And injustice, which is the
insubordination and disobedience of the inferior elements in the soul,
is the opposite of justice, and is inharmonious and unnatural, being to
the soul what disease is to the body; for in the soul as well as in the
body, good or bad actions produce good or bad habits. And virtue is the
health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice is the disease
and weakness and deformity of the soul.
Again the old question returns upon us: Is justice or injustice the
more profitable? The question has become ridiculous. For injustice,
like mortal disease, makes life not worth having. Come up with me to
the hill which overhangs the city and look down upon the single form of
virtue, and the infinite forms of vice, among which are four special
ones, characteristic both of states and of individuals. And the state
which corresponds to the single form of virtue is that which we have
been describing, wherein reason rules under one of two names—monarchy
and aristocracy. Thus there are five forms in all, both of states and
of souls...
In attempting to prove that the soul has three separate faculties,
Plato takes occasion to discuss what makes difference of faculties. And
the criterion which he proposes is difference in the working of the
faculties. The same faculty cannot produce contradictory effects. But
the path of early reasoners is beset by thorny entanglements, and he
will not proceed a step without first clearing the ground. This leads
him into a tiresome digression, which is intended to explain the nature
of contradiction. First, the contradiction must be at the same time and
in the same relation. Secondly, no extraneous word must be introduced
into either of the terms in which the contradictory proposition is
expressed: for example, thirst is of drink, not of warm drink. He
implies, what he does not say, that if, by the advice of reason, or by
the impulse of anger, a man is restrained from drinking, this proves
that thirst, or desire under which thirst is included, is distinct from
anger and reason. But suppose that we allow the term ‘thirst’ or
‘desire’ to be modified, and say an ‘angry thirst,’ or a ‘revengeful
desire,’ then the two spheres of desire and anger overlap and become
confused. This case therefore has to be excluded. And still there
remains an exception to the rule in the use of the term ‘good,’ which
is always implied in the object of desire. These are the discussions of
an age before logic; and any one who is wearied by them should remember
that they are necessary to the clearing up of ideas in the first
development of the human faculties.