l all know one another, and each will call the other father,
brother, son; and if you suppose the women to join their armies, whether
in the same rank or in the rear, either as a terror to the enemy, or as
auxiliaries in case of need, I know that they will then be absolutely
invincible; and there are many domestic advantages which might also be
mentioned and which I also fully acknowledge: but, as I admit all these
advantages and as many more as you please, if only this State of yours
were to come into existence, we need say no more about them; assuming
then the existence of the State, let us now turn to the question of
possibility and ways and means--the rest may be left.

If I loiter for a moment, you instantly make a raid upon me, I said, and
have no mercy; I have hardly escaped the first and second waves, and you
seem not to be aware that you are now bringing upon me the third, which
is the greatest and heaviest. When you have seen and heard the third
wave, I think you will be more considerate and will acknowledge
that some fear and hesitation was natural respecting a proposal so
extraordinary as that which I have now to state and investigate.

The more appeals of this sort which you make, he said, the more
determined are we that you shall tell us how such a State is possible:
speak out and at once.

Let me begin by reminding you that we found our way hither in the search
after justice and injustice.

True, he replied; but what of that?

I was only going to ask whether, if we have discovered them, we are to
require that the just man should in nothing fail of absolute justice; or
may we be satisfied with an approximation, and the attainment in him of
a higher degree of justice than is to be found in other men?

The approximation will be enough.

We were enquiring into the nature of absolute justice and into the
character of the perfectly just, and into injustice and the perfectly
unjust, that we might have an ideal. We were to look at these in order
that we might judge of our own happiness and unhappiness according to
the standard which they exhibited and the degree in which we resembled
them, but not with any view of showing that they could exist in fact.

True, he said.

Would a painter be any the worse because, after having delineated with
consummate art an ideal of a perfectly beautiful man, he was unable to
show that any such man could ever have existed?

He would be none the worse.

Well, and were