conduct of the individual will not fail to correspond with his internal condition. You thus perceive that Plato makes individual justice, or the highest virtue of the soul, to be itself the very constitution of the soul, just as political justice, or the subordination of the mass to certain governing powers, is itself the very constitution of the state. A remarkable passage from the fourth book of the Republic will show you how it is by close observation to the facts of our nature that Plato discriminates these three powers of the mind, and shows that they are really distinct.—(Rep., iv. p. 439; p. 160 in Vaughan and Davies's translation.)
43. We have now to show against whom was Plato's doctrine of justice, and of the constitution of human nature, intended to be directed. It was directed against the sophists, and he argued thus: if the nature of justice be such that it is necessarily inherent in the constitution of the human soul, is, in fact, itself that constitution, then is the sophistry of the sophists, and of all other cavillers, at once overthrown. The sophists argued that injustice might in many cases be preferable to justice: they argued that justice was good, and was esteemed, merely because it brought wealth, security, honour, and praise, so that if a man could with consummate art simulate justice, while he was in his soul unjust, he might reap the full reward of justice among men, and be to that extent happy; and, so far as regarded
