only with a view to good,' and that 'they were the better for being
punished.' Still his doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments
may be compared favourably with that perversion of Christian doctrine which
makes the everlasting punishment of human beings depend on a brief moment
of time, or even on the accident of an accident. And he has escaped the
difficulty which has often beset divines, respecting the future destiny of
the meaner sort of men (Thersites and the like), who are neither very good
nor very bad, by not counting them worthy of eternal damnation.

We do Plato violence in pressing his figures of speech or chains of
argument; and not less so in asking questions which were beyond the horizon
of his vision, or did not come within the scope of his design. The main
purpose of the Gorgias is not to answer questions about a future world, but
to place in antagonism the true and false life, and to contrast the
judgments and opinions of men with judgment according to the truth. Plato
may be accused of representing a superhuman or transcendental virtue in the
description of the just man in the Gorgias, or in the companion portrait of
the philosopher in the Theaetetus; and at the same time may be thought to
be condemning a state of the world which always has existed and always will
exist among men. But such ideals act powerfully on the imagination of
mankind. And such condemnations are not mere paradoxes of philosophers,
but the natural rebellion of the higher sense of right in man against the
ordinary conditions of human life. The greatest statesmen have fallen very
far short of the political ideal, and are therefore justly involved in the
general condemnation.

Subordinate to the main purpose of the dialogue are some other questions,
which may be briefly considered:--

a. The antithesis of good and pleasure, which as in other dialogues is