ssible, and therefore they combine to prevent
him. But if he is a king, and has power, how base would he be in
submitting to them! To invite the common herd to be lord over him, when
he might have the enjoyment of all things! For the truth is, Socrates,
that luxury and self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest
is mere talk.'

Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what other men
only think. According to his view, those who want nothing are not happy.
'Why,' says Callicles, 'if they were, stones and the dead would be
happy.' Socrates in reply is led into a half-serious, half-comic vein
of reflection. 'Who knows,' as Euripides says, 'whether life may not be
death, and death life?' Nay, there are philosophers who maintain that
even in life we are dead, and that the body (soma) is the tomb (sema) of
the soul. And some ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory, in which
he represents fools as the uninitiated, who are supposed to be carrying
water to a vessel, which is full of holes, in a similarly holey sieve,
and this sieve is their own soul. The idea is fanciful, but nevertheless
is a figure of a truth which I want to make you acknowledge, viz. that
the life of contentment is better than the life of indulgence. Are you
disposed to admit that? 'Far otherwise.' Then hear another parable.
The life of self-contentment and self-indulgence may be represented
respectively by two men, who are filling jars with streams of wine,
honey, milk,--the jars of the one are sound, and the jars of the other
leaky; the first fils his jars, and has no more trouble with them; the
second is always filling them, and would suffer extreme misery if he
desisted. Are you of the same opinion still? 'Yes, Socrates, and the
figure expresses what I mean. For true pleasure is a perpetual stream,
flowing in and flowing out. To be hungry and always eating, to be
thirsty and always drinking, and to have all the other desires and to
satisfy them, that, as I admit, is my idea of happiness.' And to
be itching and always scratching? 'I do not deny that there may be
happiness even in that.' And to indulge unnatural desires, if they are
abundantly satisfied? Callicles is indignant at the introduction of such
topics. But he is reminded by Socrates that they are introduced, not by
him, but by the maintainer of the identity of pleasure and good. Will
Callicles still maintain this? 'Yes, for the sake of consistency, he
will.' The answer d