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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: either the general, or the pilot, or any one else, in his saving power, for
he sometimes saves whole cities. Is there any comparison between him and
the pleader? And if he were to talk, Callicles, in your grandiose style,
he would bury you under a mountain of words, declaring and insisting that
we ought all of us to be engine-makers, and that no other profession is
worth thinking about; he would have plenty to say. Nevertheless you
despise him and his art, and sneeringly call him an engine-maker, and you
will not allow your daughters to marry his son, or marry your son to his
daughters. And yet, on your principle, what justice or reason is there in
your refusal? What right have you to despise the engine-maker, and the
others whom I was just now mentioning? I know that you will say, 'I am
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