o him in some terrible downfall, which may, perhaps, have been
caused not by his own fault? Another illustration is afforded by the
pauper and criminal classes, who scarcely reflect at all, except on the
means by which they can compass their immediate ends. We pity them, and
make allowances for them; but we do not consider that the same principle
applies to human actions generally. Not to have been found out in some
dishonesty or folly, regarded from a moral or religious point of view,
is the greatest of misfortunes. The success of our evil doings is a
proof that the gods have ceased to strive with us, and have given
us over to ourselves. There is nothing to remind us of our sins, and
therefore nothing to correct them. Like our sorrows, they are healed by
time;

'While rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.'

The 'accustomed irony' of Socrates adds a corollary to the
argument:--'Would you punish your enemy, you should allow him to escape
unpunished'--this is the true retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of
Proverbs, 'Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him,' etc., quoted in
Romans.)

Men are not in the habit of dwelling upon the dark side of their own
lives: they do not easily see themselves as others see them. They are
very kind and very blind to their own faults; the rhetoric of self-love
is always pleading with them on their own behalf. Adopting a similar
figure of speech, Socrates would have them use rhetoric, not in defence
but in accusation of themselves. As they are guided by feeling rather
than by reason, to their feelings the appeal must be made. They must
speak to themselves; they must argue with themselves; they must paint in
eloquent words the character of their own evil deeds. To any suffering
which they have deserved, they must persuade themselves to submit. Under
the figure there lurks a real thought, which, expressed in another form,
admits of an easy application to ourselves. For do not we too accuse as
well as excuse ourselves? And we call to our aid the rhetoric of prayer
and preaching, which the mind silently employs while the struggle
between the better and the worse is going on within us. And sometimes
we are too hard upon ourselves, because we want to restore the balance
which self-love has overthrown or disturbed; and then again we may hear
a voice as of a parent consoling us. In religious diaries a sort of
drama is often enacted by the consciences of men 'accusing