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Socrates, who at first assumes to have been terror-struck at this sudden attack, tries to soothe Thrasymachus "A clever man like you," he says, "should pity us in our perplexity, instead of treating us harshly; we are searching for what is more precious than any gold, and want all the assistance we can get."

Thrasymachus is somewhat pacified by this flattery, and gives his own theory, which is substantially the same as that we have already seen advocated by Callicles in the "Gorgias,"—that Justice is "the Interest of the Stronger." Rulers always legislate with a view to their own interests; and as a shepherd fattens his sheep for his own advantage, so do the "shepherds of the people" regard their subjects as mere sheep, and look only to the possible profit they may get from them. Justice is thus the gain of the strong and the loss of the weak; for the just man's honesty is ruinous to himself, while the unjust man, especially if he can plunder wholesale like the tyrant, is happy and prosperous, and well spoken of; and thus Injustice itself is a stronger and lordlier thing than Justice.

To this barefaced sophistry Socrates replies that the unjust man may go too far; in overreaching his neighbours—just and unjust alike—he breaks all the rules of art, and proves himself an unskilful and ignorant workman, who has no fixed standard in life to act by. And in an unjust state, where every man is thus trying to get the better of his neighbour, there will be endless discord and divisions, making all united action impossible; it will be like a house divided against itself. And as it is with the unjust state, so will it be with