Book IV, 428–435

428a “Of course.”

“Suppose we were looking for one out of four things in anything at all. If we recognized the one we sought first, that would satisfy us; but if we recognized the other three first, that very fact would reveal what we sought, for clearly it could only be the one left over.”

“You are right,” he said.

“Since these qualities also happen to be four, should we not look for them in the same way?”

“Clearly.”

“The first thing I can see plainly in our city 428b is wisdom; though there is something curious about it.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“I think the city we have described really is wise: it is well advised, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“And good counsel is evidently a kind of knowledge. People take sound counsel not through ignorance, surely, but through knowledge.”

“Clearly.”

“Yet there are many different kinds of knowledge in the city.”

“Of course.”

“Should we call the city wise and well advised because its carpenters possess knowledge?” 428c

“Not on that account,” he said. “That would make it skilled at carpentry.”

“Then the knowledge that tells us how best to make wooden furnishings is not what entitles a city to be called wise.”

“No.”

“What about the knowledge of working in bronze, or any other such craft?”

“Not one of them,” he said.

“Nor the knowledge of producing crops from the earth; that would make it skilled at farming.”

“So it seems to me.”

“Well then,” I said, “is there among some of the citizens of the city we have just founded a kind of knowledge by which it takes counsel not about any one thing 428d within it, but about itself as a whole: how best to conduct its affairs both at home and with other cities?”

“There is indeed.”

“What knowledge is it,” I asked, “and who possesses it?”

“It is the guardians' knowledge,” he said, “and is found among those rulers whom we just called guardians in the full sense.”

“Because of this knowledge, then, what name do you give the city?”

“Well advised,” he said, “and truly wise.”

“Do you think our city will contain more smiths 428e than guardians of this true kind?”

“Far more smiths,” he said.

“And compared with all the others who bear the name of some craft whose knowledge they possess, will these guardians not be the fewest?”

“By far.”

“Thus a city founded according to nature is wise as a whole by virtue of its smallest class and part, and of the knowledge residing there, in the part that leads and rules. And this class, it seems, is by nature 429a the smallest—the one whose share is the only kind of knowledge that deserves, above all other kinds, to be called wisdom.”

“What you say is entirely true,” he said.

“So, somehow or other, we have found one of the four qualities, both the thing itself and its place in the city.”

“I think we have found it quite adequately,” he said.

“Now courage itself, and the part of the city where it resides that causes us to call the city courageous, are not very hard to see.”

“How so?” 429b

“What part other than that which fights in the front ranks and goes to war on its behalf would anyone look at in calling a city cowardly or courageous?” I asked.

“No one would look anywhere else,” he said.

“For I do not think that the courage or cowardice of its other inhabitants determines whether the city is one or the other.”

“No.”

“Then a city is courageous through one part of itself: that part possesses a power to preserve, through everything, the belief about what things are to be feared and what they are like, as the lawgiver laid down 429c in the course of their education. Is this not what you call courage?”

“I did not quite understand what you said,” he replied. “Tell me again.”

“I mean,” I said, “that courage is a kind of preservation.”

“What kind?”

“Preservation of the belief about what things are to be feared and what they are like, a belief instilled by the law through education. When I said ‘through everything,’ I meant keeping it intact through pain 429d and pleasure, through desire and fear, without casting it away. If you like, I will give you an image of what I think it resembles.”

“I would like that.”

“You know,” I said, “that when dyers want to dye wool purple, they first select one kind from among so many colors, the white wool, then prepare it with no little care to take the dye as fully as possible, and only then dye it. 429e Wool dyed in this way becomes colorfast: washing cannot strip the color from it, with soap or without it. But you know what happens to wool dyed otherwise, whether it is another color or even white wool that has not been prepared beforehand.”

“I know,” he said. “The color washes out and the result is ridiculous.”

“Then understand us to have been doing something like that as far as we could when we selected our soldiers and 430a educated them in music and gymnastics. Do not suppose that our aim was anything but to make them receive the laws, through conviction, as beautifully as possible, like dye, so that their beliefs about what is to be feared and about other matters would be colorfast, owing to the fitness of their nature and upbringing. We did not want that dye washed out by these solvents, formidable at stripping color: pleasure, more potent in this respect than any alkali or lye, 430b and pain, fear, and desire, more potent than any other solvent. This power, then, to preserve through everything a right and lawful belief concerning what is and is not to be feared is what I call courage, unless you have some other account.”

“I have none,” he said. “For I take it you do not regard as truly lawful a correct belief about these same things acquired without education, such as a beast or a slave might have, and you call it something other than courage.” 430c

“Entirely true,” I said.

“Then I accept this as courage.”

“Accept it as civic courage,” I said, “and you will be right. We can examine it more thoroughly another time, if you wish. At present we are seeking not courage but justice; for that search, I think, we have done enough.”

“You speak well,” he said.

“Two things remain for us to discern in the city,” I said: 430d “temperance, and the thing for whose sake we have been seeking everything else, justice.”

“Certainly.”

“How, then, could we find justice without taking any more trouble over temperance?”

“I neither know,” he said, “nor would I wish justice to come into view first if that meant we would no longer examine temperance. If you want to please me, consider temperance before justice.” 430e

“I do want to,” I said, “if that is no injustice.”

“Consider it, then,” he said.

“We must,” I said. “As seen from here, it resembles a kind of accord and harmony more than the others do.”

“How?”

“Temperance is surely a kind of order, and mastery of certain pleasures and desires. People speak of a man as ‘master of himself,’ though I do not know quite how, and use other such phrases as traces of it. Is that not so?”

“Precisely,” he said.

“But is ‘master of himself’ not an absurd phrase? Whoever is master of himself would also be his own subject, and whoever is subject his own master: 431a it is the same man described in every case.”

“Of course.”

“Yet this phrase seems to me to mean that within a person's soul there is a better element and a worse one. When what is better by nature masters what is worse, we call the person ‘master of himself’—a term of praise, at least. But when, through bad upbringing or bad company, the better, being smaller, is mastered by the mass of the worse, 431b we censure this as a disgrace, calling someone in that condition ‘subject to himself’ and undisciplined.”

“That seems right,” he said.

“Now look at our new city,” I said, “and you will find one of those two conditions in it. You will rightly call it master of itself, if a thing in which the better rules the worse may be called temperate and master of itself.”

“I look at it,” he said, “and you are right.”

“You will find many varied desires, 431c pleasures, and pains chiefly in children and women and household servants, and among the many ordinary people who are called free.”

“Certainly.”

“But the simple and measured desires, guided by reason and true belief with understanding, you will meet in the few who are best endowed by nature and best educated.”

“True,” he said.

“Do you not see these things in your city, too? There, the desires of the many and less worthy 431d are mastered by the desires and wisdom of the fewer and better.”

“I do,” he said.

“Then if any city deserves to be called master of its pleasures and desires, and of itself, this one does.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“And temperate too, for all these reasons?”

“Indeed,” he said.

“And if there is any other city in which the rulers and the ruled hold the same belief 431e about who ought to rule, ours will have that quality as well. Do you agree?”

“Emphatically,” he said.

“When they hold this belief, in which citizens will you say temperance resides: the rulers or the ruled?”

“In both, I suppose,” he said.

“Do you see, then,” I asked, “that our guess just now was fair, when we likened temperance to a kind of harmony?”

“Why?”

“Because unlike courage and wisdom, each of which resides in one part 432a and makes the city courageous or wise, temperance does not work like that. It stretches through the whole city, like a harmony across the entire scale, making the weakest sing in accord with the strongest and those in between: whether you measure them by understanding, strength, number, wealth, or anything else of that sort. Thus we would be exactly right to call this agreement temperance: a natural accord between the worse and the better over which should rule, both in the city and in each individual.” 432b

“I agree entirely,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “as far as appearances allow us to judge, we have now detected three qualities in the city. What remains, the quality by which the city would still partake of virtue—what could that be? Clearly, it is justice.”

“Clearly.”

“Now, Glaucon, we must station ourselves around the thicket like hunters, alert lest justice slip away somewhere and vanish from sight. 432c It is plainly somewhere near. Look, then, and do your best to catch sight of it; perhaps you will see it before I do and point it out to me.”

“If only I could,” he said. “But if you use me as a follower who can see what you show him, you will make better use of me.”

“Follow me, then,” I said, “after joining me in prayer.”

“I will, but you must lead,” he said.

“The ground seems hard to cross,” I said, “and shadowed. It is dark, at any rate, and difficult to search. Still, we must go on.” 432d

“We must,” he said.

Catching sight of something, I said, “Look, look, Glaucon! I think we have found a track, and I do not believe it will escape us after all.”

“Good news,” he said.

“But what a foolish thing we have done,” I said.

“What thing?”

“It has apparently been rolling at our feet from the very beginning, my friend, and we never saw it. We were utterly ridiculous: like people who sometimes look for the thing they are holding in their hands, 432e we failed to look at the thing itself and gazed away into the distance. That perhaps is why we missed it.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean,” I said, “that for a long time we seem to have been speaking of it and hearing of it, without realizing that, in a way, it was what we were speaking of.”

“That is a long prelude for someone eager to hear,” he said.

433a “Then listen and see whether I have something to say,” I replied. “What we laid down from the beginning as a rule to be followed throughout, when we were founding the city, is, I think, justice—or some form of it. We laid down, and often repeated, if you remember, that each individual must practice one of the city's occupations, the one for which his nature is best suited.”

“We did.”

“And we have heard from many others, and often said ourselves, that doing one's own work and not meddling in many things is justice.” 433b

“We have.”

“Then this, my friend, seems in some way to be justice, when it comes into being: doing one's own work. Do you know what leads me to think so?”

“No; tell me,” he said.

“I think,” I said, “that what is left in the city after the things we have examined—temperance, courage, and wisdom—is what gave them all the power to come into being, and, once they had come into being, preserves them as long as it remains. And yet we said that justice would be 433c what remained if we found the other three.”

“That must be so,” he said.

“Moreover,” I said, “if we had to judge which of these qualities, by its presence, would do most to make our city good, it would be hard to decide. Is it the shared conviction of rulers and ruled? The preservation among soldiers of the lawful belief about which things are to be feared and which are not? Or the 433d understanding and vigilance present in the rulers? Or does the greatest good come from something present in child and woman, slave and free person, craftsman and ruler and subject alike: that each one did his own work, remaining one person and not meddling in many things?”

“It would be hard to decide,” he said. “Of course it would.”

“Then it seems that the power of each person in the city to do his own work competes with its wisdom, temperance, and courage in making the city virtuous.”

“Indeed it does,” he said.

“And would you not say that the thing that competes with those for the city's virtue is justice?” 433e

“Absolutely.”

“Consider another way of looking at it, and see whether you still agree. Will you assign judgment in lawsuits in the city to its rulers?”

“Of course.”

“And in their judgments, will they seek anything more than to ensure that no one has what belongs to another, or is deprived of what belongs to himself?”

“No, that is what they will seek.”

“Because it is just?”

“Yes.”

“Then we might agree that justice also consists, in a way, in having and 434a doing what is properly one's own.”

“That is so.”

“Now see if you agree with me here. Suppose a carpenter tries to do a cobbler's work, or a cobbler a carpenter's, and they exchange each other's tools or honors, or one man tries to do both trades. Do you think all these changes would do the city any great harm?”

“Not much,” he said.

“But when a craftsman, or anyone else naturally fitted to make money, 434b is inflated by wealth, numbers, strength, or some other such advantage and tries to enter the warrior class, or when a warrior tries, without being fit, to enter the class of counselors and guardians, and they exchange their tools and honors—or one person tries to do all these things at once—then I think you too will agree that this exchange of roles and this meddling in many things spell ruin for the city.”

“Absolutely.”

“So when there are three classes, their meddling in one another's work and changing places with one another 434c do the greatest harm to the city, and would most rightly be called its worst offense.”

“Certainly.”

“And would you not call the greatest offense against one's own city injustice?”

“Of course.”

“So that is injustice. Let us put it this way in turn: when the class of those who earn wealth, the class of auxiliaries, and the class of guardians each tend to their own work within the city, this is the opposite of that offense. Would it be justice, and would it make the city just?” 434d

“I can see no other way it could be,” he said.

“Let us not state it too firmly just yet,” I said. “If we find that this quality, when present in each individual person, is also justice there, then we will agree—for what else could we say? If not, we will examine something else. For now let us finish the inquiry we undertook when we thought that, if we tried first to see justice in something larger that possessed it, we might more easily discern what it is in an individual. 434e We decided that the larger thing was a city, and so we founded the best city we could, knowing well that justice would be present in a good city. Let us carry over to the individual what we discovered there; if the two agree, all will be well. If something different appears in the individual, we shall return to the city and test our finding, and 435a perhaps, by considering the two side by side and rubbing them together like fire-sticks, we will make justice flash forth. When it comes to light, we shall establish it firmly for ourselves.”

“What you say follows the right path,” he said. “We must proceed that way.”

“Now if a person calls a greater thing and a smaller thing by the same name, are they unlike in the respect in which they bear that same name, or alike?”

“Alike,” he said. 435b

“So a just man, in the very form of justice, will not differ from a just city but will resemble it.”

“He will resemble it,” he said.

“And the city seemed just when the three kinds of nature within it each did their own work. It seemed temperate, courageous, and wise in turn because of certain other conditions and dispositions of these same classes.”

“True,” he said.

“Then, my friend, we shall expect the same of the individual: if he has those same kinds within his soul, 435c the same conditions will rightly entitle him to the same names as the city.”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“Yet again, my remarkable friend,” I said, “we have stumbled on no easy question about the soul: whether it contains these three kinds or not.”

“It seems no easy question to me,” he said. “Perhaps, Socrates, the saying is true: beautiful things are difficult.”

“So it seems,” I said. “And you may be sure, Glaucon, that in my opinion the precise answer will never be grasped through methods like those we are now using in our discussion. 435d Another road, longer and more demanding, leads to it. Still, perhaps we can reach an answer worthy of what we have said and examined so far.”

“Would that not satisfy us?” he asked. “For the present it would certainly be enough for me.”

“It will be quite enough for me too,” I said.

“Then do not give up,” he said. “Examine it.” 435e

“Must we not agree,” I asked, “that the same kinds and dispositions are present in each one of us as in the city? They surely cannot have arrived there from anywhere else. It would be absurd to suppose that the spirited character in cities did not come from the individuals who bear that reputation—people in Thrace and Scythia and more or less throughout the northern region—or that the love of learning, which one might attribute to our own”

428a “Of course.”

“Suppose there were four other things, and we were looking for one of them somewhere. If we recognized it first, that would settle the matter. But if we recognized the other three first, that would also tell us what we were looking for. Obviously it could only be the one left over.”

“That's right,” he said.

“Then since we're dealing with four qualities here, shouldn't we look for them in the same way?”

“Clearly.”

“The first one I can plainly see in the city is 428b wisdom. But there seems to be something odd about it.”

“What?” he asked.

“The city we've described really does seem wise, because it makes good decisions, doesn't it?”

“Yes.”

“And good judgment is obviously a kind of knowledge. People make good decisions through knowledge, not ignorance.”

“Obviously.”

“But there are many different kinds of knowledge in the city.”

“Of course.”

“Should we call the city wise and good at deciding because of the carpenters' knowledge?”

“428c No,” he said. “That would make it skilled in carpentry, not wise.”

“So the city can't be called wise because it knows how to make the best decisions about wooden furniture.”

“No.”

“What about knowledge of making things out of bronze, or any similar kind?”

“No kind like that,” he said.

“Nor knowledge of how to grow crops from the earth. That would make it skilled in farming.”

“I agree.”

“Well,” I said, “is there knowledge among some of the citizens of the city we've just founded that makes decisions, not about one thing in the city, but 428d about the whole city: how it should best deal both with itself and with other cities?”

“There is.”

“What is that knowledge, and who has it?” I asked.

“It's the guardians' knowledge,” he said. “It's held by the rulers we were just calling guardians in the fullest sense.”

“And what would you call the city because of this knowledge?”

“Good at making decisions,” he said, “and truly wise.”

“Do you think there will be 428e more bronze workers in our city than these true guardians?”

“Far more bronze workers,” he said.

“And of all the people named for some kind of knowledge they possess, would these guardians be the fewest?”

“By far.”

“Then a city founded according to nature is wise as a whole because of its smallest group and the knowledge that group possesses: the group that leads and rules. And it seems that the people naturally fit to share in this knowledge are 429a the fewest of all. Of all kinds of knowledge, this one alone should be called wisdom.”

“That's absolutely right,” he said.

“So, somehow, we've found one of the four qualities, along with the place it has in the city.”

“I think we've found it well enough,” he said.

“Courage itself, and the part of the city where it lies and makes the city courageous, aren't very hard to see.”

“How so?”

“429b Would anyone call a city brave or cowardly on the basis of any group other than the one that fights and goes to war for it?” I asked.

“No one would,” he said.

“The courage or cowardice of the other people in it, I think, wouldn't determine which of these the city is.”

“No.”

“Then the city is courageous because of one part of itself. That part has the power to preserve, through everything it faces, 429c the belief about what is to be feared and what kind of things they are. It preserves the belief taught by the lawgiver in their education. Isn't that what you call courage?”

“I didn't quite follow you,” he said. “Say it again.”

“I mean that courage is a kind of preservation,” I said.

“Preservation of what?”

“Of the belief established by law through education about which things are to be feared and what they are like. By 'through everything' I mean keeping that belief 429d in pain, pleasure, desire, and fear without giving it up. If you like, I'll compare it to something I think resembles it.”

“Please do.”

“You know how dyers work when they want to dye wool purple. First, among all the colors available, they select naturally white wool. Then they carefully prepare it, with considerable effort, to make it take the dye as well as possible. Only then do they dye it. 429e Wool dyed this way holds its color. Washing can't remove the color, with or without soap. But you know what happens if someone dyes other colors of wool, or even white wool that hasn't been prepared.”

“I do,” he said. “The color washes out and looks ridiculous.”

“Think of us, then, as doing something like that, as far as we can, when we select the soldiers and 430a educate them in music and physical training. Our only purpose is to make them take in the laws as thoroughly as possible, like a dye. Their beliefs about what is to be feared and everything else will then hold fast, because their nature and upbringing have been properly prepared. That dye won't be washed out by these powerful cleansing agents: pleasure, which works more fiercely than any washing soda or lye, and 430b pain, fear, and desire, stronger than any other cleanser. This power to keep the correct, lawful belief about what is and isn't to be feared through everything: that is what I call courage, unless you would put it differently.”

“I wouldn't,” he said. “I think you don't consider a correct belief about these same things, if it arises without education, to be lawful in the full sense. An animal or a slave might have it, but you would call it something other than courage.”

“430c That's exactly right,” I said.

“Then I accept that this is courage.”

“Accept it as the courage of a citizen,” I said, “and you'll be right. We can examine it more fully another time if you like. Right now we're looking for justice, not courage, and I think we've done enough toward that inquiry.”

“That's right,” he said.

“Two qualities remain for us to find in the 430d city,” I said. “One is self-control, and the other is the reason for this whole search: justice.”

“Yes.”

“Can we find justice without having to bother about self-control?”

“I don't know,” he said, “and I wouldn't want justice to show itself first if that meant we wouldn't examine self-control. If you want to please me, look at self-control before justice.”

“430e I do want to,” I said, “unless it's wrong to do so.”

“Then look,” he said.

“We must,” I said. “From here, self-control looks more like a kind of agreement and harmony than the other two qualities did.”

“How?”

“Self-control is a kind of order and mastery over certain pleasures and desires. People say, somehow, that a person is 'master of himself.' Other expressions like that are used as hints about it, aren't they?”

“They certainly are,” he said.

“But isn't 'master of himself' a funny expression? Whoever is master of himself must also be a slave to himself, and a person who is a slave to himself must also be master of himself. 431a It's the same person in all these descriptions.”

“Yes.”

“But I think the expression means this: within the person, in the soul, there is a better part and a worse part. When the naturally better part controls the worse, people call that person master of himself, and praise him. But when bad upbringing or bad company lets the stronger, worse part overcome the smaller, better part, people criticize him for it. They call him 431b a slave to himself and lacking in self-control.”

“That seems to be what it means,” he said.

“Now look at our new city,” I said. “You'll find one of those situations there. You can rightly call it master of itself, if a place where the better part rules the worse part can be called self-controlled and master of itself.”

“I see it,” he said, “and you're right.”

“And you find many different desires, pleasures, and pains, 431c especially in children, women, household servants, and the great mass of supposedly free people who aren't particularly good.”

“Certainly.”

“But the few desires that are simple and measured, guided by reason and correct belief through reflection, you'll find among a small number of people who have the best natures and the best education.”

“That's true,” he said.

“Don't you see both in your city? 431d The desires of the many, who aren't particularly good, are controlled by the desires and good judgment of the fewer, better people.”

“I do,” he said.

“So if any city should be called master of its pleasures and desires, and master of itself, this one should.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“And shouldn't it be called self-controlled for all these reasons?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“431e Also, if there is any city in which rulers and ruled share the same belief about who should rule, ours is one. Don't you think so?”

“I certainly do,” he said.

“Then which citizens have self-control when things stand like this: the rulers or the ruled?”

“Both, I suppose,” he said.

“Now do you see that we made a good guess when we said self-control was like a kind of harmony?”

“Why?”

“Because it isn't like courage and wisdom, each of which is found in one part of the city and makes the whole city brave or wise. Self-control runs right through the whole city, 432a bringing the weakest, the strongest, and those in between into agreement. It doesn't matter whether you rank them by intelligence, strength, numbers, wealth, or anything else of that kind. We would be right to call this agreement self-control: the natural agreement of the worse and better parts about which should rule, both in a city and in each individual.”

“I agree completely,” he said.

“432b Well,” I said, “we've now seen three qualities in the city, at least as far as we can tell. What is the remaining quality by which the city shares in goodness? It must clearly be justice.”

“Clearly.”

“Glaucon, now we must surround the thicket like hunters and 432c watch carefully so justice doesn't escape somewhere and disappear from sight. Obviously it's somewhere around here. Look closely and try to spot it. If you see it before I do, tell me.”

“I wish I could,” he said. “But you'd get better use from me if I follow you and look at what you point out.”

“Follow me, then,” I said, “and pray with me.”

“I will. You just lead,” he said.

“But the place seems hard to cross and full of shade,” I said. “It's dark, at any rate, and hard to search. Still, let's go on.”

“432d Let's go on,” he said.

“Then I saw something. 'Aha, Glaucon!' I said. 'I think we may have found a trail. I don't think justice will get away from us now.'”

“That's good news,” he said.

“What fools we've been,” I said.

“How so?”

“All along, my friend, it's been right at our feet from the start, and we didn't see it. We were ridiculous, like people sometimes searching for the thing they're holding in their hands. 432e We didn't look at it. We looked far away, and perhaps that's why we missed it.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean,” I said, “I think we've been talking about it and hearing about it for a long time without realizing that, in a way, we were talking about this very thing.”

“That's a long introduction for someone who wants to hear the answer,” he said.

“433a Then listen and see if I make sense,” I said. “The rule we set from the beginning and applied throughout the founding of the city is, I think, justice, or a form of it. We set down, as you remember, and often said that each person should do the one job in the city for which their nature best fits them.”

“We did.”

“And we've heard many other people say, and often said ourselves, that justice means doing your own work and not taking on other people's business.” 433b

“We have.”

“Then, my friend, it seems that justice, in a certain sense, is this practice of doing your own work. Do you know what makes me think so?”

“No. Tell me,” he said.

“Of the qualities we've examined in the city—self-control, courage, and wisdom—I think the one left over is what gave all the others the power to come into being and, once they existed, keeps them in place as long as it remains. And we said that justice would be what remained if we found the other three.” 433c

“It has to be,” he said.

“But if we had to judge which of these qualities would most make our city good, it would be hard to decide. Is it the shared belief of rulers and ruled? Is it the soldiers' preservation of the lawful belief about what should and shouldn't be feared? Is it the wisdom and watchfulness found in the rulers? Or is the decisive thing found in children and women, slaves and free people, workers and rulers and ruled alike: that each person does their own work without meddling in anyone else's?” 433d

“It would be hard to decide,” he said.

“Then the power that makes each person in the city do their own work seems to compete with its wisdom, self-control, and courage in making the city good.”

“It certainly does,” he said.

“Wouldn't you identify the quality that competes with them in making the city good as justice?” 433e

“Absolutely.”

“Look at it another way and see if you still agree. Will you put the rulers in charge of judging cases in the city?”

“Of course.”

“Will their chief aim in judging be anything other than making sure people don't take what belongs to others or lose what belongs to themselves?”

“No, that's their aim.”

“Because that's just?”

“Yes.”

“So this is another way we could agree that justice consists in having and doing what is properly your own.” 434a

“Yes, it is.”

“Now see whether you agree with me here too. Suppose a carpenter tries to do a shoemaker's work or a shoemaker a carpenter's, or they swap tools or positions. Suppose one person tries to do both jobs, or all such occupations get rearranged. Do you think any of that would cause serious harm to the city?”

“Not much,” he said.

“But suppose a worker or some other person 434b naturally suited to making money is puffed up by wealth, supporters, strength, or something else and tries to join the soldiers. Or suppose a soldier who isn't fit to rule tries to become a counselor and guardian. Suppose they exchange tools and positions, or one person tries to do all these jobs at once. You and I both think these changes and this meddling would ruin the city.”

“Absolutely.”

“434c Then when the three groups intrude on one another's work and exchange places, they do the greatest harm to the city. We would be completely right to call it the worst wrongdoing.”

“Exactly.”

“And won't you say that the worst wrongdoing against one's own city is injustice?”

“Of course.”

“So that's injustice. Now let's turn it around. The working class, the helpers, and the guardians each doing their own work in the city: wouldn't this be the opposite, justice, and make the city just?”

“That's how it seems to me,” he said.

“434d Let's not say so too firmly yet,” I said. “If we find that this same pattern is justice when applied to individual people, then we'll agree. What else could we say? If it doesn't fit, we'll look for something else. For now, let's finish the investigation we began. We thought that if we first looked for justice in something larger that possessed it, we'd find it more easily in a single person. We chose a city as that larger thing, and we founded the best city we could, knowing that justice would be found in a good city. 434e Let's apply what we found there to the individual. If it fits, fine. But if something else appears in the individual, we'll go back to the city and test the idea there. 435a Perhaps by comparing the two and rubbing them together, like fire sticks, we'll make justice flare up. Then, once we see it, we can firmly establish it for ourselves.”

“That's the right way to proceed,” he said. “We should do it.”

“If the same name applies to something large and something small,” I asked, “are they different or alike in the respect for which they share that name?”

“Alike,” he said.

“435b Then a just person won't differ from a just city in the very form of justice. They'll be alike.”

“Alike,” he said.

“We decided that the city was just when each of its three natural groups did its own work. And we decided it was self-controlled, courageous, and wise because of certain other conditions and qualities of these same groups.”

“That's true,” he said.

“Then, my friend, we'll expect an individual who 435c has these same kinds of parts in their soul to deserve the same descriptions as the city, because the parts have the same qualities.”

“We must,” he said.

“But now, my friend, we've stumbled into no small question about the soul: does it have these three kinds of parts or not?”

“I don't think it's a small question,” he said. “Perhaps the saying is true, Socrates, that beautiful things are difficult.”

“So it seems,” I said. “435d And believe me, Glaucon, I don't think the methods we're using in this discussion will ever settle it precisely. There's another, longer and more involved path to that answer. Still, we may be able to answer it well enough for what we've said and examined so far.”

“Wouldn't that be enough?” he asked. “It would be enough for me at present.”

“It would be quite enough for me too,” I said.

“Then don't give up,” he said. “Keep looking.”

“435e Don't we have to agree,” I said, “that each of us has the same kinds of qualities and ways of behaving that the city has? After all, they didn't get into it from anywhere else. It would be absurd to think that the spirited character of a city doesn't come from its people. People in Thrace, Scythia, and, in general, the lands to our north have that reputation. Or take love of learning, which is especially associated with us—”