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not till they were dead , and by judges who were likewise dead and naked . iEacus , Rhadamanthus , and Minos , therefore , judge mankind , at the place where the two roads to Tartarus and to Elysium separate . Death / added Socrates , * is merely the separation of the body and the soul : each of them remains the same in its own nature . The body , for some time at least , continues of the same figure and aspect , and with the same
marks upon it , as during life ; and the soul likewise , when stripped of the body , discloses its natural state , as well as all the artificial impressions which have been made upon it by the habits acquired during life . These judges , therefore , when the souls come to them , know not whose souls they are , but often take hold of the soul of the Great King , * or any other monarch , or powerful man , and finding nothing sound in it , but seeing it branded and imprinted with the stigmas of perjury and injustice , which the practices of the man during his life have left upon it , and finding it
crooked and awry from having been nurtured in falsehood and deception , and full of baseness and disorderliness from habits of luxury and insolence and self-indulgence , they dismiss it to the place of torment . All punishment , when properly inflicted , is designed either to benefit the sufferer by making him better , or to be a warning to others , and render them better by the terror of the example . Those whose vices are curable , are benefited by their torments ; such benefits can only arise from suffering , either here or in Tartarus ; for there are no other means
of being cured of injustice . But those whose crimes are of the deepest dye , and who are consequently incurable , are made examples of , and are not benefited by their punishment , being incurable , but serve to benefit the beholders , being hung up as an example to those vicious men who come there . Of these Archelaus will be one , if Polus has told truth respecting him . I apprehend that most of these examples are yielded b y despots and powerful statesmen ; for they , from the greater license which
they possess , commit the greatest crimes . Homer bears witness to this , for he has represented those who suffer eternally in hell as all of them kings , Tantalus , and Sysiphus , and Tityus : he has not placed Thersites , or any other wicked private individual , among those who suffer the great punishments , as being incurable ; for it was not in the power of these men to commit the greater crimes : by so much the happier they . It is not , however , absolutely impossible even for statesmen and powerful men ,
to be virtuous ; and they who are so , are highly to be extolled : for it is difficult to live justly with much liberty of committing injustice , and few are they who do so . There have been such men , however , and probably there will be again , both here and elsewhere , whose greatness consists in performing justly that which is intrusted to them : and one very notable instance throughout all Greece , was Aristides . When , on the contrary , the judges behold a soul which has lived in holiness and truth , ( usually ,
as I affirm , that of a philosopher , who has minded his own affairs , and not taken much part in active life , ) they commend him , and dismiss him to Elysium . 4 , therefore , make it my study so to act , that I shall appear before my judge with my soul in the soundest possible state . Letting alone the honours which the Many confer , and pursuing the Truth , I endeavour to live well , and when the time shall come , to die well . And to the best of
* The name by which Che Greeks denoted the king of Persia .
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Plato ' s Dialogues ; the Gorsias . 839
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1834, page 839, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2640/page/21/
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