you defined the superior to be the stronger, and then the wiser, and now
something else;--what DO you mean? 'I mean men of political ability, who
ought to govern and to have more than the governed.' Than themselves?
'What do you mean?' I mean to say that every man is his own governor. 'I
see that you mean those dolts, the temperate. But my doctrine is, that a
man should let his desires grow, and take the means of satisfying them. To
the many this is impossible, and therefore they combine to prevent him.
But if he is a king, and has power, how base would he be in submitting to
them! To invite the common herd to be lord over him, when he might have
the enjoyment of all things! For the truth is, Socrates, that luxury and
self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest is mere talk.'

Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what other men
only think. According to his view, those who want nothing are not happy.
'Why,' says Callicles, 'if they were, stones and the dead would be happy.'
Socrates in reply is led into a half-serious, half-comic vein of
reflection. 'Who knows,' as Euripides says, 'whether life may not be
death, and death life?' Nay, there are philosophers who maintain that even
in life we are dead, and that the body (soma) is the tomb (sema) of the
soul. And some ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory, in which he
represents fools as the uninitiated, who are supposed to be carrying water
to a vessel, which is full of holes, in a similarly holey sieve, and this
sieve is their own soul. The idea is fanciful, but nevertheless is a
figure of a truth which I want to make you acknowledge, viz. that the life
of contentment is better than the life of indulgence. Are you disposed to
admit that? 'Far otherwise.' Then hear another parable. The life of
self-contentment and self-indulgence may be represented respectively by two
men, who are filling jars with streams of wine, honey, milk,--the jars of
the one are sound, and the jars of the other leaky; the first fils his
jars, and has no more trouble with them; the second is always filling them,