[408e]
the further question—“What is the next step?” What do we say is the way in which we ought to begin the study of justice? Just as if a man were exhorting us to devote care to our bodies, observing that we like children had as yet no notion of the existence of the arts of gymnastics and medicine; and were then to reproach us and say that it is disgraceful to spend all one's care on wheat and barley and vines and all the goods which we labor to acquire for the sake of the body, and yet make no effort to discover some art or device for securing that the body itself shall be in the best possible condition—and that in spite of the fact that such an art exists. Suppose then that we had put to the man who was thus exhorting us this further question—
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.
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