Here Callicles, who has been listening in silent amazement, asks Chaerephon
whether Socrates is in earnest, and on receiving the assurance that he is,
proceeds to ask the same question of Socrates himself. For if such
doctrines are true, life must have been turned upside down, and all of us
are doing the opposite of what we ought to be doing.

Socrates replies in a style of playful irony, that before men can
understand one another they must have some common feeling. And such a
community of feeling exists between himself and Callicles, for both of them
are lovers, and they have both a pair of loves; the beloved of Callicles
are the Athenian Demos and Demos the son of Pyrilampes; the beloved of
Socrates are Alcibiades and philosophy. The peculiarity of Callicles is
that he can never contradict his loves; he changes as his Demos changes in
all his opinions; he watches the countenance of both his loves, and repeats
their sentiments, and if any one is surprised at his sayings and doings,
the explanation of them is, that he is not a free agent, but must always be
imitating his two loves. And this is the explanation of Socrates'
peculiarities also. He is always repeating what his mistress, Philosophy,
is saying to him, who unlike his other love, Alcibiades, is ever the same,
ever true. Callicles must refute her, or he will never be at unity with
himself; and discord in life is far worse than the discord of musical
sounds.

Callicles answers, that Gorgias was overthrown because, as Polus said, in
compliance with popular prejudice he had admitted that if his pupil did not
know justice the rhetorician must teach him; and Polus has been similarly
entangled, because his modesty led him to admit that to suffer is more
honourable than to do injustice. By custom 'yes,' but not by nature, says
Callicles. And Socrates is always playing between the two points of view,
and putting one in the place of the other. In this very argument, what