esires it,
and that he can find no rest and no satisfaction in any thing apart from
the knowledge and the participation of the Supreme, the Absolute Good.

This, then, is the meaning of the oft-repeated assertion of Plato "_that
no man is willingly evil_;" viz., that no man deliberately chooses evil
as evil. And Plato is, at the same time, careful to guard the doctrine
from misconception. He readily grants that acts of wrong are
distinguished as voluntary and involuntary, without which there could be
neither merit nor demerit, reward nor punishment.[670] But still he
insists that no man chooses evil in and by itself. He may choose it
voluntarily as a means, but he does not choose it as an end. Every
volition, by its essential nature, pursues, at least, an _apparent_
good; because the end of volition is not the immediate act, but the
object for the sake of which the act is undertaken.[671]

[Footnote 670: "Laws," bk. ix. ch. vi.]

[Footnote 671: "Gorgias," Secs. 52, 53.]

How is it, then, it may be asked, that men become evil? The answer of
Plato is, that the soul has in it a principle of change, in the power of
regulating the desires--in indulging them to excess, or moderating them
according to the demands of reason. The circumstances in which the soul
is placed, as connected with the sensible world by means of the body,
present an occasion for the exercise of that power, the end of this
temporal connection being to establish a state of moral discipline and
probation. The humors and distempers of the body likewise deprave,
disorder, and discompose the soul.[672] "Pleasures and pains are unduly
magnified; the democracy of the passions prevails; and the ascendency of
reason is cast down." Bad forms of civil government corrupt social
manners, evil education effects the ruin of the soul. Thus the soul is
changed--is fallen from what it was when first it came from the
Creator's hand. But the eternal Ideas are not utterly effaced, the image
of God is not entirely lost. The soul may yet be restored by remedial
measures. It may be purified by knowledge, by truth, by expiations, by
sufferings, and by prayers. The utmost, however, that man can hope to do
in this life is insufficient to fully restore the image of God, and
death must complete the final emancipation of the rational element from
the bondage of the flesh. Life is thus a discipline and a preparation
for another state of being, and death the final entrance there.[673