Thrasymachus is now represented as renouncing the abstraction above noted,[21] and reverting to the actualities of life. "Such talk is childish!" (he exclaims, with the coarseness imputed to him in this dialogue). "Shepherds and herdsmen tend and fatten their flocks and herds, not for the benefit of the sheep and oxen, but for the profit of themselves and the proprietors. So too the genuine ruler in a city: he regards his subjects as so many sheep, looking only to the amount of profit which he can draw from them.[22] Justice is, in real truth, the good of another; it is the profit of him who is more powerful and rules--the loss of those who are weaker and must obey. It is the unjust man who rules over the multitude of just and well-meaning men. They serve him because he is the stronger: they build up his happiness at the cost of their own. Everywhere, both in private dealing and in public function, the just man is worse off than the unjust. I mean by the unjust, one who has the power to commit wrongful seizure on a large scale. You may see this if you look at the greatest injustice of all--the case of the despot, who makes himself happy while the juster men over whom he rules are miserable. One who is detected in the commission of petty crimes is punished, and gets a bad name: but if a man has force enough to commit crime on the grand scale, to enslave the persons of the citizens, and to appropriate their goods--instead of being called by a bad name, he is envied and regarded as happy, not only by the citizens themselves, but by all who hear him named. Those who blame injustice, do so from the fear of suffering it, not from the fear of doing it. Thus then injustice, in its successful efficiency, is strong, free, and over-ruling, as compared with justice. Injustice is profitable to a man's self: justice (as I said before) is what is profitable to some other man stronger than he."[23] [Footnote 21: Plato, Republic, p. 345 B-C.] [Footnote 22: Plato, Republic, p. 343 B. A similar comparison is put into the mouth of Sokrates himself by Plato in the Theætêtus, p. 174 D.] [Footnote 23: Plato, Republic, i. pp. 343-344.] [Side-note: Position laid for the subsequent debate and exposition.] Thrasymachus is described as laying down this position in very peremptory language, and as anxious to depart immediately after it, if he had not been detained by the other persons present. His position forms the pivot of the subsequent conversation. The two opinions included in it--(That justice consists in obedience yielded by the weak to the orders of the strong, for the advantage of the strong--That injustice, if successful, is profitable and confers happiness: justice the contrary)--are disputed, both of them, by Sokrates as well as by Glaukon.[24] [Footnote 24: Plato, Repub. i. pp. 345 A-348 A.]