I believe, on my soul, you absolutely cannot ever stop talking of cobblers and fullers, cooks and doctors, as though our discussion had to do with them.

Then will you tell me in what things the superior and wiser man has a right to the advantage of a larger share? Or will you neither put up with a suggestion from me nor make one yourself?

Why, I have been making mine for sometime past. First of all, by the superior I mean, not shoemakers or cooks, but those who are wise as regards public affairs and the proper way of conducting them, and not only wise but manly, with ability to carry out their purpose to the full; and who will not falter through softness of soul.

Do you perceive, my excellent Callicles, that your count against me is not the same as mine against you? For you say I am ever repeating the same things, and reproach me with it, whereas I charge you, on the contrary, with never saying the same thing on the same subject; but at one moment you defined the better and superior as the stronger, and at another as the wiser, and now you turn up again with something else: the manlier is what you now tell us is meant by the superior and better. No, my good friend, you had best say, and get it over, whom you do mean by the better and superior, and in what sphere.

But I have told you already: men of wisdom and manliness in public affairs. These are the persons who ought to rule our cities, and justice means this—that these should have more than other people, the rulers than the ruled.

How so? Than themselves, my friend?

What do you mean?

I mean that every man is his own ruler; or is there no need of one’s ruling oneself, but only of ruling others?

What do you mean by one who rules himself?

Nothing recondite; merely what most people mean—one who is temperate and self-mastering, ruler of the pleasures and desires that are in himself.

You will have your pleasantry! You mean the simpletons by the temperate.

How so? Nobody can fail to see that I do not mean that.