use
they are afraid; and yet that a man should be courageous from fear, and
because he is a coward, is surely a strange thing.

Very true.

And are not the temperate exactly in the same case? They are temperate
because they are intemperate--which might seem to be a contradiction,
but is nevertheless the sort of thing which happens with this foolish
temperance. For there are pleasures which they are afraid of losing; and
in their desire to keep them, they abstain from some pleasures, because
they are overcome by others; and although to be conquered by pleasure is
called by men intemperance, to them the conquest of pleasure consists in
being conquered by pleasure. And that is what I mean by saying that, in
a sense, they are made temperate through intemperance.

Such appears to be the case.

Yet the exchange of one fear or pleasure or pain for another fear or
pleasure or pain, and of the greater for the less, as if they were
coins, is not the exchange of virtue. O my blessed Simmias, is there not
one true coin for which all things ought to be exchanged?--and that
is wisdom; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is
anything truly bought or sold, whether courage or temperance or justice.
And is not all true virtue the companion of wisdom, no matter what fears
or pleasures or other similar goods or evils may or may not attend her?
But the virtue which is made up of these goods, when they are severed
from wisdom and exchanged with one another, is a shadow of virtue only,
nor is there any freedom or health or truth in her; but in the true
exchange there is a purging away of all these things, and temperance,
and justice, and courage, and wisdom herself are the purgation of them.
The founders of the mysteries would appear to have had a real meaning,
and were not talking nonsense when they intimated in a figure long ago
that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below
will lie in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and
purification will dwell with the gods. For 'many,' as they say in the
mysteries, 'are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics,'--meaning,
as I interpret the words, 'the true philosophers.' In the number
of whom, during my whole life, I have been seeking, according to my
ability, to find a place;--whether I have sought in a right way or not,
and whether I have succeeded or not, I shall truly know in a little
while, if God will, when I myself arrive