Plato, Republic 429a–433e: Book IV: Wisdom, courage and temperance in the city; justice is found

“Then it is by virtue of its smallest class and minutest part of itself, and the wisdom that resides therein, in the part which takes the lead and rules, that a city established on principles of nature would be wise as a whole. And as it appears these are by nature the fewest, the class to which it pertains to partake of the knowledge which alone of all forms of knowledge deserves the name of wisdom.” “Most true,” he said. “This one of our four, then, we have, I know not how, discovered, the thing itself and its place in the state.” “I certainly think,” said he, “that it has been discovered sufficiently.” “But again there is no difficulty in seeing bravery itself and the part of the city in which it resides for which the city is called brave.” “How so?” “Who,” said I, “in calling a city cowardly or brave would fix his eyes on any other part of it than that which defends it and wages war in its behalf?” “No one at all,” he said. “For the reason, I take it,” said I, “that the cowardice or the bravery of the other inhabitants does not determine for it the one quality or the other.” “It does not.” “Bravery too, then, belongs to a city by virtue of a part of itself owing to its possession in that part of a quality that under all conditions will preserve the conviction that things to be feared are precisely those which and such as the lawgiver inculcated in their education. Is not that what you call bravery?” “I don’t altogether understand what you said,” he replied; “but say it again.” “A kind of conservation,” I said, “is what I mean by bravery.” “What sort of a conservation?” “The conservation of the conviction which the law has created by education about fearful things—what and what sort of things are to be feared. And by the phrase ‘under all conditions’ I mean that the brave man preserves it both in pain and pleasures and in desires and fears and does not expel it from his soul. And I may illustrate it by a similitude if you please.” “I do.” “You are aware that dyers when they wish to dye wool so as to hold the purple hue begin by selecting from the many colors there be the one nature of the white and then give it a careful preparatory treatment so that it will take the hue in the best way, and after the treatment, then and then only, dip it in the dye. And things that are dyed by this process become fast-colored and washing either with or without lyes cannot take away the sheen of their hues. But otherwise you know what happens to them, whether anyone dips other colors or even these without the preparatory treatment.” “I know,” he said, “that they present a ridiculous and washed-out appearance.”

“By this analogy, then,” said I, “you must conceive what we too to the best of our ability were doing when we selected our soldiers and educated them in music and exercises of the body. The sole aim of our contrivance was that they should be convinced and receive our laws like a dye as it were, so that their belief and faith might be fast-colored both about the things that are to be feared and all other things because of the fitness of their nature and nurture, and that so their dyes might not be washed out by those lyes that have such dread power to scour our faiths away, pleasure more potent than any detergent or abstergent to accomplish this, and pain and fear and desire more sure than any lye. This power in the soul, then, this unfailing conservation of right and lawful belief about things to be and not to be feared is what I call and would assume to be courage, unless you have something different to say.” “No, nothing,” said he; “for I presume that you consider mere right opinion about the same matters not produced by education, that which may manifest itself in a beast or a slave, to have little or nothing to do with law and that you would call it by another name than courage.” “That is most true,” said I. “Well then,” he said, “I accept this as bravery.” “Do so,” said I, “and you will be right with the reservation that it is the courage of a citizen. Some other time, if it please you, we will discuss it more fully. At present we were not seeking this but justice; and for the purpose of that inquiry I believe we have done enough.” “You are quite right,” he said. “Two things still remain,” said I, “to make out in our city, soberness and the object of the whole inquiry, justice.” “Quite so.” “If there were only some way to discover justice so that we need not further concern ourselves about soberness.” “Well, I, for my part,” he said, “neither know of any such way nor would I wish justice to be discovered first if that means that we are not to go on to the consideration of soberness. But if you desire to please me, consider this before that.” “It would certainly be very wrong of me not to desire it,” said I. “Go on with the inquiry then,” he said. “I must go on,” I replied, “and viewed from here it bears more likeness to a kind of concord and harmony than the other virtues did.” “How so?” “Soberness is a kind of beautiful order and a continence of certain pleasures and appetites, as they say, using the phrase ‘master of himself’ I know not how; and there are other similar expressions that as it were point us to the same trail. Is that not so?” “Most certainly.”

“Now the phrase ‘master of himself’ is an absurdity, is it not? For he who is master of himself would also be subject to himself, and he who is subject to himself would be master. For the same person is spoken of in all these expressions.” “Of course.” “But,” said I, “the intended meaning of this way of speaking appears to me to be that the soul of a man within him has a better part and a worse part, and the expression self-mastery means the control of the worse by the naturally better part. It is, at any rate, a term of praise. But when, because of bad breeding or some association, the better part, which is the smaller, is dominated by the multitude of the worse, I think that our speech censures this as a reproach, and calls the man in this plight unselfcontrolled and licentious.” “That seems likely,” he said. “Turn your eyes now upon our new city,” said I, “and you will find one of these conditions existent in it. For you will say that it is justly spoken of as master of itself if that in which the superior rules the inferior is to be called sober and self-mastered.” “I do turn my eyes upon it,” he said, “and it is as you say.” “And again, the mob of motley appetites and pleasures and pains one would find chiefly in children and women and slaves and in the base rabble of those who are freemen in name.” “By all means.” “But the simple and moderate appetites which with the aid of reason and right opinion are guided by consideration you will find in few and those the best born and best educated.” “True,” he said. “And do you not find this too in your city and a domination there of the desires in the multitude and the rabble by the desires and the wisdom that dwell in the minority of the better?” “I do,” he said. “If, then, there is any city that deserves to be described as master of its pleasures and desires and self-mastered, this one merits that designation.” “Most assuredly,” he said. “And is it not also to be called sober in all these respects?” “Indeed it is,” he said. “And yet again, if there is any city in which the rulers and the ruled are of one mind as to who ought to rule, that condition will be found in this. Don’t you think so?” “I most emphatically do,” he said. “In which class of the citizens, then, will you say that the virtue of soberness has its seat when this is their condition? In the rulers or in the ruled?” “In both, I suppose,” he said. “Do you see then,” said I, “that our intuition was not a bad one just now that discerned a likeness between soberness and a kind of harmony?” “Why so?”

“Because its operation is unlike that of courage and wisdom, which residing in separate parts respectively made the city, the one wise and the other brave. That is not the way of soberness, but it extends literally through the entire gamut throughout, bringing about the unison in the same chant of the strongest, the weakest and the intermediate, whether in wisdom or, if you please, in strength, or for that matter in numbers, wealth, or any similar criterion. So that we should be quite right in affirming this unanimity to be soberness, the concord of the naturally superior and inferior as to which ought to rule both in the state and the individual.” “I entirely concur,” he said. “Very well,” said I. “We have made out these three forms in our city to the best of our present judgement. What can be the remaining form that would give the city still another virtue? For it is obvious that the remainder is justice.” “Obvious.” “Now then, Glaucon, is the time for us like huntsmen to surround the covert and keep close watch that justice may not slip through and get away from us and vanish from our sight. It plainly must be somewhere hereabouts. Keep your eyes open then and do your best to descry it. You may see it before I do and point it out to me.” “Would that I could,” he said; “but I think rather that if you find in me one who can follow you and discern what you point out to him you will be making a very fair use of me.” “Pray for success then,” said I, “and follow along with me.” “That I will do, only lead on,” he said. “And truly,” said I, “it appears to be an inaccessible place, lying in deep shadows.” “It certainly is a dark covert, not easy to beat up.” “But all the same on we must go.” “Yes, on.” And I caught view and gave a hulloa and said, “Glaucon, I think we have found its trail and I don’t believe it will get away from us.” “I am glad to hear that,” said he. “Truly,” said I, “we were slackers indeed.” “How so?” “Why, all the time, bless your heart, the thing apparently was tumbling about our feet from the start and yet we couldn’t see it, but were most ludicrous, like people who sometimes hunt for what they hold in their hands. So we did not turn our eyes upon it, but looked off into the distance, which perhaps was the reason it escaped us.” “What do you mean?” he said. “This,” I replied, “that it seems to me that though we were speaking of it and hearing about it all the time we did not understand ourselves or realize that we were speaking of it in a sense.” “That is a tedious prologue,” he said, “for an eager listener.”

“Listen then,” said I, “and learn if there is anything in what I say. For what we laid down in the beginning as a universal requirement when we were founding our city, this I think, or some form of this, is justice. And what we did lay down, and often said, you recall, was that each one man must perform one social service in the state for which his nature is best adapted.” “Yes, we said that.” “And again that to do one’s own business and not to be a busybody is justice, is a saying that we have heard from many and have often repeated ourselves.” “We have.” “This, then,” I said, “my friend, if taken in a certain sense appears to be justice, this principle of doing one’s own business. Do you know whence I infer this?” “No, but tell me,” he said. “I think that this is the remaining virtue in the state after our consideration of soberness, courage, and intelligence, a quality which made it possible for them all to grow up in the body politic and which when they have sprung up preserves them as long as it is present. And I hardly need to remind you that we said that justice would be the residue after we had found the other three.” “That is an unavoidable conclusion,” he said. “But moreover,” said I, “if we were required to decide what it is whose indwelling presence will contribute most to making our city good, it would be a difficult decision whether it was the unanimity of rulers and ruled or the conservation in the minds of the soldiers of the convictions produced by law as to what things are or are not to be feared, or the watchful intelligence that resides in the guardians, or whether this is the chief cause of its goodness, the principle embodied in child, woman, slave, free, artisan, ruler, and ruled, that each performed his one task as one man and was not a versatile busybody.” “Hard to decide indeed,” he said. “A thing, then, that in its contribution to the excellence of a state vies with and rivals its wisdom, its soberness, its bravery, is this principle of everyone in it doing his own task.” “It is indeed,” he said. “And is not justice the name you would have to give to the principle that rivals these as conducing to the virtue of state?” “By all means.” “Consider it in this wise too if so you will be convinced. Will you not assign the conduct of lawsuits in your state to the rulers?” “Of course.” “Will not this be the chief aim of their decisions, that no one shall have what belongs to others or be deprived of his own? Nothing else but this.” “On the assumption that this is just?” “Yes.”