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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: good will you do either to yourself or to your friends? That your friends
will be driven into exile and deprived of citizenship, or will lose their
property, is tolerably certain; and you yourself, if you fly to one of the
neighbouring cities, as, for example, Thebes or Megara, both of which are
well governed, will come to them as an enemy, Socrates, and their
government will be against you, and all patriotic citizens will cast an
evil eye upon you as a subverter of the laws, and you will confirm in the
minds of the judges the justice of their own condemnation of you. For he
who is a corrupter of the laws is more than likely to be a corrupter of the
young and foolish portion of mankind. Will you then flee from well-ordered
cities and virtuous men? and is existence worth having on these terms? Or
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