Book V - Page 2

possession; nor, again, when a person is willing, or not
unwilling, to acquire dishonest gains, does he then honour his soul with
gifts--far otherwise; he sells her glory and honour for a small piece of
gold; but all the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to
give in exchange for virtue. In a word, I may say that he who does not
estimate the base and evil, the good and noble, according to the standard
of the legislator, and abstain in every possible way from the one and
practise the other to the utmost of his power, does not know that in all
these respects he is most foully and disgracefully abusing his soul, which
is the divinest part of man; for no one, as I may say, ever considers that
which is declared to be the greatest penalty of evil-doing--namely, to
grow into the likeness of bad men, and growing like them to fly from the
conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and
follow after the company of the bad. And he who is joined to them must do
and suffer what such men by nature do and say to one another,--a suffering
which is not justice but retribution; for justice and the just are noble,
whereas retribution is the suffering which waits upon injustice; and
whether a man escape or endure this, he is miserable,--in the former case,
because he is not cured; while in the latter, he perishes in order that
the rest of mankind may be saved.

Speaking generally, our glory is to follow the better and improve the
inferior, which is susceptible of improvement, as far as this is possible.
And of all human possessions, the soul is by nature most inclined to avoid
the evil, and track out and find the chief good; which when a man has
found, he should take up his abode with it during the remainder of his
life. Wherefore the soul also is second (or next to God) in honour; and
third, as every one will perceive, comes the honour of the body in natural
order. Having determined this, we have next to consider that there is a
natural honour of the body, and that of honours some are true and some are
counterfeit. To decide which are which is the business of the legislator;
and he, I suspect, would intimate that they are as follows:--Honour is not
to be given to the fair body, or to the strong or the swift or the tall,
or to the healthy body (although many may think otherwise), any more than
to their opposites; but the mean states of all these habits are by far the
safest and most moderate; for the one extreme makes the soul braggart and
insolent, and the other, illiberal and base; and money, and property, and
distinction all go to the same tune. The excess of any of these things is
apt to be a source of hatreds and divisions among states and individuals;
and the defect of them is commonly a cause of