idden if he
means to be great in his injustice (he who is found out is nobody): for
the highest reach of injustice is: to be deemed just when you are not.
Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the
most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow
him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest
reputation for justice. If he have taken a false step he must be able
to recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect, if any of
his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where force is
required his courage and strength, and command of money and friends.
And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and
simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good.
There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured
and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the
sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let
him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must
be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let him be
the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have
been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by
the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to
the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have
reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of
injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the
two.

SOCRATES - GLAUCON

Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up
for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two
statues.

I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like there
is no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either of
them. This I will proceed to describe; but as you may think the
description a little too coarse, I ask you to suppose, Socrates, that
the words which follow are not mine.-- Let me put them into the mouths
of the eulogists of injustice: They will tell you that the just man who
is thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound--will have his eyes
burnt out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be
impaled: Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not
to be, just; the words of Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the
unjust than of the just. For the unjus