'There I cannot agree with you.' Then may heaven give us the spirit of agreement, for I am as convinced of the truth of what I say as that Crete is an island; and, if I were a lawgiver, I would exercise a censorship over the poets, and I would punish them if they said that the wicked are happy, or that injustice is profitable.

And these are not the only matters in which I should make my citizens talk in a different way to the world in general.

If I asked Zeus and Apollo, the divine legislators of Crete and Sparta,--'Are the just and pleasant life the same or not the same' ?--and they replied,--'Not the same'; and I asked again--'Which is the happier'?
And they said'-- 'The pleasant life,' this is an answer not fit for a God to utter, and therefore I ought rather to put the same question to some legislator.

And if he replies 'The pleasant,' then I should say to him, 'O my father, did you not tell me that I should live as justly as possible'?
and if to be just is to be happy, what is that principle of happiness or good which is superior to pleasure?
Is the approval of gods and men to be deemed good and honourable, but unpleasant, and their disapproval the reverse?
Or is the neither doing nor suffering evil good and honourable, although not pleasant?
But you cannot make men like what is not pleasant, and therefore you must make them believe that the just is pleasant.

The business of the legislator is to clear up this confusion.