[589a]
but
to starve the man1 and so enfeeble him that
he can be pulled about2 whithersoever either of the
others drag him, and not to familiarize or reconcile with one another the
two creatures but suffer them to bite and fight and devour one another.3”
“Yes,” he said, “that is precisely what the
panegyrist of injustice will be found to say.” “And on
the other hand he who says that justice is the more profitable affirms that
all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us4
1 The whole passage illustrates the psychology of 440 B ff.
2 Cf. Protag. 352 Cπεριελκομένης, with Aristot.Eth. Nic. 1145 b 24.
3 Perhaps a latent allusion to Hesiod, Works and Days 278.
4 Cf. “the inward man,”Romans vii. 22, 2 Cor. iv. 16, Ephes. iii. 16.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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