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know what justice is, you should not only ask but answer, and
you should not seek honor to yourself from the refutation of an
opponent, but have your own answer; for there is many a one
who can ask and cannot answer. And now I will not have you
say that justice is duty or advantage or profit or gain or interest,
for this sort of nonsense will not do for me; I must have clear-
ness and accuracy.

I was panic-stricken at his words, and could not look at him
without trembling. Indeed I believe that if I had not fixed my
eye upon him, I should have been struck dumb: but when I saw
his fury rising, I looked at him first, and was therefore able to
reply to him.

Thrasymachus, I said, with a quiver, don't be hard upon us.
Polemarchus and I may have been guilty of a little mistake in
the argument, but I can assure you that the error was not in-
tentional. If we were seeking for a piece of gold, you would
not imagine that we were "knocking under to one another,"
and so losing our chance of finding it. And why, when we are
seeking for justice, a thing more precious than many pieces of
gold, do you say that we are weakly yielding to one another
and not doing our utmost to get at the truth? Nay, my good
friend, we are most willing and anxious to do so, but the fact
is that we cannot. And if so, you people who know all things
should pity us and not be angry with us.

How characteristic of Socrates! he replied, with a bitter
laugh; that's your ironical style! Did I not foresee--have I
not already told you, that whatever he was asked he would
refuse to answer, and try irony or any other shuffle, in order
that he might avoid answering?

You are a philosopher, Thrasymachus, I replied, and well
know that if you ask a person what numbers make up twelve,
taking care to prohibit him whom you ask from answering
twice six, or three times four, or six times two, or four times
three, "for this sort of nonsense will not do for me"--then
obviously, if that is your way of putting the question, no one
can answer you. But suppose that he were to retort: "Thra-
symachus, what do you mean? If one of these numbers which
you interdict be the true answer to the question, am I falsely
to say some other number which is not the right one?--is that
your meaning?"--How would you answer him?

Just as if the two cases were at all alike! he said.

Why should they not be? I replied; and even if they are not,
but only appear to be so to the person who is asked, ought he
not to say what he thinks, whether you and I forbid him or not?

I presume then that you are going to make one of the inter-
dicted answers?

I dare say that I may, notwithstanding the danger, if upon
reflection I approve of any of them.

But what if I give you an answer about justice other and
better, he said, than any of these? What do you deserve to
have done to you?

Done to me!--as becomes the ignorant, I must learn from
the wise--that is what I deserve to have done to me.