صفحة 748 من 1391

Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of

speaking about justice and injustice, which is not confined to

the poets, but is found in prose writers. The universal voice of

mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are

honourable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of

vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured

by law and opinion. They say also that honesty is for the most

part less profitable than dishonesty; and they are quite ready to

call wicked men happy, and to honour them both in public and

private when they are rich or in any other way influential, while

they despise and overlook those who may be weak and poor, even

though acknowledging them to be better than the others. But most

extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking about virtue and

the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and misery to

many good men, and good and happiness to the wicked.