Republic

That was why, friend Thrasymachus, I was just now saying that no one of his own will chooses to hold rule and office and take other people’s troubles[*](κακά = troubles, miseres, 517 D. For the thought cf. 343 E, 345 E, Xen. Mem. 2.1.8, Hdt. 1.97.) in hand to straighten them out, but everybody expects pay for that, because he who is to exercise the art rightly never does what is best for himself or enjoins it when he gives commands according to the art, but what is best for the subject. That is the reason, it seems, why pay[*](Cf. 345 E, Aristot. Eth. Nic. 1134b 6.) must be provided for those who are to consent to rule, either in form of money or honor or a penalty if they refuse.What do you mean by that, Socrates? said Glaucon. The two wages I recognize, but the penalty you speak of and described as a form of wage I don’t understand.[*](Plato habitually explains metaphors, abstractions, and complicated defintions in this dramatic fashion. Cf. 352 E, 377 A, 413 A, 429 C, 438 B, 510 B.) Then, said I, you don’t understand the wages of the best men for the sake of which the finest spirits hold office and rule when they consent to do so. Don’t you know that to be covetous of honor and covetous of money is said to be and is a reproach? I do, he said. Well, then, said I, that is why the good are not willing to rule either for the sake of money or of honor. They do not wish to collect pay openly for their service of rule and be styled hirelings nor to take it by stealth from their office and be called thieves, nor yet for the sake of honor, for they are not covetous of honor. So there must be imposed some compulsion and penalty to constrain them to rule if they are to consent to hold office. That is perhaps why to seek office oneself and not await compulsion is thought disgraceful. But the chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse[*](Cf. Aristotle Politics 1318 b 36. In a good democracy the better classes will be content, for they will not be ruled by worse men. Cf. Cicero, Ad Att. ii. 9 male vehi malo alio gubernante quam tam ingratis vectoribus bene gubernare; Democr. fr. 49 D.: It is hard to be ruled by a worse man; Spencer, Data of Ethics, 77.) if a man will not himself hold office and rule. It is from fear of this, as it appears to me, that the better sort hold office when they do, and then they go to it not in the expectation of enjoyment nor as to a good thing,[*](The good and the necessary is a favorite Platonic antithesis, but the necessary is often the condicio sine qua non of the good. Cf. 358 C, 493 C, 540 B, Laws 628 C-D, 858 A. Aristotle took over the idea, Met. 1072 b 12.) but as to a necessary evil and because they are unable to turn it over to better men than themselves or to their like. For we may venture to say that, if there should be a city of good men[*](This suggests an ideal state, but not more strongly than Meno 100 A, 89 B.) only, immunity from office-holding would be as eagerly contended for as office is now,[*](The paradox suggests Spencer’s altruistic competition and Archibald Marshall’s Upsidonia. Cf. 521 A, 586 C, Isocrates vii. 24, xii. 145; Mill, On Representative Government, p. 56: The good despot . . . can hardly be imagined as conseting to undertake it unless as a refuge from intolerable evils; ibid. p. 200: Until mankind in general are of opinion with Plato that the proper person to be entrusted with power is the person most unwilling to accept it.) and there it would be made plain that in very truth the true ruler does not naturally seek his own advantage but that of the ruled; so that every man of understanding would rather choose to be benefited by another than to be bothered with benefiting him. This point then I by no means concede to Thrasymachus, that justice is the advantage of the superior. But that we will reserve for another occasion.[*](εἰσαῦθις lays the matter on the table. Cf. 430 C. The suggestiveness of Thrasymachus’ defintion is exhausted, and Socrates turns to the larger question and main theme of the Republic raised by the contention that the unjust life is happier and more profitable than the just.) A far weightier matter seems to me Thrasymachus’s present statement, his assertion that the life of the unjust man is better than that of the just. Which now do you choose, Glaucon? said I, and which seems to you to be the truer statement? That the life of the just man is more profitable, I say, he replied.

Did you hear, said I, all the goods that Thrasymachus just now enumerated for the life of the unjust man? I heard, he said, but I am not convinced. Do you wish us then to try to persuade him, supposing we can find a way, that what he says is not true? Of course I wish it, he said. If then we oppose[*](This is done in 358 D ff. It is the favorite Greek method of balancing pros and cons in set speeches and antithetic enumerations. Cf. Herodotus viii. 83, the διαλέξεις (Diels, Vorsokratiker ii. pp. 334-345), the choice of Heracles (Xenophon Memorabilia ii. 1), and the set speeches in Euripides. With this method the short question and answer of the Socratic dialectic is often contrasted. Cf. Protagoras 329 A, 334-335, Gorgias 461-462, also Gorgias 471 E, Cratylus 437 D, Theaetetus 171 A.) him in a set speech enumerating in turn the advantages of being just and he replies and we rejoin, we shall have to count up and measure the goods listed in the respective speeches and we shall forthwith be in need of judges to decide between us. But if, as in the preceding discussion, we come to terms with one another as to what we admit in the inquiry, we shall be ourselves both judges and pleaders. Quite so, he said. Which method do you like best? said I. This one, he said. Come then, Thrasymachus, I said, go back to the beginning and answer us. You affirm that perfect and complete injustice is more profitable than justice that is complete. I affirm it, he said, and have told you my reasons. Tell me then how you would express yourself on this point about them. You call one of them, I presume, a virtue and the other a vice? Of course. Justice the virtue and injustice the vice? It is likely,[*](Thrasymachus’s Umwertung aller Werte reverses the normal application of the words, as Callicles does in Gorgias 491 E.) you innocent, when I say that injustice pays and justice doesn’t pay. But what then, pray? The opposite, he replied. What! justice vice? No, but a most noble simplicity[*](Thrasymachus recoils from the extreme position. Socrates’ inference from the etymology of εὐήθεια (cf. 343 C) is repudiated. Injustice is not turpitude (bad character) but—discretion. εὐβουλία in a higher sense is what Protagoras teaches (Protagoras 318 E) and in the highest sense is the wisdom of Plato’s guardians (428 B).) or goodness of heart. Then do you call injustice badness of heart? No, but goodness of judgement. Do you also, Thrasymachus, regard the unjust as intelligent and good? Yes, if they are capable of complete injustice, he said, and are able to subject to themselves cities and tribes of men. But you probably suppose that I mean those who take purses. There is profit to be sure even in that sort of thing, he said, if it goes undetected. But such things are not worth taking into the account, but only what I just described. I am not unaware of your meaning in that, I said; but this is what surprised me,[*](Socrates understands the theory, and the distinction between wholesale injustice and the petty profits that are not worth mentioning, but is startled by the paradox that injustice will then fall in the category of virtue and wisdom. Thrasymachus affirms the paradox and is brought to self-contradiction by a subtle argument (349-350 C) which may pass as a dramatic illustration of the game of question and answer. Cf. Introduction p. x.) that you should range injustice under the head of virtue and wisdom, and justice in the opposite class. Well, I do so class them, he said. That, said I, is a stiffer proposition,[*](ἤδη marks the advance from the affirmation that injustice is profitable to the point of asserting that it is a virtue. This is a stiffer proposition, i.e. harder to refute, or possibly more stubborn.) my friend, and if you are going as far as that it is hard to know what to answer.

For if your position were that injustice is profitable yet you conceded it to be vicious and disgraceful as some other[*](e.g. Polus in Gorgias 474 ff., 482 D-E. Cf. Isocrates De Pace 31. Thrasymachus is too wary to separate the κακόν and the αἰσχρόν and expose himself to a refutation based on conventional usage. Cf. Laws 627 D, Politicus 306 A, Laws 662 A.) disputants do, there would be a chance for an argument on conventional principles. But, as it is, you obviously are going to affirm that it is honorable and strong and you will attach to it all the other qualities that we were assigning to the just, since you don’t shrink from putting it in the category of virtue and wisdom.You are a most veritable prophet, he replied. Well, said I, I mustn’t flinch from following out the logic of the inquiry, so long as I conceive you to be saying what you think.[*](Cf. on 346 A.) For now, Thrasymachus, I absolutely believe that you are not mocking us but telling us your real opinions about the truth.[*](περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας suggests the dogmatic titles of sophistic and pre-Socratic books. Cf. Antiphon, p. 553 Diels, Campbell on Theaetetus 161 C, and Aristotle Met. passim.) What difference does it make to you, he said, whether I believe it or not? Why don’t you test the argument? No difference, said I, but here is something I want you to tell me in addition to what you have said. Do you think the just man would want to overreach[*](In pursuance of the analogy between the virtues and the arts the moral idea πλεονεξία (overreaching, getting more than your share; see on 359 C) is generalized to include doing more than or differently from. English can hardly reproduce this. Jowett’s Shakespearian quotation (King JohnIV. ii. 28), When workmen strive to do better than well,They do confound their skill in covetousness, though apt, only illustrates the thought in part.) or exceed another just man? By no means, he said; otherwise he would not be the delightful simpleton that he is. And would he exceed or overreach or go beyond the just action? Not that either, he replied. But how would he treat the unjust man—would he deem it proper and just to outdo, overreach, or go beyond him or would he not? He would, he said, but he wouldn’t be able to. That is not my question, I said, but whether it is not the fact that the just man does not claim and wish to outdo the just man but only the unjust? That is the case, he replied. How about the unjust then? Does he claim to overreach and outdo the just man and the just action? Of course, he said, since he claims to overreach and get the better of everything. Then the unjust man will overreach and outdo also both the unjust man and the unjust action, and all his endeavor will be to get the most in everything for himself. That is so. Let us put it in this way, I said; the just man does not seek to take advantage of his like but of his unlike, but the unjust man of both. Admirably put, he said. But the unjust man is intelligent and good and the just man neither. That, too, is right, he said. Is it not also true, I said, that the unjust man is like the intelligent and good and the just man is not? Of course, he said, being such he will be like to such and the other not. Excellent. Then each is such[*](The assumption that a thing is what it is like is put as an inference from Thrasymachus’s ready admission that the unjust man is wise and good and is like the wise and good. Jevons says in Substitution of Similars; Whatever is true of a thing is true of its like. But practical logic requires the qualification in respect of their likeness. Socrates, however, argues that since the good man is like the good craftsman in not overreaching, and the good craftsman is good, therefore the just man is good. The conclusion is sound, and the analogy may have a basis of psychological truth; but the argument is a verbal fallacy.) as that to which he is like. What else do you suppose? he said. Very well, Thrasymachus, but do you recognize that one man is a musician[*](Cf. 608 E, Gorgias 463 E, Protagoras 332 A, 358 D, Phaedo 103 C, Soph. 226 B, Philebus 34 E, Meno 75 D, 88 A, Alc. I. 128 B, Cratylus 385 B. The formula, which is merely used to obtain formal recognition of a term or idea required in the argument, readily lends itself to modern parody. Socrates seems to have gone far afield. Thrasymachus answers quite confidently, ἔγωγε, but in δήπου there is a hint of bewilderment as to the object of it all.) and another unmusical? I do. Which is the intelligent and which the unintelligent? The musician, I presume, is the intelligent and the unmusical the unintelligent. And is he not good in the things in which he is intelligent[*](Familiar Socratic doctrine. Cf. Laches 194 D, Lysis 210 D, Gorgias 504 D.) and bad in the things in which he is unintelligent? Yes. And the same of the physician? The same. Do you think then, my friend, that any musician in the tuning of a lyre would want to overreach[*](πλεονεκτεῖν is here a virtual synonym of πλέον ἔχειν. The two terms help the double meaning. Cf. Laws 691 A πλεονεκτεῖν τῶν νόμων.) another musician in the tightening and relaxing of the strings or would claim and think fit to exceed or outdo him? I do not. But would the the unmusical man? Of necessity, he said.

And how about the medical man? In prescribing food and drink would he want to outdo the medical man or the medical procedure?Surely not.But he would the unmedical man?Yes.Consider then with regard to all[*](Generalizing from the inductive instances.) forms of knowledge and ignorance whether you think that anyone who knows would choose to do or say other or more than what another who knows would do or say, and not rather exactly what his like would do in the same action.Why, perhaps it must be so, he said, in such cases. But what of the ignorant man—of him who does not know? Would he not overreach or outdo equally the knower and the ignorant? It may be. But the one who knows is wise? I’ll say so. And the wise is good? I’ll say so. Then he who is good and wise will not wish to overreach his like but his unlike and opposite. It seems so, he said. But the bad man and the ignoramus will overreach both like and unlike? So it appears. And does not our unjust man, Thrasymachus, overreach both unlike and like? Did you not say that? I did, he replied. But the just man will not overreach his like but only his unlike? Yes. Then the just man is like the wise and good, and the unjust is like the bad and the ignoramus. It seems likely. But furthermore we agreed that such is each as that to which he is like. Yes, we did. Then the just man has turned out[*](Cf. 334 A.) on our hands to be good and wise and the unjust man bad and ignorant. Thrasymachus made all these admissions not as I now lightly narrate them, but with much baulking and reluctance[*](Cf. Protagoras 333 B.) and prodigious sweating, it being summer, and it was then I beheld what I had never seen before—Thrasymachus blushing.[*](Cf. the blush of the sophist in Euthydemus 297 A.) But when we did reach our conclusion that justice is virtue and wisdom and injustice vice and ignorance, Good, said I, let this be taken as established.[*](The main paradox of Thrasymachus is refuted. It will be easy to transfer the other laudatory epithets ἰσχυρόν, etc., from injustice back to justice. Thrasymachus at first refuses to share in the discussion but finally nods an ironical assent to everything that Socrates says. So Callicles in Gorgias 510 A.) But we were also affirming that injustice is a strong and potent thing. Don’t you remember, Thrasymachus? I remember, he said; but I don’t agree with what you are now saying either and I have an answer to it, but if I were to attempt to state it, I know very well that you would say that I was delivering a harangue.[*](This is really a reminiscence of such passages as Theaetetus 162 D, Protagoras 336 B, Gorgias 482 C, 494 D, 513 A ff., 519 D. The only justification for it in the preceding conversation is 348 A-B.) Either then allow me to speak at such length as I desire,[*](So Polus in Gorgias 527 A.) or, if you prefer to ask questions, go on questioning and I, as we do for old wives[*](Cf. Gorgias 527 A.) telling their tales, will say Very good and will nod assent and dissent. No, no, said I, not counter to your own belief. Yes, to please you, he said, since you don’t allow me freedom of speech. And yet what more do you want? Nothing, indeed, said I; but if this is what you propose to do, do it and I will ask the questions. Ask on, then.

This, then, is the question I ask, the same as before, so that our inquiry may proceed in sequence. What is the nature of injustice as compared with justice? For the statement made, I believe, was that injustice is a more potent and stronger thing than justice. But now, I said, if justice is wisdom and virtue, it will easily, I take it, be shown to be also a stronger thing than injustice, since injustice is ignorance—no one could now fail to recognize that—but what I want is not quite so simple[*](Cf. 331 C, 386 B. Instead of the simple or absolute argument that justice, since it is wisdom and virtue, must be stronger, etc., then injustice, Socrates wishes to bring out the deeper thought that the unjust city or man is strong not because but in spite of his injustice and by virtue of some saving residue of justice.) as that. I wish, Thrasymachus, to consider it in some such fashion as this. A city, you would say, may be unjust and try to enslave other cities unjustly, have them enslaved and hold many of them in subjection. Certainly, he said; and this is what the best state will chiefly do, the state whose injustice is most complete. I understand, I said, that this was your view. But the point that I am considering is this, whether the city that thus shows itself superior to another will have this power without justice or whether she must of necessity combine it with justice. If,[*](Thrasymachus can foresee the implications of either theory.) he replied, what you were just now saying holds good, that justice is wisdom, with justice; if it is as I said, with injustice. Admirable, Thrasymachus, I said; you not only nod assent and dissent, but give excellent answers. I am trying to please you, he replied. Very kind of you. But please me in one thing more and tell me this: do you think that a city,[*](For the thought cf. Spencer, Data of Ethics, 114: Joint aggressions upon men outside the society cannot prosper if there are many aggressions of man on man within the society; Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, Chapter. VIII. 31: It (the loyalty of a thief to his gang) is rather a spurious or class morality, etc.; Carlyle: Neither James Boswell’s good book, nor any other good thing . . . is or can be performed by any man in virtue of his badness, but always solely in spite thereof. Proclus, In Rempub. Kroll i. 20 expands this idea. Dante (Convivio I. xii.) attributes to the Philosopher in the fifth of the ethics the saying that even robbers and plunderers love justice. Locke (Human Understanding i. 3) denies that this proves the principles of justice innate: They practise them as rules of convenience within their own communities, etc. Cf. further Isocrates xii. 226 on the Spartans, and Plato Protagoras 322 B, on the inconveniences of injustice in the state of nature, ἠδίκουν ἀλλήλους.) an army, or bandits, or thieves, or any other group that attempted any action in common, could accomplish anything if they wronged one another? Certainly not, said he. But if they didn’t, wouldn’t they be more likely to? Assuredly. For factions, Thrasymachus, are the outcome of injustice, and hatreds and internecine conflicts, but justice brings oneness of mind and love. Is it not so? So be it, he replied, not to differ from you. That is good of you, my friend; but tell me this: if it is the business of injustice to engender hatred wherever it is found, will it not, when it springs up either among freemen or slaves, cause them to hate and be at strife with one another, and make them incapable of effective action in common? By all means. Suppose, then, it springs up between two, will they not be at outs with and hate each other and be enemies both to one another and to the just? They will, he said. And then will you tell me that if injustice arises in one[*](The specific function must operate universally in bond or free, in many, two, or one. The application to the individual reminds us of the main argument of the Republic. Cf. 369 A, 433 D, 441 C. For the argument many, few or two, one, Cf. Laws 626 C.) it will lose its force and function or will it none the less keep it? Have it that it keeps it, he said.

And is it not apparent that its force is such that wherever it is found in city, family, camp, or in anything else it first renders the thing incapable of cooperation with itself owing to faction and difference, and secondly an enemy to itself[*](Plato paradoxically treats the state as one organism and the individual as many warring members (cf. Introduction p. xxxv). Hence, justice in one, and being a friend to oneself are more than metaphors for him. Cf. 621 C, 416 C, 428 D, Laws 626 E, 693 B, Epistles vii. 332 D, Antiphon 556.45 Diels ὁμονοεῖ πρὸς ἑαυτόν. Aritotle, Eth. Nic. v. 11, inquires whether a man can wrong himself, and Chrysippus (Plutarch, Stoic. Repug. xvi.) pronounces the expression absurd.) and to its opposite in every case, the just? Isn’t that so?By all means.Then in the individual too, I presume, its presence will operate all these effects which it is its nature to produce. It will in the first place make him incapable of accomplishing anything because of inner faction and lack of self-agreement, and then an enemy to himself and to the just. Is it not so?Yes.But, my friend, the gods too[*](This is the conventional climax of the plea for any moral ideal. So Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1179 a 24, proves that the σοφός being likest God is θεοφιλέστατος. Cf. Democ. fr. 217 D. μοῦνοι θεοφιλέες ὅσοις ἐχθρὸν τὸ ἀδικεῖν; 382 E, 612 E, Philebus 39 E, Laws 716 D. The enlightened Thrasymachus is disgusted at this dragging in of the gods. Cf. Theaetetus 162 D θεούς τε εἰς τὸ μέσον ἄγοντες. He is reported as saying (Diels p. 544.40) that the gods regard not human affairs, else they would not have overlooked the greatest of goods, justice, which men plainly do not use.) are just.Have it that they are, he said. So to the gods also, it seems, the unjust man will be hateful, but the just man dear. Revel in your discourse, he said, without fear, for I shall not oppose you, so as not to offend your partisans here. Fill up the measure of my feast,[*](ἑστιάσεως keeps up the image of the feast of reason. Cf. 354 A-B, Lysis 211 C, Gorgias 522 A, Phaedrus 227 B, and Tim. 17 A, from which perhaps it becomes a commonplace in Dante and the Middle Ages.) then, and complete it for me, I said, by continuing to answer as you have been doing. Now that the just appear to be wiser and better and more capable of action and the unjust incapable of any common action, and that if we ever say that any men who are unjust have vigorously combined to put something over, our statement is not altogether true, for they would not have kept their hands from one another if they had been thoroughly unjust, but it is obvious that there was in them some justice which prevented them from wronging at the same time one another too as well as those whom they attacked; and by dint of this they accomplished whatever they did and set out to do injustice only half corrupted[*](For the idea cf. the argument in Protagoras 327 C-D, that Socrates would yearn for the wickedness of Athens if he found himself among wild men who knew no justice at all.) by injustice, since utter rascals completely unjust are completely incapable of effective action—all this I understand to be the truth, and not what you originally laid down. But whether it is also true[*](The main ethical question of the Republic, suggested in 347 E, now recurs.) that the just have a better life than the unjust and are happier, which is the question we afterwards proposed for examination, is what we now have to consider. It appears even now that they are, I think, from what has already been said. But all the same we must examine it more carefully.[*](Similarly 578 C. What has been said implies that injustice is the corruption and disease of the soul (see on 445 A-B). But Socrates wishes to make further use of the argument from ἔργον or specific function.) For it is no ordinary[*](Cf. on 344 D, ibid, pp. 71 f.) matter that we are discussing, but the right conduct of life. Proceed with your inquiry, he said. I proceed, said I. Tell me then—would you say that a horse has a specific work[*](See on 335 D, and Aristotle Eth. Nic. i. 7. 14. The virtue or excellence of a thing is the right performance of its specific function. See Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, i. p. 301, Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics p. 48. The following argument is in a sense a fallacy, since it relies on the double meaning of life, physical and moral (cf. 445 B and Cratylus 399 D) and on the ambiguity of εὖ πράττειν, fare well and do well. The Aristotelian commentator, Alexander, animadverts on the fallacy. For ἔργον cf. further Epictet. Dis. i. 4. 11, Max. Tyr. Dis. ii. 4, Musonius apud Stobaeus 117. 8, Thompson on Meno 90 E, Plato, Laws 896 D, Phaedrus 246 B.) or function? I would. Would you be willing to define the work of a horse or of anything else to be that which one can do only with it or best with it? I don’t understand, he replied. Well, take it this way: is there anything else with which you can see except the eyes? Certainly not. Again, could you hear with anything but ears? By no means. Would you not rightly say that these are the functions of these (organs)? By all means.

Once more, you could use a dirk to trim vine branches and a knife and many other instruments.Certainly.But nothing so well, I take it, as a pruning-knife fashioned for this purpose.That is true.Must we not then assume this to be the work or function of that?We must.You will now, then, I fancy, better apprehend the meaning of my question when I asked whether that is not the work of a thing which it only or it better than anything else can perform.Well, he said, I do understand, and agree that the work of anything is that. Very good, said I. Do you not also think that there is a specific virtue or excellence of everything for which a specific work or function is appointed? Let us return to the same examples. The eyes we say have a function? They have. Is there also a virtue of the eyes? There is. And was there not a function of the ears? Yes. And so also a virtue? Also a virtue. And what of all other things? Is the case not the same? The same. Take note now. Could the eyes possibly fulfil their function well if they lacked their own proper excellence and had in its stead the defect? How could they? he said; for I presume you meant blindness instead of vision. Whatever, said I, the excellence may be. For I have not yet come[*](Platonic dialectic asks and affirms only so much as is needed for the present purpose.) to that question, but am only asking whether whatever operates will not do its own work well by its own virtue and badly by its own defect. That much, he said, you may affirm to be true. Then the ears, too, if deprived of their own virtue will do their work ill? Assuredly. And do we then apply the same principle to all things? I think so. Then next consider this. The soul, has it a work which you couldn’t accomplish with anything else in the world, as for example, management, rule, deliberation, and the like, is there anything else than soul to which you could rightly assign these and say that they were its peculiar work? Nothing else. And again life? Shall we say that too is the function of the soul? Most certainly, he said. And do we not also say that there is an excellence virtue of the soul? We do. Will the soul ever accomplish its own work well if deprived of its own virtue, or is this impossible? It is impossible. Of necessity, then, a bad soul will govern and manage things badly while the good soul will in all these things do well.[*](For the equivocation Cf. Charmides 172 A, Gorgias 507 C, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 9. 14, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1098 b 21, Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics p. 401, Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (English ed.), ii. p. 70. It does not seriously affect the validity of the argument, for it is used only as a rhetorical confirmation of the implication that κακῶς ἄρχειν, etc. = misery and the reverse of happiness.) Of necessity. And did we not agree that the excellence or virtue of soul is justice and its defect injustice? Yes, we did. The just soul and the just man then will live well and the unjust ill? So it appears, he said, by your reasoning.

But furthermore, he who lives well is blessed and happy, and he who does not the contrary.Of course.Then the just is happy and the unjust miserable.So be it, he said. But it surely does not pay to be miserable, but to be happy. Of course not. Never, then, most worshipful Thrasymachus, can injustice be more profitable than justice. Let this complete your entertainment, Socrates, at the festival of Bendis. A feast furnished by you, Thrasymachus, I said, now that you have become gentle with me and are no longer angry.[*](For similar irony cf. Gorgias 489 D, Euthydemus 304 C.) I have not dined well, however— by my own fault, not yours. But just as gluttons[*](Similarly Holmes (Poet at the Breakfast Table, p. 108) of the poet: He takes a bite out of the sunny side of this and the other, and ever stimulated and never satisfied, etc. Cf. Lucian, Demosth. Encom. 18, Julian Orat. ii. p. 69 c, Polyb. iii. 57. 7.) snatch at every dish that is handed along and taste it before they have properly enjoyed the preceding, so I, methinks, before finding the first object of our inquiry—what justice is—let go of that and set out to consider something about it, namely whether it is vice and ignorance or wisdom and virtue; and again, when later the view was sprung upon us that injustice is more profitable than justice I could not refrain from turning to that from the other topic. So that for me the present outcome of the discussion[*](Hirzel, Der Dialog, i. p. 4, n. 1, argues that διαλόγου here means inquiry (Erorterung), not the dialogue with Thrasymachus.) is that I know nothing.[*](For the profession of ignorance at the close of a Socratic dialogue Cf. Charmides 175 A-B, Lysis 222 D-E, Protagoras 361 A-B, Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 2. 39. Cf. also Introduction p. x.) For if I don’t know what the just is,[*](Knowledge of the essence or definition must precede discussion of qualities and relations. Cf Meno 71 B, 86 D-E, Laches 190 B, Gorgias 448 E.) I shall hardly know whether it is a virtue or not, and whether its possessor is or is not happy.

When I had said this I supposed that I was done with the subject, but it all turned out to be only a prelude. For Glaucon, who is always an intrepid enterprising spirit in everything, would not on this occasion acquiesce in Thrasymachus’s abandonment[*](So in Philebus 11 C, Philebus cries off or throws up the sponge in the argument.) of his case, but said, Socrates, is it your desire to seem to have persuaded us or really to persuade us that it is without exception better to be just than unjust? Really, I said, if the choice rested with me. Well, then, you are not doing what you wish. For tell me: do you agree that there is a kind of good[*](Aristotle borrows this classification from Plato (Topics 118 b 20-22), but liking to differ from his teacher, says in one place that the good which is desired solely for itself is the highest. The Stoics apply the classification to preferables (Diogenes Laertius vii. 107). Cf. Hooker, Eccles. Pol. i. 11. Elsewhere Plato distinguishes goods of the soul, of the body, and of possessions (Laws 697 B, 727-729) or as the first Alcibiades puts it (131) the self, the things of the self, and other things.) which we would choose to possess, not from desire for its after effects, but welcoming it for its own sake? As, for example, joy and such pleasures are harmless[*](Plato here speaks of harmless pleasures, from the point of view of common sense and prudential morality. Cf. Tim. 59 D ἀμεταμέλητον ἡδονήν, Milton’s Mirth that after no repenting draws. But the Republic (583 D) like the Gorgias (493 E-494 C) knows the more technical distinction of the Philebus (42 C ff., 53 C ff.) between pure pleasures and impure, which are conditioned by desire and pain.) and nothing results from them afterwards save to have and to hold the enjoyment. I recognise that kind, said I. And again a kind that we love both for its own sake and for its consequences,[*](Isocrates i. 47 has this distinction, as well as Aristotle.) such as understanding,[*](Some philosophers, as Aristippus (Diogenes Laertius x. 1. 138), said that intelligence is a good only for its consequences, but the opening sentences of Aritotle’s Metaphysics treat all forms of knowledge as goods in themselves.) sight, and health?[*](Plutarch (1040 C) says that Chrysippus censured Plato for recognizing health as a good, but elsewhere Plato explicitly says that even health is to be disregarded when the true interests of the soul require it.) For these presume we welcome for both reasons. Yes, I said. And can you discern a third form of good under which falls exercise and being healed when sick and the art of healing and the making of money generally? For of them we would say that they are laborious and painful yet beneficial, and for their own sake we would not accept them, but only for the rewards and other benefits that accrue from them. Why yes, I said, I must admit this third class also. But what of it? In which of these classes do you place justice? he said.

In my opinion, I said, it belongs in the fairest class, that which a man who is to be happy must love both for its own sake and for the results. Yet the multitude, he said, do not think so, but that it belongs to the toilsome class of things that must be practised for the sake of rewards and repute due to opinion but that in itself is to be shunned as an affliction. I am aware, said I, that that is the general opinion and Thrasymachus has for some time been disparaging it as such and praising injustice. But I, it seems, am somewhat slow to learn. Come now, he said, hear what I too have to say and see if you agree with me. For Thrasymachus seems to me to have given up to you too soon, as if he were a serpent[*](For Plato’s fondness for the idea of κηλεῖν cf. The Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 500.) that you had charmed, but I am not yet satisfied with the proof that has been offered about justice and injustice. For what I desire is to hear what each of them is and what potency and effect it has in and of itself dwelling in the soul,[*](Cf. 366 E.) but to dismiss their rewards and consequences. This, then, is what I propose to do, with your concurrence. I will renew the argument of Thrasymachus and will first state what men say is the nature and origin of justice; secondly, that all who practise it do so reluctantly, regarding it as something necessary[*](Cf. 347 C-D.) and not as a good; and thirdly, that they have plausible grounds for thus acting, since forsooth the life of the unjust man is far better than that of the just man—as they say; though I, Socrates, don’t believe it. Yet I am disconcerted when my ears are dinned by the arguments of Thrasymachus and innumerable others.[*](Cf. Philebus 66 E. Plato affirms that the immoralism of Thrasymachus and Callicles was widespread in Greece. Cf. Introduction x-xi, and Gorgias 511 B, Protagoras 333 C, Euthydemus 279 B, and my paper on the interpretation of the Timaeus, A.J.P. vol. ix. pp. 403-404.) But the case for justice, to prove that it is better than injustice, I have never yet heard stated by any as I desire to hear it. What I desire is to hear an encomium on justice in and by itself. And I think I am most likely to get that from you. For which reason I will lay myself out in praise of the life of injustice, and in so speaking will give you an example of the manner in which I desire to hear from you in turn the dispraise of injustice and the praise of justice. Consider whether my proposal pleases you. Nothing could please me more, said I; for on what subject would a man of sense rather delight to hold and hear discourse again and again? That is excellent, he said; and now listen to what I said would be the first topic—the nature and origin of justice.

By nature,[*](Glaucon employs the antithesis between nature and law and the theory of an original social contract to expound the doctrine of Thrasymachus and Callicles in the Gorgias. His statement is more systematic than theirs, but the principle is the same; for, though Callicles does not explicitly speak of a social contract, he implies that conventional justice is an agreement of the weak devised to hold the strong in awe. (Gorgias 492 C), and Glaucon here affirms that no relally strong man would enter into any such agreement. The social contract without the immoral application is also suggested in Protagoras 322 B. Cf. also Crito 50 C, f.) they say, to commit injustice is a good and to suffer it is an evil, but that the excess of evil in being wronged is greater than the excess of good in doing wrong. So that when men do wrong and are wronged by one another and taste of both, those who lack the power to avoid the one and take the other determine that it is for their profit to make a compact with one another neither to commit nor to suffer injustice; and that this is the beginning of legislation and covenants between men, and that they name the commandment of the law the lawful and the just, and that this is the genesis and essential nature of justice—a compromise between the best, which is to do wrong with impunity, and the worst, which is to be wronged and be impotent to get one’s revenge. Justice, they tell us, being mid-way between the two, is accepted and approved, not as a real good, but as a thing honored in the lack of vigor to do injustice, since anyone who had the power to do it and was in reality a man would never make a compact with anybody either to wrong nor to be wronged; for he would be mad. The nature, then, of justice is this and such as this, Socrates, and such are the conditions in which it originates, according to the theory. But as for the second point, that those who practise it do so unwillingly and from want of power to commit injustice—we shall be most likely to apprehend that if we entertain some such supposition as this in thought: if we grant to each, the just and the unjust, licence and power to do whatever he pleases, and then accompany them in imagination and see whither his desire will conduct each. We should then catch the just man in the very act of resorting to the same conduct as the unjust man because of the self-advantage which every creature by its nature pursues as a good, while by the convention of law[*](The antithesis of φύσις and νόμος, nature and law, custom or convention, is a commonplace of both Greek rhetoric and Greek ethics. Cf. the Chicago dissertation of John Walter Beardslee, The Use of φύσις in Fifth Century Greek Literature, ch. x. p. 68. Cf. Herodotus iii. 38, Pindar, quoted by Plato, Gorgias 484 B, Laws 690 B, 715 A; Euripides or Critias, Frag. of Sisyphus, Aristophanes Birds 755 ff., Plato Protagoras 337 D, Gorgias 483 E, Laws 889 C and 890 D. It was misused by ancient as it is by modern radicals. Cf. my interpretation of the Timaeus, A.J.P. vol. ix. p. 405. The ingenuity of modern philologians has tried to classify the Greek sophists as distinctly partisans of νόμος or φύσις. It cannot be done. Cf. my unsigned review of Alfred Benn in the New York Nation, July 20, 1899, p. 57.) it is forcibly diverted to paying honor to equality.[*](Cf. Gorgias 508 A.) The licence that I mean would be most nearly such as would result from supposing them to have the power which men say once came to the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian.[*](So manuscripts and Proclus. There are many emendations which the curious will find in Adam’s first appendix to the book. Herodotus i. 8-13 tells a similar but not identical story of Gyges himself, in which the magic ring and many other points of Plato’s tale are lacking. On the whole legend cf. the study of Kirby Flower Smith, A.J.P. vol. xxiii. pp. 261-282, 361-387, and Frazer’s Paus. iii. p. 417.) They relate that he was a shepherd in the service of the ruler at that time of Lydia, and that after a great deluge of rain and an earthquake the ground opened and a chasm appeared in the place where he was pasturing; and they say that he saw and wondered and went down into the chasm; and the story goes that he beheld other marvels there and a hollow bronze horse with little doors, and that he peeped in and saw a corpse within, as it seemed, of more than mortal stature, and that there was nothing else but a gold ring on its hand, which he took off and went forth. And when the shepherds held their customary assembly to make their monthly report to the king about the flocks, he also attended wearing the ring.

So as he sat there it chanced that he turned the collet of the ring towards himself, towards the inner part of his hand, and when this took place they say that he became invisible[*](Mr. H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man rests on a similar fancy. Cf. also the lawless fancies of Aristophanes Birds 785 ff.) to those who sat by him and they spoke of him as absent and that he was amazed, and again fumbling with the ring turned the collet outwards and so became visible. On noting this he experimented with the ring to see if it possessed this virtue, and he found the result to be that when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, and when outwards visible; and becoming aware of this, he immediately managed things so that he became one of the messengers who went up to the king, and on coming there he seduced the king’s wife and with her aid set upon the king and slew him and possessed his kingdom. If now there should be two such rings, and the just man should put on one and the unjust the other, no one could be found, it would seem, of such adamantine[*](The word is used of the firmness of moral faith in Gorgias 509 A and Republic 618 E.) temper as to persevere in justice and endure to refrain his hands from the possessions of others and not touch them, though he might with impunity take what he wished even from the marketplace, and enter into houses and lie with whom he pleased, and slay and loose from bonds whomsoever he would, and in all other things conduct himself among mankind as the equal of a god.[*](ἰσόθεος. The word is a leit-motif anticipating Plato’s rebuke of the tragedians for their praises of the tyraant. Cf. 568 A-B. It does not, as Adam suggests, foreshadow Plato’s attack on the popular theology.) And in so acting he would do no differently from the other man, but both would pursue the same course. And yet this is a great proof, one might argue, that no one is just of his own will but only from constraint, in the belief that justice is not his personal good, inasmuch as every man, when he supposes himself to have the power to do wrong, does wrong. For that there is far more profit for him personally in injustice than in justice is what every man believes, and believes truly, as the proponent of this theory will maintain. For if anyone who had got such a licence within his grasp should refuse to do any wrong or lay his hands on others’ possessions, he would be regarded as most pitiable[*](Cf. 344 A, Gorgias 492 B.) and a great fool by all who took note of it,[*](αἰσθανομένοις suggests men of discernment who are not taken in by phrases, the knowing ones. Cf. Protagoras 317 A, and Aristophanes Clouds 1241 τοῖς εἰδόσιν.) though they would praise him[*](Cf. Gorgias 483 B, 492 A, Protagoras 327 B, Aristotle Rhet. ii. 23.) before one another’s faces, deceiving one another because of their fear of suffering injustice. So much for this point. But to come now to the decision[*](Cf. 580 B-C, Philebus 27 C.) between our two kinds of life, if we separate the most completely just and the most completely unjust man, we shall be able to decide rightly, but if not, not. How, then, is this separation to be made? Thus: we must subtract nothing of his injustice from the unjust man or of his justice from the just, but assume the perfection of each in his own mode of conduct.

In the first place, the unjust man must act as clever craftsmen do: a first-rate pilot or physician, for example, feels the difference between impossibilities[*](Cf. Quint. iv. 5. 17 recte enim Graeci praecipiunt non tentanda quae effici omnino non possint.) and possibilities in his art and attempts the one and lets the others go; and then, too, if he does happen to trip, he is equal to correcting his error. Similarly, the unjust man who attempts injustice rightly must be supposed to escape detection if he is to be altogether unjust, and we must regard the man who is caught as a bungler.[*](Cf. Emerson, Eloquence: Yet any swindlers we have known are novices and bunglers. . . . A greater power of face would accomplish anything and with the rest of the takings take away the bad name.) For the height of injustice[*](Cf, Cicero De offic. i. 13.) is to seem just without being so. To the perfectly unjust man, then, we must assign perfect injustice and withhold nothing of it, but we must allow him, while committing the greatest wrongs, to have secured for himself the greatest reputation for justice; and if he does happen to trip,[*](Cf. Thucydides vii. 24 on the miscalculation of the shrewd Chians.) we must concede to him the power to correct his mistakes by his ability to speak persuasively if any of his misdeeds come to light, and when force is needed, to employ force by reason of his manly spirit and vigor and his provision of friends and money; and when we have set up an unjust man of this character, our theory must set the just man at his side—a simple and noble man, who, in the phrase of Aeschylus, does not wish to seem but be good. Then we must deprive him of the seeming.[*](As Aristotle sententiously says,ὅρος δὲ τοῦ πρὸς δόξαν ὃ λανθάνειν μέλλων οὐκ ἂν ἕλοιτο (Rhet. 1365 b 1, Topics iii. 3. 14).) For if he is going to be thought just he will have honors and gifts because of that esteem. We cannot be sure in that case whether he is just for justice’s sake or for the sake of the gifts and the honors. So we must strip him bare of everything but justice and make his state the opposite of his imagined counterpart.[*](For the thought cf. Euripides Helen 270-271.) Though doing no wrong he must have the repute of the greatest injustice, so that he may be put to the test as regards justice through not softening because of ill repute and the consequences thereof. But let him hold on his course unchangeable even unto death, seeming all his life to be unjust though being just, that so, both men attaining to the limit, the one of injustice, the other of justice, we may pass judgement which of the two is the happier.Bless me, my dear Glaucon, said I, how strenuously you polish off each of your two men for the competition for the prize as if it were a statue.[*](Cf. 540 C.) To the best of my ability, he replied, and if such is the nature of the two, it becomes an easy matter, I fancy, to unfold the tale of the sort of life that awaits each. We must tell it, then; and even if my language is somewhat rude and brutal,[*](Cf. 613 E, Gorgias 486 C, 509 A, Apology 32 D. The Greeks were sensitive to rude or boastful speech.) you must not suppose, Socrates, that it is I who speak thus, but those who commend injustice above justice.

What they will say is this: that such being his disposition the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified,[*](Or strictly impaled. Cf. Cicero De Rep. iii. 27. Writers on Plato and Christianity have often compared the fate of Plato’s just man with the crucifixion.) and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire. And the saying of Aeschylus[*](Aesch. Seven 592-594) was, it seems, far more correctly applicable to the unjust man. For it is literally true, they will say, that the unjust man, as pursuing what clings closely to reality, to truth, and not regulating his life by opinion, desires not to seem but to be unjust,

1. Exploiting the deep furrows of his wit

1. From which there grows the fruit of counsels shrewd,

Fathers, when they address exhortations to their sons, and all those who have others in their charge,[*](Who, in Quaker language, have a concern for, who have charge of souls. Cf. the admonitions of the father of Horace, Satire i. 4. 105 ff., Protagoras 325 D, Xenophon Cyr. i. 5. 9, Isocrates iii. 2, Terence Adelphi 414 f., Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, i. p. 187, and the letters of Lord Chesterfield, passim, as well as Plato himself, Laws 662 E.) urge the necessity of being just, not by praising justice itself, but the good repute with mankind that accrues from it, the object that they hold before us being that by seeming to be just the man may get from the reputation office and alliances and all the good things that Glaucon just now enumerated as coming to the unjust man from his good name. But those people draw out still further this topic of reputation. For, throwing in good standing with the gods, they have no lack of blessings to describe, which they affirm the gods give to pious men, even as the worthy Hesiod and Homer declare, the one that the gods make the oaks bear for the just:

Acorns on topmost branches and swarms of bees on their mid-trunks,

Flocks of the fleece-bearing sheep are laden and weighted with soft wool,

1. Even as when a good king, who rules in the fear of the high gods,
2. Upholds justice and right, and the black earth yields him her foison,

1. Barley and wheat, and his trees are laden and weighted with fair fruits,
2. Increase comes to his flocks and the ocean is teeming with fishes.

Consider further, Socrates, another kind of language about justice and injustice employed by both laymen and poets. All with one accord reiterate that soberness and righteousness are fair and honorable, to be sure, but unpleasant and laborious, while licentiousness and injustice are pleasant and easy to win and are only in opinion and by convention disgraceful. They say that injustice pays better than justice, for the most part, and they do not scruple to felicitate bad men who are rich or have other kinds of power to do them honor in public and private, and to dishonor and disregard those who are in any way weak or poor, even while admitting that they are better men than the others. But the strangest of all these speeches are the things they say about the gods[*](The gnomic poets complain that bad men prosper for a time, but they have faith in the late punishment of the wicked and the final triumph of justice.) and virtue, how so it is that the gods themselves assign to many good men misfortunes and an evil life but to their opposites a contrary lot; and begging priests[*](There is a striking analogy between Plato’s language here and the description by Protestant historians of the sale of indulgences by Tetzel in Germany. Rich men’s doors is proverbial. Cf. 489 B.) and soothsayers go to rich men’s doors and make them believe that they by means of sacrifices and incantations have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods[*](Cf. Mill, Utility of Religion, Three Essays on Religion, p. 90: All positive religions aid this self-delusion. Bad religions teach that divine vengeance may be bought off by offerings or personal abasement. Plato, Laws 885 D, anticipates Mill. With the whole passage compare the scenes at the founding of Cloudcuckootown, Aristophanes Birds 960-990, and more seriously the medieval doctrine of the treasure of the church and the Hindu tapas.) that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals any misdeed of a man or his ancestors, and that if a man wishes to harm an enemy, at slight cost he will be enabled to injure just and unjust alike, since they are masters of spells and enchantments[*](In Laws 933 D both are used of the victim with ἐπῳδαῖς, which primarily applies to the god. Cf. Lucan, Phars. vi. 492 and 527.) that constrain the gods to serve their end. And for all these sayings they cite the poets as witnesses, with regard to the ease and plentifulness of vice, quoting:

1. Evil-doing in plenty a man shall find for the seeking;

1. Smooth is the way and it lies near at hand and is easy to enter;
2. But on the pathway of virtue the gods put sweat from the first step,

1. The gods themselves are moved by prayers,
2. And men by sacrifice and soothing vows,

1. And incense and libation turn their wills
2. Praying, whenever they have sinned and made transgression.

And they produce a bushel[*](ὅμαδον, lit. noise, hubbub, babel, here contemptuous. There is no need of the emendation ὁπμαθόν. Cf. 387 A, and Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, p. 82; cf. John Morley, Lit. Studies, p. 184, A bushel of books.) of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, the offspring of the Moon and of the Muses, as they affirm, and these books they use in their ritual, and make not only ordinary men but states believe that there really are remissions of sins and purifications for deeds of injustice, by means of sacrifice and pleasant sport[*](Cf. Laws 819 B.) for the living, and that there are also special rites for the defunct, which they call functions, that deliver us from evils in that other world, while terrible things await those who have neglected to sacrifice. What, Socrates, do we suppose is the effect of all such sayings about the esteem in which men and gods hold virtue and vice upon the souls that hear them, the souls of young men who are quick-witted and capable of flitting, as it were, from one expression of opinion to another and inferring from them all the character and the path whereby a man would lead the best life? Such a youth[*](Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 25: His (Plato’s) imagination was beset by the picture of some brilliant young Alcibiades standing at the crossways of life and debating in his mind whether the best chance for happiness lay in accepting the conventional moral law that serves to police the vulgar or in giving rein to the instincts and appetites of his own stronger nature. To confute the one, to convince the other, became to him the main problem of moral philosophy. Cf. Introduction x-xi; also The Idea of Good in Plato’s Republic, p. 214.) would most likely put to himself the question Pindar asks,

Is it by justice or by crooked deceit that I the higher tower shall scale and so live my life out in fenced and guarded security?

the seeming

masters the reality

And if we are to believe them, the thing to do is to commit injustice and offer sacrifice from fruits of our wrongdoing.[*](Cf. Verres’ distribution of his three years’ spoliation of Sicily, Cicero In C. Verrem actio prima 14 (40), and Plato Laws 906 C-D, Lysias xxvii. 6.) For if we are just, we shall, it is true, be unscathed by the gods, but we shall be putting away from us the profits of injustice; but if we are unjust, we shall win those profits, and, by the importunity of our prayers, when we transgress and sin, we shall persuade them and escape scot-free. Yes, it will be objected, but we shall be brought to judgement in the world below for our unjust deeds here, we or our children’s children. Nay, my dear sir, our calculating friend[*](His morality is the hedonistic calculus of the Protagoras or the commercial religion of other-wordliness.) will say, here again the rites for the dead[*](For these τελεταί cf. 365 A.) have much efficacy, and the absolving divinities, as the greatest cities declare, and the sons of gods, who became the poets and prophets[*](Or rather mouthpieces.) of the gods, and who reveal that this is the truth. On what further ground, then, could we prefer justice to supreme injustice? If we combine this with a counterfeit decorum, we shall prosper to our heart’s desire, with gods and men in life and death, as the words of the multitude and of men of the highest authority declare. In consequence, then, of all that has been said, what possibility is there, Socrates, that any man who has the power of any resources of mind, money, body, or family should consent to honor justice and not rather laugh[*](Aristophanes Clouds 1241.) when he hears her praised? In sooth, if anyone is able to show the falsity of these arguments, and has come to know with sufficient assurance that justice is best, he feels much indulgence for the unjust, and is not angry with them, but is aware that except a man by inborn divinity of his nature disdains injustice, or, having won to knowledge, refrains from it, no one else is willingly just, but that it is from lack of manly spirit or from old age or some other weakness[*](Cf. Gorgias 492 A.) that men dispraise injustice, lacking the power to practise it. The fact is patent. For no sooner does such one come into the power than he works injustice to the extent of his ability. And the sole cause of all this is the fact that was the starting-point of this entire plea of my friend here and of myself to you, Socrates, pointing out how strange it is that of all you self-styled advocates of justice, from the heroes of old whose discourses survive to the men of the present day, not one has ever censured injustice or commended justice otherwise than in respect of the repute, the honors, and the gifts that accrue from each. But what each one of them is in itself, by its own inherent force, when it is within the soul of the possessor and escapes the eyes of both gods and men, no one has ever adequately set forth in poetry or prose—the proof that the one is the greatest of all evils that the soul contains within itself, while justice is the greatest good.

For if you had all spoken in this way from the beginning and from our youth up had sought to convince us, we should not now be guarding against one another’s injustice, but each would be his own best guardian, for fear lest by working injustice he should dwell in communion with the greatest of evils.[*](Cf. 363 E.) This, Socrates, and perhaps even more than this, Thrasymachus and haply another might say in pleas for and against justice and injustice, inverting their true potencies, as I believe, grossly. But I— for I have no reason to hide anything from you—am laying myself out to the utmost on the theory, because I wish to hear its refutation from you. Do not merely show us by argument that justice is superior to injustice, but make clear to us what each in and of itself does to its possessor, whereby the one is evil and the other good. But do away with the repute of both, as Glaucon urged. For, unless you take away from either the true repute and attach to each the false, we shall say that it is not justice that you are praising but the semblance, nor injustice that you censure, but the seeming, and that you really are exhorting us to be unjust but conceal it, and that you are at one with Thrasymachus in the opinion that justice is other man’s good,[*](Cf. 343 C.) the advantage of the other, and that injustice is advantageous and profitible to oneself but disadvantageous to the inferior. Since, then, you have admitted that justice belongs to the class of those highest goods which are desirable both for their consequences and still more for their own sake, as sight, hearing, intelligence, yes and health too, and all other goods that are productive[*](Adam’s note on γόνιμα: i.q. γνήσια is, I think, wrong.) by their very nature and not by opinion, this is what I would have you praise about justice—the benefit which it and the harm which injustice inherently works upon its possessor. But the rewards and the honors that depend on opinion, leave to others to praise. For while I would listen to others who thus commended justice and disparaged injustice, bestowing their praise and their blame on the reputation and the rewards of either, I could not accept that sort of thing from you unless you say I must, because you have passed your entire life[*](Cf. 506 C.) in the consideration of this very matter. Do not then, I repeat, merely prove to us in argument the superiority of justice to injustice, but show us what it is that each inherently does to its possessor—whether he does or does not escape the eyes of gods and men—whereby the one is good and the other evil.

While I had always admired the natural parts of Glaucon and Adeimantus, I was especially pleased by their words on this occasion, and said:

1. It was excellently spoken of you, sons of the man we know,

Sons of Ariston,[*](The implied pun on the name is made explicit in 580 C-D. Some have held that Glaucon and Adeimantus were uncles of Plato, but Zeller decides for the usual view that they wre brothers. Cf. Ph. d. Gr. ii. 1, 4th ed. 1889, p. 392, and Abhandl. d. Berl. Akad., 1873, Hist.-Phil Kl. pp. 86 ff.) whose race from a glorious sire is god-like.