ON JUSTICE. 191 



the two agree in this conception of what is just. At a later 

 stage of the inquiry, Glaucon, describing a current opinion, 

 says : 



" This, as they affirm, is the origin and nature of justice: — there is a mean or 

 compromise between the best of all, which is to do and not to suffer injustice, 

 and the worst of all,, which is to suffer without the power of retaliation ; and 

 justice being the mean between the two, is tolerated not as good, but as the 

 lesser evil." And immediately afterward it is said that men " are only diverted 

 into the path of justice by the force of law." * 



In this significant passage several things are to be noted. 

 There is first a recognition of the fact, above indicated, that at an 

 early stage the practice of justice is initiated by the dread of 

 retaliation, and the conviction, suggested by experience, that it is 

 on the whole the best to avoid aggression and to respect the limit 

 which compromise implies ; there is no recognition of intrinsic 

 flagitiousness in aggression, but only of its impolicy. Further, 

 the limit to each man's actions, described as " a mean of compro- 

 mise," and respect for which is called " the path of justice," is 

 said to be established only " by the force of law." Law is not 

 considered as an expression of justice otherwise cognizable, but 

 as itself the source of justice ; and hence results the meaning 

 of the preceding proposition, that it is just to obey the law. 

 Thirdly, there is an implication that were it not for retaliation 

 and legal penalties, the stronger might with propriety take ad- 

 vantage of the weaker. There is a half -expressed belief that su- 

 periority ought to have the advantages of superiority ; inequality 

 occupies a prominent place, while equality makes no definite 

 appearance. 



The conception here indicated that justice consists in legality, 

 is, toward the close of Book IV, developed into the conception 

 that justice consists " in each of the three classes doing the work 

 of its own class " : carpenter, shoemaker, or what not, " doing 

 each his own business, and not another's " ; and all obeying the 

 class whose business it is to rule.f Thus the idea of justice is made 

 to include the idea of inequality. Though there is some recog- 



* Book II, p. 229. 



f On another page there is furnished a typical example of Socratic reasoning. It is 

 held to be a just " principle that individuals are neither to take what is another's, nor to 

 be deprived of what is their own." From this it is inferred that justice consists in " hav- 

 ing and doing what is a man's own " ; and then comes the further inference that it is 

 unjust for one man to assume another's occupation, and " force his way " out of one class 

 into another. Here, then, because a man's own property and his own occupation are both 

 called his own, the same conclusion is drawn concerning both. Two fallacies are in- 

 volved — the one that a man can " own " a trade in the same way that he owns a coat, and 

 the other that because he may not be deprived of the coat he must be restricted to the 

 trade. The Platonic dialogues are everywhere vitiated by fallacies of this kind, caused by 

 confounding words with things — unity of name with unity of nature. 



