Page:The works of Plato, A new and literal version, (vol 1) (Cary, 1854).djvu/145

Rh all just things are beautiful; and it was proved before that all beautiful things are good, either because they are pleasant or useful; whence it follows that he who is punished suffers that which is good, and is benefited in being freed from the greatest evil, which is depravity in the soul. From all this it is evident that rhetoric can be of no use whatever: for it is generally employed for the purpose of excusing injustice, and screening men from the punishment they deserve, which on the contrary they ought rather to court than to shun.

Polus having been thus completely silenced, Callicles takes up the argument and begins by asking whether Socrates is really in earnest. Finding that he is so, he blames Polus for having granted that it is more base to commit injustice than to suffer it; for that there is a difference between nature and law, which Socrates perceiving, confounded that which is more base by nature with that which is so by law, and so made that which is more base by law appear to be more so by nature: whereas by nature it is more base to suffer injustice than to commit it. For the weak and the many make laws with a view to their own advantage, but nature herself avows that it is just that the better should have more than the worse, and the more powerful than the weaker. Callicles then proceeds to inveigh against philosophy and philosophers, and when he has done, Socrates, after having indulged in a vein of pleasant irony at his expense, returns to the subject, and asks what he means by the superior, the better, and the stronger, whether they are the same or different. Callicles says they are the same. Socrates objects, that if that is the case the many being stronger are also the better, and so, inasmuch as they make the laws, law and nature are not contrary to each other. Callicles therefore is compelled to change his ground, and next says that by the better and superior he means the more wise: and at last he says that they are those who are skilled and courageous in administering the affairs of