Al Owski’s Reviews > The Portable Plato > Status Update

“one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature... in some affair of politics or private business; always thinking and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition, just and good action, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance.”

“But in reality justice was such as we were describing, being concerned however, not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concern of man: for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others, he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself…”

“must we not admit that the just State, or the man who is trained in the principles of such a State, will be less likely than the unjust to make away with a deposit of gold or silver? Would any one deny this?… Will the just man or citizen ever be guilty of sacrilege or theft, or treachery either to his friends or to his country?… Neither will he ever break faith where there have been oaths or agreements?”

“And would you not say that he is temperate who has these same elements in friendly harmony, in whom the one ruling principle of reason, and the two subject ones of spirit and desire are equally agreed that reason ought to rule, and do not rebel? Certainly, he said, that is the true account of temperance whether in the State or individual.”

“And the citizens being thus agreed among themselves, in which class will temperance be found in the rulers or in the subjects? In both, as I should imagine, he replied. Do you observe that we were not far wrong in our guess that temperance was a sort of harmony?”

“in the human soul there is a better and also a worse principle; and when the better has the worse under control, then a man is said to be master of himself; and this is a term of praise: but when, owing to evil education or association, the better principle, which is also the smaller, is overwhelmed by the greater mass of the worse – in this case he is blamed and is called the slave of self and unprincipled.”

“Temperance, I replied, is the ordering or controlling of certain pleasures and desires; this is curiously enough implied in the saying of "a man being his own master"; and other traces of the same notion may be found in language.”

“Now, can we find justice without troubling ourselves about temperance?”

“they are always fancying that by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts, and the other rascalities which I was mentioning, not knowing that they are in reality cutting of the heads of a hydra?”

“But, oh heavens! shall we condescend to legislate on any of these particulars? I think, he said, that there is no need to impose laws about them on good men; what regulations are necessary they will find out soon enough for themselves.”