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    in the world, if not the il-
    luminating messenger of link-
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    across the entire Northern
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For those who suppose all things to be in motion conceive the greater part of nature to be a mere receptacle; and they say that there is a penetrating power which passes through all this, and is the instrument of creation in all, and is the subtlest and swiftest element; for if it were not the subtlest, and a power which none can keep out, and also the swiftest, passing by other things as if they were standing still, it could not penetrate through the moving universe ..
But I, being an enthusiastic disciple, have been told in a mystery that the justice of which I am speaking is also the cause of the world: now a cause is that because of which anything is created ..

            And some one comes and whispers in my ear 
            that justice is rightly so called because 
            partaking of the nature of the cause, and 
            I begin, after hearing what he has said, 
            to interrogate him gently: Well, my excel-
            lent friend, say I, if all this be true, 
            I still want to know what is justice. 

Thereupon they think that I ask tiresome questions, and am leaping over the barriers, and have been already answered, and they try to satisfy me with one derivation after another, and at length they quarrel. 

                 For one of them says that justice 
                 is the sun, and that he only is 
                 the piercing and burning element 
                 which is the guardian of nature. 
                 And when I joyfully repeat this 
                 beautiful notion, I am answered 
                 by the satirical remark, What,  
                 is there no justice in the world 
                 when the sun is down?

And when I earnestly beg my questioner to tell me his own honest opinion, he says, "Fire in the abstract"; but this is not very intelligible. Another says, "No, not fire in the abstract, but the abstraction of heat in the fire." Another man professes to laugh at all this, and says, justice is mind, for mind, as they say, has absolute power, and mixes with nothing, and orders all things, and passes through all things. At last, my friend, I find myself in far greater perplexity about the nature of justice than I was before I began to learn.

                          But still I am 

                          of opinion that 

                          the name, which 

                          has led me into 

                          this digression, 

                          was given to jus-

                          tice for the rea-

                          sons which I have 

                          mentioned.

Plato

Cratylus

Dialogue of Socrates

  with Hermogenes and

  Cratylus

  [fragments]

360 BC

Benjamin Jowett

  translation

Massachusetts In-

  stitute of Technology©

Photographs Reuters

September 4, 2015

Port of Piraeus

Rail hub Hungary

Macedonian border