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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: good and evil can no longer be unravelled; and although they know that the
end cannot justify the means, they feel also that good has often come out
of evil. But Socrates would have us pass the same judgment on the tyrant
now and always; though 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.
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