Page - 214 - in The Complete Plato

same as evil fortune, and therefore the good is not the same as the pleasant? CALLICLES: I wish I knew, Socrates, what your quibbling means. SOCRATES: You know, Callicles, but you affect not to know. CALLICLES: Well, get on, and don’t keep fooling: then you will know what a wiseacre you are in your admonition of me. SOCRATES: Does not a man cease from his thirst and from his pleasure in drinking at the same time? CALLICLES: I do not understand what you are saying. GORGIAS: Nay, Callicles, answer, if only for our sakes;—we should like to hear the argument out. CALLICLES: Yes, Gorgias, but I must complain of the habitual trifling of Socrates; he is always arguing about little and unworthy questions. GORGIAS: What matter? Your reputation, Callicles, is not at stake. Let Socrates argue in his own fashion. CALLICLES: Well, then, Socrates, you shall ask these little peddling questions, since Gorgias wishes to have them. SOCRATES: I envy you, Callicles, for having been initiated into the great mysteries before you were initiated into the lesser. I thought that this was not allowable. But to return to our argument:—Does not a man cease from thirsting and from the pleasure of drinking at the same moment? CALLICLES: True. SOCRATES: And if he is hungry, or has any other desire, does he not cease from the desire and the pleasure at the same moment? CALLICLES: Very true. SOCRATES: Then he ceases from pain and pleasure at the same moment? CALLICLES: Yes. SOCRATES: But he does not cease from good and evil at the same moment, as you have admitted: do you still adhere to what you said? CALLICLES: Yes, I do; but what is the inference? SOCRATES: Why, my friend, the inference is that the good is not the same as the pleasant, or the evil the same as the painful; there is a cessation of pleasure and pain at the same moment; but not of good and evil, for they are different. How then can pleasure be the same as good, or pain as evil? And I would have you look at the matter in another light, which could hardly, I 214