THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO - Studyplace

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CHAPTER V [0.359
and the harm to the sufferer outweighs the advantage to the doer.
Consequently, when men have had a taste of both, those who have
not the power to seize the advantage and escape the harm decide
that they would be better off if they made a compact neither to do
wrong nor to suffer it. Hence they began to make laws and covenants
with one another; and whatever the law prescribed they
called lawful and right. That is what right or justice is and how
it came into existence; it stands half-way between the best thing
of all-to do wrong with impunity-and the worst, which is to
suffer wrong without the power to retaliate. So justice is accepted
as a compromise, and valued, not as good in itself, but for lack of
power to do wrong; no man worthy of the name, who had that
power, would ever enter into such a compact with anyone; he
would be mad if he did. That, Socrates, is the nature of justice according
to this account, and such the circumstances in which it
arose.
The next point is that men practise it against the grain, for lack
of power to do wrong. How true that is, we shall best see if we
imagine two men, one just, the other unjust, given full licence to
do whatever they like, and then follow them to observe where each
will be led by his desires. We shall catch the just man taking the
same road as the unjust; he will be moved by self-interest, the end
which it is natural to every creature to pursue as good, until forcibly
turned aside by law and custom to respect the principle of
equality.
Now, the easiest way to give them that complete liberty of action
would be to imagine them possessed of the talisman found by
Gyges, the ancestor of the famous Lydian. The story tells how he
was a shepherd in the King's service. One day there was a great
storm, and the ground where his flock was feeding was rent by an
earthquake. Astonished at the sight, he went down into the chasm
and saw, among other wonders of which the story tells, a brazen
horse, hollow, with windows in its sides. Peering in, he saw a dead
body, which seemed to be of more than human size. It was naked
save for a gold ring, which he took from the finger and made his
way out. When the shepherds met, as they did every month, to
send an account to the King of the state of his flocks, Gyges came