because they think that every man ought to share in this sort of virtue,
and that states could not exist if this were otherwise. I have explained
to you, Socrates, the reason of this phenomenon.

And that you may not suppose yourself to be deceived in thinking that all
men regard every man as having a share of justice or honesty and of every
other political virtue, let me give you a further proof, which is this. In
other cases, as you are aware, if a man says that he is a good flute-
player, or skilful in any other art in which he has no skill, people either
laugh at him or are angry with him, and his relations think that he is mad
and go and admonish him; but when honesty is in question, or some other
political virtue, even if they know that he is dishonest, yet, if the man
comes publicly forward and tells the truth about his dishonesty, then, what
in the other case was held by them to be good sense, they now deem to be
madness. They say that all men ought to profess honesty whether they are
honest or not, and that a man is out of his mind who says anything else.
Their notion is, that a man must have some degree of honesty; and that if
he has none at all he ought not to be in the world.

I have been showing that they are right in admitting every man as a
counsellor about this sort of virtue, as they are of opinion that every man
is a partaker of it. And I will now endeavour to show further that they do
not conceive this virtue to be given by nature, or to grow spontaneously,
but to be a thing which may be taught; and which comes to a man by taking
pains. No one would instruct, no one would rebuke, or be angry with those
whose calamities they suppose to be due to nature or chance; they do not
try to punish or to prevent them from being what they are; they do but pity
them. Who is so foolish as to chastise or instruct the ugly, or the
diminutive, or the feeble? And for this reason. Because he knows that
good and evil of this kind is the work of nature and of chance; whereas if