Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
*343B* Because you fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens or tends
the sheep or oxen with a view to their own good and not to the good of
himself or his master; and you further imagine that the rulers of states,
if they are true rulers, never think of their subjects as sheep, and that
they are not studying their own advantage day and night. Oh, no; *343C*
and so entirely astray are you in your ideas about the just and unjust as
not even to know that justice and the just are in reality another's good;
that is to say, the interest of the ruler and stronger, and the loss of
the subject and servant; and injustice the opposite; for the unjust is
lord over the truly simple and just: he is the stronger, and his subjects
do what is for his interest, and minister to his *343D* happiness, which
is very far from being their own. Consider further, most foolish Socrates,
that the just is always a loser in comparison with the unjust. First of
all, in private contracts: wherever the unjust is the partner of the just
you will find that, when the partnership is dissolved, the unjust man has
always more and the just less. Secondly, in their dealings with the State:
when there is an income-tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust
less on the same amount of income; and when there is anything to be *343E*
received the one gains nothing and the other much. Observe also what
happens when they take an office; there is the just man neglecting his
affairs and perhaps suffering other losses, and getting nothing out of the
public, because he is just; moreover he is hated by his friends and
acquaintance for refusing to serve them in unlawful ways. But all this is
reversed in the case of the unjust man. I am speaking, as before, *344A*
of injustice on a large scale in which the advantage of the unjust is most
apparent; and my meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that
highest form of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men,
and the sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most
miserable--that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away the
property of others, not little by little but wholesale; comprehending in
one, things sacred as well as profane, *344B* private {22} and public; for
which acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating any one of them
singly, he would be punished and incur great disgrace--they who do such
wrong in particular cases are called robbers of temples, and man-stealers
and burglars and swindlers and thieves. But when a man besides taking away
the money of the citizens has made slaves of them, then, instead of these
names of reproach, he is *344C* termed happy and blessed, not only by the
citizens but by all who hear of his having achieved the consummation of
injustice. For mankind censure injustice, fearing that they may be the
victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it. And thus, as
I have shown, Socrates, injustice, when on a sufficient scale, has more
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