Republic

What you say is entirely true, Socrates. Well, said I, if we should affirm that we had found the just man and state and what justice really is in them, I think we should not be much mistaken. No indeed, we should not, he said. Shall we affirm it, then? Let us so affirm. So be it, then, said I; next after this, I take it, we must consider injustice. Obviously. Must not this be a kind of civil war of these three principles, their meddlesomeness and interference with one another’s functions, and the revolt of one part against the whole of the soul that it may hold therein a rule which does not belong to it, since its nature is such that it befits it to serve as a slave to the ruling principle? Something of this sort, I fancy, is what we shall say, and that the confusion of these principles and their straying from their proper course is injustice and licentiousness and cowardice and brutish ignorance and, in general, all turpitude. Precisely this, he replied. Then, said I, to act unjustly and be unjust and in turn to act justly the meaning of all these terms becomes at once plain and clear, since injustice and justice are so. How so? Because, said I, these are in the soul what the healthful and the diseaseful are in the body; there is no difference. In what respect? he said. Healthful things surely engender health and diseaseful disease. Yes. Then does not doing just acts engender justice and unjust injustice? Of necessity. But to produce health is to establish the elements in a body in the natural relation of dominating and being dominated by one another, while to cause disease is to bring it about that one rules or is ruled by the other contrary to nature. Yes, that is so. And is it not likewise the production of justice in the soul to establish its principles in the natural relation of controlling and being controlled by one another, while injustice is to cause the one to rule or be ruled by the other contrary to nature? Exactly so, he said. Virtue, then, as it seems, would be a kind of health and beauty and good condition of the soul, and vice would be disease, ugliness, and weakness. It is so. Then is it not also true that beautiful and honorable pursuits tend to the winning of virtue and the ugly to vice? Of necessity.