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my argument stand. But neither is there any way for me not to help out, since I’m
afraid that it would be irreverent to be standing by while justice is being defamed
and not help out as long as I’m still breathing and have the power to utter a sound.
So what has the most force is for me to come to its defense in whatever way is in
my power.”
Then Glaucon and the others begged me in every way to help out and not give
up the argument, but to track down what each of them is and what the truth is about
the sort of benefit that goes with the two of them. So I said exactly what seemed to
me the case: “The inquiry we’re setting ourselves to is no inconsiderable thing, but
for someone sharp-sighted, as it appears to me. So since we aren’t clever,” I said,
“the sort of inquiry for us to make about it seems to me exactly like this: if someone
had ordered people who were not very sharp-sighted to read small print from a dis-
tance, and then it occurred to someone that maybe the same letters are also some-
where else, both bigger and on something bigger, it would plainly be a godsend,
I assume, to read those first and examine the smaller ones by that means, if they
were exactly the same.”
“Certainly,” Adeimantus said, “but Socrates, what have you spotted in the inquiry
about justice that’s of that sort?”
“I’ll tell you,” I said. “There’s justice, we claim, of one man, and there’s presum-
ably also justice of a whole city?”
“Certainly,” he said.
“Isn’t a city a bigger thing than one man?”
“It’s bigger,” he said.
“Then maybe more justice would be present in the bigger thing, and it would be
easier to understand it clearly. So if you people want to, we’ll inquire first what sort of
thing it is in cities, and then we’ll examine it by that means also in each one of the peo-
ple, examining the likeness of the bigger in the look of the smaller.”
“You seem to me to be saying something beautiful,” he said.
“Then if we were to look at a city as it comes into being in speech,” I said, “would
we see the justice and injustice that belong to it coming into being as well?”
“Probably so,” he said.
“And then, once it has come into being, is there a hope of seeing what we’re look-
ing for more readily?”
“Very much so.”
“Does it seem good, then, that we should try to accomplish this? Because I imag-
ine it’s not a small task, so you people consider it.”
“It’s been considered,” Adeimantus said. “Don’t do anything else.”
“Okay,” I said. “A city, as I imagine, comes into being because it happens that
each of us is not self-sufficient, but needs many things. Or do you imagine a city is
founded from any other origin?”
“None at all,” he said.
“So then when one person associates with another for one use, and with another
for another use, since they need many things, and many people assemble in one
dwelling place as partners and helpers, to this community we give the name city,
don’t we?”
“Certainly.”
“And they share things one with another, if they give or take shares of anything,
because each supposes it to be better for himself?”
“Certainly.”cde369a
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