=Plato.=--Here, as in the formulation of his conception of the ideal, religious imagery helped Plato to find a more objective statement for the conception of a moral judgment and a moral character. In the final judgment of the soul after death, Plato sees the real self stripped bare of all external adornments of beauty, rank, power, or wealth, and standing as naked soul before the naked judge, to receive his just reward. And the very nature of this reward or penalty shows the deepening conception of the self, and of the intrinsic nature of moral character. The true penalty of injustice is not to be found in anything external, but in the very fact that the evil doers become base and wicked: "They do not know the penalty of injustice, which above all things they ought to know,--not stripes and death, as they suppose, which evil doers often escape, but a penalty which cannot be escaped. THEOD. What is that? SOC. There are two patterns set before them in nature; the one blessed and divine, the other godless and wretched; and they do not see, in their utter folly and infatuation, that they are growing like the one and unlike the other, by reason of their evil deeds; and the penalty is that they lead a life answering to the pattern which they resemble."[82] =The Stoics.=--It is, however, in the Stoics that we find the conception of inner reflection reaching clearest expression. Seneca and Epictetus repeat again and again the thought that the conscience is of higher importance than any external judgment,--that its judgment is inevitable. In these various conceptions, we see attained the third stage of Adam Smith's description of the formation of conscience.[83] Man who read his duty at first in the judgments of his fellows, in the customs and laws and codes of honor, and in the religious precepts of the gods, has again come to find in gods and laws, in custom and authority, the true rational law of life; but it is now a law of self. Not a particular or individual self, but a self which embraces within it at once the human and the divine. The individual has become social and has recognized himself as such. The religious, social, and political judgments have become the judgments of man upon himself. "Duty," what is binding or necessary, takes its place as a definite moral conception. LITERATURE Besides the writings of Plato (especially, the _Apology_, _Crito_, _Protagoras_, _Gorgias_, and _Republic_), Xenophon (_Memorabilia_), Aristotle (_Ethics_, _Politics_), Cicero (_On Ends, Laws, Duties_; _On the Nature of the Gods_), Epictetus, Seneca, M. Aurelius, Plutarch, and the fragments of various Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, the tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedies of Aristophanes (especially the _Clouds_) afford valuable material.