Pagina 742 di 1391

I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like

there is no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which

awaits either of them. This I will proceed to describe; but as

you may think the description a little too coarse, I ask you to

suppose, Socrates, that the words which follow are not mine.-Let

me put them into the mouths of the eulogists of injustice: They

will tell you that the just man who is thought unjust will be

scourged, racked, bound-will have his eyes burnt out; and, at

last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled:

Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not to

be, just; the words of Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the

unjust than of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality; he

does not live with a view to appearances-he wants to be really

unjust and not to seem only:-

'His mind has a soil deep and fertile, Out of which spring his

prudent counsels.'