success of our evil doings is a proof that the gods have ceased to strive
with us, and have given us over to ourselves. There is nothing to remind
us of our sins, and therefore nothing to correct them. Like our sorrows,
they are healed by time;

'While rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.'

The 'accustomed irony' of Socrates adds a corollary to the argument:--
'Would you punish your enemy, you should allow him to escape unpunished'--
this is the true retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of Proverbs,
'Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him,' etc., quoted in Romans.)

Men are not in the habit of dwelling upon the dark side of their own lives:
they do not easily see themselves as others see them. They are very kind
and very blind to their own faults; the rhetoric of self-love is always
pleading with them on their own behalf. Adopting a similar figure of
speech, Socrates would have them use rhetoric, not in defence but in
accusation of themselves. As they are guided by feeling rather than by
reason, to their feelings the appeal must be made. They must speak to
themselves; they must argue with themselves; they must paint in eloquent
words the character of their own evil deeds. To any suffering which they
have deserved, they must persuade themselves to submit. Under the figure
there lurks a real thought, which, expressed in another form, admits of an
easy application to ourselves. For do not we too accuse as well as excuse
ourselves? And we call to our aid the rhetoric of prayer and preaching,
which the mind silently employs while the struggle between the better and
the worse is going on within us. And sometimes we are too hard upon
ourselves, because we want to restore the balance which self-love has
overthrown or disturbed; and then again we may hear a voice as of a parent