deluged the company with words, has a mind to escape. But the others will
not let him go, and Socrates adds a humble but earnest request that he will
not desert them at such a crisis of their fate. 'And what can I do more
for you?' he says; 'would you have me put the words bodily into your
souls?' God forbid! replies Socrates; but we want you to be consistent in
the use of terms, and not to employ 'physician' in an exact sense, and then
again 'shepherd' or 'ruler' in an inexact,--if the words are strictly
taken, the ruler and the shepherd look only to the good of their people or
flocks and not to their own: whereas you insist that rulers are solely
actuated by love of office. 'No doubt about it,' replies Thrasymachus.
Then why are they paid? Is not the reason, that their interest is not
comprehended in their art, and is therefore the concern of another art, the
art of pay, which is common to the arts in general, and therefore not
identical with any one of them? Nor would any man be a ruler unless he
were induced by the hope of reward or the fear of punishment;--the reward
is money or honour, the punishment is the necessity of being ruled by a man
worse than himself. And if a State (or Church) were composed entirely of
good men, they would be affected by the last motive only; and there would
be as much 'nolo episcopari' as there is at present of the opposite...

The satire on existing governments is heightened by the simple and
apparently incidental manner in which the last remark is introduced. There
is a similar irony in the argument that the governors of mankind do not
like being in office, and that therefore they demand pay.

...Enough of this: the other assertion of Thrasymachus is far more
important--that the unjust life is more gainful than the just. Now, as you
and I, Glaucon, are not convinced by him, we must reply to him; but if we
try to compare their respective gains we shall want a judge to decide for
us; we had better therefore proceed by making mutual admissions of the