Complete Works (144 page)

“This is a gift, my dear Critias,” I said, “which has been in your family as far back as Solon. But why not call the young man over and put him through his paces? Even though he is still so young, there can be nothing wrong in talking to him when you are here, since you are both his guardian and his cousin.”

[b] “You are right,” he said; “we’ll call him.” And he immediately spoke to his servant and said, “Boy, call Charmides and tell him I want him to meet a doctor for the weakness he told me he was suffering from yesterday.” Then Critias said to me, “You see, just lately he’s complained of a headache when he gets up in the morning. Why not pretend to him that you know a remedy for it?”

“No reason why not,” I said, “if he will only come.”

“Oh, he will come,” he said.

[c] Which is just what happened. He did come, and his coming caused a lot of laughter, because every one of us who was already seated began pushing hard at his neighbor so as to make a place for him to sit down. The upshot of it was that we made the man sitting at one end get up, and the man at the other end was toppled off sideways. In the end he came and sat down between me and Critias. And then, my friend, I really was in difficulties, and although I had thought it would be perfectly easy to talk to him, I found my previous brash confidence quite gone. And when [d] Critias said that I was the person who knew the remedy and he turned his full gaze upon me in a manner beyond description and seemed on the point of asking a question, and when everyone in the palaestra surged all around us in a circle, my noble friend, I saw inside his cloak and caught on fire and was quite beside myself. And it occurred to me that Cydias
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was the wisest love-poet when he gave someone advice on the subject of beautiful boys and said that “the fawn should beware lest, while taking a look at the lion, he should provide part of the lion’s dinner,” because I felt as if I had been snapped up by such a creature. All the same, when he asked me if I knew the headache remedy, I managed somehow to answer that I did.

“What exactly is it?” he said.

[e] And I said that it was a certain leaf, and that there was a charm to go with it. If one sang the charm while applying the leaf, the remedy would bring about a complete cure, but without the charm the leaf was useless.

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And he said, “Well, then I shall write down the charm at your dictation.”

“With my permission,” I said, “or without it?”

“With it, of course, Socrates,” he said, laughing.

“Very well,” I said. “And are you quite sure about my name?”

“It would be disgraceful if I were not,” he said, “because you are no small topic of conversation among us boys, and besides, I remember you being with Critias here when I was a child.”

“Good for you,” I said. “Then I shall speak more freely about the nature [b] of the charm. Just now I was in difficulties about what method I would adopt in order to demonstrate its power to you. Its nature, Charmides, is not such as to be able to cure the head alone. You have probably heard this about good doctors, that if you go to them with a pain in the eyes, they are likely to say that they cannot undertake to cure the eyes by themselves, but that it will be necessary to treat the head at the same time if things are also to go well with the eyes. And again it would be very foolish to suppose that one could ever treat the head by itself without [c] treating the whole body. In keeping with this principle, they plan a regime for the whole body with the idea of treating and curing the part along with the whole. Or haven’t you noticed that this is what they say and what the situation is?”

“Yes, I have,” he said.

“Then what I have said appears true, and you accept the principle?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

And when I heard his approval, I took heart and, little by little, my [d] former confidence revived, and I began to wake up. So I said, “Well Charmides, it is just the same with this charm. I learned it while I was with the army, from one of the Thracian doctors of Zalmoxis, who are also said to make men immortal. And this Thracian said that the Greek doctors were right to say what I told you just now. ‘But our king Zalmoxis,’ he said, ‘who is a god, says that just as one should not attempt to cure [e] the eyes apart from the head, nor the head apart from the body, so one should not attempt to cure the body apart from the soul. And this, he says, is the very reason why most diseases are beyond the Greek doctors, that they do not pay attention to the whole as they ought to do, since if the whole is not in good condition, it is impossible that the part should be. Because,’ he said, ‘the soul is the source both of bodily health and bodily disease for the whole man, and these flow from the soul in the same way that the eyes are affected by the head. So it is necessary first
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and foremost to cure the soul if the parts of the head and of the rest of the body are to be healthy. And the soul,’ he said, ‘my dear friend, is cured by means of certain charms, and these charms consist of beautiful words. It is a result of such words that temperance arises in the soul, and when the soul acquires and possesses temperance, it is easy to provide health both for the head and for the rest of the body.’ So when he taught me the [b] remedy and the charms, he also said, ‘Don’t let anyone persuade you to treat his head with this remedy who does not first submit his soul to you for treatment with the charm. Because nowadays,’ he said, ‘this is the mistake some doctors make with their patients. They try to produce health of body apart from health of soul.’ And he gave me very strict instructions [c] that I should be deaf to the entreaties of wealth, position, and personal beauty. So I (for I have given him my promise and must keep it) shall be obedient, and if you are willing, in accordance with the stranger’s instructions, to submit your soul to be charmed with the Thracian’s charms first, then I shall apply the remedy to your head. But if not, there is nothing we can do for you, my dear Charmides.”

When Critias heard me saying this, he said, “The headache will turn out to have been a lucky thing for the young man, Socrates, if, because of [d] his head, he will be forced to improve his wits. Let me tell you, though, that Charmides not only outstrips his contemporaries in beauty of form but also in this very thing for which you say you have the charm; it was temperance, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, indeed it was,” I said.

“Then you must know that not only does he have the reputation of being the most temperate young man of the day, but that he is second to none in everything else appropriate to his age.”

[e] “And it is quite right, Charmides, that you should be superior to the rest in all such things,” I replied, “because I don’t suppose that anyone else here could so readily point to two Athenian families whose union would be likely to produce a more aristocratic lineage than that from which you are sprung. Your father’s family, that of Critias, the son of
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Dropides,
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has been praised for us by Anacreon, Solon, and many other poets for superior beauty, virtue, and everything else called happiness. It’s the same on your mother’s side. Your maternal uncle Pyrilampes has the reputation of being the finest and most influential man in the country because of his numerous embassies to the Great King and others, so that this whole side of the family is not a bit inferior to the other. As the offspring of such forebears, it is likely that you hold pride of place. In the [b] matter of visible beauty, dear son of Glaucon, you appear to me to be in no respect surpassed by those who come before. But if, in addition, you have a sufficient share of temperance and the other attributes mentioned by your friend here, then your mother bore a blessed son in you, my dear Charmides. Now this is the situation: if temperance is already present in you, as Critias here asserts, and if you are sufficiently temperate, you have no need of the charms either of Zalmoxis or of Abaris the Hyperborean, [c] and you may have the remedy for the head straightaway. But if you still appear to lack these things, you must be charmed before you are given the remedy. So tell me yourself: do you agree with your friend and assert that you already partake sufficiently of temperance, or would you say that you are lacking in it?”

At first Charmides blushed and looked more beautiful than ever, and his bashfulness was becoming at his age. Then he answered in a way that was quite dignified: he said that it was not easy for him, in the present circumstances, either to agree or to disagree with what had been asked. “Because,” he said, “if I should deny that I am temperate, it would not [d] only seem an odd thing to say about oneself, but I would at the same time make Critias here a liar, and so with the many others to whom, by his account, I appear to be temperate. But if, on the other hand, I should agree and should praise myself, perhaps that would appear distasteful. So I do not know what I am to answer.”

And I said, “What you say appears to me to be reasonable, Charmides. And I think,” I said, “we ought to investigate together the question whether [e] you do or do not possess the thing I am inquiring about, so that you will not be forced to say anything against your will and I, on the other hand, shall not turn to doctoring in an irresponsible way. If this is agreeable to you, I would like to investigate the question with you, but if not, we can give it up.”

“Oh, I should like it above all things,” he said, “so go ahead and investigate the matter in whatever way you think best.”

“Well then,” I said, “in these circumstances, I think the following method would be best. Now it is clear that if temperance is present in you, you
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have some opinion about it. Because it is necessary, I suppose, that if it really resides in you, it provides a sense of its presence, by means of which you would form an opinion not only that you have it but of what sort it is. Or don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” he said, “I do think so.”

“Well, then, since you know how to speak Greek,” I said, “I suppose you could express this impression of yours in just the way it strikes you?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Well, to help us decide whether it resides in you or not, say what, in your opinion, temperance is,” I said.

At first he shied away and was rather unwilling to answer. Finally, [b] however, he said that in his opinion temperance was doing everything in an orderly and quiet way—things like walking in the streets, and talking, and doing everything else in a similar fashion. “So I think,” he said, “taking it all together, that what you ask about is a sort of quietness.”

“Perhaps you are right,” I said, “at least they do say, Charmides, that the quiet are temperate. Let’s see if there is anything in it. Tell me, temperance is [c] one of the admirable things, isn’t it?”

“Yes indeed,” he said.

“Now when you are at the writing master’s, is it more admirable to copy the letters quickly or quietly?”
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“Quickly.”

“What about reading? Quickly or quietly?”

“Quickly.”

“And certainly to play the lyre quickly and to wrestle in a lively fashion is much more admirable than to do these things quietly and slowly?”

“Yes.”

“Well, isn’t the same thing true about boxing and the pancration?”

“Yes indeed.”

[d] “And with running and jumping and all the movements of the body, aren’t the ones that are performed briskly and quickly the admirable ones, and those performed with difficulty and quietly the ugly ones?”

“It seems so.”

“And it seems to us that, in matters of the body, it is not the quieter movement but the quickest and most lively which is the most admirable. Isn’t it so?”

“Yes indeed.”

“But temperance was something admirable?”

“Yes.”

“Then in the case of the body it would not be quietness but quickness which is the more temperate, since temperance is an admirable thing.”

“That seems reasonable,” he said.

[e] “Well then,” I said, “is facility in learning more admirable or difficulty in learning?”

“Facility.”

“But facility in learning is learning quickly? And difficulty in learning is learning quietly and slowly?”

“Yes.”

“And to teach another person quickly—isn’t this far more admirable than to teach him quietly and slowly?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, to recall and to remember quietly and slowly—is this more admirable, or to do it vehemently and quickly?”

“Vehemently,” he said, “and quickly.”

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“And isn’t shrewdness a kind of liveliness of soul, and not a kind of quietness?”

“True.”

“And again this is also true of understanding what is said, at the writing master’s and at the lyre teacher’s and everywhere else: to act not as quietly but as quickly as possible is the most admirable.”

“Yes.”

“And, further, in the operations of thought and in making plans, it is not the quietest man, I think, and the man who plans and finds out things [b] with difficulty who appears to be worthy of praise but the one who does these things most easily and quickly.”

“Exactly so,” he said.

“Therefore, Charmides,” I said, “in all these cases, both of soul and body, we think that quickness and speed are more admirable than slowness and quietness?”

“It seems likely,” he said.

“We conclude then that temperance would not be a kind of quietness, nor would the temperate life be quiet, as far as this argument is concerned at any rate, since the temperate life is necessarily an admirable thing. There are two possibilities for us: either no quiet actions in life appear to be more [c] admirable than the swift and strong ones, or very few. If then, my friend, even quite a few quiet actions should turn out to be more admirable than the violent and quick ones, not even on this assumption would temperance consist in doing things quietly rather than in doing them violently and quickly, neither in walking nor in speech nor in anything else; nor would the quiet life be more temperate than its opposite, since in the course of [d] the argument we placed temperance among the admirable things, and the quick things have turned out to be no less admirable than the quiet ones.”