The Republic
Lydian. According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service
of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made
an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock.
Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other
marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he
stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him,
more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took
from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met
together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly
report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having
the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to
turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became
invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as
if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again
touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made
several trials of the ring, and always with the same result—when he
turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he
reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers
who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the
queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and
took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and
the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be
imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in
justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he
could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses
and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison
whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the
actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would
both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be
a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks
that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for
wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is
unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more
profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have
been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any
one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any
wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the
lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him
to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a
fear that they too might suffer injustice. Enough of this.
Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and
unjust, we must isolate them; there is no other way; and how is the
isolation to be effected? I answer: Let the unjust man be entirely
unjust, and the just man entirely just; nothing is to be taken away
from either of them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the
work of their respective lives. First, let the unjust be like other
distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or physician,
who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps within their limits, and
who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover himself. So let the
unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he
means to be great in his injustice: (he who is found out is nobody:)
for the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are
not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume
the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must
allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the
greatest reputation for justice. If he have taken a false step he must
be able to recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect,
if any of his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where
force is required by his courage and strength, and command of money and
friends. And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and
simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good.
There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured
and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the
sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let
him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must
be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let him be
the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have
been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by
the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to
the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have
reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of
injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the
two.
Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up
for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two
statues.
I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like there is
no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either of
them. This I will proceed to describe; but as you may think the
description a little too coarse, I ask you to suppose, Socrates, that
the words which follow are not mine.—Let me put them into the mouths of
the eulogists of injustice: They will tell you that the just man who is
thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound—will have his eyes burnt
out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be
impaled: Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not to
be, just; the words of Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the unjust
than of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality; he does not
live with a view to appearances—he wants to be really unjust and not to
seem only:—
‘His mind has a soil deep and fertile, Out of which spring his prudent
counsels.’
In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule in the
city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage to whom he will;
also he can trade and deal where he likes, and always to his own
advantage, because he has no misgivings about injustice; and at every
contest, whether in public or private, he gets the better of his
antagonists, and gains at their expense, and is rich, and out of his
gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he
can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and
magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to
honour in a far better style than the just, and therefore he is likely
to be dearer than they are to the gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and
men are said to unite in making the life of the unjust better than the
life of the just.
I was going to say something in answer to Glaucon, when Adeimantus, his
brother, interposed: Socrates, he said, you do not suppose that there
is nothing more to be urged?
Why, what else is there? I answered.
The strongest point of all has not been even mentioned, he replied.
Well, then, according to the proverb, ‘Let brother help brother’—if he
fails in any part do you assist him; although I must confess that
Glaucon has already said quite enough to lay me in the dust, and take
from me the power of helping justice.
Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more: There is another
side to Glaucon’s argument about the praise and censure of justice and
injustice, which is equally required in order to bring out what I
believe to be his meaning. Parents and tutors are always telling their
sons and their wards that they are to be just; but why? not for the
sake of justice, but for the sake of character and reputation; in the
hope of obtaining for him who is reputed just some of those offices,
marriages, and the like which Glaucon has enumerated among the
advantages accruing to the unjust from the reputation of justice. More,
however, is made of appearances by this class of persons than by the
others; for they throw in the good opinion of the gods, and will tell
you of a shower of benefits which the heavens, as they say, rain upon
the pious; and this accords with the testimony of the noble Hesiod and
Homer, the first of whom says, that the gods make the oaks of the just—
‘To bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle;
And the sheep are bowed down with the weight of their fleeces,’
and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them. And
Homer has a very similar strain; for he speaks of one whose fame is—
‘As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god, Maintains justice;
to whom the black earth brings forth Wheat and barley, whose trees are
bowed with fruit, And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives
him fish.’
Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his son
vouchsafe to the just; they take them down into the world below, where
they have the saints lying on couches at a feast, everlastingly drunk,
crowned with garlands; their idea seems to be that an immortality of
drunkenness is the highest meed of virtue. Some extend their rewards
yet further; the posterity, as they say, of the faithful and just shall
survive to the third and fourth generation. This is the style in which
they praise justice. But about the wicked there is another strain; they
bury them in a slough in Hades, and make them carry water in a sieve;
also while they are yet living they bring them to infamy, and inflict
upon them the punishments which Glaucon described as the portion of the
just who are reputed to be unjust; nothing else does their invention
supply. Such is their manner of praising the one and censuring the
other.
Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking
about justice and injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is
found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind is always
declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and
toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of
attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They say also
that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and
they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honour them both
in public and private when they are rich or in any other way
influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and
poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the others. But
most extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking about virtue and
the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and misery to many
good men, and good and happiness to the wicked. And mendicant prophets
go to rich men’s doors and persuade them that they have a power
committed to them by the gods of making an atonement for a man’s own or
his ancestor’s sins by sacrifices or charms, with rejoicings and
feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just or unjust, at a
small cost; with magic arts and incantations binding heaven, as they
say, to execute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom
they appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with the words of Hesiod;—
‘Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth and
her dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil,’
and a tedious and uphill road: then citing Homer as a witness that the
gods may be influenced by men; for he also says:—
‘The gods, too, may be turned from their purpose; and men pray to them
and avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing entreaties, and by
libations and the odour of fat, when they have sinned and
transgressed.’