republic (books 1 - 5)   

I am delighted, he replied, to hear you say so, and shall begin
by speaking, as I proposed, of the nature and origin of justice.

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer
injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And
so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have
had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and
obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among
themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual
covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them
lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature
of justice; it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all,
which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst
of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retalia-
tion; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is
tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honored by
reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man
who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such
an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he
did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and
origin of justice.

Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and
because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if
we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the
just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch
and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover
in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along
the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem
to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice
by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may
be most completely given to them in the form of such a power
as is said to have been possessed by Gyges, the ancestor of Croe-
sus the 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, stoop-
ing 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 outward and re-
appeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with
the same result--when he turned the collet inward he became
invisible, when outward he reappeared. Whereupon he con-
trived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the
court; where as 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 anyone
at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would,