g he turned the collet outwards and reappeared;
he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same
result-when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when
outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the
messengers who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he
seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and
slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such
magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other;
no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand
fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own
when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into
houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from
prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men.
Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust;
they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly
affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because
he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of
necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust,
there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice
is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who
argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you
could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and
never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be
thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they
would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with
one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. Enough
of this.

Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and
unjust, we must isolate them; there is no other way; and how is the
isolation to be effected? I answer: Let the unjust man be entirely
unjust, and the just man entirely just; nothing is to be taken away
from either of them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the
work of their respective lives. First, let the unjust be like other
distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or physician,
who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps within their limits, and
who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover himself. So let the
unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie h