Soc. And what art will protect us from suffering injustice, if not wholly, yet as far as possible? I want to know whether you agree with me; for I think that such an art is the art of one who is either a ruler or even tyrant himself, or the equal and companion of the ruling power.
Cal. Well said, Socrates; and please to observe how ready I am to praise you when you talk sense.
Soc. Think and tell me whether you would approve of another view of mine: To me every man appears to be most the friend of him who is most like to him-like to like, as ancient sages say: Would you not agree to this?
Cal. I should.
Soc. But when the tyrant is rude and uneducated, he may be expected to fear any one who is his superior in virtue, and will never be able to be perfectly friendly with him.
Cal. That is true.
Soc. Neither will he be the friend of any one who greatly his inferior, for the tyrant will despise him, and will never seriously regard him as a friend.
Cal. That again is true.
Soc. Then the only friend worth mentioning, whom the tyrant can have, will be one who is of the same character, and has the same likes and dislikes, and is at the same time willing to be subject and subservient to him; he is the man who will have power in the state, and no one will injure him with impunity:-is not that so?
Cal. Yes.
Soc. And if a young man begins to ask how he may become great and formidable, this would seem to be the way-he will accustom himself, from his youth upward, to feel sorrow and joy on, the same occasions as his master, and will contrive to be as like him as possible?
Cal. Yes.
Soc. And in this way he will have accomplished, as you and your friends would. say, the end of becoming a great man and not suffering injury?
Cal. Very true.
Soc. But will he also escape from doing injury? Must not the very opposite be true,-if he is to be like the tyrant in his injustice, and to have influence with him? Will he not rather contrive to do as much wrong as possible, and not be punished?
Cal. True.
Soc. And by the imitation of his master and by the power which he thus acquires will not his soul become bad and corrupted, and will not this be the greatest evil to him?
Cal. You always contrive somehow or other, Socrates, to invert everything: do you not know that he who imitates the tyrant will, if he has a mind, kill him who does not imitate him and take away his goods?
Soc. Excellent Callicles, I am not deaf, and I have heard that a great many times from you and from Polus and from nearly every man in the city, but I wish that you would hear me too. I dare say that he will kill him if he has a mind-the bad man will kill the good and true.
Cal. And is not that just the provoking thing?
Soc. Nay, not to a man of sense, as the argument shows: do you think that all our cares should be directed to prolonging life to the uttermost, and to the study of those arts which secure us from danger always; like that art of rhetoric which saves men in courts of law, and which you advise me to cultivate?
Cal. Yes, truly, and very good advice too.
Soc. Well, my friend, but what do you think of swimming; is that an art of any great pretensions?
Cal. No, indeed.
Soc. And yet surely swimming saves a man from death, there are occasions on which he must know how to swim. And if you despise the swimmers, I will tell you of another and greater art, the art of the pilot, who not only saves the souls of men, but also their bodies and properties from the extremity of danger, just like rhetoric. Yet his art is modest and unpresuming: it has no airs or pretences of doing anything extraordinary, and, in return for the same salvation which is given by the pleader, demands only two obols, if he brings us from Aegina to Athens, or for the longer voyage from Pontus or Egypt, at the utmost two drachmae, when he has saved, as I was just now saying, the passenger and his wife and children and goods, and safely disembarked them at the Piraeus -this is the payment which he asks in return for so great a boon; and he who is the master of the art, and has done all this, gets out and walks about on the sea-shore by his ship in an unassuming way. For he is able to reflect and is aware that he cannot tell which of his fellow-passengers he has benefited, and which of them he has injured in not allowing them to be drowned. He knows that they are just the same when he has disembarked them as when they embarked, and not a whit better either in their bodies or in their souls; and he considers that if a man who is afflicted by great and incurable bodily diseases is only to be pitied for having escaped, and is in no way benefited by him in having been saved from drowning, much less he who has great and incurable diseases, not of the body, but of the soul, which is the more valuable part of him; neither is life worth having nor of any profit to the bad man, whether he be delivered from the sea, or the law-courts, or any other devourer-and so he reflects that such a one had better not live, for he cannot live well.
