see the thicket move first. 'Nay, I would have you lead.'
Well then, offer up a prayer and follow. The way is dark and difficult;
but we must push on. I begin to see a track. 'Good news.' Why, Glaucon,
our dulness of scent is quite ludicrous! While we are straining our eyes
into the distance, justice is tumbling out at our feet. We are as bad
as people looking for a thing which they have in their hands. Have you
forgotten our old principle of the division of labour, or of every man
doing his own business, concerning which we spoke at the foundation
of the State--what but this was justice? Is there any other virtue
remaining which can compete with wisdom and temperance and courage in
the scale of political virtue? For 'every one having his own' is the
great object of government; and the great object of trade is that
every man should do his own business. Not that there is much harm in a
carpenter trying to be a cobbler, or a cobbler transforming himself into
a carpenter; but great evil may arise from the cobbler leaving his last
and turning into a guardian or legislator, or when a single individual
is trainer, warrior, legislator, all in one. And this evil is injustice,
or every man doing another's business. I do not say that as yet we are
in a condition to arrive at a final conclusion. For the definition
which we believe to hold good in states has still to be tested by the
individual. Having read the large letters we will now come back to the
small. From the two together a brilliant light may be struck out...

Socrates proceeds to discover the nature of justice by a method of
residues. Each of the first three virtues corresponds to one of the
three parts of the soul and one of the three classes in the State,
although the third, temperance, has more of the nature of a harmony than
the first two. If there be a fourth virtue, that can only be sought for
in the relation of the three parts in the soul or classes in the State
to one another. It is obvious and simple, and for that very reason has
not been found out. The modern logician will be inclined to object that
ideas cannot be separated like chemical substances, but that they run
into one another and may be only different aspects or names of the
same thing, and such in this instance appears to be the case. For the
definition here given of justice is verbally the same as one of the
definitions of temperance given by Socrates in the Charmides, which
however is only provisio