After thus forcibly insisting upon the necessary correlation between the individual and the society, as well as upon the variability and uncertainty of justice and injustice in different existing societies[55]--Plato is inconsistent with himself in affirming, as an universal position, that the just man receives the favour and good treatment of society, the unjust man, hatred and punishment.[56] You cannot decide this until you know in what society the just man is placed. In order to make him comfortable, Plato is obliged to construct an imaginary society suited to him: which would have been unnecessary, if you can affirm that he is sure to be well treated in every society. [Footnote 55: Plato, Republic, v. p. 479, vi. p. 493 C.] [Footnote 56: Plato, Republic, x. p. 613.] [Side-note: Qualified sense in which only this can be done.] There is a sense indeed (different from what Plato intended), in which the proposition is both true, and consistent with his own doctrine about the correlation between the individual and the society. When Plato speaks of the just or the unjust man, to whose judgment does he make appeal? To his own judgment? or to which of the numerous other dissentient judgments? For that there were numerous dissentient opinions on this point, Plato himself testifies: a person regarded as just or unjust in one community, would not be so regarded in another. All this ethical and intellectual discord is fully recognised as a fact, by Plato himself: who moreover keenly felt it, when comparing his own judgment with that of the Athenians his countrymen. Such being the ambiguity of the terms, we can affirm nothing respecting the just or the unjust man absolutely and generally--respecting justice or injustice in the abstract: We cannot affirm any thing respecting the happiness or misery of either, except with reference to the sentiments of the community wherein each is placed. Assuming their sentiments to be known, we may pronounce that any individual citizen who is unjust _relatively to them_ (_i.e._, who behaves in a manner which they account unjust), will be punished by their superior force, and rendered miserable: while any one who abstains from such behaviour, and conducts himself in a manner which they account just, will receive from them just dealing, with a certain measure of trust, and esteem: Taken in this relative sense, we may truly say of the unjust man, that he will be unhappy; because displeasure, hatred, and punitory infliction from his countrymen will be quite sufficient to make him so, without any other causes of unhappiness. Respecting the just man, we can only say that he will be happy, so far as exemption from this cause of misery is concerned: but we cannot make sure that he will be happy on the whole, because happiness is a product to which many different conditions, positive and negative, must concur--while the serious causes of misery are efficacious, each taken singly, in producing their result.