The more appeals of this sort which you make, he said, the [B]more determined are we that you shall tell us how such a State is possible: speak out and at once.
Let me begin by reminding you that we found our way hither in the search after justice and injustice.
True, he replied; but what of that?
I was only going to ask whether, if we have discovered them, we are to require that the just man should in nothing fail of absolute justice; or may we be satisfied with an approximation, [C]and the attainment in him of a higher degree of justice than is to be found in other men?
The approximation will be enough.
We were enquiring into the nature of absolute justice and into the character of the perfectly just, and into injustice and the perfectly unjust, that we might have an ideal. (1) The ideal is a standard only which can never be perfectly realized;We were to look at these in order that we might judge of our own happiness and unhappiness according to the standard [D]which they exhibited and the degree in which we resembled them, but not with any view of showing that they could exist in fact.
True, he said.
Would a painter be any the worse because, after having delineated with consummate art an ideal of a perfectly beautiful man, he was unable to show that any such man could ever have existed?
He would be none the worse.
[E] Well, and were we not creating an ideal of a perfect State?