Polus, though he will not admit this, is ready to acknowledge that to do
evil is considered the more foul or dishonourable of the two. But what is
fair and what is foul; whether the terms are applied to bodies, colours,
figures, laws, habits, studies, must they not be defined with reference to
pleasure and utility? Polus assents to this latter doctrine, and is easily
persuaded that the fouler of two things must exceed either in pain or in
hurt. But the doing cannot exceed the suffering of evil in pain, and
therefore must exceed in hurt. Thus doing is proved by the testimony of
Polus himself to be worse or more hurtful than suffering.

There remains the other question: Is a guilty man better off when he is
punished or when he is unpunished? Socrates replies, that what is done
justly is suffered justly: if the act is just, the effect is just; if to
punish is just, to be punished is just, and therefore fair, and therefore
beneficent; and the benefit is that the soul is improved. There are three
evils from which a man may suffer, and which affect him in estate, body,
and soul;--these are, poverty, disease, injustice; and the foulest of these
is injustice, the evil of the soul, because that brings the greatest hurt.
And there are three arts which heal these evils--trading, medicine,
justice--and the fairest of these is justice. Happy is he who has never
committed injustice, and happy in the second degree he who has been healed
by punishment. And therefore the criminal should himself go to the judge
as he would to the physician, and purge away his crime. Rhetoric will
enable him to display his guilt in proper colours, and to sustain himself
and others in enduring the necessary penalty. And similarly if a man has
an enemy, he will desire not to punish him, but that he shall go unpunished
and become worse and worse, taking care only that he does no injury to
himself. These are at least conceivable uses of the art, and no others
have been discovered by us.