If it be now asked, what and where is Justice? the answer is—­’every man to attend to his own business.’  Injustice occurs when any one abandons his post, or meddles with what does not belong to him; and more especially when any one of a lower division aspires to the function of a higher.  Such is Justice for the city, and such is it in the individual; the higher faculty—­Reason, must control the two lower—­Courage and Appetite.  Justice is thus a sort of harmony or balance of the mental powers; it is to the mind what health is to the body.  Health is the greatest good, sickness the greatest evil, of the body; so is Justice of the mind.

It is an essential of the Platonic Republic that, among the guardians at least, the sexual arrangements should be under public regulation, and the monopoly of one woman by one man forbidden:  a regard to the breed of the higher caste of citizens requires the magistrate to see that the best couples are brought together, and to refuse to rear the inferior offspring of ill-assorted connexions.  The number of births is also to be regulated.

In carrying on war, special maxims of clemency are to be observed towards Hellenic enemies.

The education of the Guardians must be philosophical; it is for them to rise to the Idea of the good, to master the science of Good and Evil; they must be emancipated from the notion that Pleasure is the good.  To indicate the route to this attainment Plato gives his theory of cognition generally—­the theory of Ideas;—­and indicates (darkly) how these sublime generalities are to be reached.

The Ideal Commonwealth supposed established, is doomed to degradation and decay; passing through Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, to Despotism, with a corresponding declension of happiness.  The same varieties may be traced in the Individual; the ‘despotized’ mind is the acme of Injustice and consequent misery.

The comparative value of Pleasures is discussed.  The pleasures of philosophy, or wisdom (those of Reason), are alone true and pure; the pleasures corresponding to the two other parts of the mind are inferior; Love of Honour (from Courage or Energy), and Love of Money (Appetite).  The well-ordered mind—­Justice—­is above all things the source of happiness.  Apart from all consequences of Justice, this is true; the addition of the natural results only enhances the strength of the position.

In TIMAEUS, Plato repeats the doctrine that wickedness is to the mind what disease is to the body.  The soul suffers from two distempers, madness and ignorance; the man under passionate heat is not wicked voluntarily.  No man is bad willingly; but only from some evil habit of body, the effect of bad bringing-up [very much the view of Robert Owen].