Republic

Correct, he said. But how about this? Is the medical art itself defective or faulty, or has any other art any need of some virtue, quality, or excellence—as the eyes of vision, the ears of hearing, and for this reason is there need of some art over them that will consider and provide what is advantageous for these very ends—does there exist in the art itself some defect and does each art require another art to consider its advantage and is there need of still another for the considering art and so on ad infinitum, or will the art look out for its own advantage? Or is it a fact that it needs neither itself nor another art to consider its advantage and provide against its deficiency? For there is no defect or error at all that dwells in any art. Nor does it befit an art to seek the advantage of anything else than that of its object. But the art itself is free from all harm and admixture of evil, and is right so long as each art is precisely and entirely that which it is. And consider the matter in that precise way of speaking. Is it so or not? It appears to be so, he said. Then medicine, said I, does not consider the advantage of medicine but of the body? Yes. Nor horsemanship of horsemanship but of horses, nor does any other art look out for itself—for it has no need—but for that of which it is the art. So it seems, he replied. But surely,[*](The next step is the identification of (true) politics with the disinterested arts which also rule and are the stronger. Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 9. 11. γε emphasizes the argumentative implication of ἄρχουσι to which Thrasymachus assents reluctantly; and Socrates develops and repeats the thought for half a page. Art is virtually science, as contrasted with empiric rule of thumb, and Thrasymachus’s infallible rulers are of course scientific. Ruler is added lest we forget the analogy between political rule and that of the arts. Cf. Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics 244, Laws 875 C.) Thrasymachus, the arts do hold rule and are stronger than that of which they are the arts. He conceded this but it went very hard. Then no art considers or enjoins[*](It is not content with theoretic knowledge, but like other arts gives orders to achieve results. Cf. Politicus 260 A, C.) the advantage of the stronger but every art that of the weaker which is ruled by it. This too he was finally brought to admit though he tried to contest it. But when he had agreed—Can we deny, then, said I, that neither does any physician in so far as he is a physician seek or enjoin the advantage of the physician but that of the patient? For we have agreed that the physician, precisely speaking, is a ruler and governor of bodies and not a moneymaker. Did we agree on that? He assented. And so the precise pilot is a ruler of sailors, not a sailor? That was admitted. Then that sort of a pilot and ruler will not consider and enjoin the advantage of the pilot but that of the sailor whose ruler he is. He assented reluctantly. Then, said I, Thrasymachus, neither does anyone in any office of rule in so far as he is a ruler consider and enjoin his own advantage but that of the one whom he rules and for whom he exercises his craft, and he keeps his eyes fixed on that and on what is advantageous and suitable to that in all that he says and does.

When we had come to this point in the discussion and it was apparent to everybody that his formula of justice had suffered a reversal of form, Thrasymachus, instead of replying,[*](Thrasymachus first vents his irritation by calling Socrates a snivelling innocent, and then, like Protagoras (Protagoras 334), when pressed by Socrates’ dialectic makes a speech. He abandons the abstract (ideal) ruler, whom he assumed to be infallible and Socrates proved to be disinterested, for the actual ruler or shepherd of the people, who tends the flock only that he might shear it. All political experience and the career of successful tyrants, whom all men count happy, he thinks confirms this view, which is that of Callicles in the Gorgias. Justice is another’s good which only the naive and innocent pursue. It is better to inflict than to suffer wrong. The main problem of the Republic is clearly indicated, but we are not yet ready to debate it seriously.) said, Tell me, Socrates, have you got a nurse? What do you mean? said I. Why didn’t you answer me instead of asking such a question? Because, he said, she lets her little snotty run about drivelling[*](κορυζῶντα L. and S., also s. v. κόυζα. Lucian, Lexiphanes 18, treats the expression as an affectation, but elsewhere employs it. The philosophers used this and similar terms (1) of stupidity, (2) as a type of the minor ills of the flesh. Horace, Satire i. 4. 8, ii. 2. 76, Epictet. i. 6. 30 ἀλλ’ αἱ μύξαι μου ῥέουσι.) and doesn’t wipe your face clean, though you need it badly, if she can’t get you to know[*](Literally, if you don’t know for her. For the ethical dative cf. Shakespeare Taming of the Shrew, I. ii. 8 Knock me here soundly. Not to know the shepherd from the sheep seems to be proverbial. Shepherd of the people, like survival of the fittest, may be used to prove anything in ethics and politics. Cf. Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics p. 431, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 2. 1, Suetonius Vit. Tib. 32, and my note in Class. Phil . vol. i. p. 298.) the difference between the shepherd and the sheep. And what, pray, makes you think that? said I. Because you think that the shepherds and the neat-herds are considering the good of the sheep and the cattle and fatten and tend them with anything else in view than the good of their masters and themselves; and by the same token you seem to suppose that the rulers in our cities, I mean the real rulers,[*](Thrasymachus’s real rulers are the bosses and tyrants. Socrates’ true rulers are the true kings of the Stoics and Ruskin, the true shepherds of Ruskin and Milton.) differ at all in their thoughts of the governed from a man’s attitude towards his sheep[*](Cf. Aristophanes Clouds 1203 πρόβατ’ ἄλλως, Herrick, Kings ought to shear, not skin their sheep.) or that they think of anything else night and day than the sources of their own profit. And you are so far out[*](This (quite possible) sense rather than the ironical, so far advanced, better accords with ἀγνοεῖς and with the direct brutality of Thrasymachus.) concerning the just and justice and the unjust and injustice that you don’t know that justice and the just are literally[*](τῷ ὄντι like ὡς ἀληθῶς, ἀτεχνῶς, etc., marks the application (often ironical or emphatic) of an image or familiar proverbial or technical expression or etymology. Cf. 443 D, 442 A, 419 A, 432 A, Laches 187 B, Philebus 64 E. Similarly ἐτήτυμον of a proverb, Archil. fr. 35 (87). The origin of the usage appears in Aristophanes Birds 507 τοῦτ’ ἄρ’ ἐκεῖν ἦν τοὔπος ἀληθῶς, etc. Cf. Anth. Pal. v. 6. 3. With εὐηθικῶν, however, ὡς ἀληθῶς does not verify the etymology but ironically emphasizes the contradiction between the etymology and the conventional meaning, simple, which Thrasymachus thinks truly fits those to whom Socrates would apply the full etymological meaning of good character. Cf. 348 C, 400 E, Laws 679 C, Thucydides iii. 83. Cf. in English the connexion of silly with selig, and in Italian, Leopardi’s bitter comment on dabbenaggine (Pensieri xxvi.).) the other fellow’s good[*](Justice not being primarily a self-regarding virtue, like prudence, is of course another’s good. Cf. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1130 a 3; 1134 b 5. Thrasymachus ironically accepts the formula, adding the cynical or pessimistic comment, but one’s own harm, for which see 392 B, Euripides Heracleid. 1-5, and Isocrates’ protest (viii. 32). Bion (Diogenes Laertius iv. 7. 48) wittily defined beauty as the other fellow’s good; which recalls Woodrow Wilson’s favourite limerick, and the definition of business as l’argent des autres.)—the advantage of the stronger and the ruler, but a detriment that is all his own of the subject who obeys and serves; while injustice is the contrary and rules those who are simple in every sense of the word and just, and they being thus ruled do what is for his advantage who is the stronger and make him happy in serving him, but themselves by no manner of means. And you must look at the matter, my simple-minded Socrates, in this way: that the just man always comes out at a disadvantage in his relation with the unjust. To begin with, in their business dealings in any joint undertaking of the two you will never find that the just man has the advantage over the unjust at the dissolution of the partnership but that he always has the worst of it. Then again, in their relations with the state, if there are direct taxes or contributions to be paid, the just man contributes more from an equal estate and the other less, and when there is a distribution the one gains much and the other nothing. And so when each holds office, apart from any other loss the just man must count on his own affairs[*](For the idea that the just ruler neglects his own business and gains no compensating graft cf. the story of Deioces in Herodotus i. 97, Democ. fr. 253 Diels, Laches 180 B, Isocrates xii. 145, Aristotle Pol. v. 8. 15-20. For office as a means of helping friends and harming enemies cf. Meno 71 E, Lysias ix. 14, and the anecdote of Themistocles (Plutarch, Praecept. reipub. ger. 13) cited by Goodwin (Political Justice) in the form: God forbid that I should sit upon a bench of justice where my friends found no more favour than my enemies. Democr. (fr. 266 Diels) adds that the just ruler on laying down his office is exposed to the revenge of wrongdoers with whom he has dealt severely.) falling into disorder through neglect, while because of his justice makes no profit from the state, and thereto he will displease his friends and his acquaintances by his unwillingness to serve them unjustly. But to the unjust man all the opposite advantages accrue.

I mean, of course, the one I was just speaking of, the man who has the ability to overreach on a large scale. Consider this type of man, then, if you wish to judge how much more profitable it is to him personally to be unjust than to be just. And the easiest way of all to understand this matter will be to turn to the most consummate form of injustice which makes the man who has done the wrong most happy and those who are wronged and who would not themselves willingly do wrong most miserable. And this is tyranny, which both by stealth and by force takes away what belongs to others, both sacred and profane, both private and public, not little by little but at one swoop.[*](The order of the words dramatically expressses Thrasymachus’s excitement and the sweeping success of the tyrant.) For each several part of such wrongdoing the malefactor who fails to escape detection is fined and incurs the extreme of contumely; for temple-robbers, kidnappers, burglars, swindlers, and thieves the appellations of those who commit these partial forms of injustice. But when in addition to the property of the citizens men kidnap and enslave the citizens themselves, instead of these opprobrious names they are pronounced happy and blessed[*](The European estimate of Louis Napoleon before 1870 is a good illustration. Cf. Theopompus on Philip, Polybius viii. 11. Euripides’ Bellerophon (fr. 288) uses the happiness of the tyrant as an argument against the moral government of the world.) not only by their fellow-citizens but by all who hear the story of the man who has committed complete and entire injustice.[*](Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1130 b 15 uses the expression in a different sense.) For it is not the fear of doing[*](The main issue of the Republic. Cf. 360 D, 358 E and Gorgias 469 B.) but of suffering wrong that calls forth the reproaches of those who revile injustice. Thus, Socrates, injustice on a sufficiently large scale is a stronger, freer, and a more masterful thing than justice, and, as I said in the beginning, it is the advantage of the stronger that is the just, while the unjust is what profits man’s self and is for his advantage.After this Thrasymachus was minded to depart when like a bathman[*](Cf. Theophrastus, Char. xv. 19 (Jebb), Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, p. 134. For the metaphor cf. 536 B, Lysis 204 D, Aristophanes Wasps 483. Sudden, lit. all at once.) he had poured his speech in a sudden flood over our ears. But the company would not suffer him and were insistent that he should remain and render an account of what he had said. And I was particularly urgent and said, I am surprised at you, Thrasymachus; after hurling[*](Cf. Euripides Alcestis 680 οὐ βαλὼν οὕτως ἄπει.) such a doctrine at us, can it be that you propose to depart without staying to teach us properly or learn yourself whether this thing is so or not? Do you think it is a small matter[*](Socrates reminds us that a serious moral issue is involved in all this word-play. So 352 D, Gorgias 492 C, 500 C, Laches 185 A. Cf. 377 B, 578 C, 608 B.) that you are attempting to determine and not the entire conduct of life that for each of us would make living most worth while? Well, do I deny it?[*](Plainly a protesting question, Why, do I think otherwise? Cf. 339 D.) said Thrasymachus. You seem to, said I, or else[*](For the impossibility of J. and C.’s or rather see my note in A.J.P. vol. xiii. p. 234.) to care nothing for us and so feel no concern whether we are going to live worse or better lives in our ignorance of what you affirm that you know.

Nay, my good fellow, do your best to make the matter clear to us also: it will be no bad investment[*](κείσεται of an investment perhaps. Cf. Plautus, Rudens 939 bonis quod bene fit, haud perit.) for you—any benefit that you bestow on such company as this. For I tell you for my part that I am not convinced, neither do I think that injustice is more profitable[*](Isocrates viii. 31 and elsewhere seems to be copying Plato’s idea that injustice can never be profitable in the higher sense of the word. Cf. also the proof in the Hipparchus that all true κέρδος is ἀγαθόν.) than justice, not even if one gives it free scope and does not hinder it of its will.[*](Plato neglects for the present the refinement that the unjust man does not do what he really wishes, since all desire the good. Cf. 438 A, 577 D, and Gorgias 467 B.) But, suppose, sir, a man to be unjust and to be able to act unjustly either because he is not detected or can maintain it by violence,[*](Cf. 365 D.) all the same he does not convince me that it is more profitable than justice. Now it may be that there is someone else among us who feels in this way and that I am not the only one. Persuade us, then, my dear fellow, convince us satisfactorily that we are ill advised in preferring justice to injustice.And how am I to persuade you?[*](Thrasymachus has stated his doctrine. Like Dr. Johnson he cannot supply brains to understand it. Cf. Gorgias 489 C, 499 B, Meno 75 D.) he said. If you are not convinced by what I just now was saying, what more can I do for you? Shall I take the argument and ram[*](The language is idiomatic, and the metaphor of a nurse feeding a baby, Aristophanes Eccl. 716, is rude. Cf. Shakespeare, He crams these words into my ears against the stomach of my sense.) it into your head? Heaven forbid! I said, don’t do that. But in the first place when you have said a thing stand by it,[*](Cf. Socrates’ complaint of Callicles’ shifts, Gorgias 499 B-C, but Cf. 334 E, 340 B-C.) or if you shift your ground change openly and don’t try to deceive us. But, as it is, you see, Thrasymachus—let us return to the previous examples—you see that while you began by taking the physician in the true sense of the word, you did not think fit afterwards to be consistent and maintain with precision the notion of the true shepherd, but you apparently think that he herds his sheep in his quality of shepherd not with regard to what is best for the sheep but as if he were a banqueter about to be feasted with regard to the good cheer or again with a view to the sale of them as if he were a money-maker and not a shepherd. But the art of the shepherd[*](The art = the ideal abstract artist. See on 342 A-C. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1098 a 8 ff. says that the function of a harper and that of a good harper are generically the same. Cf. Crito 48 A.) surely is concerned with nothing else than how to provide what is best for that over which is set, since its own affairs, its own best estate, are entirely sufficiently provided for so long as it in nowise fails of being the shepherd’s art. And in like manner I supposed that we just now were constrained to acknowledge that every form of rule[*](Aristotle’s despotic rule over slaves would seem to be an exception (Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics p. 245.). But that too should be for the good of the slave; infra 590 D.) in so far as it is rule considers what is best for nothing else than that which is governed and cared for by it, alike in political and private rule. Why, do you think that the rulers and holders of office in our cities—the true rulers[*](See on 343 B, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1102 a 8. The new point that good rulers are reluctant to take office is discussed to 347 E, and recalled later, 520 D. See Newman, l.c. pp. 244-245, Dio Cass. xxxvi. 27. 1.)—willingly hold office and rule? I don’t think, he said, I know right well they do.

But what of other forms of rule, Thrasymachus? Do you not perceive that no one chooses of his own will to hold the office of rule, but they demand pay, which implies that not to them will benefit accrue from their holding office but to those whom they rule? For tell me this: we ordinarily say, do we not, that each of the arts is different from others because its power or function is different? And, my dear fellow, in order that we may reach some result, don’t answer counter to your real belief.[*](Cf. Gorgias 495 A. But elsewhere Socrates admits that the argument may be discussed regardless of the belief of the respondent (349 A). Cf. Thompson on Meno 83 D, Campbell on Soph. 246 D.) Well, yes, he said, that is what renders it different. And does not each art also yield us benefit[*](As each art has a specific function, so it renders a specific service and aims at a specific good. This idea and the examples of the physician and the pilot are commonplaces in Plato and Aristotle.) that is peculiar to itself and not general,[*](Hence, as argued below, from this abstract point of view wage-earning, which is common to many arts, cannot be the specific service of any of them, but must pertain to the special art μισθωτική. This refinement is justified by Thrasymachus’ original abstraction of the infallible craftsman as such. It also has this much moral truth, that the good workman, as Ruskin says, rarely thinks first of his pay, and that the knack of getting well paid does not always go with the ability to do the work well. See Aristotle on χρηματιστική, Politics i. 3 (1253 b 14).) as for example medicine health, the pilot’s art safety at sea, and the other arts similarly? Assuredly. And does not the wage-earner’s art yield wage? For that is its function. Would you identify medicine and the pilot’s art? Or if you please to discriminate precisely as you proposed, none the more if a pilot regains his health because a sea voyage is good for him, no whit the more, I say, for this reason do you call his art medicine, do you? Of course not, he said. Neither, I take it, do you call wage-earning medicine if a man earning wages is in health. Surely not. But what of this? Do you call medicine wage-earning, if a man when giving treatment earns wages? No, he said. And did we not agree that the benefit derived from each art is peculiar to it? So be it, he said. Any common or general benefit that all craftsmen receive, then, they obviously derive from their common use of some further identical thing. It seems so, he said. And we say that the benefit of earning wages accrues to the craftsmen from their further exercise of the wage-earning art. He assented reluctantly. Then the benefit, the receiving of wages does not accrue to each from his own art. But if we are to consider it precisely medicine produces health but the fee-earning art the pay, and architecture a house but the fee-earning art accompanying it the fee, and so with all the others, each performs its own task and benefits that over which it is set, but unless pay is added to it is there any benefit which the craftsman receives from the craft? Apparently not, he said. Does he then bestow no benefit either when he works for nothing? I’ll say he does. Then, Thrasymachus, is not this immediately apparent, that no art or office provides what is beneficial for itself—but as we said long ago it provides and enjoins what is beneficial to its subject, considering the advantage of that, the weaker, and not the advantage the stronger?

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.