Heaven, earth and order
SocratesThis, then, is how I for my part set these things down, and I say that they are true. And if they are true, then, as it seems, the one who wants to be happy must pursue and practise temperance, and must flee unrestraint as fast as each of us has feet to carry him; and one must prepare above all not to need restraining; but if there is need of it, whether for oneself or for anyone else of one’s own, whether a private person or a city, the one in need must be made to pay the penalty and be restrained, if he is to be happy. This, it seems to me, is the target one must keep in view as one lives: straining everything of one’s own and everything of the city’s towards it, one must act so that justice and temperance will be present to the one who is to be blessed—not letting one’s desires be unrestrained and trying to fill them, an evil without end, living the life of a robber.
For such a man would be dear neither to any other human being nor to a god: he is incapable of community, and one in whom there is no community could have no friendship. And the wise say, Callicles, that what holds heaven and earth, gods and men together is community and friendship, orderliness, temperance and justice; and it is for this reason, my friend, that they call this whole a world-order, and not disorder or unrestraint. But you seem to me not to give your mind to these things, wise man though you are; no, it has escaped you that geometrical equality has great power among gods and men alike, and you think one must practise getting more: for you neglect geometry.
Very well. Either this argument must be refuted by us, and we must show that it is not by the possession of justice and temperance that the happy are happy, nor by the possession of vice that the wretched are wretched—or, if it is true, we must consider what the consequences are. All those earlier things follow, Callicles, the ones about which you asked me whether I was saying them in earnest, when I said that one must accuse oneself and one’s son and one’s companion, if any of them does injustice, and must use rhetoric for this purpose; and what you thought Polus conceded out of shame was true after all: that by as much as doing injustice is more shameful than suffering injustice, by so much is it worse; and the one who is to be a rhetorician in the right way must, then, be just and knowing what is just—which Polus in his turn said Gorgias had agreed to out of shame.