CLEINIAS: To be sure we are, if only for the strangeness of the paradox, which asserts that a man ought of his own accord to plunge into utter degradation.
ATHENIAN: Are you speaking of the soul?
CLEINIAS: Yes.
ATHENIAN: And what would you say about the body, my friend? Are you not surprised at any one of his own accord bringing upon himself deformity, leanness, ugliness, decrepitude?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: Yet when a man goes of his own accord to a doctor's shop, and takes medicine, is he not aware that soon, and for many days afterwards, he will be in a state of body which he would die rather than accept as the permanent condition of his life? Are not those who train in gymnasia, at first beginning reduced to a state of weakness?
CLEINIAS: Yes, all that is well known.
ATHENIAN: Also that they go of their own accord for the sake of the subsequent benefit?
CLEINIAS: Very good.
ATHENIAN: And we may conceive this to be true in the same way of other practices?