identical.

Glaucon further maintains that the appearance of virtue is alone necessary to secure happiness; because if a man seems to be virtuous, he will obtain for himself the rewards of society and the smiles of his fellow-men, quite as much as if he were really what he seemed. Hence if it were generally possible for a man to appear virtuous and to be vicious, that should be the object of our endeavours; for we should then reap a twofold advantage,—we should obtain the rewards, without the punishments, of vice, and we should also receive the rewards of virtue; we should enjoy the pleasures of sin without its pains, and we should also share the favours which society is in the habit of bestowing upon honest and honourable men. Still, as a rule, Glaucon says, if a man has only the appearance of virtue, the chances of exposure are great, and therefore honesty is on the whole the best policy. It is a sacrifice of one's own interest, but it is one which pays.

He

Here Socrates takes up the discussion. proceeds to argue that virtue is desirable not only for its extrinsic, but also for its intrinsic, rewards; not only because it procures for us the goodwill and kindly offices of our fellow - men, but also, and chiefly, because of what it is in

The

itself. Virtue, says Socrates, is the wellbeing of the soul, and therefore it is its own reward. virtuous soul is as superior to the vicious, as a well-ordered and well-governed state is superior to a country which is embroiled in civil war. The heart of the vicious man is necessarily more or less filled, even in prosperity, with tumult and discord; while the heart of the virtuous man is tranquil, content, and happy even in the direst adversity.

In the Dialogue called 'Gorgias,' Plato takes a somewhat similar view. He there compares the virtuous to the healthy man. Just as a man afflicted with some excruciating and loathsome disease is to be pitied, even though he be a millionaire, so a man whose soul is impure is in an unenviable state, however magnificent may be his possessions and surroundings. His evil deeds may have procured for him, so far as appearances are concerned, only wealth and fame and power; but if, during the process, his soul has contracted an incurable disease, he is after all the most miserable of men. What shall it profit a man, Plato asks in effect, if he gain the whole world and yet lose himself?

Now the views of Thrasymachus and Glaucon, which Socrates and Plato controverted, are held

at the present time in a somewhat less extreme form, not only by thinkers, but also by a great many persons who never think.

When men have escaped the detection and punishment of society, they fancy they have got off altogether scot-free. The professional thief, who has been successful in a robbery, imagines that, as he has balked the police, he is at liberty to offer himself unqualified congratulations. The person who has said something that is not strictly true in order to shield himself from blame, knows that if he is detected he will fall in the esteem of his fellow-men; but if he is not detected, he flatters himself that all is right, that he need not trouble himself any further; that, though it would not be safe to try the experiment too often, yet for this once he has sown without having reaped, or rather has sown evil and reaped only good. And all of us are too much in the habit of thinking, in regard to actions which lie on the border-land between the good and the bad, that it really does not matter whether we do them or not, since in neither case does there seem much prospect of reaping either punishment or reward. For instance, we decide on amusing ourselves when, perhaps, we ought to be at work. The work may not promise any immediate remun

eration, and the amusement seems self-evidently desirable. So we imagine that, in choosing the latter, we must be acting wisely, or at any rate that we are doing ourselves no harm.

Now, in reasoning thus, we are guilty of two mistakes. In the first place, we assume that if retribution does not come at once, it will not come at all. We might as well argue, because the harvest does not come in the spring-time, that therefore it will not come in the autumn. "Crime and punishment," says Emerson, "grow out of one stem. Punishment is the fruit that, unsuspected, ripens within the flower of the [sinful] pleasure that conceals it. The retribution is inseparable from the thing, though it is often spread over a long time, and so does not become distinct for many years."

In the second place, we assume that pain is the only form of retribution. It is true that in the long-run, and as a rule, we do reap a harvest of pleasure or of pain, according to the moral goodness or badness of the actions we have sown. "In the weary satiety of the idle," says Mr Greg, "in the healthy energy of honest labour, in the irritable temper of the selfish, in the serene peace of the benevolent, in the startling tortures of the soul where the passions have the mastery, in the

calm Elysium which succeeds their subjugation, may be traced materials of retribution sufficient to satisfy the severest justice." But even when punishment for evil deeds does not take the form of actual pain, it by no means follows that those deeds have been committed with impunity. The retribution may have come as deterioration of character. This deterioration is the worst conceivable punishment; though it often exercises on men a benumbing, stupefying influence, and makes them insensible to the pain they would have felt had they lived a nobler life.

However fond we may be of pleasure, there are few of us, I suppose, who care for nothing else. We would not be always children, even if the pleasures of children were greater, as they possibly may be, than any that can be experienced in maturer years. It is better to be a man than an ape, even though the ape may have more pleasure and less pain in his life than the man. And surely it is better for a human being to act in a way which will develop a noble character, though he may thereby lose pleasure, not only at the time but even in the long-run. As Mrs Barbauld quaintly puts it: "Is it not some reproach on the economy of Providence that such an one, who is a mean dirty fellow,