een on the watch to keep one another from
doing wrong, but every one would have been his own watchman, because
afraid, if he did wrong, of harbouring in himself the greatest of
evils. I dare say that Thrasymachus and others would seriously hold the
language which I have been merely repeating, and words even stronger
than these about justice and injustice, grossly, as I conceive,
perverting their true nature. But I speak in this vehement manner, as
I must frankly confess to you, because I want to hear from you the
opposite side; and I would ask you to show not only the superiority
which justice has over injustice, but what effect they have on the
possessor of them which makes the one to be a good and the other an evil
to him. And please, as Glaucon requested of you, to exclude reputations;
for unless you take away from each of them his true reputation and
add on the false, we shall say that you do not praise justice, but the
appearance of it; we shall think that you are only exhorting us to keep
injustice dark, and that you really agree with Thrasymachus in thinking
that justice is another's good and the interest of the stronger, and
that injustice is a man's own profit and interest, though injurious to
the weaker. Now as you have admitted that justice is one of that highest
class of goods which are desired indeed for their results, but in a far
greater degree for their own sakes--like sight or hearing or knowledge
or health, or any other real and natural and not merely conventional
good--I would ask you in your praise of justice to regard one point
only: I mean the essential good and evil which justice and injustice
work in the possessors of them. Let others praise justice and censure
injustice, magnifying the rewards and honours of the one and abusing the
other; that is a manner of arguing which, coming from them, I am
ready to tolerate, but from you who have spent your whole life in the
consideration of this question, unless I hear the contrary from your own
lips, I expect something better. And therefore, I say, not only prove to
us that justice is better than injustice, but show what they either of
them do to the possessor of them, which makes the one to be a good and
the other an evil, whether seen or unseen by gods and men.

I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but on
hearing these words I was quite delighted, and said: Sons of an
illustrious father, that was not a bad beginning of the Elegiac