unt of the two lives of the temperate and intemperate in
a figure:--There are two men, both of whom have a number of casks; the
one man has his casks sound and full, one of wine, another of honey,
and a third of milk, besides others filled with other liquids, and the
streams which fill them are few and scanty, and he can only obtain them
with a great deal of toil and difficulty; but when his casks are once
filled he has no need to feed them any more, and has no further trouble
with them or care about them. The other, in like manner, can procure
streams, though not without difficulty; but his vessels are leaky and
unsound, and night and day he is compelled to be filling them, and if
he pauses for a moment, he is in an agony of pain. Such are their
respective lives:--And now would you say that the life of the
intemperate is happier than that of the temperate? Do I not convince you
that the opposite is the truth?

CALLICLES: You do not convince me, Socrates, for the one who has filled
himself has no longer any pleasure left; and this, as I was just now
saying, is the life of a stone: he has neither joy nor sorrow after he
is once filled; but the pleasure depends on the superabundance of the
influx.

SOCRATES: But the more you pour in, the greater the waste; and the holes
must be large for the liquid to escape.

CALLICLES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: The life which you are now depicting is not that of a dead
man, or of a stone, but of a cormorant; you mean that he is to be
hungering and eating?

CALLICLES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And he is to be thirsting and drinking?

CALLICLES: Yes, that is what I mean; he is to have all his desires about
him, and to be able to live happily in the gratification of them.

SOCRATES: Capital, excellent; go on as you have begun, and have no
shame; I, too, must disencumber myself of shame: and first, will you
tell me whether you include itching and scratching, provided you have
enough of them and pass your life in scratching, in your notion of
happiness?

CALLICLES: What a strange being you are, Socrates! a regular mob-orator.

SOCRATES: That was the reason, Callicles, why I scared Polus and
Gorgias, until they were too modest to say what they thought; but you
will not be too modest and will not be scared, for you are a brave man.
And now, answer my question.

CALLICLES: I answer, that even the scratcher would live pleasantly.

SOCRATES: And if pleasantly, then also happily?

CALLICLES: To