ugh he is surrounded by his satellites, and has
the applauses of Europe and Asia ringing in his ears; though he is the
civilizer or liberator of half a continent, he is, and always will be,
the most miserable of men. The greatest consequences for good or for
evil cannot alter a hair's breadth the morality of actions which are
right or wrong in themselves. This is the standard which Socrates holds
up to us. Because politics, and perhaps human life generally, are of a
mixed nature we must not allow our principles to sink to the level of
our practice.

And so of private individuals--to them, too, the world occasionally
speaks of the consequences of their actions:--if they are lovers of
pleasure, they will ruin their health; if they are false or dishonest,
they will lose their character. But Socrates would speak to them, not of
what will be, but of what is--of the present consequence of lowering
and degrading the soul. And all higher natures, or perhaps all men
everywhere, if they were not tempted by interest or passion, would agree
with him--they would rather be the victims than the perpetrators of
an act of treachery or of tyranny. Reason tells them that death comes
sooner or later to all, and is not so great an evil as an unworthy life,
or rather, if rightly regarded, not an evil at all, but to a good man
the greatest good. For in all of us there are slumbering ideals of truth
and right, which may at any time awaken and develop a new life in us.

Second Thesis:--

It is better to suffer for wrong doing than not to suffer.

There might have been a condition of human life in which the penalty
followed at once, and was proportioned to the offence. Moral evil would
then be scarcely distinguishable from physical; mankind would avoid vice
as they avoid pain or death. But nature, with a view of deepening and
enlarging our characters, has for the most part hidden from us the
consequences of our actions, and we can only foresee them by an effort
of reflection. To awaken in us this habit of reflection is the business
of early education, which is continued in maturer years by observation
and experience. The spoilt child is in later life said to be
unfortunate--he had better have suffered when he was young, and been
saved from suffering afterwards. But is not the sovereign equally
unfortunate whose education and manner of life are always concealing
from him the consequences of his own actions, until at length they are
revealed t