Do not you think, therefore, that there is any benefit, or that there is any advantage which can be procured by injustice, precious enough to counterbalance the constant pressure of remorse, and the haunting consciousness that retribution awaits the sinner, and hangs over his devoted head.[342] * * * XVII.

[Our philosophers, therefore, put a case.

Suppose, say they, two men, one of whom is an excellent and admirable person, of high honor and remarkable integrity; the latter is distinguished by nothing but his vice and audacity.

And suppose that their city has so mistaken their characters as to imagine the good man to be a scandalous, impious, and audacious criminal, and to esteem the wicked man, on the contrary, as a pattern of probity and fidelity.

On account of this error of their fellow-citizens, the good man is arrested and tormented, his hands are cut off, his eyes are plucked out, he is condemned, bound, burned, exterminated, reduced to want, and to the last appears to all men to be most deservedly the most miserable of men.