Thus much to show that the parallel between the community and the individual, which Plato pursues through the larger portion of the Republic, is fallacious. His affirmation--That the just man is happy in his justice, _quand même_--in his own mental perfection, whatever supposition may be made as to the community among whom he lives--implies that the just man is self-sufficing: and Plato himself expressly declares that no individual is self-sufficing. Indeed, no author can set forth more powerfully than Plato himself in this very dialogue--the uncomfortable and perilous position of a philosophical individual, when standing singly as a dissenter among a community with fixed habits and sentiments--unphilosophical and anti-philosophical. Such a person (Plato says) is like a man who has fallen into a den of wild beasts: he may think himself fortunate, if by careful retirement and absence from public manifestation, he can preserve himself secure and uncorrupted: but his characteristic and superior qualities can obtain no manifestation. The philosopher requires a community suited to his character. Nowhere does any such community (so Plato says) exist at present.[35] [Footnote 35: Plato, Repub. vi. pp. 494 E, 496 D, 497 B. [Greek: ô(/sper ei)s thêri/a a)/nthrôpos e)mpesô/n], &c. Compare also ix. p. 592 A.] [Side-note: Plato has not made good his refutation--the thesis which he impugns is true.] I cannot think, therefore, that the main thesis which Sokrates professes to have established, against the difficulties raised by Glaukon, is either proved or provable. Plato has fallen into error, partly by exaggerating the parallelism between the individual man and the commonwealth: partly by attempting to reason on justice and injustice in abstract isolation, without regard to the natural consequences of either--while yet those consequences cannot be really excluded from consideration, when we come to apply to these terms, predicates either favourable or unfavourable. That justice, taken along with its ordinary and natural consequences, tends materially to the happiness of the just agent--that injustice, looked at in the same manner, tends to destroy or impair the happiness of the unjust--these are propositions true and valuable to be inculcated. But this was the very case embodied in the exhortations of the ordinary moralists and counsellors, whom Plato intends to refute. He is not satisfied to hear them praise justice taken along with its natural consequences: he stands forward to panegyrise justice abstractedly, and without its natural consequences: nay, even if followed by consequences the very reverse of those which are ordinary and natural.[36] He insists that justice is eligible and pleasing _per se_, self-recommending: that among the three varieties of _Bona_ (1. That which we choose for itself and from its own immediate attractions. 2. That which is in itself indifferent or even painful, but which we choose from regard to