with themselves, and lay them open to the assaults of all around. Therefore, justice is the strength, the true nature of every soul, just as it is of every political constitution; and, accordingly, when this simpler and more truthful system of morals was given to the world by Plato, the doctrine of the sophists fell to the ground as an edifice which had no solid foundation.
46. Plato goes on to enforce and illustrate his views by showing that justice is the health, and consequently the happiness, of the soul, and that the mere semblance of justice is no more the health and happiness of the soul, than the mere semblance of bodily vigour is the health and happiness of the body. How, asks Plato, is bodily health produced? It is produced when the ongoings of our physical frame proceed as they have been established by nature; disease inevitably arises when any part of the system is out of joint, or is not governed according to nature. In the same way disease arises in the soul, when any of its parts do not conform to the design of the whole. But justice is itself a conformity with this design, is a working in accordance with it, just as injustice is the reverse. Therefore injustice, although its external accompaniments and consequences may be honours and rewards, is the disease, the deformity, the misery, the bad habit of the soul; while justice, even though it should meet with no corresponding external advantages, is the
