Yes; but how in such partnerships is the just man of more use than any other man?
'When you want to have money safely kept and not used.' Then justice will be useful when money is useless.

And there is another difficulty: justice, like the art of war or any other art, must be of opposites, good at attack as well as at defence, at stealing as well as at guarding.

But then justice is a thief, though a hero notwithstanding, like Autolycus, the Homeric hero, who was 'excellent above all men in theft and perjury'-- to such a pass have you and Homer and Simonides brought us; though I do not forget that the thieving must be for the good of friends and the harm of enemies.
And still there arises another question: Are friends to be interpreted as real or seeming; enemies as real or seeming?
And are our friends to be only the good, and our enemies to be the evil?
The answer is, that we must do good to our seeming and real good friends, and evil to our seeming and real evil enemies--good to the good, evil to the evil.

But ought we to render evil for evil at all, when to do so will only make men more evil?
Can justice produce injustice any more than the art of horsemanship can make bad horsemen, or heat produce cold?
The final conclusion is, that no sage or poet ever said that the just return evil for evil; this was a maxim of some rich and mighty man, Periander, Perdiccas, or Ismenias the Theban (about B.C.

398-381)...
Thus the first stage of aphoristic or unconscious morality is shown to be inadequate to the wants of the age; the authority of the poets is set aside, and through the winding mazes of dialectic we make an approach to the Christian precept of forgiveness of injuries.