Platos Gorgias
POLUS: It has been admitted.
general the depravity of the soul, are the greatest of evils?
SOCRATES: And most disgraceful either because most POLUS: That is evident.
painful and causing excessive pain, or most hurtful, or both?
SOCRATES: Now, what art is there which delivers us from POLUS: Certainly.
poverty? Does not the art of making money?
SOCRATES: And therefore to be unjust and intemperate, POLUS: Yes.
and cowardly and ignorant, is more painful than to be poor and sick?
SOCRATES: And what art frees us from disease? Does not the art of medicine?
POLUS: Nay, Socrates; the painfulness does not appear to me to follow from your premises.
POLUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: Then, if, as you would argue, not more pain-SOCRATES: And what from vice and injustice? If you are ful, the evil of the soul is of all evils the most disgraceful; not able to answer at once, ask yourself whither we go with and the excess of disgrace must be caused by some preter-the sick, and to whom we take them.
natural greatness, or extraordinary hurtfulness of the evil.
POLUS: To the physicians, Socrates.
POLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And to whom do we go with the unjust and SOCRATES: And that which exceeds most in hurtfulness intemperate?
will be the greatest of evils?
POLUS: To the judges, you mean.
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Who are to punish them?
SOCRATES: Then injustice and intemperance, and in 97
Platos Gorgias
POLUS: Yes.
are those who are being healed pleased?
SOCRATES: And do not those who rightly punish others, POLUS: I think not.
punish them in accordance with a certain rule of justice?
SOCRATES: A useful thing, then?
POLUS: Clearly.
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then the art of money-making frees a man from poverty; medicine from disease; and justice from in-SOCRATES: Yes, because the patient is delivered from a temperance and injustice?
great evil; and this is the advantage of enduring the pain
that you get well?
POLUS: That is evident.
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Which, then, is the best of these three?
SOCRATES: And would he be the happier man in his POLUS: Will you enumerate them?
bodily condition, who is healed, or who never was out of health?
SOCRATES: Money-making, medicine, and justice.
POLUS: Clearly he who was never out of health.
POLUS: Justice, Socrates, far excels the two others.
SOCRATES: Yes; for happiness surely does not consist in SOCRATES: And justice, if the best, gives the greatest plea-being delivered from evils, but in never having had them.
sure or advantage or both?
POLUS: True.
POLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And suppose the case of two persons who SOCRATES: But is the being healed a pleasant thing, and have some evil in their bodies, and that one of them is healed 98
Platos Gorgias
and delivered from evil, and another is not healed, but re-and rebuke and punishment?
tains the evilwhich of them is the most miserable?
POLUS: Yes.
POLUS: Clearly he who is not healed.
SOCRATES: Then he lives worst, who, having been un-SOCRATES: And was not punishment said by us to be a just, has no deliverance from injustice?
deliverance from the greatest of evils, which is vice?
POLUS: Certainly.
POLUS: True.
SOCRATES: That is, he lives worst who commits the great-SOCRATES: And justice punishes us, and makes us more est crimes, and who, being the most unjust of men, suc-just, and is the medicine of our vice?
ceeds in escaping rebuke or correction or punishment; and this, as you say, has been accomplished by Archelaus and POLUS: True.
other tyrants and rhetoricians and potentates? (Compare Republic.)
SOCRATES: He, then, has the first place in the scale of happiness who has never had vice in his soul; for this has POLUS: True.
been shown to be the greatest of evils.
SOCRATES: May not their way of proceeding, my friend, POLUS: Clearly.
be compared to the conduct of a person who is afflicted with the worst of diseases and yet contrives not to pay the SOCRATES: And he has the second place, who is deliv-penalty to the physician for his sins against his constitution, ered from vice?
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: True.
POLUS: Yes, truly.
SOCRATES: That is to say, he who receives admonition 99
Platos Gorgias
SOCRATES: He would seem as if he did not know the POLUS: Yes.
nature of health and bodily vigour; and if we are right, Polus, in our previous conclusions, they are in a like case who SOCRATES: To do wrong, then, is second only in the strive to evade justice, which they see to be painful, but are scale of evils; but to do wrong and not to be punished, is blind to the advantage which ensues from it, not knowing first and greatest of all?
how far more miserable a companion a diseased soul is than a diseased body; a soul, I say, which is corrupt and POLUS: That is true.
unrighteous and unholy. And hence they do all that they can to avoid punishment and to avoid being released from SOCRATES: Well, and was not this the point in dispute, my the greatest of evils; they provide themselves with money friend? You deemed Archelaus happy, because he was a very and friends, and cultivate to the utmost their powers of per-great criminal and unpunished: I, on the other hand, main-suasion. But if we, Polus, are right, do you see what follows, tained that he or any other who like him has done wrong and or shall we draw out the consequences in form?
has not been punished, is, and ought to be, the most miserable of all men; and that the doer of injustice is more miserable POLUS: If you please.
than the sufferer; and he who escapes punishment, more miserable than he who suffers.Was not that what I said?
SOCRATES: Is it not a fact that injustice, and the doing of injustice, is the greatest of evils?
POLUS: Yes.
POLUS: That is quite clear.
SOCRATES: And it has been proved to be true?
SOCRATES: And further, that to suffer punishment is the POLUS: Certainly.
way to be released from this evil?
SOCRATES: Well, Polus, but if this is true, where is the POLUS: True.
great use of rhetoric? If we admit what has been just now said, every man ought in every way to guard himself against SOCRATES: And not to suffer, is to perpetuate the evil?
doing wrong, for he will thereby suffer great evil?