Note 142 — Chapter XXIII · PROTAGORAS.
Reading edition
Plato, Protag. p. 330 C, p. 333 B.
To say “Justice is just,” or “Holiness is holy,” is indeed either mere tautology, or else an impropriety of speech. Dr. Hutcheson observes on an analogous case: “None can apply moral attributes to the very faculty of perceiving moral qualities: or call his moral Sense morally Good or Evil, any more than he calls the power of tasting, sweet or bitter — or the power of seeing, straight or crooked, white or black” (Hutcheson on the Passions, sect. i. p. 234).