Complete Works (217 page)

When all such sayings about the attitudes of gods and humans to virtue and vice are so often repeated, Socrates, what effect do you suppose they have on the souls of young people? I mean those who are clever and are able to flit from one of these sayings to another, so to speak, and gather from them an impression of what sort of person he should be and of how best to travel the road of life. He would surely ask himself Pindar’s question, [b] “Should I by justice or by crooked deceit scale this high wall and live my life guarded and secure?” And he’ll answer: “The various sayings suggest that there is no advantage in my being just if I’m not also thought just, while the troubles and penalties of being just are apparent. But they tell me that an unjust person, who has secured for himself a reputation for justice, lives the life of a god. Since, then, ‘opinion forcibly overcomes truth’ and ‘controls happiness,’ as the wise men say, I must surely turn [c] entirely to it.
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I should create a façade of illusory virtue around me to deceive those who come near, but keep behind it the greedy and crafty fox of the wise Archilochus.”
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“But surely,” someone will object, “it isn’t easy for vice to remain always hidden.” We’ll reply that nothing great is easy. And, in any case, if we’re to be happy, we must follow the path indicated in these accounts. To [d] remain undiscovered we’ll form secret societies and political clubs. And there are teachers of persuasion to make us clever in dealing with assemblies and law courts. Therefore, using persuasion in one place and force in another, we’ll outdo others without paying a penalty.

“What about the gods? Surely, we can’t hide from them or use violent force against them!” Well, if the gods don’t exist or don’t concern themselves with human affairs, why should we worry at all about hiding from them? If they do exist and do concern themselves with us, we’ve learned [e] all we know about them from the laws and the poets who give their genealogies—nowhere else. But these are the very people who tell us that the gods can be persuaded and influenced by sacrifices, gentle prayers, and offerings. Hence, we should believe them on both matters or neither. If we believe them, we should be unjust and offer sacrifices from the fruits of our injustice. If we are just, our only gain is not to be punished by the
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gods, since we lose the profits of injustice. But if we are unjust, we get the profits of our crimes and transgressions and afterwards persuade the gods by prayer and escape without punishment.

“But in Hades won’t we pay the penalty for crimes committed here, either ourselves or our children’s children?” “My friend,” the young man will say as he does his calculation, “mystery rites and the gods of absolution have great power. The greatest cities tell us this, as do those children of [b] the gods who have become poets and prophets.”

Why, then, should we still choose justice over the greatest injustice? Many eminent authorities agree that, if we practice such injustice with a false façade, we’ll do well at the hands of gods and humans, living and dying as we’ve a mind to. So, given all that has been said, Socrates, how [c] is it possible for anyone of any power—whether of mind, wealth, body, or birth—to be willing to honor justice and not laugh aloud when he hears it praised? Indeed, if anyone can show that what we’ve said is false and has adequate knowledge that justice is best, he’ll surely be full not of anger but of forgiveness for the unjust. He knows that, apart from someone of godlike character who is disgusted by injustice or one who has gained [d] knowledge and avoids injustice for that reason, no one is just willingly. Through cowardice or old age or some other weakness, people do indeed object to injustice. But it’s obvious that they do so only because they lack the power to do injustice, for the first of them to acquire it is the first to do as much injustice as he can.

And all of this has no other cause than the one that led Glaucon and me to say to you: “Socrates, of all of you who claim to praise justice, from the original heroes of old whose words survive, to the men of the present [e] day, not one has ever blamed injustice or praised justice except by mentioning the reputations, honors, and rewards that are their consequences. No one has ever adequately described what each itself does of its own power by its presence in the soul of the person who possesses it, even if it remains hidden from gods and humans. No one, whether in poetry or in private conversations, has adequately argued that injustice is the worst thing a soul can have in it and that justice is the greatest good. If you had treated
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the subject in this way and persuaded us from youth, we wouldn’t now be guarding against one another’s injustices, but each would be his own best guardian, afraid that by doing injustice he’d be living with the worst thing possible.”

Thrasymachus or anyone else might say what we’ve said, Socrates, or maybe even more, in discussing justice and injustice—crudely inverting their powers, in my opinion. And, frankly, it’s because I want to hear the [b] opposite from you that I speak with all the force I can muster. So don’t merely give us a theoretical argument that justice is stronger than injustice, but tell us what each itself does, because of its own powers, to someone who possesses it, that makes injustice bad and justice good. Follow Glaucon’s advice, and don’t take reputations into account, for if you don’t deprive justice and injustice of their true reputations and attach false ones to them, we’ll say that you are not praising them but their reputations and that you’re encouraging us to be unjust in secret. In that case, we’ll [c] say that you agree with Thrasymachus that justice is the good of another, the advantage of the stronger, while injustice is one’s own advantage and profit, though not the advantage of the weaker.

You agree that justice is one of the greatest goods, the ones that are worth getting for the sake of what comes from them, but much more so for their own sake, such as seeing, hearing, knowing, being healthy, and [d] all other goods that are fruitful by their own nature and not simply because of reputation. Therefore, praise justice as a good of that kind, explaining how—because of its very self—it benefits its possessors and how injustice harms them. Leave wages and reputations for others to praise.

Others would satisfy me if they praised justice and blamed injustice in that way, extolling the wages of one and denigrating those of the other. But you, unless you order me to be satisfied, wouldn’t, for you’ve spent your whole life investigating this and nothing else. Don’t, then, give us [e] only a theoretical argument that justice is stronger than injustice, but show what effect each has because of itself on the person who has it—the one for good and the other for bad—whether it remains hidden from gods and human beings or not.

While I’d always admired the natures of Glaucon and Adeimantus, I was especially pleased on this occasion, and I said: You are the sons of a
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great man, and Glaucon’s lover began his elegy well when he wrote, celebrating your achievements at the battle of Megara,

Sons of Ariston, godlike offspring of a famous man.

That’s well said in my opinion, for you must indeed be affected by the divine if you’re not convinced that injustice is better than justice and yet can speak on its behalf as you have done. And I believe that you really are unconvinced by your own words. I infer this from the way you live, [b] for if I had only your words to go on, I wouldn’t trust you. The more I trust you, however, the more I’m at a loss as to what to do. I don’t see how I can be of help. Indeed, I believe I’m incapable of it. And here’s my evidence. I thought what I said to Thrasymachus showed that justice is better than injustice, but you won’t accept it from me. On the other hand, I don’t see how I can refuse my help, for I fear that it may even be impious to have breath in one’s body and the ability to speak and yet to stand idly by and not defend justice when it is being prosecuted. So the best course [c] is to give justice any assistance I can.

Glaucon and the others begged me not to abandon the argument but to help in every way to track down what justice and injustice are and what the truth about their benefits is. So I told them what I had in mind: The investigation we’re undertaking is not an easy one but requires keen eyesight. Therefore, since we aren’t clever people, we should adopt the [d] method of investigation that we’d use if, lacking keen eyesight, we were told to read small letters from a distance and then noticed that the same letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface. We’d consider it a godsend, I think, to be allowed to read the larger ones first and then to examine the smaller ones, to see whether they really are the same.

That’s certainly true, said Adeimantus, but how is this case similar to [e] our investigation of justice?

I’ll tell you. We say, don’t we, that there is the justice of a single man and also the justice of a whole city?

Certainly.

And a city is larger than a single man?

It is larger.

Perhaps, then, there is more justice in the larger thing, and it will be easier to learn what it is. So, if you’re willing, let’s first find out what sort
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of thing justice is in a city and afterwards look for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger.

That seems fine to me.

If we could watch a city coming to be in theory, wouldn’t we also see its justice coming to be, and its injustice as well?

Probably so.

And when that process is completed, we can hope to find what we are looking for more easily?

[b] Of course.

Do you think we should try to carry it out, then? It’s no small task, in my view. So think it over.

We have already, said Adeimantus. Don’t even consider doing anything else.

I think a city comes to be because none of us is self-sufficient, but we all need many things. Do you think that a city is founded on any other principle?

No.

And because people need many things, and because one person calls [c] on a second out of one need and on a third out of a different need, many people gather in a single place to live together as partners and helpers. And such a settlement is called a city. Isn’t that so?

It is.

And if they share things with one another, giving and taking, they do so because each believes that this is better for himself?

That’s right.

Come, then, let’s create a city in theory from its beginnings. And it’s our needs, it seems, that will create it.

It is, indeed.

[d] Surely our first and greatest need is to provide food to sustain life.

Certainly.

Our second is for shelter, and our third for clothes and such.

That’s right.

How, then, will a city be able to provide all this? Won’t one person have to be a farmer, another a builder, and another a weaver? And shouldn’t we add a cobbler and someone else to provide medical care?

All right.

So the essential minimum for a city is four or five men?

Apparently. [e]

And what about this? Must each of them contribute his own work for the common use of all? For example, will a farmer provide food for everyone, spending quadruple the time and labor to provide food to be shared by them all? Or will he not bother about that, producing one quarter the food in one quarter the time, and spending the other three quarters, one in
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building a house, one in the production of clothes, and one in making shoes, not troubling to associate with the others, but minding his own business on his own?

Perhaps, Socrates, Adeimantus replied, the way you suggested first would be easier than the other.

That certainly wouldn’t be surprising, for, even as you were speaking it occurred to me that, in the first place, we aren’t all born alike, but each of us differs somewhat in nature from the others, one being suited to one task, another to another. Or don’t you think so? [b]

I do.

Second, does one person do a better job if he practices many crafts or—since he’s one person himself—if he practices one?

If he practices one.

It’s clear, at any rate, I think, that if one misses the right moment in anything, the work is spoiled.

It is.

That’s because the thing to be done won’t wait on the leisure of the doer, but the doer must of necessity pay close attention to his work rather than treating it as a secondary occupation. [c]

Yes, he must.

The result, then, is that more plentiful and better-quality goods are more easily produced if each person does one thing for which he is naturally suited, does it at the right time, and is released from having to do any of the others.

Absolutely.

Then, Adeimantus, we’re going to need more than four citizens to provide the things we’ve mentioned, for a farmer won’t make his own plough, not if it’s to be a good one, nor his hoe, nor any of his other farming tools. Neither will a builder—and he, too, needs lots of things. And the same is [d] true of a weaver and a cobbler, isn’t it?

It is.

Hence, carpenters, metal workers, and many other craftsmen of that sort will share our little city and make it bigger.

That’s right.

Yet it won’t be a huge settlement even if we add cowherds, shepherds, and other herdsmen in order that the farmers have cows to do their ploughing, [e] the builders have oxen to share with the farmers in hauling their materials, and the weavers and cobblers have hides and fleeces to use.

It won’t be a small one either, if it has to hold all those.

Moreover, it’s almost impossible to establish a city in a place where nothing has to be imported.

Indeed it is.

So we’ll need yet further people to import from other cities whatever is needed.

Yes.

And if an importer goes empty-handed to another city, without a cargo of the things needed by the city from which he’s to bring back what his
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own city needs, he’ll come away empty-handed, won’t he?

So it seems.

Therefore our citizens must not only produce enough for themselves at home but also goods of the right quality and quantity to satisfy the requirements of others.