_S._--Whom do you call friends: those whom a man believes to be good,--or those who really are good, whether he believes them to be so or not: and the like, in reference to enemies? _P._--I mean those whom he believes to be good. It is natural that he should love _them_ and that he should hate those whom he believes to be evil. _S._--But is not a man often mistaken in this belief? _P._--Yes: often. _S._--In so far as a man is mistaken, the good men are his enemies, and the evil men his friends. Justice, therefore, on your showing, consists in doing good to the evil men, and evil to the good men. _P._--So it appears. _S._--Now good men are just, and do no wrong to any one. It is therefore just, on your explanation, to hurt those who do no wrong. _P._--Impossible! that is a monstrous doctrine. _S._--You mean, then, that it is just to hurt unjust men, and to benefit just men? _P._--Yes; that is something better. _S._--It will often happen, therefore, when a man misjudges about others, that justice will consist in hurting his friends, since they are in his estimation the evil men: and in benefiting his enemies, since they are in his estimation the good men. Now this is the direct contrary of what Simonides defined to be justice.[9] [Footnote 9: Plato, Republic, i. p. 334 D.] [Side-note: Justice consists in doing good to your friend, if really a good man: hurt to your enemy, with the like proviso. Sokrates affirms that the just man will do no hurt to any one. Definition of Simonides rejected.] "We have misconceived the meaning of Simonides (replies Polemarchus). He must have meant that justice consists in benefiting your friend, assuming him to be a good man: and in hurting your enemy, assuming him to be an evil man." Sokrates proceeds to impugn the definition in this new sense. He shows that justice does not admit of our hurting any man, either evil or good. By hurting the evil man, we only make him more evil than he was before. To do this belongs not to justice, but to injustice.[10] The definition of justice--That it consists in rendering benefit to friends and hurt to enemies--is not suitable to a wise man like Simonides, but to some rich potentate like Periander or Xerxes, who thinks his own power irresistible.[11] [Footnote 10: Plato, Republic, i. pp. 335-336.] [Footnote 11: Here is a characteristic specimen of searching cross-examination in the Platonic or Sokratic style: citing multiplied analogies, and requiring the generalities of a definition to be clothed with particulars, that its sufficiency may be proved in each of many successive as well as different cases.] [Side-note: Thrasymachus takes up the dialogue--Repulsive portrait drawn of him.]