We now have three of the cardinal virtues: temperance, the subjection of appetite to reason; fortitude, the control of the spirit by reason; and wisdom, won through education, the assertion of the dictates of reason over the clamour of both appetite and spirit. But where, amid all this, Plato asks, is righteousness? In reply he remarks, "that when we first began our inquiry, ages ago, there lay righteousness rolling at our feet, and we, fools that we were, failed to see her, like people who go about looking for what they have in their hands. Righteousness is the comprehensive aspect of the three virtues already considered in detail. It is the ultimate cause and condition of the existence of all of them. Righteousness in a state consists in each citizen doing the thing to which his nature is most perfectly adapted: in minding one's own business, in other words, with a view to the good of the whole. Righteousness in an individual, then, consists in having each part of one's nature devoted to its specific function: in having the appetites obey, in having the spirit steadfast in difficulty and danger, and in having the reason rule supreme. Thus righteousness, that subordination and coordination of all the parts of the soul in the service of the soul as a whole, includes each of the other three virtues and comprehends them all in the unity of the soul's organic life. "For the righteous man does not permit the several elements within him to meddle with one another, but he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master, and at peace with himself; when he has bound together the three principles within him, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he will begin to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affairs of politics or of private business; in all which cases he will think and call just and good action, that which preserves and coöperates with this condition, and the knowledge which presides over this wisdom."