therefore I had best give such help as I can.
Glaucon and the rest entreated me by all means not to let the question drop, but to proceed in the investigation. They wanted to arrive at the truth,
I cannot refuse to help, while breath and speech remain to me; I am afraid that there would be an impiety in being present when justice is evil spoken of and not lifting up a hand in her defence. And
inability is brought home to me by the fact that you were not satisfied with the answer which I made to Thrasymachus, proving, as I thought, the superiority which justice has over injustice. And yet
you. But now, the greater my confidence in you, the greater is my difficulty in knowing what to say. For I am in a strait between two; on the one hand I feel that I am unequal to the task; and my
remaining unconvinced by your own arguments. And I do believe that you are not convinced--this I infer from your general character, for had I judged only from your speeches I should have mistrusted
offspring of an
illustrious hero.'
The epithet is very appropriate, for there is something truly divine in being able to argue as you have done for the superiority of injustice, and
beginning of the Elegiac verses which the admirer of Glaucon made in honour of you after you had distinguished yourselves at the battle of Megara:--
`Sons of Ariston,' he sang, `divine
unseen by gods and men.
I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but on hearing these words I was quite delighted, and said: Sons of an illustrious father, that was not a bad
I say, do not only prove to us that justice is better than injustice but show what they either of them do to the possessor of them which makes the one a good and the other an evil, whether seen or
them, I am ready to tolerate, but, from you who have spent your whole life in contemplation of this question, unless I hear the contrary from your own lips, I expect something better. And, therefore,
possessors of them. Let others praise justice and censure injustice, magnifying the rewards and honours of the one and abusing and slandering the other. That is a manner of arguing which, coming from
real and natural and not merely conventional good, I would ask you in your praise of justice to regard one point only: I mean the essential good and evil which justice and injustice work in the
justice is one of that highest class of goods which are desired indeed for their results, but in a far greater degree for their own sakes, like sight or hearing or knowledge or health or any other
thinking that justice is another's good and the interest of the stronger, and that injustice is a man's own profit and interest, albeit injurious to the weaker.
Now, as you have admitted that
false, we shall say that you do not praise justice but rather the appearance of it; we shall think that you are only exhorting us to keep injustice dark and that you really agree with Thrasymachus in
them which makes the one a good and the other an evil unto him. And please, as Glaucon requested of you, exclude reputations, for, unless you take away from each his true reputation and add on the
confess to you, because I want to hear from you the opposite side, and I would ask you to show not only the superiority which justice has over injustice but what effect they have on the possessor of
which I have been merely repeating and words even stronger about justice and injustice — grossly, as I conceive, perverting their true nature. But I speak in this vehement manner, as I must frankly
wrong, but every one would have been his own watchman, afraid, if he did wrong, of harbouring in himself the greatest of evils.
I dare say Thrasymachus and others would seriously hold the language
injustice the greatest evil. Had this been the universal strain, and had you sought to persuade us of this from our youth upwards, we should not have been on the watch to keep one another from doing
nature of either of them abiding in the soul and invisible to any human or divine eye, or shown that, of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and
blamed injustice or praised justice except with a view to the glories, honours and benefits which flow from them. No-one has ever adequately described, either in verse or in prose, the true essential
were to find that of all the professing panegyrists of justice, beginning with the ancient heroes of whom any memorial has come down to us and ending with the men of our own time, no-one has ever
power, he immediately becomes unjust as far as he can be.
The cause of all this, Socrates, was indicated by us at the beginning of the argument, when my brother and I told you how astonished we
