Republic, Book IV, 443b-445a

(Trans. Shorey)

[443b]“Do you still, then, look for justice to be anything else than this potency which provides men and cities of this sort?”

“No, by heaven,” he said, “I do not.”

“Finished, then, is our dream and perfected —the surmise we spoke of, that, by some Providence, at the very beginning of our foundation of the state, [443c] we chanced to hit upon the original principle and a sort of type of justice.”

“Most assuredly.”

“It really was, it seems, Glaukon, which is why it helps, a sort of adumbration of justice, this principle that it is right for the cobbler by nature to cobble and occupy himself with nothing else, and the carpenter to practice carpentry, and similarly all others. But the truth of the matter was, as it seems, [443d] that justice is indeed something of this kind, yet not in regard to the doing of one's own business externally, but with regard to that which is within and in the true sense concerns one's self, and the things of one's self—it means that a man must not suffer the principles in his soul to do each the work of some other and interfere and meddle with one another, but that he should dispose well of what in the true sense of the word is properly his own, and having first attained to self-mastery and beautiful order within himself, and having harmonized these three principles, the notes or intervals of three terms quite literally the lowest, the highest, and the mean, [443e] and all others there may be between them, and having linked and bound all three together and made of himself a unit, one man instead of many, self-controlled and in unison, he should then and then only turn to practice if he find aught to do either in the getting of wealth or the tendance of the body or it may be in political action or private business, in all such doings believing and naming the just and honorable action to be that which preserves and helps to produce this condition of soul, and wisdom the science [444a] that presides over such conduct; and believing and naming the unjust action to be that whichever tends to overthrow this spiritual constitution, and brutish ignorance, to be the opinion1 that in turn presides over this.”

“What you say is entirely true, Socrates.”

“Well,” said I, “if we should affirm that we had found the just man and state and what justice really is in them, I think we should not be much mistaken.”

“No indeed, we should not,” he said.

“Shall we affirm it, then?”

“Let us so affirm.”

“So be it, then,” said I; “next after this, I take it, we must consider injustice.”

“Obviously.”

[444b] “Must not this be a kind of civil war1 of these three principles, their meddlesomeness2 and interference with one another's functions, and the revolt of one part against the whole of the soul that it may hold therein a rule which does not belong to it, since its nature is such that it befits it to serve as a slave to the ruling principle? Something of this sort, I fancy, is what we shall say, and that the confusion of these principles and their straying from their proper course is injustice and licentiousness and cowardice and brutish ignorance and, in general, all turpitude.”

“Precisely this,” [444c] he replied.

“Then,” said I, “to act unjustly and be unjust and in turn to act justly the meaning of all these terms becomes at once plain and clear, since injustice and justice are so.”

“How so?”

“Because,” said I, “these are in the soul what the healthful and the diseaseful are in the body; there is no difference.”

“In what respect?” he said. “Healthful things surely engender health and diseaseful disease.”

“Yes.”

“Then does not doing just acts engender justice and [444d] unjust injustice?”

“Of necessity.”

“But to produce health is to establish the elements in a body in the natural relation of dominating and being dominated1 by one another, while to cause disease is to bring it about that one rules or is ruled by the other contrary to nature.”

“Yes, that is so.”

“And is it not likewise the production of justice in the soul to establish its principles in the natural relation of controlling and being controlled by one another, while injustice is to cause the one to rule or be ruled by the other contrary to nature?”

“Exactly so,” he said.

“Virtue, then, as it seems, would be a kind of health [444e] and beauty and good condition of the soul, and vice would be disease,1 ugliness, and weakness.”

“It is so.”

“Then is it not also true that beautiful and honorable pursuits tend to the winning of virtue and the ugly to vice?”

“Of necessity.”

“And now at last, it seems, it remains for us to consider whether it is profitable to do justice [445a] and practice honorable pursuits and be just, whether1 one is known to be such or not, or whether injustice profits, and to be unjust, if only a man escape punishment and is not bettered by chastisement.”