temperance, also, which even the multitude call temperance, and
which consists in not being carried away by the passions, but in holding
them in contempt, and keeping them in subjection, does not this belong
to those only who most despise the body, and live in the study of
philosophy?"

"Necessarily so," he replied.

36. "For," he continued, "if you will consider the fortitude and
temperance of others, they will appear to you to be absurd."

"How so, Socrates?"

"Do you know," he said, "that all others consider death among the great
evils?"

"They do indeed," he answered.

"Then, do the brave among them endure death when they do endure it,
through dread of greater evils?"

"It is so."

"All men, therefore, except philosophers, are brave through being afraid
and fear; though it is absurd that any one should be brave through fear
and cowardice."

"Certainly."

"But what, are not those among them who keep their passions in
subjection affected in the same way? and are they not temperate through
a kind of intemperance? And although we may say, perhaps, that this is
impossible, nevertheless the manner in which they are affected with
respect to this silly temperance resembles this, for, fearing to be
deprived of other pleasures, and desiring them, they abstain from some,
being mastered by others. And though they call intemperance the being
governed by pleasures, yet it happens to them that, by being mastered by
some pleasures, they master others, and this is similar to what was just
now said, that in a certain manner they become temperate through
intemperance."

"So it seems,"

37. "My dear Simmias, consider that this is not a right exchange for
virtue, to barter pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, fear for
fear, and the greater for the lesser, like pieces of money, but that
that alone is the right coin, for which we ought to barter all these
things, wisdom, and for this and with this everything is in reality
bought and sold Fortitude, temperance and justice, and, in a word true
virtue, subsist with wisdom, whether pleasures and fears, and everything
else of the kind, are present or absent, but when separated from wisdom
and changed one for another, consider whether such virtue is not a mere
outline and in reality servile, possessing neither soundness nor truth.
But the really true virtue is a purification from all such things, and
temperance, justice, fortitude and wisdom itself, are a kind of
initiat