protagoras   

manner on your behalf also, if you would allow me, that justice is

either the same with holiness, or very nearly the same; and above

all I would assert that justice is like holiness and holiness is

like justice; and I wish that you would tell me whether I may be

permitted to give this answer on your behalf, and whether you would

agree with me.

He replied, I cannot simply agree, Socrates, to the proposition that

justice is holy and that holiness is just, for there appears to me

to be a difference between them. But what matter? if you please I

please; and let us assume, if you will I, that justice is holy, and

that holiness is just.

Pardon me, I replied; I do not want this "if you wish" or "if you

will" sort of conclusion to be proven, but I want you and me to be

proven: I mean to say that the conclusion will be best proven if there

be no "if."

Well, he said, I admit that justice bears a resemblance to holiness,

for there is always some point of view in which everything is like

every other thing; white is in a certain way like black, and hard is

like soft, and the most extreme opposites have some qualities in

common; even the parts of the face which, as we were saying before,

are distinct and have different functions, are still in a certain

point of view similar, and one of them is like another of them. And

you may prove that they are like one another on the same principle

that all things are like one another; and yet things which are like in

some particular ought not to be called alike, nor things which are

unlike in some particular, however slight, unlike.

And do you think, I said in a tone of surprise, that justice and

holiness have but a small degree of likeness?

Certainly not; any more than I agree with what I understand to be

your view.

Well, I said, as you appear to have a difficulty about this, let

us take another of the examples which you mentioned instead. Do you