han unpunished; to which may be added (3) a third Socratic paradox or
ideal, that bad men do what they think best, but not what they desire,
for the desire of all is towards the good. That pleasure is to be
distinguished from good is proved by the simultaneousness of pleasure
and pain, and by the possibility of the bad having in certain cases
pleasures as great as those of the good, or even greater. Not merely
rhetoricians, but poets, musicians, and other artists, the whole tribe
of statesmen, past as well as present, are included in the class of
flatterers. The true and false finally appear before the judgment-seat
of the gods below.

The dialogue naturally falls into three divisions, to which the three
characters of Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles respectively correspond; and
the form and manner change with the stages of the argument. Socrates is
deferential towards Gorgias, playful and yet cutting in dealing with the
youthful Polus, ironical and sarcastic in his encounter with Callicles.
In the first division the question is asked--What is rhetoric? To this
there is no answer given, for Gorgias is soon made to contradict
himself by Socrates, and the argument is transferred to the hands of his
disciple Polus, who rushes to the defence of his master. The answer has
at last to be given by Socrates himself, but before he can even explain
his meaning to Polus, he must enlighten him upon the great subject of
shams or flatteries. When Polus finds his favourite art reduced to
the level of cookery, he replies that at any rate rhetoricians, like
despots, have great power. Socrates denies that they have any real
power, and hence arise the three paradoxes already mentioned. Although
they are strange to him, Polus is at last convinced of their truth; at
least, they seem to him to follow legitimately from the premises. Thus
the second act of the dialogue closes. Then Callicles appears on the
scene, at first maintaining that pleasure is good, and that might is
right, and that law is nothing but the combination of the many weak
against the few strong. When he is confuted he withdraws from the
argument, and leaves Socrates to arrive at the conclusion by himself.
The conclusion is that there are two kinds of statesmanship, a higher
and a lower--that which makes the people better, and that which only
flatters them, and he exhorts Callicles to choose the higher. The
dialogue terminates with a mythus of a final judgment, in which there
wil