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I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeiman-
tus, but on hearing these words I was quite delighted, and said:
Sons of an illustrious father, that was not a bad beginning of
the elegiac verses which the admirer of Glaucon made in honor
of you after you had distinguished yourselves at the battle of
Megara:

"Sons of Ariston," he sang, "divine offspring of an illustrious hero."

The epithet is very appropriate, for there is something truly
divine in being able to argue as you have done for the supe-
riority of injustice, and remaining unconvinced by your own
arguments. And I do believe that you are not convinced--
this I infer from your general character, for had I judged only
from your speeches I should have mistrusted you. But now,
the greater my confidence in you, the greater is my difficulty in
knowing what to say. For I am in a strait between two; on
the one hand I feel that I am unequal to the task; and my ina-
bility is brought home to me by the fact that you were not sat-
isfied with the answer which I made to Thrasymachus, proving,
as I thought, the superiority which justice has over injustice.
And yet I cannot refuse to help, while breath and speech remain
to me; I am afraid that there would be an impiety in being
present when justice is evil spoken of and not lifting up a hand
in her defence. And therefore I had best give such help as I
can.

Glaucon and the rest entreated me by all means not to let
the question drop, but to proceed in the investigation. They
wanted to arrive at the truth, first, about the nature of justice
and injustice, and secondly, about their relative advantages.
I told them, what I really thought, that the inquiry would be
of a serious nature, and would require very good eyes. Seeing
then, I said, that we are no great wits, I think that we had bet-
ter adopt a method which I may illustrate thus; suppose that
a short-sighted person had been asked by someone to read small
letters from a distance; and it occurred to someone else that
they might be found in another place which was larger and in
which the letters were larger--if they were the same and he
could read the larger letters first, and then proceed to the lesser
--this would have been thought a rare piece of good-fortune.

Very true, said Adeimantus; but how does the illustration
apply to our inquiry?

I will tell you, I replied; justice, which is the subject of our
inquiry, is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of
an individual, and sometimes as the virtue of a State.

True, he replied.

And is not a State larger than an individual?

It is.

Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to be larger
and more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we in-
quire into the nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear
in the State, and secondly in the individual, proceeding from
the greater to the lesser and comparing them.

That, he said, is an excellent proposal.