ALLICLES: But, indeed, I am afraid that I cannot tell you of any such
among the orators who are at present living.

SOCRATES: Well, then, can you mention any one of a former generation,
who may be said to have improved the Athenians, who found them worse
and made them better, from the day that he began to make speeches? for,
indeed, I do not know of such a man.

CALLICLES: What! did you never hear that Themistocles was a good man,
and Cimon and Miltiades and Pericles, who is just lately dead, and whom
you heard yourself?

SOCRATES: Yes, Callicles, they were good men, if, as you said at first,
true virtue consists only in the satisfaction of our own desires and
those of others; but if not, and if, as we were afterwards compelled to
acknowledge, the satisfaction of some desires makes us better, and of
others, worse, and we ought to gratify the one and not the other, and
there is an art in distinguishing them,--can you tell me of any of these
statesmen who did distinguish them?

CALLICLES: No, indeed, I cannot.

SOCRATES: Yet, surely, Callicles, if you look you will find such a one.
Suppose that we just calmly consider whether any of these was such as I
have described. Will not the good man, who says whatever he says with
a view to the best, speak with a reference to some standard and not at
random; just as all other artists, whether the painter, the builder, the
shipwright, or any other look all of them to their own work, and do
not select and apply at random what they apply, but strive to give
a definite form to it? The artist disposes all things in order, and
compels the one part to harmonize and accord with the other part, until
he has constructed a regular and systematic whole; and this is true of
all artists, and in the same way the trainers and physicians, of whom we
spoke before, give order and regularity to the body: do you deny this?

CALLICLES: No; I am ready to admit it.

SOCRATES: Then the house in which order and regularity prevail is good;
that in which there is disorder, evil?

CALLICLES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the same is true of a ship?

CALLICLES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the same may be said of the human body?

CALLICLES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And what would you say of the soul? Will the good soul be that
in which disorder is prevalent, or that in which there is harmony and
order?

CALLICLES: The latter follows from our previous admissions.

SOCRATES: What is the name which is given to the effect o