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Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more: There is
another side to Glaucon's argument about the praise and censure of
justice and injustice, which is equally required in order to bring out
what I believe to be his meaning. Parents and tutors are always
telling their sons and their wards that they are to be just; but
why? not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of character and
reputation; in the hope of obtaining for him who is reputed just
some of those offices, marriages, and the like which Glaucon has
enumerated among the advantages accruing to the unjust from the
reputation of justice. More, however, is made of appearances by this
class of persons than by the others; for they throw in the good
opinion of the gods, and will tell you of a shower of benefits which
the heavens, as they say, rain upon the pious; and this accords with
the testimony of the noble Hesiod and Homer, the first of whom says,
that the gods make the oaks of the just--
To hear acorns at their summit, and bees I the middle;
And the sheep the bowed down bowed the with the their fleeces.
and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them. And
Homer has a very similar strain; for he speaks of one whose fame is--
As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god,
Maintains justice to whom the black earth brings forth
Wheat and barley, whose trees are bowed with fruit,
And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives him fish.
Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his son
vouchsafe to the just; they take them down into the world below, where
they have the saints lying on couches at a feast, everlastingly drunk,
crowned with garlands; their idea seems to be that an immortality of
drunkenness is the highest meed of virtue. Some extend their rewards
yet further; the posterity, as they say, of the faithful and just
shall survive to the third and fourth generation. This is the style in
which they praise justice. But about the wicked there is another
strain; they bury them in a slough in Hades, and make them carry water
in a sieve; also while they are yet living they bring them to
infamy, and inflict upon them the punishments which Glaucon
described as the portion of the just who are reputed to be unjust;
nothing else does their invention supply. Such is their manner of
praising the one and censuring the other.
Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of
speaking about justice and injustice, which is not confined to the
poets, but is found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind
is always declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but
grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice
are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They
say also that honesty is for the most part less profitable than
dishonesty; and they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and
to honour them both in public and private when they are rich or in any
other way influential, while they despise and overlook those who may
be weak and poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the
others. But most extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking
about virtue and the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity
and misery to many good men, and good and happiness to the wicked. And
mendicant prophets go to rich men's doors and persuade them that
they have a power committed to them by the gods of making an atonement
for a man's own or his ancestor's sins by sacrifices or charms, with
rejoicings and feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just
or unjust, at a small cost; with magic arts and incantations binding
heaven, as they say, to execute their will. And the poets are the
authorities to whom they appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with
the words of Hesiod; --
Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth
and her dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set
toil,
and a tedious and uphill road: then citing Homer as a witness that the
gods may be influenced by men; for he also says:
The gods, too, may he turned from their purpose; and men pray to
them and avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing entreaties,
and by libations and the odour of fat, when they have sinned and
transgressed.
And they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus, who
were children of the Moon and the Muses --that is what they say
--according to which they perform their ritual, and persuade not
only individuals, but whole cities, that expiations and atonements for
sin may be made by sacrifices and amusements which fill a vacant hour,
and are equally at the service of the living and the dead; the
latter sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains
of hell, but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us.
He proceeded: And now when the young hear all this said about virtue
and vice, and the way in which gods and men regard them, how are their
minds likely to be affected, my dear Socrates, --those of them, I
mean, who are quickwitted, and, like bees on the wing, light on
every flower, and from all that they hear are prone to draw
conclusions as to what manner of persons they should be and in what
way they should walk if they would make the best of life? Probably the
youth will say to himself in the words of Pindar--
Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower
which may he a fortress to me all my days?
For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also
thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the
other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the
reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since
then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is
lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself. I will describe
around me a picture and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and
exterior of my house; behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox,
as Archilochus, greatest of sages, recommends. But I hear some one
exclaiming that the concealment of wickedness is often difficult; to
which I answer, Nothing great is easy. Nevertheless, the argument
indicates this, if we would be happy, to be the path along which we
should proceed. With a view to concealment we will establish secret
brotherhoods and political clubs. And there are professors of rhetoric
who teach the art of persuading courts and assemblies; and so,
partly by persuasion and partly by force, I shall make unlawful
gains and not be punished. Still I hear a voice saying that the gods
cannot be deceived, neither can they be compelled. But what if there
are no gods? or, suppose them to have no care of human things --why in
either case should we mind about concealment? And even if there are
gods, and they do care about us, yet we know of them only from
tradition and the genealogies of the poets; and these are the very
persons who say that they may be influenced and turned by
'sacrifices and soothing entreaties and by offerings.' Let us be
consistent then, and believe both or neither. If the poets speak
truly, why then we had better be unjust, and offer of the fruits of
injustice; for if we are just, although we may escape the vengeance of
heaven, we shall lose the gains of injustice; but, if we are unjust,
we shall keep the gains, and by our sinning and praying, and praying
and sinning, the gods will be propitiated, and we shall not be
punished. 'But there is a world below in which either we or our
posterity will suffer for our unjust deeds.' Yes, my friend, will be
the reflection, but there are mysteries and atoning deities, and these
have great power. That is what mighty cities declare; and the children
of the gods, who were their poets and prophets, bear a like testimony.
On what principle, then, shall we any longer choose justice rather
than the worst injustice? when, if we only unite the latter with a
deceitful regard to appearances, we shall fare to our mind both with
gods and men, in life and after death, as the most numerous and the
highest authorities tell us. Knowing all this, Socrates, how can a man
who has any superiority of mind or person or rank or wealth, be
willing to honour justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when
he hears justice praised? And even if there should be some one who
is able to disprove the truth of my words, and who is satisfied that
justice is best, still he is not angry with the unjust, but is very
ready to forgive them, because he also knows that men are not just
of their own free will; unless, peradventure, there be some one whom
the divinity within him may have inspired with a hatred of
injustice, or who has attained knowledge of the truth --but no other
man. He only blames injustice who, owing to cowardice or age or some
weakness, has not the power of being unjust. And this is proved by the
fact that when he obtains the power, he immediately becomes unjust
as far as he can be.
The cause of all this, Socrates, was indicated by us at the
beginning of the argument, when my brother and I told you how
astonished we were to find that of all the professing panegyrists of
justice --beginning with the ancient heroes of whom any memorial has
been preserved to us, and ending with the men of our own time --no one
has ever blamed injustice or praised justice except with a view to the
glories, honours, and benefits which flow from them. No one has ever
adequately described either in verse or prose the true essential
nature of either of them abiding in the soul, and invisible to any
human or divine eye; or shown that of all the things of a man's soul
which he has within him, justice is the greatest good, and injustice
the greatest evil. Had this been the universal strain, had you
sought to persuade us of this from our youth upwards, we should not
have been 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.
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