il 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.

SOCRATES - ADEIMANTUS

I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but on
hearing these words I was quite delighted, and said: Sons of an
illustrious father, that was not a bad beginning of the Elegiac verses
which the admirer of Glaucon made in honour of you after you had
distinguished yourselves at the battle of Megara:--

'Sons of Ariston,' he sang, 'divine offspring of an
illustrious hero.'

The epithet is very appropriate, for there is something truly divine in
being able to argue as you have done for the superiority of injustice,
and remaining unconvinced by your own arguments. And I do believe that
you are not convinced--this I infer from your general character, for
had I judged only from your speeches I should have mistrusted you. But
now, the greater my confidence in you, the greater is my difficulty in
knowing what to say. For I am in a strait between two; on th