REPUBLIC(BOOKIV) 85
if you want, because what we’ve been looking for now is not that but justice. For the
inquiry about that, I imagine this is sufficient.”
“Yes,” he said, “beautifully said.”
“So two things are still left,” I said, “that it’s necessary to catch sight of in the city,
moderation, and the one for the sake of which we’re looking for them all, justice.”
“Quite so.”
“How, then, might we discover justice so that we won’t have to bother any more
about moderation?”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know and I wouldn’t want it to come to light first anyway
if we’re no longer going to examine moderation. So if you want to gratify me, consider
this before that.”
“I certainly do want to,” I said; “unless I’d be doing an injustice.”
“Consider it, then,” he said.
“It’s got to be considered,” I said, “and as seen from where we are, it looks more
like a sort of consonance and harmony than the ones before.”
“How?”
“Presumably,” I said, “moderation is a certain well-orderedness, and a mastery
over certain pleasures and desires, as people say—being stronger than oneself—though
in what way they mean that I don’t know. And some other things of that sort are said
that are like clues to it, aren’t they?”
“They most of all,” he said.
“But then isn’t being stronger than oneself absurd? Because the one who’s
stronger than himself would presumably also be weaker than himself, and the weaker
stronger, since the same person is referred to in all these terms.”
“How could it not be the same one?”
“But it appears to me,” I said, “that this phrase intends to say that there’s some-
thing to do with the soul within a human being himself that has something better and
something worse in it, and whenever what’s better by nature is master over what’s
worse, calling this ‘being stronger than oneself’ at least praises it. But whenever, from a
bad upbringing or some sort of bad company, the better part that’s smaller is mastered
by the larger multitude of the worse part, this as a reproach is blamed and called ‘being
weaker than oneself,’ and the person so disposed is called intemperate.”
“That’s likely it,” he said.
“Then look over toward our new city,” I said, “and you’ll find one of these things
present in it. Because you’ll claim that it’s justly referred to as stronger than itself, if in
fact something in which the better rules over the worse ought to be called moderate and
stronger than itself.”
“I am looking over at it,” he said, “and you’re telling the truth.”
“And surely one would find a multitude and variety of desires as well as pleasures
and pains, in children especially, and in women and menial servants, and also in most of
the lower sorts of people among those who are called free.”
“Very much so.”
“But you’ll meet with simple and measured desires and pleasures, which are
guided by reasoning with intelligence and right opinion, in few people, who are both
best in nature and best educated.”
“True,” he said.
“Then don’t you see that these too are present in your city, and that the desires in
most people and those of the lower sorts are mastered there by the desires and intelli-
gence of the lesser number of more decent people?”
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