Section 443

For example, if an answer were demanded to the question concerning that city and the man whose birth and breeding was in harmony with it, whether we believe that such a man, entrusted with a deposit 1 of gold or silver, would withhold it and embezzle it, who do you suppose would think that he would be more likely so to act than men of a different kind? No one would, he said. And would not he be far removed from sacrilege and theft and betrayal of comrades in private life or of the state in public? He would. And, moreover, he would not be in any way faithless either in the keeping of his oaths or in other agreements. How could he? Adultery, surely, and neglect of parents and of the due service of the gods would pertain to anyone rather than to such a man. To anyone indeed, he said. And is not the cause of this to be found in the fact that each of the principles within him does its own work in the matter of ruling and being ruled? Yes, that and nothing else. 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, 2 that, by some Providence, at the very beginning of our foundation of the state, we chanced to hit upon the original principle and a sort of type of justice. Most assuredly. It really was, it seems, Glaucon, which is why it helps, 3 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 4 was, as it seems, 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 5 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, 6 and having first attained to self-mastery 7 and beautiful order 8 within himself, 9 and having harmonized 10 these three principles, the notes or intervals of three terms quite literally the lowest, the highest, and the mean, and all others there may be between them, and having linked and bound all three together and made of himself a unit, 11 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 12 the just and honorable action to be that which preserves and helps to produce this condition of soul, and wisdom the science that presides over such conduct; and believing and naming the unjust action to be that which ever tends to overthrow this spiritual constitution, and brutish ignorance, to be the opinion 13 that in turn presides 14 over this.