"These things being so, let us inquire what it is you reproach me with: whether it is well said, or not, that I, forsooth, am not able to assist either myself or any of my friends or my relations, or to save myself from the greatest dangers, but that, like the infamous, I am at the mercy of any one who may choose to smite me on the face (for this was your juvenile expression), or take away my property, or drive me out of the city, or (the extreme case) kill me, and that to be so situated is, as you say, the most shameful of all things. But my view is,--a view many times expressed already, but there is no objection to its being stated again,--_my view, I say, is, O Callicles, that to be struck on the face unjustly is not most shameful, nor to have my body mutilated, nor my purse cut; but that to strike and cut me and mine unjustly is more shameful and worse--and stealing, too,_ _and enslaving, and housebreaking, and, in general, doing any wrong whatever to me and mine, is more shameful and worse--for him who does the wrong than for me who suffer it_. These things, which thus appeared to us in the former part of this discussion, are secured and bound (even if the expression be somewhat rustical) with iron and adamantine arguments, as indeed they would seem to be; and unless you, or some one stronger than you, can break them, it is impossible for any one, saying otherwise than as I now say, to speak correctly: since, for my part, _I always have the same thing to say,--that I know not how these things are, but that, of all whom I have ever discoursed with as now, no one is able to say otherwise without being ridiculous_."[72] [72] Gorgias, Cap. LXIV. Such is the wisdom of Socrates, as reported by Plato; and it has found beautiful expression in the verse of an English poet, who says,-- "Dear as freedom is, and in my heart's Just estimation prized above all price, _I had much rather be myself the slave And wear the bonds than fasten them on him_."[73] [73] Cowper, The Task, Book II. vv. 33-36.