pts, which have no common principle,
fails to satisfy the demands of dialectic.

...He proceeds: What did Simonides mean by this saying of his? Did he
mean that I was to give back arms to a madman? 'No, not in that case,
not if the parties are friends, and evil would result. He meant that you
were to do what was proper, good to friends and harm to enemies.' Every
act does something to somebody; and following this analogy, Socrates
asks, What is this due and proper thing which justice does, and to whom?
He is answered that justice does good to friends and harm to enemies.
But in what way good or harm? 'In making alliances with the one, and
going to war with the other.' Then in time of peace what is the good
of justice? The answer is that justice is of use in contracts, and
contracts are money partnerships. Yes; but how in such partnerships
is the just man of more use than any other man? 'When you want to have
money safely kept and not used.' Then justice will be useful when money
is useless. And there is another difficulty: justice, like the art of
war or any other art, must be of opposites, good at attack as well as
at defence, at stealing as well as at guarding. But then justice is a
thief, though a hero notwithstanding, like Autolycus, the Homeric hero,
who was 'excellent above all men in theft and perjury'--to such a pass
have you and Homer and Simonides brought us; though I do not forget that
the thieving must be for the good of friends and the harm of enemies.
And still there arises another question: Are friends to be interpreted
as real or seeming; enemies as real or seeming? And are our friends to
be only the good, and our enemies to be the evil? The answer is, that
we must do good to our seeming and real good friends, and evil to our
seeming and real evil enemies--good to the good, evil to the evil. But
ought we to render evil for evil at all, when to do so will only make
men more evil? Can justice produce injustice any more than the art of
horsemanship can make bad horsemen, or heat produce cold? The final
conclusion is, that no sage or poet ever said that the just return
evil for evil; this was a maxim of some rich and mighty man, Periander,
Perdiccas, or Ismenias the Theban (about B.C. 398-381)...

Thus the first stage of aphoristic or unconscious morality is shown to
be inadequate to the wants of the age; the authority of the poets is set
aside, and through the winding mazes of dialectic we make an approach