o you mean by his 'ruling over himself'?

SOCRATES: A simple thing enough; just what is commonly said, that a
man should be temperate and master of himself, and ruler of his own
pleasures and passions.

CALLICLES: What innocence! you mean those fools,--the temperate?

SOCRATES: Certainly:--any one may know that to be my meaning.

CALLICLES: Quite so, Socrates; and they are really fools, for how can a
man be happy who is the servant of anything? On the contrary, I plainly
assert, that he who would truly live ought to allow his desires to wax
to the uttermost, and not to chastise them; but when they have grown to
their greatest he should have courage and intelligence to minister to
them and to satisfy all his longings. And this I affirm to be natural
justice and nobility. To this however the many cannot attain; and they
blame the strong man because they are ashamed of their own weakness,
which they desire to conceal, and hence they say that intemperance is
base. As I have remarked already, they enslave the nobler natures, and
being unable to satisfy their pleasures, they praise temperance and
justice out of their own cowardice. For if a man had been originally
the son of a king, or had a nature capable of acquiring an empire or
a tyranny or sovereignty, what could be more truly base or evil than
temperance--to a man like him, I say, who might freely be enjoying every
good, and has no one to stand in his way, and yet has admitted custom
and reason and the opinion of other men to be lords over him?--must
not he be in a miserable plight whom the reputation of justice and
temperance hinders from giving more to his friends than to his enemies,
even though he be a ruler in his city? Nay, Socrates, for you profess
to be a votary of the truth, and the truth is this:--that luxury and
intemperance and licence, if they be provided with means, are virtue and
happiness--all the rest is a mere bauble, agreements contrary to nature,
foolish talk of men, nothing worth. (Compare Republic.)

SOCRATES: There is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your way of
approaching the argument; for what you say is what the rest of the world
think, but do not like to say. And I must beg of you to persevere, that
the true rule of human life may become manifest. Tell me, then:--you
say, do you not, that in the rightly-developed man the passions ought
not to be controlled, but that we should let them grow to the utmost and
somehow or other satisfy them, an