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Now, I said, you are on more substantial and almost unanswerable

ground; for if the injustice which you were maintaining to be

profitable had been admitted by you as by others to be vice and

deformity, an answer might have been given to you on received

principles; but now I perceive that you will call injustice

honourable and strong, and to the unjust you will attribute all

the qualities which were attributed by us before to the just,

seeing that you do not hesitate to rank injustice with wisdom and

virtue.

You have guessed most infallibly, he replied.

Then I certainly ought not to shrink from going through with the

argument so long as I have reason to think that you,

Thrasymachus, are speaking your real mind; for I do believe that

you are now in earnest and are not amusing yourself at our

expense.

I may be in earnest or not, but what is that to you?-to refute

the argument is your business.