[352]
And is it not apparent that its force is such that wherever it is found in city, family, camp, or in anything else
352a
it first renders the thing incapable of cooperation with itself owing to faction and difference, and secondly an enemy to itself
1
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,
352b
the gods too
2
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,
3
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,
352c
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
4
by injustice, since utter rascals completely unjust
352d
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
5
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.
6
For it is no ordinary
7
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
352e
that a horse has a specific work
8
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.
Republic. Plato. Paul Shorey (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-37.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.