Gorgias

Soc.

Polus, I am not one of your statesmen: indeed, last year, when I was elected a member of the Council, and, as my tribe held the Presidency, I had to put a question to the vote, I got laughed at for not understanding the procedure.[*](Socrates refers humorously to his noble act in refusing to put to the vote an illegal proposal against the generals who fought at Arginusae, 406 B.C. By saying last year he fixes the supposed date of this conversation at 405 B.C.) So do not call upon me again to take the votes of the company now; but if, as I said this moment, you have no better disproof than those, hand the work over to me in my turn, and try the sort of refutation that I think the case requires. For I know how to produce one witness in support of my statements, and that is the man himself with whom I find myself arguing; the many I dismiss: there is also one whose vote I know how to take, whilst to the multitude I have not a word to say. See therefore if you will consent to be put to the proof in your turn by answering my questions. For I think, indeed, that you and I and the rest of the world believe that doing wrong is worse than suffering it, and escaping punishment worse than incurring it.

Pol.

And I, that neither I nor anyone else in the world believes it. You, it seems, would choose rather to suffer wrong than to do it.

Soc.

Yes, and so would you and everyone else.

Pol.

Far from it neither; I nor you nor anybody else.

Soc.

Then will you answer?

Pol.

To be sure I will, for indeed I am eager to know what on earth you will say.

Soc.

Well then, so that you may know, tell me, just as though I were asking you all over again, which of the two seems to you, Polus, to be the worse—doing wrong or suffering it?

Pol.

Suffering it, I say.

Soc.

Now again, which is fouler—doing wrong or suffering it? Answer.

Pol.

Doing it.

Soc.

And also more evil, if fouler.

Pol.

Not at all.

Soc.

I see: you hold, apparently, that fair and good are not the same, nor evil and foul.

Pol.

Just so.

Soc.

But what of this? All fair things, like bodies and colors and figures and sounds and observances—is it according to no standard that you call these fair in each case? Thus in the first place, when you say that fair bodies are fair, it must be either in view of their use for some particular purpose that each may serve, or in respect of some pleasure arising when, in the act of beholding them, they cause delight to the beholder. Have you any description to give beyond this of bodily beauty?

Pol.

I have not.

Soc.

And so with all the rest in the same way, whether they be figures or colors, is it for some pleasure or benefit or both that you give them the name of fair?

Pol.

It is.

Soc.

And sounds also, and the effects of music, are not these all in the same case?

Pol.

Yes.

Soc.

And further, in all that belongs to laws and observances, surely the fairness of them cannot lie beyond those limits of being either beneficial or pleasant or both.