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 and I, for my part, promise to retract any mistake which you may think I have made—on one condition."

And this condition is that his answers must be brief. True, it is hard that Polus should be deprived of his freedom of speech, especially in Athens; but it is harder still, says Socrates, for his hearers, to have to listen to long-winded arguments.

Then Socrates gives his views on Rhetoric, which was the question they had started with. It is not, strictly speaking, an art at all, but, like cookery or music, is a mere routine for gratifying the senses, being, in fact, a part of flattery, and the shadow of a part of politics, and bearing the same relation to justice that Sophistry bears to legislation.

In the course of his argument with Polus, Socrates makes two statements which sound to his audience like the wildest paradoxes—truisms as they may appear from a Christian point of view. It is better (he says) to suffer than to do a wrong; and the evil-doer, though possessed of infinite wealth and power, must inevitably be miserable. Though all the world should be against him, he will maintain this to be the truth—yes, and he will go a step further. The evil-doer who