rstand you to say, if I am not mistaken, that the
honourable is not the same as the good, or the disgraceful as the evil?

POLUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Let me ask a question of you: When you speak of beautiful
things, such as bodies, colours, figures, sounds, institutions, do
you not call them beautiful in reference to some standard: bodies, for
example, are beautiful in proportion as they are useful, or as the sight
of them gives pleasure to the spectators; can you give any other account
of personal beauty?

POLUS: I cannot.

SOCRATES: And you would say of figures or colours generally that they
were beautiful, either by reason of the pleasure which they give, or of
their use, or of both?

POLUS: Yes, I should.

SOCRATES: And you would call sounds and music beautiful for the same
reason?

POLUS: I should.

SOCRATES: Laws and institutions also have no beauty in them except in so
far as they are useful or pleasant or both?

POLUS: I think not.

SOCRATES: And may not the same be said of the beauty of knowledge?

POLUS: To be sure, Socrates; and I very much approve of your measuring
beauty by the standard of pleasure and utility.

SOCRATES: And deformity or disgrace may be equally measured by the
opposite standard of pain and evil?

POLUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then when of two beautiful things one exceeds in beauty, the
measure of the excess is to be taken in one or both of these; that is to
say, in pleasure or utility or both?

POLUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And of two deformed things, that which exceeds in deformity or
disgrace, exceeds either in pain or evil--must it not be so?

POLUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: But then again, what was the observation which you just now
made, about doing and suffering wrong? Did you not say, that suffering
wrong was more evil, and doing wrong more disgraceful?

POLUS: I did.

SOCRATES: Then, if doing wrong is more disgraceful than suffering, the
more disgraceful must be more painful and must exceed in pain or in evil
or both: does not that also follow?

POLUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: First, then, let us consider whether the doing of injustice
exceeds the suffering in the consequent pain: Do the injurers suffer
more than the injured?

POLUS: No, Socrates; certainly not.

SOCRATES: Then they do not exceed in pain?

POLUS: No.

SOCRATES: But if not in pain, then not in both?

POLUS: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: Then they can only exceed in the other?

POLUS: Ye