And there is no reason, I daresay, why your statement should not be right; but still I wonder, I went on, whether you judge that temperate men are ignorant of their temperance.
No, I do not, he said.
A little while ago, I said, were you not saying that there was no reason why craftsmen should not be temperate in making others’ things as well?
Yes, I was, he said, but what of it ?
Nothing; only tell me whether you think that a doctor, in making someone healthy, makes a helpful result both for himself and for the person whom he cures.
I do.
And he who does this does his duty?
Yes.
Is not he who does his duty temperate?
Indeed he is.
Well, and must the doctor know when his medicine will be helpful, and when not? And must every craftsman know when he is likely to be benefited by the work he does, and when not?Probably not.
Then sometimes, I went on, the doctor may have done what is helpful or harmful without knowing the effect of his own action; and yet, in doing what was helpful, by your statement, he has done temperately. Or did you not state that?
I did.
Then it would seem that in doing what is helpful he may sometimes do temperately and be temperate, but be ignorant of his own temperance?
But that, he said, Socrates, could never be: if you think this in any way a necessary inference from my previous admissions, I would rather withdraw some of them, and not be ashamed to say my statements were wrong, than concede at any time that a man who is ignorant of himself is temperate. For I would almost say that this very thing, self-knowledge, is temperance, and I am at one with him who put up the inscription of those words at Delphi. For the purpose of that inscription on the temple, as it seems to me, is to serve as the god’s salutation to those who enter it, instead of Hail!
—this is a wrong form of greeting, and they should rather exhort one another with the words, Be temperate!
And thus the god addresses those who are entering his temple in a mode which differs from that of men; such was the intention of the dedicator of the inscription in putting it up, I believe; and that he says to each man who enters, in reality, Be temperate !