Crito
Plato
tr. Benjamin Jowett

"SOCRATES:

Could we live, having an evil and corrupted body?

CRITO:

Certainly not.

SOCRATES:

And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice? Do we suppose that principle, whatever it may be in man, which has to do with justice and injustice, to be inferior to the body?

CRITO:

Certainly not.

SOCRATES:

More honourable than the body?

CRITO:

Far more.

SOCRATES:

Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many say of us; but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say. And therefore you begin in error when you advise that we should regard the opinion of the many about just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable. — "Well," someone will say, "but the many can kill us."

CRITO:

Yes, Socrates; that will clearly be the answer.

SOCRATES:

And it is true; but still I find with surprise that the old argument is unshaken as ever. And I should like to know whether I may say the same of another proposition — that not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued?

CRITO:

Yes, that also remains unshaken.

SOCRATES:

And a good life is equivalent to a just and honourable one — that holds also?

CRITO:

Yes, it does." (47e-48b)

END