Gorgias (500)

Soc.

Because, you know, Polus and I, if you recollect, decided[*]. that everything we do should be for the sake of what is good. Do you agree with us in this view—that the good is the end of all our actions, and it is for its sake that all other things should be done, and not it for theirs?

Do you add your vote to ours, and make a third?

Call.

I do.

Soc.

Then it is for the sake of what is good that we should do everything, including what is pleasant, not the good for the sake of the pleasant.

Call.

Certainly.

Soc.

Now is it in every man’s power to pick out which sort of pleasant things are good and which bad, or is professional skill required in each case?

Call.

Professional skill.

Soc.

Then let us recall those former points I was putting to Polus and Gorgias.[*] I said, if you remember,

that there were certain industries, some of which extend only to pleasure, procuring that and no more, and ignorant of better and worse; while others know what is good and what bad. And I placed among those that are concerned with pleasure the habitude, not art, of cookery, and among those concerned with good the art of medicine. Now by the sanctity of friendship, Callicles, do not on your part indulge in jesting with me, or give me random answers against your conviction, or again, take what I say as though I were jesting. For you see that our debate is upon a question which has the highest conceivable claims to the serious interest even of a person who has but little intelligence—namely, what course of life is best; whether it should be that to which you invite me, with all those manly pursuits of speaking in Assembly and practicing rhetoric and going in for politics after the fashion of you modern politicians, or this life of philosophy; and what makes the difference between these two. Well, perhaps it is best to do what I attempted a while ago, and distinguish them; and then, when we have distinguished them and come to an agreement with each other as to these lives being really two, we must consider what is the difference between them and which of them is the one we ought to live. Now I daresay you do not yet grasp my meaning.

Call.

No, I do not.

Soc.

Well, I will put it to you more plainly. Seeing that we have agreed, you and I, that there is such a thing as good, and such a thing as pleasant, and that the pleasant is other than the good, and that for the acquisition of either there is a certain practice or preparation—the quest of the pleasant in the one case, and that of the good in the other—but first you must either assent or object to this statement of mine:

do you assent?

Call.

I am with you entirely.