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Socrates. Right. Then in other matters, not to enumerate them all, in questions of right and wrong and disgraceful and noble and good and bad, which we are now considering, ought we to follow and fear the opinion of the many or that of the one, if there is anyone who knows about them, whom we ought to revere and fear more than all the others? And if we do not follow him, we shall injure and cripple that which we used to say is benefited by the right and is ruined by the wrong. Or is there nothing in this?
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Crito. I think it is true, Socrates.
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Socrates. Well then, if through yielding to the opinion of the ignorant we ruin that which is benefited by health and injured by disease, is life worth living for us when that is ruined? And that is the body, is it not?
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Crito. Yes.
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Socrates. Then is life worth living when the body is worthless and ruined?
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Crito. Certainly not.
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Socrates. But is it worth living when that is ruined which is injured by the wrong and improved by the right? Or do we think that part of us, whatever it is, which is concerned with right and wrong, is less important than the body?
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Crito. By no means.
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Socrates. But more important?
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Crito. Much more.
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Socrates. Then, most excellent friend, we must not consider at all what the many will say of us, but what he who knows about right and wrong, the one man, and truth herself will say. And so you introduced the discussion wrongly in the first place, when you began by saying we ought to consider the opinion of the multitude about the right and the noble and the good and their opposites. But it might, of course, be said that the multitude can put us to death.
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Crito. That is clear, too. It would be said, Socrates.
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Socrates. That is true. But, my friend, the argument we have just finished seems to me still much the same as before; and now see whether we still hold to this, or not, that it is not living, but living well which we ought to consider most important.
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Crito. We do hold to it.
