S:

[Footnote 56: Plato is one of the very few Greek authors none of whose
work has been lost. He shares this good fortune with Xenophon. Of the
dialog Plato was practically, if not actually, the originator, and the
form has survived to our day.]

[Footnote 57: From "The Republic." Translated by Benjamin Jowett. In
this famous work Plato describes an ideal commonwealth.]

[Footnote 58: The speaker here is Glaucon, Plato's brother.]

II

GOOD AND EVIL[59]

I suppose that you are satisfied at having a life of pleasure which is
without pain. And if you are satisfied, and if you are unable to show
any good or evil which does not end in pleasure and pain, hear the
consequences: If this is true, then I say that the argument is absurd
which affirms that a man often does evil knowingly when he might
abstain, because he is seduced and amazed by pleasure; or again, when
you say that a man knowingly refuses to do what is good because he is
overcome at the moment by pleasure. Now that this is ridiculous will
be evident if we only give up the use of various names, such as
pleasant and painful and good and evil. As there are two things, let
us call them by two names--first, good and evil, and then pleasant and
painful. Assuming this, let us go on to say that a man does evil
knowing that he does evil. But some one will ask, Why? Because he is
overcome, is the first answer. And by what is he overcome? the
inquirer will proceed to ask. And we shall not be able to reply, by
pleasure, for the name of pleasure has been exchanged for that of
good.

In our answer, then, we shall say only that he is overcome. By what?
he will reiterate. By the good, we shall have to reply; indeed, we
shall. Nay, but our questioner will rejoin with a laugh, if he be one
of the swaggering sort, that is too ridiculous, that a man should do
what he knows to be evil when he ought not, because he is overcome by
good. Is that, he will ask, because the good was worthy or not worthy
of conquering the evil? And in answer to that we shall clearly reply,
because it was not worthy; for if it had been worthy, then he who, as
we say, was overcome by pleasure, would not have been wrong. But how,
he will reply, can the good be unworthy of the evil, or the evil of
the good? Is not the real explanation that they are out of proportion
to each other, either as greater and smaller, or more and fewer? This
we can not deny. And when you speak of being overcome, what