For health, we said, belongs to another art, did we not? We did. Nor of benefit, my good friend; for this work, again, we assigned to another art just now, did we not? Certainly. Then how will temperance be beneficial, if it produces no benefit? By no means, Socrates, as it seems. So do you see, Critias, how all the time I had good reason for my fear, and fair ground for the reproach I made against myself, that my inquiry regarding temperance was worthless? Footnote 1Cf. Plat. Charm. 172c. For I cannot think that what is admitted to be the noblest thing in the world would have appeared to us useless if I had been of any use for making a good search. But now, you see, we are worsted every way, and cannot discover what thing it can possibly be to which the lawgiver gave this name, temperance. And yet we have conceded many points which were not deducible from our argument. For you know we conceded that there was a science of science, when the argument was against it and would not agree; and we further conceded that this science could know the works also of the other sciences, when the argument was against this too, in order to make out that the temperate man had a knowledge of what he knew and did not know, so as to know that he knew the one and did not know the other. And we made this concession in a really magnificent manner, without considering the impossibility of a man knowing, in some sort of way, things that he does not know at all; for our admission says that he knows that he does not know them; and yet, in my opinion, there can be nothing more irrational than this. Nevertheless, although it has found us so simple-minded and tractable, the inquiry remains quite incapable of discovering the truth, but has utterly flouted it by most impudently showing us the inutility of that which we had been ever so long assuming, by our joint admissions and fictions, to be the meaning of temperance. Now, so far as I am concerned, I am not particularly distressed: but for your sake, I said, Charmides, I am seriously distressed to think that you, with your goodly form and most temperate soul besides, are to have no profit or advantage from the presence of that temperance in all your life. And I am still more distressed about the charm which I learnt from the Thracian, Footnote 2Cf. Plat. Charm. 156d. that I should have spent so much pains on a lesson which has had such a worthless effect. Now I really do not think that this can be the case, but rather that I am a poor hand at inquiring; for temperance I hold to be a great good, and you to be highly blessed, if you actually have it.