e ridiculous in us to attempt public works, or to advise one another to
undertake them. Is not this true?

CALLICLES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And does not the same hold in all other cases? If you and I
were physicians, and were advising one another that we were competent to
practise as state-physicians, should I not ask about you, and would
you not ask about me, Well, but how about Socrates himself, has he good
health? and was any one else ever known to be cured by him, whether
slave or freeman? And I should make the same enquiries about you. And if
we arrived at the conclusion that no one, whether citizen or stranger,
man or woman, had ever been any the better for the medical skill of
either of us, then, by Heaven, Callicles, what an absurdity to
think that we or any human being should be so silly as to set up as
state-physicians and advise others like ourselves to do the same,
without having first practised in private, whether successfully or not,
and acquired experience of the art! Is not this, as they say, to begin
with the big jar when you are learning the potter's art; which is a
foolish thing?

CALLICLES: True.

SOCRATES: And now, my friend, as you are already beginning to be a
public character, and are admonishing and reproaching me for not being
one, suppose that we ask a few questions of one another. Tell me, then,
Callicles, how about making any of the citizens better? Was there ever
a man who was once vicious, or unjust, or intemperate, or foolish, and
became by the help of Callicles good and noble? Was there ever such a
man, whether citizen or stranger, slave or freeman? Tell me, Callicles,
if a person were to ask these questions of you, what would you answer?
Whom would you say that you had improved by your conversation? There may
have been good deeds of this sort which were done by you as a private
person, before you came forward in public. Why will you not answer?

CALLICLES: You are contentious, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Nay, I ask you, not from a love of contention, but because
I really want to know in what way you think that affairs should be
administered among us--whether, when you come to the administration of
them, you have any other aim but the improvement of the citizens? Have
we not already admitted many times over that such is the duty of a
public man? Nay, we have surely said so; for if you will not answer for
yourself I must answer for you. But if this is what the good man ought
to effect for