第 十九 章 · Many things pleased me in the order of our State, but there was（10）

Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and

unjust, we must isolate them; there is no other way; and how is the

isolation to be effected? I answer: Let the unjust man be entirely

unjust, and the just man entirely just; nothing is to be taken away

from either of them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the

work of their respective lives. First, let the unjust be like other

distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or physician,

who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps within their limits, and

who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover himself. So let the

unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he

means to be great in his injustice: (he who is found out is nobody:)

for the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are

not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume

the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must

allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the

greatest reputation for justice. If he have taken a false step he must

be able to recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect,

if any of his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where

force is required by his courage and strength, and command of money and

friends. And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and

simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good.

There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured

and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the

sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let

him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must

be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let him be

the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have

been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by

the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to

the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have

reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of

injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the

two.

Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up

for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two

statues.

I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like there is

no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either of

them. This I will proceed to describe; but as you may think the

description a little too coarse, I ask you to suppose, Socrates, that

the words which follow are not mine.—Let me put them into the mouths of

the eulogists of injustice: They will tell you that the just man who is

thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound—will have his eyes burnt

out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be

impaled: Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not to

be, just; the words of Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the unjust

than of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality; he does not

live with a view to appearances—he wants to be really unjust and not to

seem only:—

‘His mind has a soil deep and fertile, Out of which spring his prudent

counsels.’

In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule in the

city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage to whom he will;

also he can trade and deal where he likes, and always to his own

advantage, because he has no misgivings about injustice; and at every

contest, whether in public or private, he gets the better of his

antagonists, and gains at their expense, and is rich, and out of his

gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he

can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and

magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to

honour in a far better style than the just, and therefore he is likely

to be dearer than they are to the gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and

men are said to unite in making the life of the unjust better than the

life of the just.

I was going to say something in answer to Glaucon, when Adeimantus, his

brother, interposed: Socrates, he said, you do not suppose that there

is nothing more to be urged?

Why, what else is there? I answered.

The strongest point of all has not been even mentioned, he replied.

Well, then, according to the proverb, ‘Let brother help brother’—if he

fails in any part do you assist him; although I must confess that

Glaucon has already said quite enough to lay me in the dust, and take

from me the power of helping justice.

Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more: There is another

side to Glaucon’s argument about the praise and censure of justice and

injustice, which is equally required in order to bring out what I

believe to be his meaning. Parents and tutors are always telling their

sons and their wards that they are to be just; but why? not for the

sake of justice, but for the sake of character and reputation; in the

hope of obtaining for him who is reputed just some of those offices,

marriages, and the like which Glaucon has enumerated among the

advantages accruing to the unjust from the reputation of justice. More,

however, is made of appearances by this class of persons than by the

others; for they throw in the good opinion of the gods, and will tell

you of a shower of benefits which the heavens, as they say, rain upon

the pious; and this accords with the testimony of the noble Hesiod and

Homer, the first of whom says, that the gods make the oaks of the just—

‘To bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle;

And the sheep are bowed down with the weight of their fleeces,’

and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them. And

Homer has a very similar strain; for he speaks of one whose fame is—

‘As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god, Maintains justice;

to whom the black earth brings forth Wheat and barley, whose trees are

bowed with fruit, And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives

him fish.’

Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his son

vouchsafe to the just; they take them down into the world below, where

they have the saints lying on couches at a feast, everlastingly drunk,

crowned with garlands; their idea seems to be that an immortality of

drunkenness is the highest meed of virtue. Some extend their rewards

yet further; the posterity, as they say, of the faithful and just shall

survive to the third and fourth generation. This is the style in which

they praise justice. But about the wicked there is another strain; they

bury them in a slough in Hades, and make them carry water in a sieve;

also while they are yet living they bring them to infamy, and inflict

upon them the punishments which Glaucon described as the portion of the

just who are reputed to be unjust; nothing else does their invention

supply. Such is their manner of praising the one and censuring the

other.

Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking

about justice and injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is

found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind is always

declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and

toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of

attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They say also

that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and

they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honour them both

in public and private when they are rich or in any other way

influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and

poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the others. But

most extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking about virtue and

the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and misery to many

good men, and good and happiness to the wicked. And mendicant prophets

go to rich men’s doors and persuade them that they have a power

committed to them by the gods of making an atonement for a man’s own or

his ancestor’s sins by sacrifices or charms, with rejoicings and

feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just or unjust, at a

small cost; with magic arts and incantations binding heaven, as they

say, to execute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom

they appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with the words of Hesiod;—

‘Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth and

her dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil,’

and a tedious and uphill road: then citing Homer as a witness that the

gods may be influenced by men; for he also says:—

‘The gods, too, may be turned from their purpose; and men pray to them

and avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing entreaties, and by

libations and the odour of fat, when they have sinned and

transgressed.’

And they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus, who

were children of the Moon and the Muses—that is what they say—according

to which they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals,

but whole cities, that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by

sacrifices and amusements which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at

the service of the living and the dead; the latter sort they call

mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains of hell, but if we neglect

them no one knows what awaits us.

He proceeded: And now when the young hear all this said about virtue

and vice, and the way in which gods and men regard them, how are their

minds likely to be affected, my dear Socrates,—those of them, I mean,

who are quickwitted, and, like bees on the wing, light on every flower,

and from all that they hear are prone to draw conclusions as to what

manner of persons they should be and in what way they should walk if

they would make the best of life? Probably the youth will say to

himself in the words of Pindar—

‘Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower

which may be a fortress to me all my days?’

For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought

just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are

unmistakeable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of

justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers

prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to

appearance I must devote myself. I will describe around me a picture

and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house;

behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox, as Archilochus, greatest

of sages, recommends. But I hear some one exclaiming that the

concealment of wickedness is often difficult; to which I answer,

Nothing great is easy. Nevertheless, the argument indicates this, if we

would be happy, to be the path along which we should proceed. With a

view to concealment we will establish secret brotherhoods and political

clubs. And there are professors of rhetoric who teach the art of

persuading courts and assemblies; and so, partly by persuasion and

partly by force, I shall make unlawful gains and not be punished. Still

I hear a voice saying that the gods cannot be deceived, neither can

they be compelled. But what if there are no gods? or, suppose them to

have no care of human things—why in either case should we mind about

concealment? And even if there are gods, and they do care about us, yet

we know of them only from tradition and the genealogies of the poets;

and these are the very persons who say that they may be influenced and

turned by ‘sacrifices and soothing entreaties and by offerings.’ Let us

be consistent then, and believe both or neither. If the poets speak

truly, why then we had better be unjust, and offer of the fruits of

injustice; for if we are just, although we may escape the vengeance of

heaven, we shall lose the gains of injustice; but, if we are unjust, we

shall keep the gains, and by our sinning and praying, and praying and

sinning, the gods will be propitiated, and we shall not be punished.

‘But there is a world below in which either we or our posterity will

suffer for our unjust deeds.’ Yes, my friend, will be the reflection,

but there are mysteries and atoning deities, and these have great

power. That is what mighty cities declare; and the children of the

gods, who were their poets and prophets, bear a like testimony.

On what principle, then, shall we any longer choose justice rather than

the worst injustice? when, if we only unite the latter with a deceitful

regard to appearances, we shall fare to our mind both with gods and

men, in life and after death, as the most numerous and the highest

authorities tell us. Knowing all this, Socrates, how can a man who has

any superiority of mind or person or rank or wealth, be willing to

honour justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when he hears

justice praised? And even if there should be some one who is able to

disprove the truth of my words, and who is satisfied that justice is

best, still he is not angry with the unjust, but is very ready to

forgive them, because he also knows that men are not just of their own

free will; unless, peradventure, there be some one whom the divinity

within him may have inspired with a hatred of injustice, or who has

attained knowledge of the truth—but no other man. He only blames

injustice who, owing to cowardice or age or some weakness, has not the

power of being unjust. And this is proved by the fact that when he

obtains the 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 were

to find that of all the professing panegyrists of justice—beginning

with the ancient heroes of whom any memorial has been preserved to us,

and ending with the men of our own time—no one has ever 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 prose the true essential 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 injustice the greatest evil. Had

this been the universal strain, 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 wrong, but every one would have been his own

watchman, because afraid, if he did wrong, of harbouring in himself the

greatest of evils. I dare say that Thrasymachus and others would

seriously hold the language which I have been merely repeating, and

words even stronger than these about justice and injustice, grossly, as

I conceive, perverting their true nature. But I speak in this vehement

manner, as I must frankly 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 them which makes the one to be a good and the other

an evil to him. And please, as Glaucon requested of you, to exclude

reputations; for unless you take away from each of them his true

reputation and add on the false, we shall say that you do not praise

justice, but 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 thinking that justice is another’s good and the

interest of the stronger, and that injustice is a man’s own profit and

interest, though injurious to the weaker. Now as you have admitted that

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 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 possessors of them. Let others

praise justice and censure injustice, magnifying the rewards and

honours of the one and abusing the other; that is a manner of arguing

which, coming from them, I am ready to tolerate, but from you who have

spent your whole life in the consideration of this question, unless I

hear the contrary from your own lips, I expect something better. And

therefore, I say, 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 to be a good and the other an evil, whether

seen or 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, first, about the nature of justice and injustice, and secondly,

about their relative advantages. I told them, what I really thought,

that the enquiry would be of a serious nature, and would require very

good eyes. Seeing then, I said, that we are no great wits, I think that

we had better adopt a method which I may illustrate thus; suppose that

a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters

from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be

found in another place which was larger and in which the letters were

larger—if they were the same and he could read the larger letters

first, and then proceed to the lesser—this would have been thought a

rare piece of good fortune.

Very true, said Adeimantus; but how does the illustration apply to our

enquiry?

I will tell you, I replied; justice, which is the subject of our

enquiry, is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of an

individual, and sometimes as the virtue of a State.

True, he replied.

And is not a State larger than an individual?

It is.

Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to be larger and

more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the

nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear in the State, and

secondly in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the lesser

and comparing them.

That, he said, is an excellent proposal.

And if we imagine the State in process of creation, we shall see the

justice and injustice of the State in process of creation also.

I dare say.

When the State is completed there may be a hope that the object of our

search will be more easily discovered.

Yes, far more easily.

But ought we to attempt to construct one? I said; for to do so, as I am

inclined to think, will be a very serious task. Reflect therefore.

I have reflected, said Adeimantus, and am anxious that you should

proceed.

A State, I said, arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no

one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. Can any other

origin of a State be imagined?

There can be no other.

Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are needed to supply

them, one takes a helper for one purpose and another for another; and

when these partners and helpers are gathered together in one habitation

the body of inhabitants is termed a State.

True, he said.

And they exchange with one another, and one gives, and another

receives, under the idea that the exchange will be for their good.

Very true.

Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true

creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.

Of course, he replied.

Now the first and greatest of necessities is food, which is the

condition of life and existence.

Certainly.

The second is a dwelling, and the third clothing and the like.

True.

And now let us see how our city will