James Adam, The Republic of Plato

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443B - 444A We were right then in suspecting that Justice in a certain shape was with us from the first when we founded our city. But the principle that every one should do his professional work and no more, is in reality only an image or shadow of Justice. True Justice is concerned with the inner man and consists in the performance of its own peculiar office by each if the three elements within the soul. It is this which produces spiritual unity, and spiritual unity shews itself in outward acts. We may now claim to have discovered Justice both in the City and in the Individual.

ff. This section deals with the relation between Civic and Individual virtue. Although we discovered the latter by means of the former, it is the virtue of the soul which is alone original; the other, its outward expression, is but a copy. All true virtue therefore rests upon psychology; not yet, as in VI and VII, on the metaphysical knowledge of the Idea of Good. The full meaning of Plato's ‘natural city’ (κατὰ φύσιν οἰκισθεῖσα πόλις) now appears. It is a commonwealth whose institutions and political life are the outward expression or embodiment of the true and uncorrupted nature of the soul, regarded as in very truth a φυτὸν οὐκ ἔγγειον, ἀλλ᾽ οὐράνιον (Tim. 90 A). Hence arise the three orders of the city; hence too, each order performs its own function; for it is part of soul's ‘nature’ τὰ ἑαυτῆς πράττειν, and πολυπραγμονεῖν is a consequence of unnatural degeneration (441 A). This optimistic view of ‘nature’ is noteworthy. It rests on the wide-spread Greek belief that good is natural, and evil unnatural; cf. infra 444 D and Aristotle's ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ ἡ φύσις οὐδὲν μάτην ποιοῦσι (de Caelo I 4. 271^{a} 33), οὐδὲν τῶν παρὰ φύσιν καλόν (Pol. H 3. 1325^{b} 10) and the like. For more on this subject I may be allowed to refer to my essay on Classical Education, Deighton, Bell and Co. 1895 pp. 12 ff. Although not itself expressly a deduction from the theory of Ideas, Plato's conception of ‘nature’ as good and not evil is altogether in harmony with the sovereignty of the Idea of Good in Book VI: see on 505 A ff.

τέλεον κτλ. The language is suggested by Homer's οὐκ ὄναρ, ἀλλ᾽ ὕπαρ ἐσθλόν, ὅ τοι τετελεσμένον ἔσται (Od. XIX 547). ὅ is a vague internal accusative: see on ἣν ᾠήθημεν in 434 D.

ἔφαμεν κτλ. The reference is to 433 A. On οἰκίζειν see III 407 B note For κινδυνεύομεν Hartman suggests ἐκινδυνεύομεν; but presents do not of course become imperfects in indirect.