second class of goods, such as knowledge, sight,
health, which are desirable not only in themselves, but also for their
results?

Certainly, I said.

And would you not recognize a third class, such as gymnastic, and the
care of the sick, and the physician's art; also the various ways of
money-making--these do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and
no one would choose them for their own sakes, but only for the sake of
some reward or result which flows from them?

There is, I said, this third class also. But why do you ask?

Because I want to know in which of the three classes you would place
justice?

In the highest class, I replied,--among those goods which he who would
be happy desires both for their own sake and for the sake of their
results.

Then the many are of another mind; they think that justice is to be
reckoned in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued
for the sake of rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are
disagreeable and rather to be avoided.

I know, I said, that this is their manner of thinking, and that this was
the thesis which Thrasymachus was maintaining just now, when he censured
justice and praised injustice. But I am too stupid to be convinced by
him.

I wish, he said, that you would hear me as well as him, and then I shall
see whether you and I agree. For Thrasymachus seems to me, like a snake,
to have been charmed by your voice sooner than he ought to have been;
but to my mind the nature of justice and injustice have not yet been
made clear. Setting aside their rewards and results, I want to know what
they are in themselves, and how they inwardly work in the soul. If you,
please, then, I will revive the argument of Thrasymachus. And first I
will speak of the nature and origin of justice according to the common
view of them. Secondly, I will show that all men who practise justice do
so against their will, of necessity, but not as a good. And thirdly, I
will argue that there is reason in this view, for the life of the unjust
is after all better far than the life of the just--if what they say
is true, Socrates, since I myself am not of their opinion. But still I
acknowledge that I am perplexed when I hear the voices of Thrasymachus
and myriads of others dinning in my ears; and, on the other hand, I have
never yet heard the superiority of justice to injustice maintained by
any one in a satisfactory way. I want to hear justice praised in respect
of its