the honorable, work could never be a reproach. For things honorably and usefully made he called works, and such makings he called workings and doings; and we must suppose that it was only such things as these that he called our proper concerns, but all that was harmful, the concerns of others. So that we must conclude that Hesiod, and anyone else of good sense, calls him temperate who does his own business. Ah, Critias, I said, you had hardly begun, when I grasped the purport of your speech—that you called one’s proper and one’s own things good, and that the makings of the good you called doings; for in fact I have heard Prodicus drawing innumerable distinctions between names. [*] Well, I will allow you any application of a name that you please; only make clear to what thing it is that you attach such-and-such a name. So begin now over again, and define more plainly. Do you say that this doing or making, or whatever is the term you prefer, of good things, is temperance? I do, he replied. Then not he who does evil, but he who does good, is temperate? And do not you, my excellent friend, he said, think so? Leave that aside, I said; for we have not to consider yet what I think, but what you say now. Well, all the same, I say, he replied, that he who does evil instead of good is not temperate, whereas he who does good instead of evil is temperate : for I give you the doing of good things is temperance as my plain definition.

And there is no reason, I daresay, why your statement should not be right; but still I wonder, I went on, whether you judge that temperate men are ignorant of their temperance. No, I do not, he said. A little while ago, I said, were you not saying that there was no reason why craftsmen should not be temperate in making others’ things as well? Yes, I was, he said, but what of it ? Nothing; only tell me whether you think that a doctor, in making someone healthy, makes a helpful result both for himself and for the person whom he cures. I do. And he who does this does his duty? Yes. Is not he who does his duty temperate? Indeed he is. Well, and must the doctor know when his medicine will be helpful, and when not? And must every craftsman know when he is likely to be benefited by the work he does, and when not?Probably not. Then sometimes, I went on, the doctor may have done what is helpful or harmful without knowing the effect of his own action; and yet, in doing what was helpful, by your statement, he has done temperately. Or did you not state that? I did. Then it would seem that in doing what is helpful he may sometimes do temperately and be temperate, but be ignorant of his own temperance? But that, he said, Socrates, could never be: if you think this in any way a necessary inference from my previous admissions, I would rather withdraw some of them, and not be ashamed to say my statements were wrong, than concede at any time that a man who is ignorant of himself is temperate. For I would almost say that this very thing, self-knowledge, is temperance, and I am at one with him who put up the inscription of those words at Delphi. For the purpose of that inscription on the temple, as it seems to me, is to serve as the god’s salutation to those who enter it, instead of Hail!—this is a wrong form of greeting, and they should rather exhort one another with the words, Be temperate! And thus the god addresses those who are entering his temple in a mode which differs from that of men; such was the intention of the dedicator of the inscription in putting it up, I believe; and that he says to each man who enters, in reality,

Be temperate !