And in all that concerns either BODY OR SOUL, swiftness and activity are clearly better than slowness and quietness ? CHARMIDES
Soc. Listen to me, then, while I recapitulate the argument : — Is the pleasant the same as the good ? Not the same. Callicles and I are agreed about that. And is the pleasant to be pursued for the sake of the good ? or the good for the sake of the pleasant ? The pleasant is to be pursued for the sake of the good. And that is pleasant at the presence of which we are pleased, and that is good at the presence of which we are good ? To be sure. And we — good, and all good things whatever are good when some virtue is present in us or them ? That, Callicles, is my conviction. But the virtue of each thing, whether BODY OR SOUL, instrument or creature, when given to them in the best way comes to them not by chance but as the result of the order and truth and art which are imparted to them : Am I not right ? I maintain that I am. And is not the virtue of each thing dependent on order or arrangement ? Yes, I say. And that which makes a thing good is the proper order inhering in each thing ? Such is my view. And is not the soul which has an order of her own better than that which has no order ? Certainly. And the soul which has order is orderly ? Of course. And that which is orderly is temperate ? Assuredly. And the temperate soul is good ? No other answer can I give, Callicles dear ; have you any ? GORGIAS
Soc. And the other had in view the greatest improvement of that which was ministered to, whether BODY OR SOUL ? GORGIAS
But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother in whose birth the female has no part, — she is from the male only ; this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older, there is nothing of wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by this love turn to the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent nature ; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in the very character of their attachments. For they love not boys, but intelligent, beings whose reason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards begin to grow. And in choosing young men to be their companions, they mean to be faithful to them, and pass their whole life in company with them, not to take them in their inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with them, or run away from one to another of them. But the love of young boys should be forbidden by law, because their future is uncertain ; they may turn out good or bad, either in BODY OR SOUL, and much noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them ; in this matter the good are a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be restrained by force ; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them from fixing their affections on women of free birth. These are the persons who bring a reproach on love ; and some have been led to deny the lawfulness of such attachments because they see the impropriety and evil of them ; for surely nothing that is decorously and lawfully done can justly be censured. SYMPOSIUM
herein is an excellent proof of her tenderness — that she walks not upon the hard but upon the soft. Let us adduce a similar proof of the tenderness of Love ; for he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon skulls of men, which are not so very soft, but in the hearts and souls of both god, and men, which are of all things the softest : in them he walks and dwells and makes his home. Not in every soul without exception, for Where there is hardness he departs, where there is softness there he dwells ; and nestling always with his feet and in all manner of ways in the softest of soft places, how can he be other than the softest of all things ? Of a truth he is the tenderest as well as the youngest, and also he is of flexile form ; for if he were hard and without flexure he could not enfold all things, or wind his way into and out of every soul of man undiscovered. And a proof of his flexibility and symmetry of form is his grace, which is universally admitted to be in an especial manner the attribute of Love ; ungrace and love are always at war with one another. The fairness of his complexion is revealed by his habitation among the flowers ; for he dwells not amid bloomless or fading beauties, whether of BODY OR SOUL or aught else, but in the place of flowers and scents, there he sits and abides. Concerning the beauty of the god I have said enough ; and yet there remains much more which I might say. Of his virtue I have now to speak : his greatest glory is that he can neither do nor suffer wrong to or from any god or any man ; for he suffers not by force if he suffers ; force comes not near him, neither when he acts does he act by force. For all men in all things serve him of their own free will, and where there is voluntary agreement, there, as the laws which are the lords of the city say, is justice. And not only is he just but exceedingly temperate, for Temperance is the acknowledged ruler of the pleasures and desires, and no pleasure ever masters Love ; he is their master and they are his servants ; and if he conquers them he must be temperate indeed. As to courage, even the God of War is no match for him ; he is the captive and Love is the lord, for love, the love of Aphrodite, masters him, as the tale runs ; and the master is stronger than the servant. And if he conquers the bravest of all others, he must be himself the bravest. SYMPOSIUM
Str. Acuteness and quickness, whether in BODY OR SOUL or in the movement of sound, and the imitations of them which painting and music supply, you must have praised yourself before now, or been present when others praised them. STATESMAN
Now, what lives are they, and how many in which, having searched out and beheld the objects of will and desire and their opposites, and making of them a law, choosing, I say, the dear and the pleasant and the best and noblest, a man may live in the happiest way possible ? Let us say that the temperate life is one kind of life, and the rational another, and the courageous another, and the healthful another ; and to these four let us oppose four other lives — the foolish, the cowardly, the intemperate, the diseased. He who knows the temperate life will describe it as in all things gentle, having gentle pains and gentle pleasures, and placid desires and loves not insane ; whereas the intemperate life is impetuous in all things, and has violent pains and pleasures, and vehement and stinging desires, and loves utterly insane ; and in the temperate life the pleasures exceed the pains, but in the intemperate life the pains exceed the pleasures in greatness and number and frequency. Hence one of the two lives is naturally and necessarily more pleasant and the other more painful, and he who would live pleasantly cannot possibly choose to live intemperately. And if this is true, the inference clearly is that no man is voluntarily intemperate ; but that the whole multitude of men lack temperance in their lives, either from ignorance, or from want of self-control, or both. And the same holds of the diseased and healthy life ; they both have pleasures and pains, but in health the pleasure exceeds the pain, and in sickness the pain exceeds the pleasure. Now our intention in choosing the lives is not that the painful should exceed, but the life in which pain is exceeded by pleasure we have determined to be the more pleasant life. And we should say that the temperate life has the elements both of pleasure and pain fewer and smaller and less frequent than the intemperate, and the wise life than the foolish life, and the life of courage than the life of cowardice ; one of each pair exceeding in pleasure and the other in pain, the courageous surpassing the cowardly, and the wise exceeding the foolish. And so the one dass of lives exceeds the other class in pleasure ; the temperate and courageous and wise and healthy exceed the cowardly and foolish and intemperate and diseased lives ; and generally speaking, that which has any virtue, whether of BODY OR SOUL, is pleasanter than the vicious life, and far superior in beauty and rectitude and excellence and reputation, and causes him who lives accordingly to be infinitely happier than the opposite. LAWS BOOK V