Charmides

“Most certainly, then, if temperance is only knowledge of knowledge and of the lack of knowledge, it will be able to tell neither a doctor who knows the things of his craft from one who does not know them but pretends or thinks he does, nor anyone else who knows anything at all, except the temperate man’s own fellow craftsman, as the other craftsmen can.”

“So it appears,” he said.

171d“Then what benefit, Critias,” I said, “would we still get from temperance, if it is like this? For if, as we supposed at the start, the temperate man knew what he knew and what he did not know, of some things that he knows them, of others that he does not, and were able to examine another man in the same situation, then, we say, it would be of enormous benefit to us to be temperate.¹ For we would live our lives without error, both we ourselves who had temperance and all the others who were ruled by us. 171e For neither would we ourselves try to do what we did not know; we would find those who did know and hand things over to them. Nor would we allow the others we ruled to do anything except what they would do correctly, and that would be whatever they had knowledge of. And so a household run by temperance would be bound to be run well, and a city governed by it too, and everything else that temperance ruled. For with error 172a removed and rightness leading, those so disposed must necessarily do finely and well in every action, and those who do well must be happy.² Wasn’t this what we were saying about temperance, Critias,” I said, “when we said what a great good it would be to know what one knows and what one does not know?”

“Certainly,” he said, “that is what we said.”