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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: discernible in his argument with Callicles.
(2) Although Socrates professes to be convinced by reason only, yet the
argument is often a sort of dialectical fiction, by which he conducts
himself and others to his own ideal of life and action. And we may
sometimes wish that we could have suggested answers to his antagonists, or
pointed out to them the rocks which lay concealed under the ambiguous terms
good, pleasure, and the like. But it would be as useless to examine his
arguments by the requirements of modern logic, as to criticise this ideal
from a merely utilitarian point of view. If we say that the ideal is
generally regarded as unattainable, and that mankind will by no means agree
in thinking that the criminal is happier when punished than when
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