temperance and avoid intemperance, and if possible escape the necessity of
punishment, but if he have done wrong he must endure punishment. In this
way states and individuals should seek to attain harmony, which, as the
wise tell us, is the bond of heaven and earth, of gods and men. Callicles
has never discovered the power of geometrical proportion in both worlds; he
would have men aim at disproportion and excess. But if he be wrong in
this, and if self-control is the true secret of happiness, then the paradox
is true that the only use of rhetoric is in self-accusation, and Polus was
right in saying that to do wrong is worse than to suffer wrong, and Gorgias
was right in saying that the rhetorician must be a just man. And you were
wrong in taunting me with my defenceless condition, and in saying that I
might be accused or put to death or boxed on the ears with impunity. For I
may repeat once more, that to strike is worse than to be stricken--to do
than to suffer. What I said then is now made fast in adamantine bonds. I
myself know not the true nature of these things, but I know that no one can
deny my words and not be ridiculous. To do wrong is the greatest of evils,
and to suffer wrong is the next greatest evil. He who would avoid the last
must be a ruler, or the friend of a ruler; and to be the friend he must be
the equal of the ruler, and must also resemble him. Under his protection
he will suffer no evil, but will he also do no evil? Nay, will he not
rather do all the evil which he can and escape? And in this way the
greatest of all evils will befall him. 'But this imitator of the tyrant,'
rejoins Callicles, 'will kill any one who does not similarly imitate him.'
Socrates replies that he is not deaf, and that he has heard that repeated
many times, and can only reply, that a bad man will kill a good one. 'Yes,
and that is the provoking thing.' Not provoking to a man of sense who is
not studying the arts which will preserve him from danger; and this, as you
say, is the use of rhetoric in courts of justice. But how many other arts
are there which also save men from death, and are yet quite humble in their
pretensions--such as the art of swimming, or the art of the pilot? Does