Lysis

Well, what reason can they have for so strangely preventing you from being happy and doing what you like? Why do they maintain you all day long in constant servitude to somebody, so that, in a word, you do hardly a single thing that you desire? And thus, it would seem, you get no advantage from all your great possessions— nay, anyone else controls them rather than you—nor from your own person, though so well-born, which is also shepherded and managed by another; while you, Lysis, control nobody, and do nothing that you desire. It is because I am not yet of age, Socrates, he said. That can hardly be the hindrance, son of Democrates, since there is a certain amount, I imagine, that your father and mother entrust to you without waiting until you come of age. For when they want some reading or writing done for them, it is you, I conceive, whom they appoint to do it before any others of the household. Is it not so? Quite so, he replied. And you are free there to choose which letter you shall write first and which second, and you have a like choice in reading. And, I suppose, when you take your lyre, neither your father nor your mother prevents you from tightening or slackening what string you please, or from using your finger or your plectrum at will: or do they prevent you? Oh, no. Then whatever can be the reason, Lysis, why they do not prevent you here, while in the matters we were just mentioning they do? I suppose, he said, because I understand these things, but not those others. Very well, I said, my excellent friend: so it is not your coming of age that your father is waiting for, as the time for entrusting you with everything; but on the day when he considers you to have a better intelligence than himself, he will entrust you with himself and all that is his. Yes, I think so, he said. Very well, I went on, but tell me, does not your neighbor observe the same rule as your father towards you? Do you think he will entrust you with the management of his house, as soon as he considers you to have a better idea of its management than himself, or will he direct it himself? I should say he would entrust it to me. Well then, do you not think that the Athenians will entrust you with their affairs, when they perceive that you have sufficient intelligence? I do. Ah, do let me ask this, I went on: what, pray, of the Great King? Would he allow his eldest son, heir-apparent to the throne of Asia, to put what he chose into the royal stew, or would he prefer us to do it, supposing we came before him and convinced him that we had a better notion than his son of preparing a tasty dish? Clearly he would prefer us, he said. And he would not allow the prince to put in the smallest bit, whereas he would let us have our way even if we wanted to put in salt by the handful. Why, of course.