RING OF GYGES: from Plato’s REPUBLIC – Book 2
They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that
the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered
injustice and have had experience of both, not being able [359a] to avoid the one
and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to
have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is
ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the
origin and nature of justice; — it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all,
which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to
suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle
point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, [359b] but as the lesser evil,
and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who
is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were
able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates,
of the nature and origin of justice.
Now that those who practice justice do so involuntarily and because they have
not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind:
