But first he must prove that there are three parts of the individual soul.
His argument is as follows:--Quantity makes no difference in quality.
The word 'just,' whether applied to the individual or to the State, has the same meaning.

And the term 'justice' implied that the same three principles in the State and in the individual were doing their own business.

But are they really three or one?
The question is difficult, and one which can hardly be solved by the methods which we are now using; but the truer and longer way would take up too much of our time.
'The shorter will satisfy me.' Well then, you would admit that the qualities of states mean the qualities of the individuals who compose them?
The Scythians and Thracians are passionate, our own race intellectual, and the Egyptians and Phoenicians covetous, because the individual members of each have such and such a character; the difficulty is to determine whether the several principles are one or three; whether, that is to say, we reason with one part of our nature, desire with another, are angry with another, or whether the whole soul comes into play in each sort of action.

This enquiry, however, requires a very exact definition of terms.

The same thing in the same relation cannot be affected in two opposite ways.