red by us in the previous discussion.

CALLICLES: Tell me, Chaerephon, is Socrates in earnest, or is he joking?

CHAEREPHON: I should say, Callicles, that he is in most profound
earnest; but you may well ask him.

CALLICLES: By the gods, and I will. Tell me, Socrates, are you in
earnest, or only in jest? For if you are in earnest, and what you say is
true, is not the whole of human life turned upside down; and are we not
doing, as would appear, in everything the opposite of what we ought to
be doing?

SOCRATES: O Callicles, if there were not some community of feelings
among mankind, however varying in different persons--I mean to say, if
every man's feelings were peculiar to himself and were not shared by
the rest of his species--I do not see how we could ever communicate our
impressions to one another. I make this remark because I perceive that
you and I have a common feeling. For we are lovers both, and both of
us have two loves apiece:--I am the lover of Alcibiades, the son of
Cleinias, and of philosophy; and you of the Athenian Demus, and of
Demus the son of Pyrilampes. Now, I observe that you, with all your
cleverness, do not venture to contradict your favourite in any word or
opinion of his; but as he changes you change, backwards and forwards.
When the Athenian Demus denies anything that you are saying in the
assembly, you go over to his opinion; and you do the same with Demus,
the fair young son of Pyrilampes. For you have not the power to resist
the words and ideas of your loves; and if a person were to express
surprise at the strangeness of what you say from time to time when under
their influence, you would probably reply to him, if you were honest,
that you cannot help saying what your loves say unless they are
prevented; and that you can only be silent when they are. Now you must
understand that my words are an echo too, and therefore you need not
wonder at me; but if you want to silence me, silence philosophy, who
is my love, for she is always telling me what I am now telling you, my
friend; neither is she capricious like my other love, for the son
of Cleinias says one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, but
philosophy is always true. She is the teacher at whose words you are
now wondering, and you have heard her yourself. Her you must refute,
and either show, as I was saying, that to do injustice and to escape
punishment is not the worst of all evils; or, if you leave her word
unrefuted, by the