you and I agreed about this?

  Cle. I think that we partly agree and partly do not.

  Ath. When a man has health and wealth and a tyranny which lasts, and
when he is preeminent in strength and courage, and has the gift of
immortality, and none of the so-called evils which counter-balance
these goods, but only the injustice and insolence of his own nature-of
such an one you are, I suspect, unwilling to believe that he is
miserable rather than happy.

  Cle. That is quite true.

  Ath. Once more: Suppose that he be valiant and strong, and
handsome and rich, and does throughout his whole life whatever he
likes, still, if he be unrighteous and insolent, would not both of you
agree that he will of necessity live basely? You will surely grant
so much?

  Cle. Certainly.

  Ath. And an evil life too?

  Cle. I am not equally disposed to grant that.

  Ath. Will he not live painfully and to his own disadvantage?

  Cle. How can I possibly say so?

  Ath. How! Then may Heaven make us to be of one mind, for now we
are of two. To me, dear Cleinias, the truth of what I am saying is
as plain as the fact that Crete is an island. And, if I were a
lawgiver, I would try to make the poets and all the citizens speak
in this strain, and I would inflict the heaviest penalties on any
one in all the land who should dare to say that there are bad men
who lead pleasant lives, or that the profitable and gainful is one
thing, and the just another; and there are many other matters about
which I should make my citizens speak in a manner different from the
Cretans and Lacedaemonians of this age, and I may say, indeed, from
the world in general. For tell me, my good friends, by Zeus and Apollo
tell me, if I were to ask these same Gods who were your legislators-Is
not the most just life also the pleasantest? or are there two lives,
one of which is the justest and the other the pleasantest?-and they
were to reply that there are two; and thereupon I proceeded to ask,
(that would be the right way of pursuing the enquiry), Which are the
happier-those who lead the justest, or those who lead the
pleasantest life? and they replied, Those who lead the
pleasantest-that would be a very strange answer, which I should not
like to put into the mouth of the Gods. The words will come with
more propriety from the lips of fathers and legislators, and therefore
I will repeat my former questions to one of them, and suppose him to
say again that he who leads the pleasantest life is the happiest.
And to that I rejoin:-O my father, did you not wish me to live as
happily as possible? And yet you also never ceased telling me that I
should live as justly as possible. Now, here the giver of the rule,
whether he be legislator or father, will be in a dilemma, and will
in vain endeavour to be consistent with himself. But if he were to
declare that the justest life is also the happiest, every one
hearing him would enquire, if I am not mistaken, what is that good and
noble principle in life which the law approves, and which is
superior to pleasure. For what good can the just man have which is
separated from pleasure? Shall we say that glory and fame, coming from
Gods and men, though good and noble, are nevertheless unpleasant,
and infamy pleasant? Certainly not, sweet legislator. Or shall we
say that the not-doing of wrong and there being no wrong done is
good and honourable, although there is no pleasure in it, and that the
doing wrong is pleasant, but evil and base?

  Cle. Impossible.

  Ath. The view which identifies the pleasant and the pleasant and the
just and the good and the noble has an excellent moral and religious
tendency. And the opposite view is most at variance with the designs
of the legislator, and is, in his opinion, infamous; for no one, if he
can help, will be persuaded to do that which gives him more pain
than pleasure. But as distant prospects are apt to make us dizzy,
especially in childhood, the legislator will try to purge away the
darkness and exhibit the truth; he will persuade the citizens, in some
way or other, by customs and praises and words, that just and unjust
are shadows only, and that injustice, which seems opposed to
justice, when contemplated by the unjust and evil man appears pleasant
and the just most unpleasant; but that from the just man's point of
view, the very opposite is the appearance of both of them.

  Cle. True.

  Ath. And which may be supposed to be the truer judgment-that of
the inferior or of the better soul?

  Cle. Surely, that of the better soul.

  Ath. Then the unjust life must not only be more base and depraved,
but also more unpleasant than the just and holy life?

  Cle. That seems to be implied in the present argument.

  Ath. And even supposing this were otherwise, and not as the argument
has proven, still the lawgiver, who is worth anything, if he ever
ventures to tell a lie to the young for their good, could not invent a
more useful lie than this, or one which will have a better effect in