Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/60

Rh still does that fact give any true distinction between good and evil as such? For whoever urges us to do right merely to get the favor of the gods, urges us in reality just to do what is prudent. Such doctrines make justice not desirable in itself, but desirable solely for what it brings in its train. And thus there would be no difference between good and evil as such, but only between what brings reward and what brings punishment. “Therefore, O Socrates,” they in effect say, “do thou defend for us justice in itself, and show us what it is worth in itself, and how it is different from injustice. But put us not off with stories about reward and punishment.” Such is a brief summary of their two speeches.

No better could either the need or the difficulty of the task of moral idealism be set forth than in these eloquent statements. How does Plato lay the ghosts that he has thus raised? How does he give an independent foundation to the ideal of justice? He surely felt how hard a problem he was undertaking. He has, in fact, attempted several answers to it. But the main answer, given in the Republic itself is insufficient, though noble. This answer is, in effect, that the properly balanced, fully and harmoniously developed soul, absorbed in the contemplation of eternal truth, cannot possibly desire injustice; that only the tyrannical soul, in which the desires have the upper hand, where nothing is secure, whose life is like the life of an ill-governed or even anarchic community, tumultuous, wretched, helpless before passion, only such a soul can desire injustice. Injustice, then, means desire for discord,