impatient at the length of your exordium.

Well then, tell me, I said, whether I am right or not: You remember the
original principle which we were always laying down at the foundation
of the State, that one man should practise one thing only, the thing to
which his nature was best adapted;--now justice is this principle or a
part of it.

Yes, we often said that one man should do one thing only.

Further, we affirmed that justice was doing one's own business, and not
being a busybody; we said so again and again, and many others have said
the same to us.

Yes, we said so.

Then to do one's own business in a certain way may be assumed to be
justice. Can you tell me whence I derive this inference?

I cannot, but I should like to be told.

Because I think that this is the only virtue which remains in the
State when the other virtues of temperance and courage and wisdom are
abstracted; and, that this is the ultimate cause and condition of the
existence of all of them, and while remaining in them is also their
preservative; and we were saying that if the three were discovered by
us, justice would be the fourth or remaining one.

That follows of necessity.

If we are asked to determine which of these four qualities by its
presence contributes most to the excellence of the State, whether the
agreement of rulers and subjects, or the preservation in the soldiers of
the opinion which the law ordains about the true nature of dangers, or
wisdom and watchfulness in the rulers, or whether this other which I am
mentioning, and which is found in children and women, slave and freeman,
artisan, ruler, subject,--the quality, I mean, of every one doing his
own work, and not being a busybody, would claim the palm--the question
is not so easily answered.

Certainly, he replied, there would be a difficulty in saying which.

Then the power of each individual in the State to do his own work
appears to compete with the other political virtues, wisdom, temperance,
courage.

Yes, he said.

And the virtue which enters into this competition is justice?

Exactly.

Let us look at the question from another point of view: Are not
the rulers in a State those to whom you would entrust the office of
determining suits at law?

Certainly.

And are suits decided on any other ground but that a man may neither
take what is another's, nor be deprived of what is his own?

Yes; that is their principle.

Which is a just principle?

Yes.