88 PLATO
“Because it’s the just thing?”
“Yes.”
“Then in this respect too, having and doing what’s properly one’s own would be
agreed to be justice.”
“That’s so.”
“Now see if the same thing seems so to you that does to me. If a carpenter tries to
work at the job of a leatherworker, or a leatherworker at that of a carpenter, or if they
trade their tools and honors with each other, or even if the same person tries to do both
jobs, and everything else gets traded around, would it seem to you to do the city any
great harm?”
“Not very great,” he said.
“But I imagine when someone who’s a craftsman by nature, or some other sort of
moneymaker, but proud of his wealth or the multitude of his household or his strength
or anything else of the sort, tries to get in among the warrior kind, or one of the warriors
into the deliberative and guardian kind when he doesn’t merit it, and they trade their
tools and honors with each other, or when the same person tries to do all these jobs at
the same time, then I imagine it would seem to you too that this change and meddling
among them would be the ruin of the city.”
“Absolutely so.”
“Therefore among the three classes there are, any meddling or changing into one
another is of the greatest harm to the city, and would most correctly be referred to as the
greatest wrongdoing.”
“Precisely so.”
“And wouldn’t you say the greatest wrongdoing toward one’s own city is injustice?”
“How could it not be?”
“So this is injustice. And let’s say this the other way around; the minding of their
own business by the moneymaking, auxiliary, and guardian classes, when each of them
does what properly belongs to it in a city, is the opposite of that and would be justice
and would show the city to be just?”
“It doesn’t seem to be any other way than that to me,” he said.
“Let’s not say it in quite so rigid a way yet, but if this form is agreed by us to be
present in each one of the people as well and to be justice there, then we’ll join in going
along with it. What more would there be to say? And if not, then we’ll consider some-
thing else. But for now let’s complete the examination by which we imagined it would be
easier to catch sight of what sort of thing justice is in one human being if we tried to see
it first in some bigger thing that has justice in it. And it seemed to us that a city is just
that, and so we founded the best one in our power, knowing well that it would be present
in a good one at least. So let’s carry over what came to light for us there to one person,
and if they’re in accord, it will turn out beautifully; but if something different shows up
in the single person, we’ll go back to the city again and test it. And maybe, by examining
them side by side and rubbing them together like sticks, we could make justice flame
forth from them, and once it’s become evident we could substantiate it for ourselves.”
“Then it’s down the road you indicate,” he said, “and it behooves us to go there too.”
“Well then,” I said, “does the bigger or smaller thing that someone refers to by the
same name happen to be unlike the other one in the respect in which it’s called the same,
or like it?”
“Like it,” he said.
“Therefore a just man will not differ at all from a just city with respect to the form
of justice, but he’ll be like it.”
“He’ll be like it,” he said.434a
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