Strona 889 z 1391

If we proceed along the old path, my belief, I said, is that we

shall find the answer. And our answer will be that, even as they

are, our guardians may very likely be the happiest of men; but

that our aim in founding the State was not the disproportionate

happiness of any one class, but the greatest happiness of the

whole; we thought that in a State which is ordered with a view to

the good of the whole we should be most likely to find justice,

and in the ill-ordered State injustice: and, having found them,

we might then decide which of the two is the happier. At present,

I take it, we are fashioning the happy State, not piecemeal, or

with a view of making a few happy citizens, but as a whole; and

by-and-by we will proceed to view the opposite kind of State.