Charmides

the temperate life be quiet, on this argument at any rate, since, being temperate, it has to be fine. For one of two things is true: quiet actions in life have appeared finer to us than quick and strong ones either nowhere 160c or in very few places. But even supposing, my friend, at the very most, that the quiet actions which turn out finer are no fewer than the vigorous and quick ones, even so temperance would not be acting quietly any more than acting vigorously and quickly, whether in walking or in talking or anywhere else, nor would the quiet life be more 160d temperate than the unquiet one. For in our argument we laid it down that temperance is one of the fine things, and quick things have turned out to be no less fine than quiet ones.”¹

“I think what you have said is right, Socrates,” he said.

“Then once more, Charmides,” I said, “pay closer attention and look within yourself. Consider what sort of person temperance makes you by being present, and what sort of thing it would be that could produce such a person; then put all this together and tell me, properly 160e and like a man, what it seems to you to be.”

He paused, and after thinking it over to himself very much like a man, said, “Well, I think temperance makes a person feel shame and makes him bashful, and that temperance is the same thing as modesty.”²

“Very well,” I said. “Weren’t you agreeing just now that temperance is fine?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“And temperate men are good men, too?”

“Yes.”

“Now could anything be good that does not make men good?”