Whoever has learned what is just
SocratesHold on: you put that well. If you do make someone a rhetorician, he must know what is just and what is unjust, having learned them either beforehand or else afterwards from you.
GorgiasCertainly.
SocratesWhat then? The one who has learned carpentry is a carpenter, or isn’t he?
GorgiasYes.
SocratesAnd so, too, the one who has learned music, a musician?
GorgiasYes.
SocratesAnd the one who has learned medicine, a doctor? And the rest likewise, by the same argument: the one who has learned each thing is what the knowledge of it makes each person?
GorgiasCertainly.
SocratesThen by this argument the one who has learned just things is likewise just?
GorgiasAbsolutely, I should think.
SocratesAnd the just man, I suppose, does just things.
GorgiasYes.
SocratesThen the rhetorician must be just, and the just man must want to do just things?
GorgiasSo it appears, at least.
SocratesSo the just man, at least, will never want to do injustice.
GorgiasNecessarily.
SocratesAnd the rhetorician, by the argument, must be just.
GorgiasYes.
SocratesSo the rhetorician will never want to do injustice.
GorgiasApparently not.