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[360e]

“But to come now to the decision1 between our two kinds of life, if we separate the most completely just and the most completely unjust man, we shall be able to decide rightly, but if not, not. How, then, is this separation to be made? Thus: we must subtract nothing of his injustice from the unjust man or of his justice from the just, but assume the perfection of each in his own mode of conduct. In the first place, the unjust man must act as clever craftsmen do: a first-rate pilot or physician, for example, feels the difference between impossibilities2 and possibilities in his art

1 Cf. 580 B-C, Philebus 27 C.

2 Cf. Quint. iv. 5. 17 “recte enim Graeci praecipiunt non tentanda quae effici omnino non possint.”

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