n. If I am not mistaken, we are all
agreed that justice, and just men and things and actions, are all fair,
and, if a person were to maintain that just men, even when they are
deformed in body, are still perfectly beautiful in respect of the
excellent justice of their minds, no one would say that there was any
inconsistency in this.

CLEINIAS: They would be quite right.

ATHENIAN: Perhaps; but let us consider further, that if all things which
are just are fair and honourable, in the term 'all' we must include just
sufferings which are the correlatives of just actions.

CLEINIAS: And what is the inference?

ATHENIAN: The inference is, that a just action in partaking of the just
partakes also in the same degree of the fair and honourable.

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And must not a suffering which partakes of the just principle
be admitted to be in the same degree fair and honourable, if the
argument is consistently carried out?

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: But then if we admit suffering to be just and yet
dishonourable, and the term 'dishonourable' is applied to justice, will
not the just and the honourable disagree?

CLEINIAS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN: A thing not difficult to understand; the laws which have been
already enacted would seem to announce principles directly opposed to
what we are saying.

CLEINIAS: To what?

ATHENIAN: We had enacted, if I am not mistaken, that the robber of
temples, and he who was the enemy of law and order, might justly be put
to death, and we were proceeding to make divers other enactments of
a similar nature. But we stopped short, because we saw that these
sufferings are infinite in number and degree, and that they are, at
once, the most just and also the most dishonourable of all sufferings.
And if this be true, are not the just and the honourable at one time all
the same, and at another time in the most diametrical opposition?

CLEINIAS: Such appears to be the case.

ATHENIAN: In this discordant and inconsistent fashion does the language
of the many rend asunder the honourable and just.

CLEINIAS: Very true, Stranger.

ATHENIAN: Then now, Cleinias, let us see how far we ourselves are
consistent about these matters.

CLEINIAS: Consistent in what?

ATHENIAN: I think that I have clearly stated in the former part of the
discussion, but if I did not, let me now state--

CLEINIAS: What?

ATHENIAN: That all bad men are always involuntarily bad; and from this