and would suffer extreme misery if he desisted. Are you of the same
opinion still? 'Yes, Socrates, and the figure expresses what I mean. For
true pleasure is a perpetual stream, flowing in and flowing out. To be
hungry and always eating, to be thirsty and always drinking, and to have
all the other desires and to satisfy them, that, as I admit, is my idea of
happiness.' And to be itching and always scratching? 'I do not deny that
there may be happiness even in that.' And to indulge unnatural desires, if
they are abundantly satisfied? Callicles is indignant at the introduction
of such topics. But he is reminded by Socrates that they are introduced,
not by him, but by the maintainer of the identity of pleasure and good.
Will Callicles still maintain this? 'Yes, for the sake of consistency, he
will.' The answer does not satisfy Socrates, who fears that he is losing
his touchstone. A profession of seriousness on the part of Callicles
reassures him, and they proceed with the argument. Pleasure and good are
the same, but knowledge and courage are not the same either with pleasure
or good, or with one another. Socrates disproves the first of these
statements by showing that two opposites cannot coexist, but must alternate
with one another--to be well and ill together is impossible. But pleasure
and pain are simultaneous, and the cessation of them is simultaneous; e.g.
in the case of drinking and thirsting, whereas good and evil are not
simultaneous, and do not cease simultaneously, and therefore pleasure
cannot be the same as good.

Callicles has already lost his temper, and can only be persuaded to go on
by the interposition of Gorgias. Socrates, having already guarded against
objections by distinguishing courage and knowledge from pleasure and good,
proceeds:--The good are good by the presence of good, and the bad are bad
by the presence of evil. And the brave and wise are good, and the cowardly
and foolish are bad. And he who feels pleasure is good, and he who feels
pain is bad, and both feel pleasure and pain in nearly the same degree, and