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    my ability I call upon all men to do the same ; and I exhort you , in my turn , to this mode of life , and this struggle , which is worth all the struggie . s here : and I tell you , that you will not be able to protect yourself , but when iEacus calls you before him , you will gape and stare as much as I should here , and perhaps some one will strike you a blow , and insult you with every kind of contumely .

    * Perhaps you may despise all this , and think it an old woman ' s tale . And there would be nothing wonderful in despising it , if , by seeking , we could find any thing better and more true . But now you see that you , the three wisest men now living in Greece , you , and Polus , and Gorgias , are not able to show that any other course of life should be pursued , than that which this story pronounces to be for our interest in a future

    state ; but amid so many refutations , this conclusion alone rests Andis-Jurbed , that to injure should be more guarded against than to be injured , and that it ought to be our greatest study not to appear good , but to be good , both in private and in public ; and that if in any respect we become wicked , we should be punished , and that the next best thing to being just , is to become so by being punished ; and that all adulation , whether of ourselves or of others , of a few or of many , should be

    avoided , and rhetoric , and every thing else , should be employed for the purposes of justice only . Be advised by me , therefore , and follow me thither , where , if you arrive , you will be happy both in life and after death . And suffer any man to despise you as a fool , and to insul ^ ou if he will , aye , and to strike you even that disgraceful blow : for you will suffer nothing by it if you are really excellent , and practise virtue . And having thus practised it in common , we will then , if we see fit , apply

    ourselves to public life , or adopt any course to which our deliberationa may lead us , being then fitter for deliberation than we are now . For it is shameful , being as it seems we are , to value ourselves as being somebody ; we who never think the same thing on the same subject , and that the greatest of all subjects ; so ignorant are we . Let us use , therefore , as our' guide , the argument which we have now investigated ; which tells us , that the best mode of life , is to live and die in the practice of justice , and of all other virtue . This road let us follow , and to this let us exhort

    all others ; not that to which you exhorted me ; for it is good for nothing , O Callicles / m The reader has now seen the substance of what the greatest moralist of antiquity finds to say in recommendation of a virtuous life . His arguments , like those of moralists in general , are not ? of a nature to convince many , except those who do not need conviction ; there are few of them which Polus and Callicles ,

    had the author endowed them with dialectical skill equal to his own , might not easily have parried . But is not this an inconvenience necessarily attending the attempt to prove the eligibility of virtue by argument ? Argument may show what general regulation of the desires , or what particular course of' conduct , virtue requires : How to live virtuously , is a question the solution of which belongs to the understanding : but the understanding has no inducements which it can bring to the aid of one who has

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    840 Plato ' s Dialogues ; the Gorgias .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1834, page 840, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2640/page/22/