Pagina 758 van 1391

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.