d that this is virtue?

CALLICLES: Yes; I do.

SOCRATES: Then those who want nothing are not truly said to be happy?

CALLICLES: No indeed, for then stones and dead men would be the happiest
of all.

SOCRATES: But surely life according to your view is an awful thing; and
indeed I think that Euripides may have been right in saying,

'Who knows if life be not death and death life;'

and that we are very likely dead; I have heard a philosopher say that at
this moment we are actually dead, and that the body (soma) is our tomb
(sema (compare Phaedr.)), and that the part of the soul which is the
seat of the desires is liable to be tossed about by words and blown up
and down; and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an
Italian, playing with the word, invented a tale in which he called the
soul--because of its believing and make-believe nature--a vessel (An
untranslatable pun,--dia to pithanon te kai pistikon onomase pithon.),
and the ignorant he called the uninitiated or leaky, and the place in
the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated, being the
intemperate and incontinent part, he compared to a vessel full of holes,
because it can never be satisfied. He is not of your way of thinking,
Callicles, for he declares, that of all the souls in Hades, meaning the
invisible world (aeides), these uninitiated or leaky persons are the
most miserable, and that they pour water into a vessel which is full of
holes out of a colander which is similarly perforated. The colander, as
my informer assures me, is the soul, and the soul which he compares to
a colander is the soul of the ignorant, which is likewise full of holes,
and therefore incontinent, owing to a bad memory and want of faith.
These notions are strange enough, but they show the principle which, if
I can, I would fain prove to you; that you should change your mind,
and, instead of the intemperate and insatiate life, choose that which
is orderly and sufficient and has a due provision for daily needs. Do I
make any impression on you, and are you coming over to the opinion that
the orderly are happier than the intemperate? Or do I fail to persuade
you, and, however many tales I rehearse to you, do you continue of the
same opinion still?

CALLICLES: The latter, Socrates, is more like the truth.

SOCRATES: Well, I will tell you another image, which comes out of the
same school:--Let me request you to consider how far you would accept
this as an acco