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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: 'Do you mean to say that the rhetoricians are esteemed flatterers?' They
are not esteemed at all. 'Why, have they not great power, and can they not
do whatever they desire?' They have no power, and they only do what they
think best, and never what they desire; for they never attain the true
object of desire, which is the good. 'As if you, Socrates, would not envy
the possessor of despotic power, who can imprison, exile, kill any one whom
he pleases.' But Socrates replies that he has no wish to put any one to
death; he who kills another, even justly, is not to be envied, and he who
kills him unjustly is to be pitied; it is better to suffer than to do
injustice. He does not consider that going about with a dagger and putting
men out of the way, or setting a house on fire, is real power. To this
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