oes not satisfy Socrates, who fears that he is losing
his touchstone. A profession of seriousness on the part of Callicles
reassures him, and they proceed with the argument. Pleasure and good
are the same, but knowledge and courage are not the same either with
pleasure or good, or with one another. Socrates disproves the first of
these statements by showing that two opposites cannot coexist, but must
alternate with one another--to be well and ill together is impossible.
But pleasure and pain are simultaneous, and the cessation of them is
simultaneous; e.g. in the case of drinking and thirsting, whereas good
and evil are not simultaneous, and do not cease simultaneously, and
therefore pleasure cannot be the same as good.

Callicles has already lost his temper, and can only be persuaded to go
on by the interposition of Gorgias. Socrates, having already guarded
against objections by distinguishing courage and knowledge from pleasure
and good, proceeds:--The good are good by the presence of good, and the
bad are bad by the presence of evil. And the brave and wise are good,
and the cowardly and foolish are bad. And he who feels pleasure is good,
and he who feels pain is bad, and both feel pleasure and pain in nearly
the same degree, and sometimes the bad man or coward in a greater
degree. Therefore the bad man or coward is as good as the brave or may
be even better.

Callicles endeavours now to avert the inevitable absurdity by affirming
that he and all mankind admitted some pleasures to be good and others
bad. The good are the beneficial, and the bad are the hurtful, and
we should choose the one and avoid the other. But this, as Socrates
observes, is a return to the old doctrine of himself and Polus, that all
things should be done for the sake of the good.

Callicles assents to this, and Socrates, finding that they are agreed
in distinguishing pleasure from good, returns to his old division of
empirical habits, or shams, or flatteries, which study pleasure only,
and the arts which are concerned with the higher interests of soul and
body. Does Callicles agree to this division? Callicles will agree to
anything, in order that he may get through the argument. Which of
the arts then are flatteries? Flute-playing, harp-playing, choral
exhibitions, the dithyrambics of Cinesias are all equally condemned on
the ground that they give pleasure only; and Meles the harp-player, who
was the father of Cinesias, failed even in that. The