Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the [E]soul, and vice the disease and weakness and deformity of the same?
True.
And do not good practices lead to virtue, and evil practices to vice?
Assuredly.
[445]The old question, whether the just or the unjust is the happier, has become ridiculous. Still our old question of the comparative advantage of justice and injustice has not been answered: Which is the more profitable, to be just and act justly and practise virtue, whether seen or unseen of gods and men, or to be unjust and act unjustly, if only unpunished and unreformed?
In my judgment, Socrates, the question has now become ridiculous. We know that, when the bodily constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with all kinds of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all power; and shall we be told that when the very essence of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, life is [B]still worth having to a man, if only he be allowed to do whatever he likes with the single exception that he is not to acquire justice and virtue, or to escape from injustice and vice; assuming them both to be such as we have described?
Yes, I said, the question is, as you say, ridiculous. Still, 139 as we are near the spot at which we may see the truth in the clearest manner with our own eyes, let us not faint by the way.
Certainly not, he replied.
[C] Come up hither, I said, and behold the various forms of vice, those of them, I mean, which are worth looking at.
I am following you, he replied: proceed.