What Makes Us Different from Animals.3

From the Republic (guess what our first class is on?):

"[A] thing's function is the work that it alone can do, or can do better than anything else." And living is, "above all the function of the soul" and involves well-being and happiness. And this function of the soul requires a special virtue (justice).

It is interesting that Plato explains all of this in dialogue with, of all people, Thrasymachus, who is likened, at the beginning of their conversation, to an animal--"like a wild beast he sprang at us as if he would tear us in pieces."

And later comes the beautiful line, "Thrasymachus' assent was dragged out of him with reluctance of which my account gives no idea. He was sweating at every pore, for the weather was hot; and I saw then what I had never seen before--Thrasymachus blushing."