Certainly not.

Or because a man is in good health when he receives pay you would not
say that the art of payment is medicine?

I should not.

Nor would you say that medicine is the art of receiving pay because a
man takes fees when he is engaged in healing?

Certainly not.

And we have admitted, I said, that the good of each art is specially
confined to the art?

Yes.

Then, if there be any good which all artists have in common, that is to
be attributed to something of which they all have the common use?

True, he replied.

And when the artist is benefited by receiving pay the advantage is
gained by an additional use of the art of pay, which is not the art
professed by him?

He gave a reluctant assent to this.

Then the pay is not derived by the several artists from their respective
arts. But the truth is, that while the art of medicine gives health, and
the art of the builder builds a house, another art attends them which
is the art of pay. The various arts may be doing their own business and
benefiting that over which they preside, but would the artist receive
any benefit from his art unless he were paid as well?

I suppose not.

But does he therefore confer no benefit when he works for nothing?

Certainly, he confers a benefit.

Then now, Thrasymachus, there is no longer any doubt that neither arts
nor governments provide for their own interests; but, as we were before
saying, they rule and provide for the interests of their subjects who
are the weaker and not the stronger--to their good they attend and
not to the good of the superior. And this is the reason, my dear
Thrasymachus, why, as I was just now saying, no one is willing to
govern; because no one likes to take in hand the reformation of evils
which are not his concern without remuneration. For, in the execution of
his work, and in giving his orders to another, the true artist does not
regard his own interest, but always that of his subjects; and therefore
in order that rulers may be willing to rule, they must be paid in one of
three modes of payment, money, or honour, or a penalty for refusing.

What do you mean, Socrates? said Glaucon. The first two modes of payment
are intelligible enough, but what the penalty is I do not understand, or
how a penalty can be a payment.

You mean that you do not understand the nature of this payment which to
the best men is the great inducement to rule? Of course you know that
ambition and avarice a