But what matter? if you please I please; and let
us assume, if you will I, that justice is holy, and that holiness is just.
Pardon me, I replied; I do not want this 'if you wish' or 'if you will'
sort of conclusion to be proven, but I want you and me to be proven: I
mean to say that the conclusion will be best proven if there be no 'if.'
Well, he said, I admit that justice bears a resemblance to holiness, for
there is always some point of view in which everything is like every other
thing; white is in a certain way like black, and hard is like soft, and the
most extreme opposites have some qualities in common; even the parts of the
face which, as we were saying before, are distinct and have different
functions, are still in a certain point of view similar, and one of them is
like another of them. And you may prove that they are like one another on
the same principle that all things are like one another; and yet things
which are like in some particular ought not to be called alike, nor things
which are unlike in some particular, however slight, unlike.
And do you think, I said in a tone of surprise, that justice and holiness
have but a small degree of likeness?
Certainly not; any more than I agree with what I understand to be your
view.
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