Callicles: shame, nature, law
CalliclesSocrates, you seem to swagger in your speeches like a true popular orator; and now you are playing the popular orator with this, since Polus has suffered the same thing he accused Gorgias of suffering in his dealings with you. For he said, I suppose, that when you asked Gorgias whether he would teach someone who came to him wanting to learn rhetoric without knowing what is just, Gorgias was ashamed and said he would, because of what people are used to, since they would be indignant if anyone said he would not—and it was because of this agreement that he was compelled to contradict himself, and that was just what you delighted in—and Polus laughed at you then, rightly, as it seems to me at least. But now he himself has suffered this very same thing in his turn.
And I, for my part, do not admire Polus for exactly this: that he conceded to you that doing injustice is more shameful than suffering injustice. For it was from this agreement, in turn, that he himself was hobbled by you in argument and muzzled, because he was ashamed to say what he had in mind. You see, Socrates, while claiming to pursue the truth, you in reality bring the talk round to vulgar and crowd-pleasing things of this kind, which are fine not by nature but by law. And for the most part these two, nature and law, are opposed to each other; so if someone is ashamed and does not dare to say what he has in mind, he is compelled to contradict himself. And you, having grasped this very bit of wisdom, play foul in argument: if someone speaks of what is so by law, you slip in your questions about what is so by nature; and if he speaks of the things of nature, you ask about the things of law.
Just as here, for instance, with doing injustice and suffering injustice: when Polus was speaking of what is more shameful by law, you pursued the argument in terms of what is so by nature. For by nature everything that is also worse is more shameful—suffering injustice—but by law, doing injustice. For this suffering at any rate, suffering injustice, is not a man’s lot but some slave’s, for whom it is better to be dead than alive: someone who, when he suffers injustice and is dragged through the mud, is unable to help himself or anyone else he cares about. But those who lay down the laws, I think, are the weak people, and the many.