man’s moral principles than a word? More effective unquestionably; for of those who say what is just many do what is unjust; but if a man’s actions are just there is no injustice in him. Well then, Hippias, I ask you, did you ever know me either bearing false witness or playing the informer, or exciting discontent among the people; or doing any other wrong action? Certainly not. But is not abstaining from what is wrong the definition of what is right? There you are again! said Hippias; I catch you in the act; you are {93} wriggling cunningly out of the position, and instead of telling me what just men do, you tell me what they don’t do. I did so because I honestly thought that to abstain from all unjust deeds was a sufficient proof of the existence of justice in the breast of the actor. But if a negative answer does not satisfy you, then take this--I say that Right is conformity to the laws (τὸ νόμιμον δίκαιον εἶναι). Do you then literally mean to say that Right and Law are identical? I do. Well, then, I must tell you, in the first place, that I do not understand what you mean by Law and Right. You know the laws of the State, I presume? Of course. What then are the laws of the State? The laws of the State, said he, are all the enactments which the people have made when they have agreed among themselves as to what things ought to be done and what things ought not to be done. Then, said Socrates, that person would act according to law who obeyed those enactments, and he would be a lawless person who transgressed them? Unquestionably. Then I presume the man who did according to law would act according to rights while the man who transgressed the law would do wrong? Of course. Then you admit that the man who observes law, and the just man, or the man who acts according to right, are identical, and the transgressor of law and the unjust man in the same way? This sounds very well, said Hippias; but how can rectitude, or right, be measured by the standard of laws which the very persons who make them are often the first to repudiate,--enacting the exact contrary? That is not so very strange, said Socrates, for the same parties who declare war to-day may {94} make peace to-morrow. Of course they may, he replied. Well, then, I do not comprehend with what distinction you maintain that, whereas persons who observe the rights of war to-day and the rights of peace to-morrow are not charged with inconsistency, persons obeying any other laws to-day which may be reversed to-morrow are chargeable with unsettling the principles of right; or do you really mean to stand up as a universal peacemonger, and to say that those who serve their country well in war are guilty of a crime? Far from it, said he. Right, said Socrates; for obedience to the laws is really in every good citizen the one thing needful; and Lycurgus, the famous Spartan, would have been not a whit better than other legislators had he not by his institutions worked into the very blood of the people a