[359a]
to avoid the
one and take the other determine that it is for their profit to make a
compact with one another neither to commit nor to suffer injustice; and that
this is the beginning of legislation and covenants between men, and that
they name the commandment of the law the lawful and the just, and that this
is the genesis and essential nature of justice—a compromise
between the best, which is to do wrong with impunity, and the worst, which
is to be wronged and be impotent to get one's revenge. Justice, they tell
us, being mid-way between the two, is accepted and approved,
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.