raying and sinning, the gods will be
propitiated, and we shall not be punished. 'But there is a world below
in which either we or our posterity will suffer for our unjust deeds.'
Yes, my friend, will be the reflection, but there are mysteries and
atoning deities, and these have great power. That is what mighty
cities declare; and the children of the gods, who were their poets and
prophets, bear a like testimony.

On what principle, then, shall we any longer choose justice rather than
the worst injustice? when, if we only unite the latter with a deceitful
regard to appearances, we shall fare to our mind both with gods and
men, in life and after death, as the most numerous and the highest
authorities tell us. Knowing all this, Socrates, how can a man who
has any superiority of mind or person or rank or wealth, be willing to
honour justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when he hears justice
praised? And even if there should be some one who is able to disprove
the truth of my words, and who is satisfied that justice is best, still
he is not angry with the unjust, but is very ready to forgive them,
because he also knows that men are not just of their own free will;
unless, peradventure, there be some one whom the divinity within him may
have inspired with a hatred of injustice, or who has attained knowledge
of the truth--but no other man. He only blames injustice who, owing to
cowardice or age or some weakness, has not the power of being unjust.
And this is proved by the fact that when he obtains the power, he
immediately becomes unjust as far as he can be.

The cause of all this, Socrates, was indicated by us at the beginning of
the argument, when my brother and I told you how astonished we were to
find that of all the professing panegyrists of justice--beginning with
the ancient heroes of whom any memorial has been preserved to us, and
ending with the men of our own time--no one has ever blamed injustice or
praised justice except with a view to the glories, honours, and benefits
which flow from them. No one has ever adequately described either in
verse or prose the true essential nature of either of them abiding in
the soul, and invisible to any human or divine eye; or shown that of
all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is
the greatest good, and injustice the greatest evil. Had this been the
universal strain, had you sought to persuade us of this from our youth
upwards, we should not have b