Dialogues

is the being healed a pleasant thing, and are those who are being healed pleased? Polus I think not. Socrates A useful thing, then? Polus Yes. Socrates Yes, because the patient is delivered from a great evil; and this is the advantage of enduring the pain⁠—that you get well? Polus Certainly. Socrates And would he be the happier man in his bodily condition, who is healed, or who never was out of health? Polus Clearly he who was never out of health. Socrates Yes; for happiness surely does not consist in being delivered from evils, but in never having had them. Polus True. Socrates And suppose the case of two persons who have some evil in their bodies, and that one of them is healed and delivered from evil, and another is not healed, but retains the evil⁠—which of them is the most miserable? Polus Clearly he who is not healed. Socrates And was not punishment said by us to be a deliverance from the greatest of evils, which is vice? Polus True. Socrates And justice punishes us, and makes us more just, and is the medicine of our vice? Polus True. Socrates He, then, has the first place in the scale of happiness who has never had vice in his soul; for this has been shown to be the greatest of evils. Polus Clearly. Socrates And he has the second place, who is delivered from vice? Polus True. Socrates That is to say, he who receives admonition and rebuke and punishment? Polus Yes. Socrates Then he lives worst, who, having been unjust, has no deliverance from injustice? Polus Certainly. Socrates That is, he lives worst who commits the greatest crimes, and who, being the most unjust of men, succeeds in escaping rebuke or correction or punishment; and this, as you say, has been accomplished by Archelaus and other tyrants and rhetoricians and potentates?117 Polus True. Socrates May not their way of proceeding, my friend, be compared to the conduct of a person who is afflicted with the worst of diseases and yet contrives not to pay the penalty to the physician for his sins against his constitution, and will not be cured, because, like a child, he is afraid of the pain of being burned or cut:⁠—Is not that a parallel case? Polus Yes, truly. Socrates He would seem as if he did not know the nature of health and bodily vigour; and if we are right, Polus, in our previous conclusions, they are in a like case who strive to evade justice, which they see to be painful, but are blind to the advantage which ensues from it, not knowing how far more miserable a companion a diseased soul is than a diseased body; a soul, I say, which is corrupt and unrighteous and unholy. And hence they do all that they can to avoid punishment and to avoid being released from the greatest of evils; they provide themselves with money and friends, and cultivate to the utmost their powers of persuasion. But if we, Polus, are right, do you see what follows, or shall we draw out the consequences in form? Polus If you please. Socrates Is it not a fact that injustice, and the doing of injustice, is the greatest of evils? Polus That is quite clear. Socrates And further, that to suffer punishment is the way to be released from this evil? Polus True. Socrates And not to suffer, is to perpetuate the evil? Polus Yes. Socrates To do wrong, then, is second only in the scale of evils; but to do wrong and not to be punished, is first and greatest of all? Polus That is true. Socrates Well, and was not this the point in dispute, my friend? You deemed Archelaus happy, because he was a very great criminal and unpunished: I, on the other hand, maintained that he or any other who like him has done wrong and has not been punished, is, and ought to be, the most miserable of all men; and that the doer of injustice is more miserable than the sufferer; and he who escapes punishment, more miserable than he who suffers.⁠—Was not that what I said? Polus Yes. Socrates And it has been proved to be true? Polus Certainly. Socrates Well, Polus, but if this is true, where is the great use of rhetoric? If we admit what has been just now said, every man ought in every way to guard himself against doing wrong, for he will thereby suffer great evil? Polus True. Socrates And if he, or anyone about whom he cares, does wrong, he ought of his own accord to go where he will be immediately punished; he will run to the judge, as he would to the physician, in order that the disease of injustice may not be rendered chronic and become the incurable cancer of the soul; must we not allow this consequence, Polus, if our former admissions are to stand:⁠—is any other inference consistent with them? Polus To that, Socrates, there can be but one answer. Socrates Then rhetoric is of no use to us, Polus, in helping a man to excuse his own injustice, that of his parents or friends, or children or country; but may be of use to anyone who holds that instead of excusing he ought to accuse⁠—himself above all, and in the next degree his family or any of his friends who may be doing wrong; he should bring to light the iniquity and not conceal it, that so the wrongdoer may suffer and be made whole; and he should even force himself and others not to shrink, but with closed eyes like brave men to let the physician operate with knife or searing iron, not regarding the pain, in the hope of attaining the good and the honourable; let him who has done things worthy of stripes, allow himself to be scourged, if of bonds, to be bound, if of a fine, to be fined, if of exile, to be exiled, if of death, to die, himself being the first to accuse himself and his own relations, and using rhetoric to this end, that his and their unjust actions may be made manifest, and that they themselves