istence, 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 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 are 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 we not creating an ideal of a perfect State?

To be sure.

And is our theory a worse theory because we are unable to prove the
possibility of a city being ordered in the manner described?

Surely not, he replied.

That is the truth, I said. But if, at your request, I am to try and
show how and under what conditions the possibility is highest, I must
ask you, having this in view, to repeat your former admissions.

What admissions?

I want to know whether ideals are ever fully realised in language?