Gorgias

 
 Cal. By the gods, and I will. Tell me, Socrates, are you in earnest,
or only in jest? For if you are in earnest, and what you say is
true, is not the whole of human life turned upside down; and are we
not doing, as would appear, in everything the opposite of what we
ought to be doing?
 Soc. O Callicles, if there were not some community of feelings among
mankind, however varying in different persons-I mean to say, if
every man's feelings were peculiar to himself and were not shared by
the rest of his species-I do not see how we could ever communicate our
impressions to one another. I make this remark because I perceive that
you and I have a common feeling. For we are lovers both, and both of
us have two loves apiece:-I am the lover of Alcibiades, the son of
Cleinias-I and of philosophy; and you of the Athenian Demus, and of
Demus the son of Pyrilampes. Now, I observe that you, with all your
cleverness, do not venture to contradict your favourite in any word or
opinion of his; but as he changes you change, backwards and
forwards. When the Athenian Demus denies anything that you are
saying in the assembly, you go over to his opinion; and you do the
same with Demus, the fair young son of Pyrilampes. For you have not
the power to resist the words and ideas of your loves; and is a person
were to express surprise at the strangeness of what you say from
time to time when under their influence, you would probably reply to
him, if you were honest, that you cannot help saying what your loves
say unless they are prevented; and that you can only be silent when
they are. Now you must understand that my words are an echo too, and
therefore you need not wonder at me; but if you want to silence me,
silence philosophy, who is my love, for she is always telling me
what I am telling you, my friend; neither is she capricious like my
other love, for the son of Cleinias says one thing to-day and
another thing to-morrow, but philosophy is always true. She is the
teacher at whose words you are. now wondering, and you have heard
her yourself. Her you must refute, and either show, as I was saying,
that to do injustice and to escape punishment is not the worst of
all evils; or, if you leave her word unrefuted, by the dog the god
of Egypt, I declare, O Callicles, that Callicles will never be at
one with himself, but that his whole life, will be a discord. And yet,
my friend, I would rather that my lyre should be inharmonious, and
that there should be no music in the chorus which I provided; aye,
or that the whole world should be at odds with me, and oppose me,
rather than that I myself should be at odds with myself, and
contradict myself.

 
But if I died because I have no powers of flattery or
rhetoric, I am very sure that you would not find me repining at death.
For no man who is not an utter fool and coward is afraid of death
itself, but he is afraid of doing wrong. For to go to the world
below having one's soul full of injustice is the last and worst of all
evils. And in proof of what I say, if you have no objection, I
should like to tell you a story.
 Cal. Very well, proceed; and then we shall have done.
 Soc. Listen, then, as story-tellers say, to a very pretty tale,
which I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as a fable only,
but which, as I believe, is a true tale, for I mean to speak the
truth. Homer tells us, how Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto divided the
empire which they inherited from their father. Now in the days of
Cronos there existed a law respecting the destiny of man, which has
always been, and still continues to be in Heaven-that he who has lived
all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he is dead, to the
Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in perfect happiness out of
the reach of evil; but that he who has lived unjustly and impiously
shall go to the house of vengeance and punishment, which is called
Tartarus. And in the time of Cronos, and even quite lately in the
reign of Zeus, the judgment was given on the very day on which the men
were to die; the judges were alive, and the men were alive; and the
consequence was that the judgments were not well given. Then Pluto and
the authorities from the Islands of the Blessed came to Zeus, and said
that the souls found their way to the wrong places. Zeus said: "I
shall put a stop to this; the judgments are not well given, because
the persons who are judged have their clothes on, for they are
alive; and there are many who, having evil souls, are apparelled in
fair bodies, or encased in wealth or rank, and, when the day of
judgment arrives, numerous witnesses come forward and testify on their
behalf that they have lived righteously. The judges are awed by
them, and they themselves too have their clothes on when judging;
their eyes and ears and their whole bodies are interposed as a well
before their own souls. All this is a hindrance to them; there are the
clothes of the judges and the clothes of the judged-What is to be
done? I will tell you:-In the first place, I will deprive men of the
foreknowledge of death, which they possess at present: this power
which they have Prometheus has already received my orders to take from
them: in the second place, they shall be entirely stripped before they
are judged, for they shall be judged when they are dead; and the judge
too shall be naked, that is to say, dead-he with his naked soul
shall pierce into the other naked souls; and they shall die suddenly
and be deprived of all their kindred, and leave their brave attire
strewn upon the earth-conducted in this manner, the judgment will be
just. I knew all about the matter before any of you, and therefore I
have made my sons judges; two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and
one from Europe, Aeacus. And these, when they are dead, shall give
judgment in the meadow at the parting of the ways, whence the two
roads lead, one to the Islands of the Blessed, and the other to
Tartarus. Rhadamanthus shall judge those who come from Asia, and
Aeacus those who come from Europe. And to Minos I shall give the
primacy, and he shall hold a court of appeal, in case either of the
two others are in any doubt:-then the judgment respecting the last
journey of men will be as just as possible."
 From this tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, I draw
the following inferences:-Death, if I am right, is in the first
place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body;
nothing else. And after they are separated they retain their several
natures, as in life; the body keeps the same habit, and the results of
treatment or accident are distinctly visible in it: for example, he
who by nature or training or both, was a tall man while he was
alive, will remain as he was, after he is dead; and the fat man will
remain fat; and so on; and the dead man, who in life had a fancy to
have flowing hair, will have flowing hair. And if he was marked with
the whip and had the prints of the scourge, or of wounds in him when
he was alive, you might see the same in the dead body; and if his
limbs were broken or misshapen when he was alive, the same
appearance would be visible in the dead. And in a word, whatever was
the habit of the body during life would be distinguishable after
death, either perfectly, or in a great measure and for a certain time.
And I should imagine that this is equally true of the soul, Callicles;
when a man is stripped of the body, all the natural or acquired
affections of the soul are laid open to view. And when they come to
the judge, as those from Asia come to Rhadamanthus, he places them
near him and inspects them quite impartially, not knowing whose the
soul is: perhaps he may lay hands on the soul of the great king, or of
some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in him, but his
soul is marked with the whip, and is full of the prints and scars of
perjuries and crimes with which each action has stained him, and he is
all crooked with falsehood and imposture, and has no straightness,
because he has lived without truth. Him Rhadamanthus beholds, full
of all deformity and disproportion, which is caused by licence and
luxury and insolence and incontinence, and despatches him
ignominiously to his prison, and there he undergoes the punishment
which he deserves.
 Now the proper office of punishment is twofold: he who is rightly
punished ought either to become better and profit by it, or he ought
to be made an example to his fellows, that they may see what he
suffers, and fear and become better. Those who are improved when
they are punished by gods and men, are those whose sins are curable;
and they are improved, as in this world so also in another, by pain
and suffering; for there is no other way in which they can be
delivered from their evil. But they who have been guilty of the
worst crimes, and are incurable by reason of their crimes, are made
examples; for, as they are incurable, the time has passed at which
they can receive any benefit. They get no good themselves, but
others get good when they behold them enduring for ever the most
terrible and painful and fearful sufferings as the penalty of their
sins-there they are, hanging up as examples, in the prison-house of
the world below, a spectacle and a warning to all unrighteous men
who come thither. And among them, as I confidently affirm, will be
found Archelaus, if Polus truly reports of him, and any other tyrant
who is like him. Of these fearful examples, most, as I believe, are
taken from the class of tyrants and kings and potentates and public
men, for they are the authors of the greatest and most impious crimes,
because they have the power. And Homer witnesses to the truth of this;
for they are always kings and potentates whom he has described as
suffering everlasting punishment in the world below: such were
Tantalus and Sisyphus and Tityus. But no one ever described Thersites,
or any private person who was a villain, as suffering everlasting
punishment, or as incurable. For to commit the worst crimes, as I am
inclined to think, was not in his power, and he was happier than those
who had the power. No, Callicles, the very bad men come from the class
of those who have power. And yet in that very class there may arise
good men, and worthy of all admiration they are, for where there is
great power to do wrong, to live and to die justly is a hard thing,
and greatly to be praised, and few there are who attain to this.
Such good and true men, however, there have been, and will be again,
at Athens and in other states, who have fulfilled their trust
righteously; and there is one who is quite famous all over Hellas,
Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But, in general, great men are also
bad, my friend.
 As I was saying, Rhadamanthus, when he gets a soul of the bad
kind, knows nothing about him, neither who he is, nor who his
parents are; he knows only that he has got hold of a villain; and
seeing this, he stamps him as curable or incurable, and sends him away
to Tartarus, whither he goes and receives his proper recompense. Or,
again, he looks with admiration on the soul of some just one who has
lived in holiness and truth; he may have been a private man or not;
and I should say, Callicles, that he is most likely to have been a
philosopher who has done his own work, and not troubled himself with
the doings of other in his lifetime; him Rhadamanthus sends to the
Islands of the Blessed. Aeacus does the same; and they both have
sceptres, and judge; but Minos alone has a golden sceptre and is
seated looking on, as Odysseus in Homer declares that he saw him:
 
 Holding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.
 
Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these things, and I
consider how I shall present my soul whole and undefiled before the
judge in that day. Renouncing the honours at which the world aims, I
desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when
I die, to die as well as I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I
exhort all other men to do the same. And, in return for your
exhortation of me, I exhort you also to take part in the great combat,
which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly
conflict. And I retort your reproach of me, and say, that you will not
be able to help yourself when the day of trial and judgment, of
which I was speaking, comes upon you; you will go before the judge,
the son of Aegina, and, when he has got you in his grip and is
carrying you off, you will gape and your head will swim round, just as
mine would in the courts of this world, and very likely some one
will shamefully box you on the ears, and put upon you any sort of
insult.
 Perhaps this may appear to you to be only an old wife's tale,
which you will contemn. And there might be reason in your contemning
such tales, if by searching we could find out anything better or
truer: but now you see that you and Polus and Gorgias, who are the
three wisest of the Greeks of our day, are not able to show that we
ought to live any life which does not profit in another world as
well as in this. And of all that has been said, nothing remains
unshaken but the saying, that to do injustice is more to be avoided
than to suffer injustice, and that the reality and not the
appearance of virtue is to be followed above all things, as well in
public as in private life; and that when any one has been wrong in
anything, he is to be chastised, and that the next best thing to a man
being just is that he should become just, and be chastised and
punished; also that he should avoid all flattery of himself as well as
of others, of the few or of the many: and rhetoric and any other art
should be used by him, and all his actions should be done always, with
a view to justice.
 Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in
life and after death, as the argument shows. And never mind if some
one despises you as a fool, and insults you, if he has a mind; let him
strike you, by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer, and do not mind
the insulting blow, for you will never come to any harm in the
practice of virtue, if you are a really good and true man. When we
have practiced virtue together, we will apply ourselves to politics,
if that seems desirable, or we will advise about whatever else may
seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge then. In our
present condition we ought not to give ourselves airs, for even on the
most important subjects we are always changing our minds; so utterly
stupid are we! Let us, then, take the argument as our guide, which has
revealed to us that the best way of life is to practice justice and
every virtue in life and death. This way let us go; and in this exhort
all men to follow, not in the way to which you trust and in which
you exhort me to follow you; for that way, Callicles, is nothing
worth.
 
 
  -THE END-
.