rupting and destroying
element is the evil, and the saving and improving element the good?

Yes.

And you admit that every thing has a good and also an evil; as
ophthalmia is the evil of the eyes and disease of the whole body; as
mildew is of corn, and rot of timber, or rust of copper and iron: in
everything, or in almost everything, there is an inherent evil and
disease?

Yes, he said.

And anything which is infected by any of these evils is made evil, and
at last wholly dissolves and dies?

True.

The vice and evil which is inherent in each is the destruction of each;
and if this does not destroy them there is nothing else that will; for
good certainly will not destroy them, nor again, that which is neither
good nor evil.

Certainly not.

If, then, we find any nature which having this inherent corruption
cannot be dissolved or destroyed, we may be certain that of such a
nature there is no destruction?

That may be assumed.

Well, I said, and is there no evil which corrupts the soul?

Yes, he said, there are all the evils which we were just now passing in
review: unrighteousness, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance.

But does any of these dissolve or destroy her?--and here do not let us
fall into the error of supposing that the unjust and foolish man, when
he is detected, perishes through his own injustice, which is an evil of
the soul. Take the analogy of the body: The evil of the body is a
disease which wastes and reduces and annihilates the body; and all the
things of which we were just now speaking come to annihilation through
their own corruption attaching to them and inhering in them and so
destroying them. Is not this true?

Yes.

Consider the soul in like manner. Does the injustice or other evil
which exists in the soul waste and consume her? Do they by attaching
to the soul and inhering in her at last bring her to death, and so
separate her from the body?

Certainly not.

And yet, I said, it is unreasonable to suppose that anything can perish
from without through affection of external evil which could not be
destroyed from within by a corruption of its own?

It is, he replied.

Consider, I said, Glaucon, that even the badness of food, whether
staleness, decomposition, or any other bad quality, when confined to
the actual food, is not supposed to destroy the body; although, if the
badness of food communicates corruption to the body, then we should say
that the body has been destro