|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: even if successful, is essentially evil, and has the nature of disease and
death. Especially when crimes are committed on the great scale--the crimes
of tyrants, ancient or modern--after a while, seeing that they cannot be
undone, and have become a part of history, mankind are disposed to forgive
them, not from any magnanimity or charity, but because their feelings are
blunted by time, and 'to forgive is convenient to them.' The tangle of
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
|
