Socrates goes about figuring out what justice is for an individual by first finding out what is justice in the city. He starts with wisdom because that is what seemed odd to him. He reaches with the fact that the knowledge in the city is what the city is recognized for and for being something that it is recognized for, it has to be what is ruling the city and for ruling the city, it has to have something that is of the rarest in the city; the least numerous that could be found in the city. This is how Socrates comes up with first portion of virtue. He then realizes that for there to be a city, there has to be some sort of preservation of the belief of the sort of things that are to be fear in order for things to be done the way it is supposed to be done when it is supposed to be done without any mess-ups. For if there is such preservation in a city, then the citizens will be well prepared to accept and learn any necessary information to keep the city functioning and this preservation, according to Socrates, is called courage. He now has two things left to find in the city, moderation and justice, the goal of his entire inquiry. Because his goal is to find out what justice is in the city, he decides to make that last and continue with moderation. He first defines moderation as self-control and states that a person is self-controlled when the better part of the person is in control of the worse. He then comes up with the assumption that if a city is said to be in control of itself and of its pleasures and desires, then it is in moderation. After coming up with moderation, all that was left for Socrates in the city was justice. He realizes that for a city to stay functioning the way it has been and not fall to ruins, everybody must do what they are naturally good at and not try to do what someone else is doing.
