hint which had been already given by Glaucon, proceeds to show that in the
opinion of mankind justice is regarded only for the sake of rewards and
reputation, and points out the advantage which is given to such arguments
as those of Thrasymachus and Glaucon by the conventional morality of
mankind. He seems to feel the difficulty of 'justifying the ways of God to
man.' Both the brothers touch upon the question, whether the morality of
actions is determined by their consequences; and both of them go beyond the
position of Socrates, that justice belongs to the class of goods not
desirable for themselves only, but desirable for themselves and for their
results, to which he recalls them. In their attempt to view justice as an
internal principle, and in their condemnation of the poets, they anticipate
him. The common life of Greece is not enough for them; they must penetrate
deeper into the nature of things.

It has been objected that justice is honesty in the sense of Glaucon and
Adeimantus, but is taken by Socrates to mean all virtue. May we not more
truly say that the old-fashioned notion of justice is enlarged by Socrates,
and becomes equivalent to universal order or well-being, first in the
State, and secondly in the individual? He has found a new answer to his
old question (Protag.), 'whether the virtues are one or many,' viz. that
one is the ordering principle of the three others. In seeking to establish
the purely internal nature of justice, he is met by the fact that man is a
social being, and he tries to harmonise the two opposite theses as well as
he can. There is no more inconsistency in this than was inevitable in his
age and country; there is no use in turning upon him the cross lights of
modern philosophy, which, from some other point of view, would appear
equally inconsistent. Plato does not give the final solution of
philosophical questions for us; nor can he be judged of by our standard.

The remainder of the Republic is developed out of the question of the sons