Socrates: And he has the second place, who is delivered from vice?
Polus: True.
Socrates: That is to say, he who receives admonition and rebuke and punishment?
Polus: Yes.
Socrates: Then he lives worst, who, having been unjust, has no deliverance from injustice?
Polus: Certainly.
Socrates: That is, he lives worst who commits the greatest crimes, and who, being the most unjust of men, succeeds in escaping rebuke or correction or punishment; and this, as you say, has been accomplished by Archelaus and other tyrants and rhetoricians and potentates?
Polus: True.
Socrates: May not their way of proceeding, my friend, be compared to the conduct of a person who is afflicted with the worst of diseases and yet contrives not to pay the penalty to the physician for his sins against his constitution, and will not be cured, because, like a child, he is afraid of the pain of being burned or cut:—Is not that a parallel case?
Polus: Yes, truly.
Socrates: He would seem as if he did not know the nature of health and bodily vigour; and if we are right, Polus, in our previous conclusions, they are in a like case who strive to evade justice, which they see to be painful, but are blind to the advantage which ensues from it, not knowing how far more miserable a companion a diseased soul is than a diseased body; a soul, I say, which is corrupt and unrighteous and unholy. And hence they do all that they can to avoid punishment and to avoid being released from the greatest of evils; they provide themselves with money and friends, and cultivate to the utmost their powers of persuasion. But if we, Polus, are right, do you see what follows, or shall we draw out the consequences in form?
Polus: If you please.
Socrates: Is it not a fact that injustice, and the doing of injustice, is the greatest of evils?
Polus: That is quite clear.
Socrates: And further, that to suffer punishment is the way to be released from this evil?
Polus: True.
Socrates: And not to suffer, is to perpetuate the evil?
Polus: Yes.
Socrates: To do wrong, then, is second only in the scale of evils; but to do wrong and not to be punished, is first and greatest of all?
Polus: That is true.
Socrates: Well, and was not this the point in dispute, my friend? You deemed Archelaus happy, because he was a very great criminal and unpunished: I, on the other hand, maintained that he or any other who like him has done wrong and has not been punished, is, and ought to be, the most miserable of all men; and that the doer of injustice is more miserable than the sufferer; and he who escapes punishment, more miserable than he who suffers.—Was not that what I said?
Polus: Yes.
Socrates: And it has been proved to be true?
Polus: Certainly.
Socrates: Well, Polus, but if this is true, where is the great use of rhetoric? If we admit what has been just now said, every man ought in every way to guard himself against doing wrong, for he will thereby suffer great evil?