THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO - Studyplace

32 CHAPTER IV [I. 349
make themsdves masters of whole cities and nations. Perhaps you
think I was talking of pickpockets. There is profit even in that
trade, if you can escape detection; but it doesn't come to much
as compared with the gains I was describing.
I understand you now on that point, I replied. What astonished
me was that you should class injustice with superior character and
intdligence and justice with the reverse.
Well, I do, he rejoined.
That is a much more stubborn position, my friend; and it is
not so easy to see how to assail it. If you would admit that injustice,
however well it pays, is nevertheless, as some people think, a
defect and a discreditable thing, then we could argue on generally •
accepted principles. But now that you have gone so far as to rank
it with superior character and intelligence, obviously you will say
it is an admirable thing as well as a source of strength, and has
all the other qualities we have attributed to justice.
You read my thoughts like a book, he replied.
However, I went on, it is no good shirking; I must go through
with the argument, so long as I can be sure you are really speaking
your mind. I do believe you are not playing with us now, Thrasy~
machus, but stating the truth as you conceive it.
Why not refute the doctrine he said. What does it matter to you
whether I bdieve it or not
It does not matter, I replied.
[Socrates attacks separately three points in Thrasymachus' posi~
tion: (I) that the unjust is superior to the just in character ('virtue')
and intelligence; (2) that injustice is a source of strength;
(3) that it brings happiness.
(I) The first argument (349 B-350 c) is omitted here, because
only a very loose paraphrase could liberate the meaning from the
stiff and archaic form of the original. Thrasymachus has upheld
the superman who will try to outdo everyone else and go to any
lengths in getting the better of his neighbours. Socrates attacks this
ideal of unlimited self-assertion, relying once more on the admitted
analogy between the art of living and other arts. The musician,
tuning an instrument, knows that there is for each stn"ng a certain