For tell me, my good friends, by Zeus and Apollo tell me, if I were to ask these same Gods who were your legislators,--Is not the most just life also the pleasantest?
or are there two lives, one of which is the justest and the other the pleasantest ?--and they were to reply that there are two; and thereupon I proceeded to ask, (that would be the right way of pursuing the enquiry), Which are the happier--those who lead the justest, or those who lead the pleasantest life?
and they replied, Those who lead the pleasantest--that would be a very strange answer, which I should not like to put into the mouth of the Gods.

The words will come with more propriety from the lips of fathers and legislators, and therefore I will repeat my former questions to one of them, and suppose him to say again that he who leads the pleasantest life is the happiest.

And to that I rejoin:--O my father, did you not wish me to live as happily as possible?
And yet you also never ceased telling me that I should live as justly as possible.

Now, here the giver of the rule, whether he be legislator or father, will be in a dilemma, and will in vain endeavour to be consistent with himself.

But if he were to declare that the justest life is also the happiest, every one hearing him would enquire, if I am not mistaken, what is that good and noble principle in life which the law approves, and which is superior to pleasure.