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@@ -24,9 +24,14 @@ Mondays 14:00-15:00 RC426
- 30% :: Assignment 1 - [[./cs101-csai-lec1.pdf][Yak Shaving]]
- 20% :: Create a git repository with a file, and share it
- 10% :: Put a transcript of a session with the Emacs doctor in that file
-- 20% :: Assignment 2
-- 20% :: Assignment 3
-- 20% :: Assignment 4
+- 30% :: Assignment 2 - [[./cs101-csai-lec1.pdf][Probability and Text]]
+ - 10% :: Write a program to output random characters
+ - 10% :: Write a program that, given a character, predicts the next character
+ - 10% :: Write a program to output a sequence of characters
+ - 10% (bonus) :: Write a program that outputs a sequence of
+ characters conditional on the previous two characters
+- 30% :: Assignment 3
+
* Topics
1. Yak Shaving - Software Engineering Tooling [[./cs101-csai-lec1.pdf][(PDF]])
diff --git a/cs101-csai-lec2.org b/cs101-csai-lec2.org
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+#+title: CS101 - Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence - Lecture 2
+#+startup: beamer
+#+latex_class: beamer
+#+latex_class_options: [14pt,aspectratio=169,hyperref={pdfpagelabels=false},svgnames]
+#+latex_header_extra: \usetheme{strath}
+#+latex_header_extra: \usepackage{tikz}
+#+latex_header_extra: \usepackage{pgfplots}
+#+latex_header_extra: \usepackage{filecontents}
+#+options: toc:nil
+
+* CS101 - Cog. Sci. and AI
+
+** Today
+
+- Recap of assignment 1 - git
+- Probability and text
+
+* Assignment 1
+
+- 74 students have attempted to submit the assignment
+- of these, 72 have actually submitted the assignment
+
+*This is only slightly more than half the class!*
+
+Marking will happen this week.
+
+If you do not do this assignment, you will not be able to submit any
+of the other assignments and you will get *0* for this module.
+
+* Probability Distributions: Definition
+* Probability Distributions: Definition
+
+- Support :: a set $S$,
+ $$
+ S = \left\{ x_1, x_2, \ldots, x_n \right\}
+ $$
+- Probability map :: a mapping
+ $$
+ \Pr: S \rightarrow \left[0,1\right]
+ $$
+- Condition ::
+ $$
+ \sum_{x \in S} \Pr(x) = 1
+ $$
+
+* Probability Distributions: a Fair Coin
+
+Consider a fair coin$\ldots$
+
+$$
+S_1 = \left\{ \mathtt{heads}, \mathtt{tails} \right\}
+$$
+
+$$
+\Pr_1(x) = \begin{cases}
+\frac{1}{2} & x\,is\,\mathtt{heads}\\
+\frac{1}{2} & x\,is\,\mathtt{tails}
+\end{cases}
+$$
+
+$$
+\Pr_1(\mathtt{heads}) + \Pr_1(\mathtt{tails}) = \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{2} = 1
+$$
+
+* Probability Distributions: Two Fair Coins
+\begin{align*}
+S_2 = S_1 \times S_1 = \left\{&
+(\mathtt{heads}, \mathtt{heads}), (\mathtt{heads}, \mathtt{tails}),\right.\\
+&\left.(\mathtt{tails}, \mathtt{heads}), (\mathtt{tails}, \mathtt{tails})
+\right\}
+\end{align*}
+
+\begin{align*}
+\Pr_2(x,y) &= \Pr_1(x)\Pr_1(y),\qquad\forall (x,y) \in S_2\\
+&= \frac{1}{2}\cdot\frac{1}{2} = \frac{1}{4}
+\end{align*}
+
+*Assumption:* these two coin tosses are /independent/
+
+* Probability Distributions: Fair Dice
+
+Consider a (fair) six-sided die,
+$$
+S_{d6} = \left\{1,2,3,4,5,6\right\}
+$$
+$$
+\Pr_\text{fair}(x) = \frac{1}{6}, \qquad\forall x \in S_{d6}
+$$
+
+* Probability Distributions: Unfair Dice
+
+Now consider an /unfair/ six-sided die,
+
+$$
+\Pr_\text{unfair}(x) = \begin{cases}
+\frac{1}{5} & x = 1\\
+\frac{1}{10} & x \in \left\{2,3,4,5\right\}\\
+\frac{2}{5} & x = 6
+\end{cases}
+$$
+
+* Questions
+
+- Can we quantify /fairness/?
+
+- Can we distinguish /information/ from random noise?
+
+* Entropy
+
+\begin{align*}
+H(\Pr) &= -\sum_{x\in S} \Pr(x) \log_2 \Pr(x)\\
+\Pr &: S \rightarrow \left[0,1\right]
+\end{align*}
+
+Define: $ 0 \log_2 0 \equiv 0 $
+
+* Entropy
+
+\begin{center}
+\vspace{-2\baselineskip}
+\hspace{2ex}\includegraphics[height=\textheight]{./img/neglog.png}
+\end{center}
+
+* Entropy -- Fair Coin
+
+\begin{align*}
+H(\Pr_1)
+&= -\left[ \Pr_1(\mathtt{heads})\log_2 \Pr_1(\mathtt{heads}) +
+ \Pr_1(\mathtt{tails})\log_2 \Pr_1(\mathtt{tails}) \right]\\
+&= -\left[ \frac{1}{2}\log_2 \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{2}\log_2 \frac{1}{2}\right]\\
+&= -2 \frac{1}{2} \log_2 \frac{1}{2}\\
+&= -\log_2 \frac{1}{2}\\
+&= 1
+\end{align*}
+
+* Entropy -- Two Fair Coins
+\begin{align*}
+S_2 = \left\{&
+(\mathtt{heads}, \mathtt{heads}), (\mathtt{heads}, \mathtt{tails}),\right.\\
+&\left. (\mathtt{tails}, \mathtt{heads}), (\mathtt{tails}, \mathtt{tails})
+\right\}
+\end{align*}
+
+\begin{align*}
+\Pr_2(x) &= \frac{1}{4}, \qquad\forall x \in S_2
+\end{align*}
+
+* Entropy -- Two Fair Coins
+\begin{align*}
+H(\Pr_2)
+&= -\left[ \Pr_2(\mathtt{HH})\log_2 \Pr_2(\mathtt{HH}) +
+ \Pr_2(\mathtt{HT})\log_2 \Pr_2(\mathtt{HT}) +\right.\\
+&\qquad\,\left.
+ \Pr_2(\mathtt{TH})\log_2 \Pr_2(\mathtt{TH}) +
+ \Pr_2(\mathtt{TT})\log_2 \Pr_2(\mathtt{TT})\right]\\
+&= -4 \frac{1}{4} \log_2 \frac{1}{4}\\
+&= -\log_2 \frac{1}{4}\\
+&= 2
+\end{align*}
+
+* Entropy -- Fair Dice
+
+$$
+H(\Pr_\text{fair}) = -\log_2 \frac{1}{6} \approx 2.58\ldots
+$$
+
+* Entropy -- Unfair Dice
+\begin{align*}
+\Pr_\text{unfair}(S) &= \left\{\Pr_\text{unfair}(1), \Pr_\text{unfair}(2), \Pr_\text{unfair}(3), \Pr_\text{unfair}(4), \Pr_\text{unfair}(5), \Pr_\text{unfair}(6) \right\}\\
+ &= \left\{\frac{1}{5}, \frac{1}{10}, \frac{1}{10}, \frac{1}{10}, \frac{1}{10}, \frac{2}{5} \right\}
+\end{align*}
+
+* Entropy -- Unfair Dice
+\begin{align*}
+\Pr_\text{unfair}(S) &= \left\{\Pr_\text{unfair}(1), \Pr_\text{unfair}(2), \Pr_\text{unfair}(3), \Pr_\text{unfair}(4), \Pr_\text{unfair}(5), \Pr_\text{unfair}(6) \right\}\\
+ &= \left\{\frac{1}{5}, \frac{1}{10}, \frac{1}{10}, \frac{1}{10}, \frac{1}{10}, \frac{2}{5} \right\}
+\end{align*}
+
+\begin{align*}
+H(\Pr_\text{unfair}) &= -\left[
+\frac{1}{5}\log_2 \frac{1}{5} + 4\frac{1}{10}\log_2 \frac{1}{10} + \frac{2}{5}\log_2 \frac{2}{5}
+\right]\\
+&\approx 2.32\ldots
+\end{align*}
+
+* Entropy -- Really Unfair Dice
+What if...
+$$
+Pr(x) = \begin{cases}
+1 & x = 1\\
+0 & \text{otherwise}
+\end{cases}
+$$
+
+\begin{align*}
+H(Pr) &= -1 \log_2 1 - 5\cdot0\log_2 0\\
+ &= 0
+\end{align*}
+
+* Normalised Entropy
+
+$$
+\bar{H} = \frac{\text{entropy of a distribution}}{\text{entropy of the uniform distribution}}
+$$
+
+
+* Normalised Entropy
+
+$$
+\bar{H} = \frac{\text{entropy of a distribution}}{\text{entropy of the uniform distribution}}
+$$
+
+Recall entropy of the uniform distribution is just $-log_2 \frac{1}{|S|}$
+
+Notation -- $|S|$ is number of elements in the support
+
+* Normalised Entropy
+
+For our unfair vs fair (uniform) dice,
+
+$$
+\bar{H}(\Pr_\text{unfair}) = \frac{H(\Pr_\text{unfair})}{-\log_2\frac{1}{|S_{d6}|}} = \frac{2.32\ldots}{2.58\ldots} = 0.898\ldots
+$$
+
+* Normalised Entropy
+
+There better concept of relative entropy of two distributions,
+*Kullback-Leibler divergence*. You would learn about this in a course on
+Information Theory.
+
+For our purposes, the normalised entropy will do.
+
+* So what about text? Choose an alphabet
+
+$$
+S_\alpha = \mathtt{'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz\_'}
+$$
+
+(by '_' we mean a space)
+
+Some light pre-processing:
+- make all letters lower case
+- ignore punctuation etc
+
+* So what about text? Probability distribution
+
+Choose a letter at random from a text.
+
+What is the chance you pick =e= or =q= or =' '= (space?)
+
+- Support :: all (ascii) letters + space
+- Mapping ::
+ $$
+ \Pr_\alpha(x) = \frac{\mathrm{count}(x)}{\mathrm{count}(\text{all letters})}
+ $$
+
+
+* Letter probabilities
+
+#+begin_src
+a 0.0654 b 0.0124 c 0.0214 d 0.0311 e 0.1061
+f 0.0195 g 0.0144 h 0.0547 i 0.0604 j 0.0014
+k 0.0043 l 0.0316 m 0.0196 n 0.0586 o 0.0633
+p 0.0145 q 0.0009 r 0.0483 s 0.0537 t 0.0783
+u 0.0236 v 0.0078 w 0.0177 x 0.0013 y 0.0164
+z 0.0004 0.1727
+#+end_src
+
+* Normalised entropy of letter probabilities
+
+$$
+H(\Pr_\alpha) = 4.095\ldots
+$$
+
+Maximum entropy, $\log_2 \frac{1}{27} \approx 4.754\ldots$
+
+$$
+\bar{H}(\Pr_\alpha) = \frac{4.095\ldots}{4.754\ldots} = 0.861\ldots
+$$
+
+* Pair and conditional probability
+
+\begin{align*}
+\Pr(y | x) &\qquad\text{probability of }y\text{ given }x\\
+\Pr(x,y) &\qquad\text{probability of seeing the pair }(x,y)
+\end{align*}
+
+\begin{align*}
+\Pr(x,y) &= \Pr(y|x) \Pr(x)\\
+\Pr(y) &= \sum_x \Pr(y|x) \Pr(x)
+\end{align*}
+
+* Assignment 2a - Probability and Text (10%)
+
+Write a program named =assignment-2a= that takes a file and
+prints out a letter according to the distribution of letters in
+that file, e.g.
+
+#+begin_src
+xgb21195@cafe:~/cs101$ assignment-2a filename
+e
+xgb21195@cafe:~/cs101$
+#+end_src
+
+* Assignment 2a - Probability and Text (10%)
+
+/hint: use the Python 3 built in/ =random.choices= /function/
+
+Note:
+
+#+begin_src
+random.choices(population, weights=None, ...)
+#+end_src
+
+- =population= $\rightarrow$ support
+- =weights= $\rightarrow$ probabilities
+
+https://docs.python.org/3/library/random.html
+
+* Assignment 2b - Probability and Text (10%)
+
+Write a program named =assignment-2b= that takes a file and a
+letter and prints out a following letter according to the
+/conditional/ distribution letters given the previous letter that file,
+e.g.
+
+#+begin_src
+xgb21195@cafe:~/cs101$ ./assignment-2b filename e
+r
+xgb21195@cafe:~/cs101$
+#+end_src
+
+* Assignment 2c - Probability and Text (10%)
+
+Write a program named =assignment-2c= that takes a filename and a
+number and prints out a sequence of characters according to the
+conditional distribution from 2b
+
+#+begin_src
+xgb21195@cafe:~/cs101$ ./assignment-2c filename 25
+end usanve n imemas hely
+xgb21195@cafe:~/cs101$
+#+end_src
+
+* Assignment 2
+
+- Your programs *must* be named =assignment-2a=, =assignment-2b=, and
+ =assignment-2c= in your git repository
+- You can write your programs in whatever language you wish. If you
+ use a compiled language, you must include a binary that runs on the
+ CIS linux machines and source code and a Makefile to build it.
+- You *must* make sure the programs run on the CIS linux machines, if it
+ does not, you will receive no marks, no exceptions.
+
+* Assignment 2 bonus (10%)
+
+Write a program like 2c that instead of using probability conditional
+one /one/ previous letter, conditions on the previous /two/ letters.
+
+Call this program =assignment-2d=
+
+* Materials
+
+https://gitlab.cis.strath.ac.uk/xgb21195/cs101-csai
+
+look in the =lec2= subdirectory.
+
+- letters.py :: definition of "letters" and a functions to get
+ distributions of letters from a file
+- entropy.py :: implementation of entropy function and example of
+ using it on a file (for letters)
+- example.py :: examples of using this function
+- republic.txt :: Plato's Republic from Project Gutenberg
+
+* Reading for next week
+
+The Game, Anatoly Dneprov, 1961
+
+http://q-bits.org/images/Dneprov.pdf
+
+
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diff --git a/lec2/entropy.py b/lec2/entropy.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..db059f7a224cc0597be965a44f0a7cacece1f1dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lec2/entropy.py
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+
+from letters import file2prob, file2pairs
+from math import log
+
+def entropy(dist):
+ """
+ Calculate the entropy of a probability distribution. The
+ probability distribution is given as a dictionary where
+ the keys are the support and the values are the probabilities
+ """
+ return -sum(p*log(p, 2) for p in dist.values() if p > 0)
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+ import sys
+
+ if len(sys.argv) != 2:
+ print("Usage: %s filename" % sys.argv[0])
+ sys.exit(-1)
+
+ filename = sys.argv[1]
+
+ probs = file2prob(filename)
+ conds = file2pairs(filename)
+
+ cc = sum([ [probs[c]*d for d in conds[c].values()]
+ for c in conds ], [])
+ centropy = -sum(p*log(p,2) for p in cc if p > 0)
+ print(entropy(probs)/-log(1/len(probs),2), centropy/-log(1/len(cc),2))
diff --git a/lec2/example.py b/lec2/example.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..f60ef55416714482c9b2032b19164508a18f12a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lec2/example.py
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+
+from entropy import entropy
+
+fair_coin = { "heads": 0.5, "tails": 0.5 }
+two_coins = { "HH": 0.25, "HT": 0.25, "TH": 0.25, "TT": 0.25 }
+fair_die = { 1: 1/6, 2: 1/6, 3: 1/6, 4: 1/6, 5: 1/6, 6: 1/6 }
+unfair_die = { 1: 1/5, 2: 1/10, 3: 1/10, 4: 1/10, 5: 1/10, 6: 2/5 }
+
+print("Entropy of a fair coin:", entropy(fair_coin))
+print("Entropy of two fair coins:", entropy(two_coins))
+print("Entropy of a fair six-sided die:", entropy(fair_die))
+print("Entropy of an unfair six-sided die:", entropy(unfair_die))
+
+from letters import file2prob, letters
+
+print("Entropy of the uniform alphabet:",
+ entropy({ c: 1/len(letters) for c in letters }))
+
+probs = file2prob("republic.txt")
+
+lines = []
+for i in range(6):
+ line = []
+ for j in range(5):
+ try:
+ letter = letters[i*5+j]
+ except IndexError:
+ continue
+ line.append("%s %.04f" % (letter, probs[letter]))
+ lines.append(" ".join(line))
+
+print("#+begin_src")
+print("\n".join(lines))
+print("#+end_src")
+
+print("Entropy of letters in Plato's Republic:", entropy(probs))
diff --git a/lec2/letters.py b/lec2/letters.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..22f445c8e866cb37eb083520bc151d6c0f295ad3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lec2/letters.py
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+
+letters = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz '
+
+def file2prob(filename):
+ """
+ Read a file and return a dictionary of letters and
+ their probabilities
+ """
+ letter_dict = { c: 0 for c in letters }
+ letter_total = 0
+
+ with open(filename) as fp:
+ for c in fp.read():
+ if c.lower() not in letter_dict:
+ continue
+ letter_dict[c.lower()] += 1
+ letter_total += 1
+
+ probs = { c: letter_dict[c]/letter_total for c in letter_dict }
+ return probs
+
+def file2pairs(filename):
+ """
+ Read a file and return a dictionary of letters and
+ the probabilities of following letters. That is, the
+ conditional probability of a letter given its
+ predecessor.
+ """
+ letter_dict = { c: { a: 0 for a in letters }
+ for c in letters }
+ previous = None
+ with open(filename) as fp:
+ for c in fp.read():
+ if c not in letter_dict:
+ continue
+ c = c.lower()
+ if previous is None:
+ previous = c
+ continue
+ letter_dict[previous][c] += 1
+ previous = c
+
+ probs = { c: { d: letter_dict[c][d]/sum(letter_dict[c].values())
+ for d in letters } for c in letters }
+ return probs
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+ import sys
+
+ if len(sys.argv) != 3:
+ print("Usage: %s filename letter" % sys.argv[0])
+ sys.exit(-1)
+
+ filename = sys.argv[1]
+ letter = sys.argv[2]
+
+ probs = file2prob(filename)
+ print(probs[letter])
diff --git a/lec2/republic.txt b/lec2/republic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..0ec9e37f5d38e6682e440f5c20424b8bbaa0ec91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lec2/republic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,24919 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Republic
+
+This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
+at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
+you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
+before using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Republic
+
+
+Author: Plato
+
+Translator: Benjamin Jowett
+
+Release date: October 1, 1998 [eBook #1497]
+ Most recently updated: September 11, 2021
+
+Language: English
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REPUBLIC ***
+
+
+
+THE REPUBLIC
+
+By Plato
+
+Translated by Benjamin Jowett
+
+Note: See also “The Republic†by Plato, Jowett, eBook #150
+
+
+Contents
+
+ INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
+ THE REPUBLIC.
+ PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE.
+ BOOK I.
+ BOOK II.
+ BOOK III.
+ BOOK IV.
+ BOOK V.
+ BOOK VI.
+ BOOK VII.
+ BOOK VIII.
+ BOOK IX.
+ BOOK X.
+
+
+
+
+ INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
+
+
+The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception of
+the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are nearer
+approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist;
+the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions of
+the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art, the
+Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence. But no other
+Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same
+perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or
+contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not
+of one age only but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or
+a greater wealth of humour or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in
+any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and
+speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The Republic is
+the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped; here
+philosophy reaches the highest point (cp, especially in Books V, VI,
+VII) to which ancient thinkers ever attained. Plato among the Greeks,
+like Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of
+knowledge, although neither of them always distinguished the bare
+outline or form from the substance of truth; and both of them had to be
+content with an abstraction of science which was not yet realized. He
+was the greatest metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in
+him, more than in any other ancient thinker, the germs of future
+knowledge are contained. The sciences of logic and psychology, which
+have supplied so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based
+upon the analyses of Socrates and Plato. The principles of definition,
+the law of contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the
+distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion,
+between means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the
+division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible
+elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and
+unnecessary—these and other great forms of thought are all of them to
+be found in the Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato.
+The greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on
+philosophy are most apt to lose sight, the difference between words and
+things, has been most strenuously insisted on by him (cp. Rep.; Polit.;
+Cratyl. 435, 436 ff), although he has not always avoided the confusion
+of them in his own writings (e.g. Rep.). But he does not bind up truth
+in logical formulae,—logic is still veiled in metaphysics; and the
+science which he imagines to ‘contemplate all truth and all existence’
+is very unlike the doctrine of the syllogism which Aristotle claims to
+have discovered (Soph. Elenchi, 33. 18).
+
+Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third part of a
+still larger design which was to have included an ideal history of
+Athens, as well as a political and physical philosophy. The fragment of
+the Critias has given birth to a world-famous fiction, second only in
+importance to the tale of Troy and the legend of Arthur; and is said as
+a fact to have inspired some of the early navigators of the sixteenth
+century. This mythical tale, of which the subject was a history of the
+wars of the Athenians against the Island of Atlantis, is supposed to be
+founded upon an unfinished poem of Solon, to which it would have stood
+in the same relation as the writings of the logographers to the poems
+of Homer. It would have told of a struggle for Liberty (cp. Tim. 25 C),
+intended to represent the conflict of Persia and Hellas. We may judge
+from the noble commencement of the Timaeus, from the fragment of the
+Critias itself, and from the third book of the Laws, in what manner
+Plato would have treated this high argument. We can only guess why the
+great design was abandoned; perhaps because Plato became sensible of
+some incongruity in a fictitious history, or because he had lost his
+interest in it, or because advancing years forbade the completion of
+it; and we may please ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary
+narrative ever been finished, we should have found Plato himself
+sympathising with the struggle for Hellenic independence (cp. Laws,
+iii. 698 ff.), singing a hymn of triumph over Marathon and Salamis,
+perhaps making the reflection of Herodotus (v. 78) where he
+contemplates the growth of the Athenian empire—‘How brave a thing is
+freedom of speech, which has made the Athenians so far exceed every
+other state of Hellas in greatness!’ or, more probably, attributing the
+victory to the ancient good order of Athens and to the favor of Apollo
+and Athene (cp. Introd. to Critias).
+
+Again, Plato may be regarded as the ‘captain’ (‘arhchegoz’) or leader
+of a goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be found the
+original of Cicero’s De Republica, of St. Augustine’s City of God, of
+the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous other imaginary
+States which are framed upon the same model. The extent to which
+Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the
+Politics has been little recognised, and the recognition is the more
+necessary because it is not made by Aristotle himself. The two
+philosophers had more in common than they were conscious of; and
+probably some elements of Plato remain still undetected in Aristotle.
+In English philosophy too, many affinities may be traced, not only in
+the works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in great original writers
+like Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. That there is a
+truth higher than experience, of which the mind bears witness to
+herself, is a conviction which in our own generation has been
+enthusiastically asserted, and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek
+authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato
+has had the greatest influence. The Republic of Plato is also the first
+treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke,
+Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like
+Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is
+profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge; in the early Church
+he exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of
+Literature on politics. Even the fragments of his words when ‘repeated
+at second-hand’ (Symp. 215 D) have in all ages ravished the hearts of
+men, who have seen reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the
+father of idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many
+of the latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the
+unity of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes,
+have been anticipated in a dream by him.
+
+The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice, the nature of
+which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and blameless old
+man—then discussed on the basis of proverbial morality by Socrates and
+Polemarchus—then caricatured by Thrasymachus and partially explained by
+Socrates—reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and
+having become invisible in the individual reappears at length in the
+ideal State which is constructed by Socrates. The first care of the
+rulers is to be education, of which an outline is drawn after the old
+Hellenic model, providing only for an improved religion and morality,
+and more simplicity in music and gymnastic, a manlier strain of poetry,
+and greater harmony of the individual and the State. We are thus led on
+to the conception of a higher State, in which ‘no man calls anything
+his own,’ and in which there is neither ‘marrying nor giving in
+marriage,’ and ‘kings are philosophers’ and ‘philosophers are kings;’
+and there is another and higher education, intellectual as well as
+moral and religious, of science as well as of art, and not of youth
+only but of the whole of life. Such a State is hardly to be realized in
+this world and quickly degenerates. To the perfect ideal succeeds the
+government of the soldier and the lover of honour, this again declining
+into democracy, and democracy into tyranny, in an imaginary but regular
+order having not much resemblance to the actual facts. When ‘the wheel
+has come full circle’ we do not begin again with a new period of human
+life; but we have passed from the best to the worst, and there we end.
+The subject is then changed and the old quarrel of poetry and
+philosophy which had been more lightly treated in the earlier books of
+the Republic is now resumed and fought out to a conclusion. Poetry is
+discovered to be an imitation thrice removed from the truth, and Homer,
+as well as the dramatic poets, having been condemned as an imitator, is
+sent into banishment along with them. And the idea of the State is
+supplemented by the revelation of a future life.
+
+The division into books, like all similar divisions (Cp. Sir G.C. Lewis
+in the Classical Museum, vol. ii. p 1.), is probably later than the age
+of Plato. The natural divisions are five in number;—(1) Book I and the
+first half of Book II down to the paragraph beginning, ‘I had always
+admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus,’ which is introductory;
+the first book containing a refutation of the popular and sophistical
+notions of justice, and concluding, like some of the earlier Dialogues,
+without arriving at any definite result. To this is appended a
+restatement of the nature of justice according to common opinion, and
+an answer is demanded to the question—What is justice, stripped of
+appearances? The second division (2) includes the remainder of the
+second and the whole of the third and fourth books, which are mainly
+occupied with the construction of the first State and the first
+education. The third division (3) consists of the fifth, sixth, and
+seventh books, in which philosophy rather than justice is the subject
+of enquiry, and the second State is constructed on principles of
+communism and ruled by philosophers, and the contemplation of the idea
+of good takes the place of the social and political virtues. In the
+eighth and ninth books (4) the perversions of States and of the
+individuals who correspond to them are reviewed in succession; and the
+nature of pleasure and the principle of tyranny are further analysed in
+the individual man. The tenth book (5) is the conclusion of the whole,
+in which the relations of philosophy to poetry are finally determined,
+and the happiness of the citizens in this life, which has now been
+assured, is crowned by the vision of another.
+
+Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted; the first
+(Books I - IV) containing the description of a State framed generally
+in accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and morality, while in
+the second (Books V - X) the Hellenic State is transformed into an
+ideal kingdom of philosophy, of which all other governments are the
+perversions. These two points of view are really opposed, and the
+opposition is only veiled by the genius of Plato. The Republic, like
+the Phaedrus (see Introduction to Phaedrus), is an imperfect whole; the
+higher light of philosophy breaks through the regularity of the
+Hellenic temple, which at last fades away into the heavens. Whether
+this imperfection of structure arises from an enlargement of the plan;
+or from the imperfect reconcilement in the writer’s own mind of the
+struggling elements of thought which are now first brought together by
+him; or, perhaps, from the composition of the work at different
+times—are questions, like the similar question about the Iliad and the
+Odyssey, which are worth asking, but which cannot have a distinct
+answer. In the age of Plato there was no regular mode of publication,
+and an author would have the less scruple in altering or adding to a
+work which was known only to a few of his friends. There is no
+absurdity in supposing that he may have laid his labours aside for a
+time, or turned from one work to another; and such interruptions would
+be more likely to occur in the case of a long than of a short writing.
+In all attempts to determine the chronological order of the Platonic
+writings on internal evidence, this uncertainty about any single
+Dialogue being composed at one time is a disturbing element, which must
+be admitted to affect longer works, such as the Republic and the Laws,
+more than shorter ones. But, on the other hand, the seeming
+discrepancies of the Republic may only arise out of the discordant
+elements which the philosopher has attempted to unite in a single
+whole, perhaps without being himself able to recognise the
+inconsistency which is obvious to us. For there is a judgment of after
+ages which few great writers have ever been able to anticipate for
+themselves. They do not perceive the want of connexion in their own
+writings, or the gaps in their systems which are visible enough to
+those who come after them. In the beginnings of literature and
+philosophy, amid the first efforts of thought and language, more
+inconsistencies occur than now, when the paths of speculation are well
+worn and the meaning of words precisely defined. For consistency, too,
+is the growth of time; and some of the greatest creations of the human
+mind have been wanting in unity. Tried by this test, several of the
+Platonic Dialogues, according to our modern ideas, appear to be
+defective, but the deficiency is no proof that they were composed at
+different times or by different hands. And the supposition that the
+Republic was written uninterruptedly and by a continuous effort is in
+some degree confirmed by the numerous references from one part of the
+work to another.
+
+The second title, ‘Concerning Justice,’ is not the one by which the
+Republic is quoted, either by Aristotle or generally in antiquity, and,
+like the other second titles of the Platonic Dialogues, may therefore
+be assumed to be of later date. Morgenstern and others have asked
+whether the definition of justice, which is the professed aim, or the
+construction of the State is the principal argument of the work. The
+answer is, that the two blend in one, and are two faces of the same
+truth; for justice is the order of the State, and the State is the
+visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society.
+The one is the soul and the other is the body, and the Greek ideal of
+the State, as of the individual, is a fair mind in a fair body. In
+Hegelian phraseology the state is the reality of which justice is the
+idea. Or, described in Christian language, the kingdom of God is
+within, and yet developes into a Church or external kingdom; ‘the house
+not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ is reduced to the
+proportions of an earthly building. Or, to use a Platonic image,
+justice and the State are the warp and the woof which run through the
+whole texture. And when the constitution of the State is completed, the
+conception of justice is not dismissed, but reappears under the same or
+different names throughout the work, both as the inner law of the
+individual soul, and finally as the principle of rewards and
+punishments in another life. The virtues are based on justice, of which
+common honesty in buying and selling is the shadow, and justice is
+based on the idea of good, which is the harmony of the world, and is
+reflected both in the institutions of states and in motions of the
+heavenly bodies (cp. Tim. 47). The Timaeus, which takes up the
+political rather than the ethical side of the Republic, and is chiefly
+occupied with hypotheses concerning the outward world, yet contains
+many indications that the same law is supposed to reign over the State,
+over nature, and over man.
+
+Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient and
+modern times. There is a stage of criticism in which all works, whether
+of nature or of art, are referred to design. Now in ancient writings,
+and indeed in literature generally, there remains often a large element
+which was not comprehended in the original design. For the plan grows
+under the author’s hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of
+writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he
+begins. The reader who seeks to find some one idea under which the
+whole may be conceived, must necessarily seize on the vaguest and most
+general. Thus Stallbaum, who is dissatisfied with the ordinary
+explanations of the argument of the Republic, imagines himself to have
+found the true argument ‘in the representation of human life in a State
+perfected by justice, and governed according to the idea of good.’
+There may be some use in such general descriptions, but they can hardly
+be said to express the design of the writer. The truth is, that we may
+as well speak of many designs as of one; nor need anything be excluded
+from the plan of a great work to which the mind is naturally led by the
+association of ideas, and which does not interfere with the general
+purpose. What kind or degree of unity is to be sought after in a
+building, in the plastic arts, in poetry, in prose, is a problem which
+has to be determined relatively to the subject-matter. To Plato
+himself, the enquiry ‘what was the intention of the writer,’ or ‘what
+was the principal argument of the Republic’ would have been hardly
+intelligible, and therefore had better be at once dismissed (cp. the
+Introduction to the Phaedrus).
+
+Is not the Republic the vehicle of three or four great truths which, to
+Plato’s own mind, are most naturally represented in the form of the
+State? Just as in the Jewish prophets the reign of Messiah, or ‘the day
+of the Lord,’ or the suffering Servant or people of God, or the ‘Sun of
+righteousness with healing in his wings’ only convey, to us at least,
+their great spiritual ideals, so through the Greek State Plato reveals
+to us his own thoughts about divine perfection, which is the idea of
+good—like the sun in the visible world;—about human perfection, which
+is justice—about education beginning in youth and continuing in later
+years—about poets and sophists and tyrants who are the false teachers
+and evil rulers of mankind—about ‘the world’ which is the embodiment of
+them—about a kingdom which exists nowhere upon earth but is laid up in
+heaven to be the pattern and rule of human life. No such inspired
+creation is at unity with itself, any more than the clouds of heaven
+when the sun pierces through them. Every shade of light and dark, of
+truth, and of fiction which is the veil of truth, is allowable in a
+work of philosophical imagination. It is not all on the same plane; it
+easily passes from ideas to myths and fancies, from facts to figures of
+speech. It is not prose but poetry, at least a great part of it, and
+ought not to be judged by the rules of logic or the probabilities of
+history. The writer is not fashioning his ideas into an artistic whole;
+they take possession of him and are too much for him. We have no need
+therefore to discuss whether a State such as Plato has conceived is
+practicable or not, or whether the outward form or the inward life came
+first into the mind of the writer. For the practicability of his ideas
+has nothing to do with their truth; and the highest thoughts to which
+he attains may be truly said to bear the greatest ‘marks of
+design’—justice more than the external frame-work of the State, the
+idea of good more than justice. The great science of dialectic or the
+organisation of ideas has no real content; but is only a type of the
+method or spirit in which the higher knowledge is to be pursued by the
+spectator of all time and all existence. It is in the fifth, sixth, and
+seventh books that Plato reaches the ‘summit of speculation,’ and
+these, although they fail to satisfy the requirements of a modern
+thinker, may therefore be regarded as the most important, as they are
+also the most original, portions of the work.
+
+It is not necessary to discuss at length a minor question which has
+been raised by Boeckh, respecting the imaginary date at which the
+conversation was held (the year 411 B.C. which is proposed by him will
+do as well as any other); for a writer of fiction, and especially a
+writer who, like Plato, is notoriously careless of chronology (cp.
+Rep., Symp., 193 A, etc.), only aims at general probability. Whether
+all the persons mentioned in the Republic could ever have met at any
+one time is not a difficulty which would have occurred to an Athenian
+reading the work forty years later, or to Plato himself at the time of
+writing (any more than to Shakespeare respecting one of his own
+dramas); and need not greatly trouble us now. Yet this may be a
+question having no answer ‘which is still worth asking,’ because the
+investigation shows that we cannot argue historically from the dates in
+Plato; it would be useless therefore to waste time in inventing
+far-fetched reconcilements of them in order to avoid chronological
+difficulties, such, for example, as the conjecture of C.F. Hermann,
+that Glaucon and Adeimantus are not the brothers but the uncles of
+Plato (cp. Apol. 34 A), or the fancy of Stallbaum that Plato
+intentionally left anachronisms indicating the dates at which some of
+his Dialogues were written.
+
+The principal characters in the Republic are Cephalus, Polemarchus,
+Thrasymachus, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Cephalus appears in
+the introduction only, Polemarchus drops at the end of the first
+argument, and Thrasymachus is reduced to silence at the close of the
+first book. The main discussion is carried on by Socrates, Glaucon, and
+Adeimantus. Among the company are Lysias (the orator) and Euthydemus,
+the sons of Cephalus and brothers of Polemarchus, an unknown
+Charmantides—these are mute auditors; also there is Cleitophon, who
+once interrupts, where, as in the Dialogue which bears his name, he
+appears as the friend and ally of Thrasymachus.
+
+Cephalus, the patriarch of the house, has been appropriately engaged in
+offering a sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man who has almost
+done with life, and is at peace with himself and with all mankind. He
+feels that he is drawing nearer to the world below, and seems to linger
+around the memory of the past. He is eager that Socrates should come to
+visit him, fond of the poetry of the last generation, happy in the
+consciousness of a well-spent life, glad at having escaped from the
+tyranny of youthful lusts. His love of conversation, his affection, his
+indifference to riches, even his garrulity, are interesting traits of
+character. He is not one of those who have nothing to say, because
+their whole mind has been absorbed in making money. Yet he acknowledges
+that riches have the advantage of placing men above the temptation to
+dishonesty or falsehood. The respectful attention shown to him by
+Socrates, whose love of conversation, no less than the mission imposed
+upon him by the Oracle, leads him to ask questions of all men, young
+and old alike, should also be noted. Who better suited to raise the
+question of justice than Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the
+expression of it? The moderation with which old age is pictured by
+Cephalus as a very tolerable portion of existence is characteristic,
+not only of him, but of Greek feeling generally, and contrasts with the
+exaggeration of Cicero in the De Senectute. The evening of life is
+described by Plato in the most expressive manner, yet with the fewest
+possible touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic. iv. 16), the aged
+Cephalus would have been out of place in the discussion which follows,
+and which he could neither have understood nor taken part in without a
+violation of dramatic propriety (cp. Lysimachus in the Laches).
+
+His ‘son and heir’ Polemarchus has the frankness and impetuousness of
+youth; he is for detaining Socrates by force in the opening scene, and
+will not ‘let him off’ on the subject of women and children. Like
+Cephalus, he is limited in his point of view, and represents the
+proverbial stage of morality which has rules of life rather than
+principles; and he quotes Simonides (cp. Aristoph. Clouds) as his
+father had quoted Pindar. But after this he has no more to say; the
+answers which he makes are only elicited from him by the dialectic of
+Socrates. He has not yet experienced the influence of the Sophists like
+Glaucon and Adeimantus, nor is he sensible of the necessity of refuting
+them; he belongs to the pre-Socratic or pre-dialectical age. He is
+incapable of arguing, and is bewildered by Socrates to such a degree
+that he does not know what he is saying. He is made to admit that
+justice is a thief, and that the virtues follow the analogy of the
+arts. From his brother Lysias (contra Eratosth.) we learn that he fell
+a victim to the Thirty Tyrants, but no allusion is here made to his
+fate, nor to the circumstance that Cephalus and his family were of
+Syracusan origin, and had migrated from Thurii to Athens.
+
+The ‘Chalcedonian giant,’ Thrasymachus, of whom we have already heard
+in the Phaedrus, is the personification of the Sophists, according to
+Plato’s conception of them, in some of their worst characteristics. He
+is vain and blustering, refusing to discourse unless he is paid, fond
+of making an oration, and hoping thereby to escape the inevitable
+Socrates; but a mere child in argument, and unable to foresee that the
+next ‘move’ (to use a Platonic expression) will ‘shut him up.’ He has
+reached the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in
+advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus. But he is incapable of defending
+them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his confusion with
+banter and insolence. Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him
+by Plato were really held either by him or by any other Sophist is
+uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality
+might easily grow up—they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers
+in Thucydides; but we are concerned at present with Plato’s description
+of him, and not with the historical reality. The inequality of the
+contest adds greatly to the humour of the scene. The pompous and empty
+Sophist is utterly helpless in the hands of the great master of
+dialectic, who knows how to touch all the springs of vanity and
+weakness in him. He is greatly irritated by the irony of Socrates, but
+his noisy and imbecile rage only lays him more and more open to the
+thrusts of his assailant. His determination to cram down their throats,
+or put ‘bodily into their souls’ his own words, elicits a cry of horror
+from Socrates. The state of his temper is quite as worthy of remark as
+the process of the argument. Nothing is more amusing than his complete
+submission when he has been once thoroughly beaten. At first he seems
+to continue the discussion with reluctance, but soon with apparent
+good-will, and he even testifies his interest at a later stage by one
+or two occasional remarks. When attacked by Glaucon he is humorously
+protected by Socrates ‘as one who has never been his enemy and is now
+his friend.’ From Cicero and Quintilian and from Aristotle’s Rhetoric
+we learn that the Sophist whom Plato has made so ridiculous was a man
+of note whose writings were preserved in later ages. The play on his
+name which was made by his contemporary Herodicus (Aris. Rhet.), ‘thou
+wast ever bold in battle,’ seems to show that the description of him is
+not devoid of verisimilitude.
+
+When Thrasymachus has been silenced, the two principal respondents,
+Glaucon and Adeimantus, appear on the scene: here, as in Greek tragedy
+(cp. Introd. to Phaedo), three actors are introduced. At first sight
+the two sons of Ariston may seem to wear a family likeness, like the
+two friends Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo. But on a nearer
+examination of them the similarity vanishes, and they are seen to be
+distinct characters. Glaucon is the impetuous youth who can ‘just never
+have enough of fechting’ (cp. the character of him in Xen. Mem. iii.
+6); the man of pleasure who is acquainted with the mysteries of love;
+the ‘juvenis qui gaudet canibus,’ and who improves the breed of
+animals; the lover of art and music who has all the experiences of
+youthful life. He is full of quickness and penetration, piercing easily
+below the clumsy platitudes of Thrasymachus to the real difficulty; he
+turns out to the light the seamy side of human life, and yet does not
+lose faith in the just and true. It is Glaucon who seizes what may be
+termed the ludicrous relation of the philosopher to the world, to whom
+a state of simplicity is ‘a city of pigs,’ who is always prepared with
+a jest when the argument offers him an opportunity, and who is ever
+ready to second the humour of Socrates and to appreciate the
+ridiculous, whether in the connoisseurs of music, or in the lovers of
+theatricals, or in the fantastic behaviour of the citizens of
+democracy. His weaknesses are several times alluded to by Socrates,
+who, however, will not allow him to be attacked by his brother
+Adeimantus. He is a soldier, and, like Adeimantus, has been
+distinguished at the battle of Megara (anno 456?)...The character of
+Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the profounder objections are
+commonly put into his mouth. Glaucon is more demonstrative, and
+generally opens the game. Adeimantus pursues the argument further.
+Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick sympathy of youth;
+Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up man of the world. In
+the second book, when Glaucon insists that justice and injustice shall
+be considered without regard to their consequences, Adeimantus remarks
+that they are regarded by mankind in general only for the sake of their
+consequences; and in a similar vein of reflection he urges at the
+beginning of the fourth book that Socrates fails in making his citizens
+happy, and is answered that happiness is not the first but the second
+thing, not the direct aim but the indirect consequence of the good
+government of a State. In the discussion about religion and mythology,
+Adeimantus is the respondent, but Glaucon breaks in with a slight jest,
+and carries on the conversation in a lighter tone about music and
+gymnastic to the end of the book. It is Adeimantus again who volunteers
+the criticism of common sense on the Socratic method of argument, and
+who refuses to let Socrates pass lightly over the question of women and
+children. It is Adeimantus who is the respondent in the more
+argumentative, as Glaucon in the lighter and more imaginative portions
+of the Dialogue. For example, throughout the greater part of the sixth
+book, the causes of the corruption of philosophy and the conception of
+the idea of good are discussed with Adeimantus. Glaucon resumes his
+place of principal respondent; but he has a difficulty in apprehending
+the higher education of Socrates, and makes some false hits in the
+course of the discussion. Once more Adeimantus returns with the
+allusion to his brother Glaucon whom he compares to the contentious
+State; in the next book he is again superseded, and Glaucon continues
+to the end.
+
+Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the successive
+stages of morality, beginning with the Athenian gentleman of the olden
+time, who is followed by the practical man of that day regulating his
+life by proverbs and saws; to him succeeds the wild generalization of
+the Sophists, and lastly come the young disciples of the great teacher,
+who know the sophistical arguments but will not be convinced by them,
+and desire to go deeper into the nature of things. These too, like
+Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, are clearly distinguished from one
+another. Neither in the Republic, nor in any other Dialogue of Plato,
+is a single character repeated.
+
+The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly consistent.
+In the first book we have more of the real Socrates, such as he is
+depicted in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in the earliest Dialogues of
+Plato, and in the Apology. He is ironical, provoking, questioning, the
+old enemy of the Sophists, ready to put on the mask of Silenus as well
+as to argue seriously. But in the sixth book his enmity towards the
+Sophists abates; he acknowledges that they are the representatives
+rather than the corrupters of the world. He also becomes more dogmatic
+and constructive, passing beyond the range either of the political or
+the speculative ideas of the real Socrates. In one passage Plato
+himself seems to intimate that the time had now come for Socrates, who
+had passed his whole life in philosophy, to give his own opinion and
+not to be always repeating the notions of other men. There is no
+evidence that either the idea of good or the conception of a perfect
+state were comprehended in the Socratic teaching, though he certainly
+dwelt on the nature of the universal and of final causes (cp. Xen.
+Mem.; Phaedo); and a deep thinker like him, in his thirty or forty
+years of public teaching, could hardly have failed to touch on the
+nature of family relations, for which there is also some positive
+evidence in the Memorabilia (Mem.) The Socratic method is nominally
+retained; and every inference is either put into the mouth of the
+respondent or represented as the common discovery of him and Socrates.
+But any one can see that this is a mere form, of which the affectation
+grows wearisome as the work advances. The method of enquiry has passed
+into a method of teaching in which by the help of interlocutors the
+same thesis is looked at from various points of view. The nature of the
+process is truly characterized by Glaucon, when he describes himself as
+a companion who is not good for much in an investigation, but can see
+what he is shown, and may, perhaps, give the answer to a question more
+fluently than another.
+
+Neither can we be absolutely certain that Socrates himself taught the
+immortality of the soul, which is unknown to his disciple Glaucon in
+the Republic (cp. Apol.); nor is there any reason to suppose that he
+used myths or revelations of another world as a vehicle of instruction,
+or that he would have banished poetry or have denounced the Greek
+mythology. His favorite oath is retained, and a slight mention is made
+of the daemonium, or internal sign, which is alluded to by Socrates as
+a phenomenon peculiar to himself. A real element of Socratic teaching,
+which is more prominent in the Republic than in any of the other
+Dialogues of Plato, is the use of example and illustration Ï„á½° φοÏτικὰ
+αá½Ï„á¿· Ï€ÏοσφέÏοντες, ‘Let us apply the test of common instances.’ ‘You,’
+says Adeimantus, ironically, in the sixth book, ‘are so unaccustomed to
+speak in images.’ And this use of examples or images, though truly
+Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into the form of
+an allegory or parable, which embodies in the concrete what has been
+already described, or is about to be described, in the abstract. Thus
+the figure of the cave in Book VII is a recapitulation of the divisions
+of knowledge in Book VI. The composite animal in Book IX is an allegory
+of the parts of the soul. The noble captain and the ship and the true
+pilot in Book VI are a figure of the relation of the people to the
+philosophers in the State which has been described. Other figures, such
+as the dog, or the marriage of the portionless maiden, or the drones
+and wasps in the eighth and ninth books, also form links of connexion
+in long passages, or are used to recall previous discussions.
+
+Plato is most true to the character of his master when he describes him
+as ‘not of this world.’ And with this representation of him the ideal
+state and the other paradoxes of the Republic are quite in accordance,
+though they cannot be shown to have been speculations of Socrates. To
+him, as to other great teachers both philosophical and religious, when
+they looked upward, the world seemed to be the embodiment of error and
+evil. The common sense of mankind has revolted against this view, or
+has only partially admitted it. And even in Socrates himself the
+sterner judgement of the multitude at times passes into a sort of
+ironical pity or love. Men in general are incapable of philosophy, and
+are therefore at enmity with the philosopher; but their
+misunderstanding of him is unavoidable: for they have never seen him as
+he truly is in his own image; they are only acquainted with artificial
+systems possessing no native force of truth—words which admit of many
+applications. Their leaders have nothing to measure with, and are
+therefore ignorant of their own stature. But they are to be pitied or
+laughed at, not to be quarrelled with; they mean well with their
+nostrums, if they could only learn that they are cutting off a Hydra’s
+head. This moderation towards those who are in error is one of the most
+characteristic features of Socrates in the Republic. In all the
+different representations of Socrates, whether of Xenophon or Plato,
+and amid the differences of the earlier or later Dialogues, he always
+retains the character of the unwearied and disinterested seeker after
+truth, without which he would have ceased to be Socrates.
+
+Leaving the characters we may now analyse the contents of the Republic,
+and then proceed to consider (1) The general aspects of this Hellenic
+ideal of the State, (2) The modern lights in which the thoughts of
+Plato may be read.
+
+BOOK I. The Republic opens with a truly Greek scene—a festival in
+honour of the goddess Bendis which is held in the Piraeus; to this is
+added the promise of an equestrian torch-race in the evening. The whole
+work is supposed to be recited by Socrates on the day after the
+festival to a small party, consisting of Critias, Timaeus, Hermocrates,
+and another; this we learn from the first words of the Timaeus.
+
+When the rhetorical advantage of reciting the Dialogue has been gained,
+the attention is not distracted by any reference to the audience; nor
+is the reader further reminded of the extraordinary length of the
+narrative. Of the numerous company, three only take any serious part in
+the discussion; nor are we informed whether in the evening they went to
+the torch-race, or talked, as in the Symposium, through the night. The
+manner in which the conversation has arisen is described as
+follows:—Socrates and his companion Glaucon are about to leave the
+festival when they are detained by a message from Polemarchus, who
+speedily appears accompanied by Adeimantus, the brother of Glaucon, and
+with playful violence compels them to remain, promising them not only
+the torch-race, but the pleasure of conversation with the young, which
+to Socrates is a far greater attraction. They return to the house of
+Cephalus, Polemarchus’ father, now in extreme old age, who is found
+sitting upon a cushioned seat crowned for a sacrifice. ‘You should come
+to me oftener, Socrates, for I am too old to go to you; and at my time
+of life, having lost other pleasures, I care the more for
+conversation.’ Socrates asks him what he thinks of age, to which the
+old man replies, that the sorrows and discontents of age are to be
+attributed to the tempers of men, and that age is a time of peace in
+which the tyranny of the passions is no longer felt. Yes, replies
+Socrates, but the world will say, Cephalus, that you are happy in old
+age because you are rich. ‘And there is something in what they say,
+Socrates, but not so much as they imagine—as Themistocles replied to
+the Seriphian, “Neither you, if you had been an Athenian, nor I, if I
+had been a Seriphian, would ever have been famous,†I might in like
+manner reply to you, Neither a good poor man can be happy in age, nor
+yet a bad rich man.’ Socrates remarks that Cephalus appears not to care
+about riches, a quality which he ascribes to his having inherited, not
+acquired them, and would like to know what he considers to be the chief
+advantage of them. Cephalus answers that when you are old the belief in
+the world below grows upon you, and then to have done justice and never
+to have been compelled to do injustice through poverty, and never to
+have deceived anyone, are felt to be unspeakable blessings. Socrates,
+who is evidently preparing for an argument, next asks, What is the
+meaning of the word justice? To tell the truth and pay your debts? No
+more than this? Or must we admit exceptions? Ought I, for example, to
+put back into the hands of my friend, who has gone mad, the sword which
+I borrowed of him when he was in his right mind? ‘There must be
+exceptions.’ ‘And yet,’ says Polemarchus, ‘the definition which has
+been given has the authority of Simonides.’ Here Cephalus retires to
+look after the sacrifices, and bequeaths, as Socrates facetiously
+remarks, the possession of the argument to his heir, Polemarchus...
+
+The description of old age is finished, and Plato, as his manner is,
+has touched the key-note of the whole work in asking for the definition
+of justice, first suggesting the question which Glaucon afterwards
+pursues respecting external goods, and preparing for the concluding
+mythus of the world below in the slight allusion of Cephalus. The
+portrait of the just man is a natural frontispiece or introduction to
+the long discourse which follows, and may perhaps imply that in all our
+perplexity about the nature of justice, there is no difficulty in
+discerning ‘who is a just man.’ The first explanation has been
+supported by a saying of Simonides; and now Socrates has a mind to show
+that the resolution of justice into two unconnected precepts, which
+have no common principle, fails to satisfy the demands of dialectic.
+
+...He proceeds: What did Simonides mean by this saying of his? Did he
+mean that I was to give back arms to a madman? ‘No, not in that case,
+not if the parties are friends, and evil would result. He meant that
+you were to do what was proper, good to friends and harm to enemies.’
+Every act does something to somebody; and following this analogy,
+Socrates asks, What is this due and proper thing which justice does,
+and to whom? He is answered that justice does good to friends and harm
+to enemies. But in what way good or harm? ‘In making alliances with the
+one, and going to war with the other.’ Then in time of peace what is
+the good of justice? The answer is that justice is of use in contracts,
+and contracts are money partnerships. Yes; but how in such partnerships
+is the just man of more use than any other man? ‘When you want to have
+money safely kept and not used.’ Then justice will be useful when money
+is useless. And there is another difficulty: justice, like the art of
+war or any other art, must be of opposites, good at attack as well as
+at defence, at stealing as well as at guarding. But then justice is a
+thief, though a hero notwithstanding, like Autolycus, the Homeric hero,
+who was ‘excellent above all men in theft and perjury’—to such a pass
+have you and Homer and Simonides brought us; though I do not forget
+that the thieving must be for the good of friends and the harm of
+enemies. And still there arises another question: Are friends to be
+interpreted as real or seeming; enemies as real or seeming? And are our
+friends to be only the good, and our enemies to be the evil? The answer
+is, that we must do good to our seeming and real good friends, and evil
+to our seeming and real evil enemies—good to the good, evil to the
+evil. But ought we to render evil for evil at all, when to do so will
+only make men more evil? Can justice produce injustice any more than
+the art of horsemanship can make bad horsemen, or heat produce cold?
+The final conclusion is, that no sage or poet ever said that the just
+return evil for evil; this was a maxim of some rich and mighty man,
+Periander, Perdiccas, or Ismenias the Theban (about B.C. 398-381)...
+
+Thus the first stage of aphoristic or unconscious morality is shown to
+be inadequate to the wants of the age; the authority of the poets is
+set aside, and through the winding mazes of dialectic we make an
+approach to the Christian precept of forgiveness of injuries. Similar
+words are applied by the Persian mystic poet to the Divine being when
+the questioning spirit is stirred within him:—‘If because I do evil,
+Thou punishest me by evil, what is the difference between Thee and me?’
+In this both Plato and Kheyam rise above the level of many Christian
+(?) theologians. The first definition of justice easily passes into the
+second; for the simple words ‘to speak the truth and pay your debts’ is
+substituted the more abstract ‘to do good to your friends and harm to
+your enemies.’ Either of these explanations gives a sufficient rule of
+life for plain men, but they both fall short of the precision of
+philosophy. We may note in passing the antiquity of casuistry, which
+not only arises out of the conflict of established principles in
+particular cases, but also out of the effort to attain them, and is
+prior as well as posterior to our fundamental notions of morality. The
+‘interrogation’ of moral ideas; the appeal to the authority of Homer;
+the conclusion that the maxim, ‘Do good to your friends and harm to
+your enemies,’ being erroneous, could not have been the word of any
+great man, are all of them very characteristic of the Platonic
+Socrates.
+
+...Here Thrasymachus, who has made several attempts to interrupt, but
+has hitherto been kept in order by the company, takes advantage of a
+pause and rushes into the arena, beginning, like a savage animal, with
+a roar. ‘Socrates,’ he says, ‘what folly is this?—Why do you agree to
+be vanquished by one another in a pretended argument?’ He then
+prohibits all the ordinary definitions of justice; to which Socrates
+replies that he cannot tell how many twelve is, if he is forbidden to
+say 2 x 6, or 3 x 4, or 6 x 2, or 4 x 3. At first Thrasymachus is
+reluctant to argue; but at length, with a promise of payment on the
+part of the company and of praise from Socrates, he is induced to open
+the game. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘my answer is that might is right, justice
+the interest of the stronger: now praise me.’ Let me understand you
+first. Do you mean that because Polydamas the wrestler, who is stronger
+than we are, finds the eating of beef for his interest, the eating of
+beef is also for our interest, who are not so strong? Thrasymachus is
+indignant at the illustration, and in pompous words, apparently
+intended to restore dignity to the argument, he explains his meaning to
+be that the rulers make laws for their own interests. But suppose, says
+Socrates, that the ruler or stronger makes a mistake—then the interest
+of the stronger is not his interest. Thrasymachus is saved from this
+speedy downfall by his disciple Cleitophon, who introduces the word
+‘thinks;’—not the actual interest of the ruler, but what he thinks or
+what seems to be his interest, is justice. The contradiction is escaped
+by the unmeaning evasion: for though his real and apparent interests
+may differ, what the ruler thinks to be his interest will always remain
+what he thinks to be his interest.
+
+Of course this was not the original assertion, nor is the new
+interpretation accepted by Thrasymachus himself. But Socrates is not
+disposed to quarrel about words, if, as he significantly insinuates,
+his adversary has changed his mind. In what follows Thrasymachus does
+in fact withdraw his admission that the ruler may make a mistake, for
+he affirms that the ruler as a ruler is infallible. Socrates is quite
+ready to accept the new position, which he equally turns against
+Thrasymachus by the help of the analogy of the arts. Every art or
+science has an interest, but this interest is to be distinguished from
+the accidental interest of the artist, and is only concerned with the
+good of the things or persons which come under the art. And justice has
+an interest which is the interest not of the ruler or judge, but of
+those who come under his sway.
+
+Thrasymachus is on the brink of the inevitable conclusion, when he
+makes a bold diversion. ‘Tell me, Socrates,’ he says, ‘have you a
+nurse?’ What a question! Why do you ask? ‘Because, if you have, she
+neglects you and lets you go about drivelling, and has not even taught
+you to know the shepherd from the sheep. For you fancy that shepherds
+and rulers never think of their own interest, but only of their sheep
+or subjects, whereas the truth is that they fatten them for their use,
+sheep and subjects alike. And experience proves that in every relation
+of life the just man is the loser and the unjust the gainer, especially
+where injustice is on the grand scale, which is quite another thing
+from the petty rogueries of swindlers and burglars and robbers of
+temples. The language of men proves this—our ‘gracious’ and ‘blessed’
+tyrant and the like—all which tends to show (1) that justice is the
+interest of the stronger; and (2) that injustice is more profitable and
+also stronger than justice.’
+
+Thrasymachus, who is better at a speech than at a close argument,
+having deluged the company with words, has a mind to escape. But the
+others will not let him go, and Socrates adds a humble but earnest
+request that he will not desert them at such a crisis of their fate.
+‘And what can I do more for you?’ he says; ‘would you have me put the
+words bodily into your souls?’ God forbid! replies Socrates; but we
+want you to be consistent in the use of terms, and not to employ
+‘physician’ in an exact sense, and then again ‘shepherd’ or ‘ruler’ in
+an inexact,—if the words are strictly taken, the ruler and the shepherd
+look only to the good of their people or flocks and not to their own:
+whereas you insist that rulers are solely actuated by love of office.
+‘No doubt about it,’ replies Thrasymachus. Then why are they paid? Is
+not the reason, that their interest is not comprehended in their art,
+and is therefore the concern of another art, the art of pay, which is
+common to the arts in general, and therefore not identical with any one
+of them? Nor would any man be a ruler unless he were induced by the
+hope of reward or the fear of punishment;—the reward is money or
+honour, the punishment is the necessity of being ruled by a man worse
+than himself. And if a State (or Church) were composed entirely of good
+men, they would be affected by the last motive only; and there would be
+as much ‘nolo episcopari’ as there is at present of the opposite...
+
+The satire on existing governments is heightened by the simple and
+apparently incidental manner in which the last remark is introduced.
+There is a similar irony in the argument that the governors of mankind
+do not like being in office, and that therefore they demand pay.
+
+...Enough of this: the other assertion of Thrasymachus is far more
+important—that the unjust life is more gainful than the just. Now, as
+you and I, Glaucon, are not convinced by him, we must reply to him; but
+if we try to compare their respective gains we shall want a judge to
+decide for us; we had better therefore proceed by making mutual
+admissions of the truth to one another.
+
+Thrasymachus had asserted that perfect injustice was more gainful than
+perfect justice, and after a little hesitation he is induced by
+Socrates to admit the still greater paradox that injustice is virtue
+and justice vice. Socrates praises his frankness, and assumes the
+attitude of one whose only wish is to understand the meaning of his
+opponents. At the same time he is weaving a net in which Thrasymachus
+is finally enclosed. The admission is elicited from him that the just
+man seeks to gain an advantage over the unjust only, but not over the
+just, while the unjust would gain an advantage over either. Socrates,
+in order to test this statement, employs once more the favourite
+analogy of the arts. The musician, doctor, skilled artist of any sort,
+does not seek to gain more than the skilled, but only more than the
+unskilled (that is to say, he works up to a rule, standard, law, and
+does not exceed it), whereas the unskilled makes random efforts at
+excess. Thus the skilled falls on the side of the good, and the
+unskilled on the side of the evil, and the just is the skilled, and the
+unjust is the unskilled.
+
+There was great difficulty in bringing Thrasymachus to the point; the
+day was hot and he was streaming with perspiration, and for the first
+time in his life he was seen to blush. But his other thesis that
+injustice was stronger than justice has not yet been refuted, and
+Socrates now proceeds to the consideration of this, which, with the
+assistance of Thrasymachus, he hopes to clear up; the latter is at
+first churlish, but in the judicious hands of Socrates is soon restored
+to good-humour: Is there not honour among thieves? Is not the strength
+of injustice only a remnant of justice? Is not absolute injustice
+absolute weakness also? A house that is divided against itself cannot
+stand; two men who quarrel detract from one another’s strength, and he
+who is at war with himself is the enemy of himself and the gods. Not
+wickedness therefore, but semi-wickedness flourishes in states,—a
+remnant of good is needed in order to make union in action
+possible,—there is no kingdom of evil in this world.
+
+Another question has not been answered: Is the just or the unjust the
+happier? To this we reply, that every art has an end and an excellence
+or virtue by which the end is accomplished. And is not the end of the
+soul happiness, and justice the excellence of the soul by which
+happiness is attained? Justice and happiness being thus shown to be
+inseparable, the question whether the just or the unjust is the happier
+has disappeared.
+
+Thrasymachus replies: ‘Let this be your entertainment, Socrates, at the
+festival of Bendis.’ Yes; and a very good entertainment with which your
+kindness has supplied me, now that you have left off scolding. And yet
+not a good entertainment—but that was my own fault, for I tasted of too
+many things. First of all the nature of justice was the subject of our
+enquiry, and then whether justice is virtue and wisdom, or evil and
+folly; and then the comparative advantages of just and unjust: and the
+sum of all is that I know not what justice is; how then shall I know
+whether the just is happy or not?...
+
+Thus the sophistical fabric has been demolished, chiefly by appealing
+to the analogy of the arts. ‘Justice is like the arts (1) in having no
+external interest, and (2) in not aiming at excess, and (3) justice is
+to happiness what the implement of the workman is to his work.’ At this
+the modern reader is apt to stumble, because he forgets that Plato is
+writing in an age when the arts and the virtues, like the moral and
+intellectual faculties, were still undistinguished. Among early
+enquirers into the nature of human action the arts helped to fill up
+the void of speculation; and at first the comparison of the arts and
+the virtues was not perceived by them to be fallacious. They only saw
+the points of agreement in them and not the points of difference.
+Virtue, like art, must take means to an end; good manners are both an
+art and a virtue; character is naturally described under the image of a
+statue; and there are many other figures of speech which are readily
+transferred from art to morals. The next generation cleared up these
+perplexities; or at least supplied after ages with a further analysis
+of them. The contemporaries of Plato were in a state of transition, and
+had not yet fully realized the common-sense distinction of Aristotle,
+that ‘virtue is concerned with action, art with production’ (Nic.
+Eth.), or that ‘virtue implies intention and constancy of purpose,’
+whereas ‘art requires knowledge only’. And yet in the absurdities which
+follow from some uses of the analogy, there seems to be an intimation
+conveyed that virtue is more than art. This is implied in the reductio
+ad absurdum that ‘justice is a thief,’ and in the dissatisfaction which
+Socrates expresses at the final result.
+
+The expression ‘an art of pay’ which is described as ‘common to all the
+arts’ is not in accordance with the ordinary use of language. Nor is it
+employed elsewhere either by Plato or by any other Greek writer. It is
+suggested by the argument, and seems to extend the conception of art to
+doing as well as making. Another flaw or inaccuracy of language may be
+noted in the words ‘men who are injured are made more unjust.’ For
+those who are injured are not necessarily made worse, but only harmed
+or ill-treated.
+
+The second of the three arguments, ‘that the just does not aim at
+excess,’ has a real meaning, though wrapped up in an enigmatical form.
+That the good is of the nature of the finite is a peculiarly Hellenic
+sentiment, which may be compared with the language of those modern
+writers who speak of virtue as fitness, and of freedom as obedience to
+law. The mathematical or logical notion of limit easily passes into an
+ethical one, and even finds a mythological expression in the conception
+of envy (Greek). Ideas of measure, equality, order, unity, proportion,
+still linger in the writings of moralists; and the true spirit of the
+fine arts is better conveyed by such terms than by superlatives.
+
+‘When workmen strive to do better than well,
+They do confound their skill in covetousness.’ (King John. Act. iv. Sc.
+2.)
+
+
+The harmony of the soul and body, and of the parts of the soul with one
+another, a harmony ‘fairer than that of musical notes,’ is the true
+Hellenic mode of conceiving the perfection of human nature.
+
+In what may be called the epilogue of the discussion with Thrasymachus,
+Plato argues that evil is not a principle of strength, but of discord
+and dissolution, just touching the question which has been often
+treated in modern times by theologians and philosophers, of the
+negative nature of evil. In the last argument we trace the germ of the
+Aristotelian doctrine of an end and a virtue directed towards the end,
+which again is suggested by the arts. The final reconcilement of
+justice and happiness and the identity of the individual and the State
+are also intimated. Socrates reassumes the character of a
+‘know-nothing;’ at the same time he appears to be not wholly satisfied
+with the manner in which the argument has been conducted. Nothing is
+concluded; but the tendency of the dialectical process, here as always,
+is to enlarge our conception of ideas, and to widen their application
+to human life.
+
+BOOK II. Thrasymachus is pacified, but the intrepid Glaucon insists on
+continuing the argument. He is not satisfied with the indirect manner
+in which, at the end of the last book, Socrates had disposed of the
+question ‘Whether the just or the unjust is the happier.’ He begins by
+dividing goods into three classes:—first, goods desirable in
+themselves; secondly, goods desirable in themselves and for their
+results; thirdly, goods desirable for their results only. He then asks
+Socrates in which of the three classes he would place justice. In the
+second class, replies Socrates, among goods desirable for themselves
+and also for their results. ‘Then the world in general are of another
+mind, for they say that justice belongs to the troublesome class of
+goods which are desirable for their results only. Socrates answers that
+this is the doctrine of Thrasymachus which he rejects. Glaucon thinks
+that Thrasymachus was too ready to listen to the voice of the charmer,
+and proposes to consider the nature of justice and injustice in
+themselves and apart from the results and rewards of them which the
+world is always dinning in his ears. He will first of all speak of the
+nature and origin of justice; secondly, of the manner in which men view
+justice as a necessity and not a good; and thirdly, he will prove the
+reasonableness of this view.
+
+‘To do injustice is said to be a good; to suffer injustice an evil. As
+the evil is discovered by experience to be greater than the good, the
+sufferers, who cannot also be doers, make a compact that they will have
+neither, and this compact or mean is called justice, but is really the
+impossibility of doing injustice. No one would observe such a compact
+if he were not obliged. Let us suppose that the just and unjust have
+two rings, like that of Gyges in the well-known story, which make them
+invisible, and then no difference will appear in them, for every one
+will do evil if he can. And he who abstains will be regarded by the
+world as a fool for his pains. Men may praise him in public out of fear
+for themselves, but they will laugh at him in their hearts (Cp.
+Gorgias.)
+
+‘And now let us frame an ideal of the just and unjust. Imagine the
+unjust man to be master of his craft, seldom making mistakes and easily
+correcting them; having gifts of money, speech, strength—the greatest
+villain bearing the highest character: and at his side let us place the
+just in his nobleness and simplicity—being, not seeming—without name or
+reward—clothed in his justice only—the best of men who is thought to be
+the worst, and let him die as he has lived. I might add (but I would
+rather put the rest into the mouth of the panegyrists of injustice—they
+will tell you) that the just man will be scourged, racked, bound, will
+have his eyes put out, and will at last be crucified (literally
+impaled)—and all this because he ought to have preferred seeming to
+being. How different is the case of the unjust who clings to appearance
+as the true reality! His high character makes him a ruler; he can marry
+where he likes, trade where he likes, help his friends and hurt his
+enemies; having got rich by dishonesty he can worship the gods better,
+and will therefore be more loved by them than the just.’
+
+I was thinking what to answer, when Adeimantus joined in the already
+unequal fray. He considered that the most important point of all had
+been omitted:—‘Men are taught to be just for the sake of rewards;
+parents and guardians make reputation the incentive to virtue. And
+other advantages are promised by them of a more solid kind, such as
+wealthy marriages and high offices. There are the pictures in Homer and
+Hesiod of fat sheep and heavy fleeces, rich corn-fields and trees
+toppling with fruit, which the gods provide in this life for the just.
+And the Orphic poets add a similar picture of another. The heroes of
+Musaeus and Eumolpus lie on couches at a festival, with garlands on
+their heads, enjoying as the meed of virtue a paradise of immortal
+drunkenness. Some go further, and speak of a fair posterity in the
+third and fourth generation. But the wicked they bury in a slough and
+make them carry water in a sieve: and in this life they attribute to
+them the infamy which Glaucon was assuming to be the lot of the just
+who are supposed to be unjust.
+
+‘Take another kind of argument which is found both in poetry and
+prose:—“Virtue,†as Hesiod says, “is honourable but difficult, vice is
+easy and profitable.†You may often see the wicked in great prosperity
+and the righteous afflicted by the will of heaven. And mendicant
+prophets knock at rich men’s doors, promising to atone for the sins of
+themselves or their fathers in an easy fashion with sacrifices and
+festive games, or with charms and invocations to get rid of an enemy
+good or bad by divine help and at a small charge;—they appeal to books
+professing to be written by Musaeus and Orpheus, and carry away the
+minds of whole cities, and promise to “get souls out of purgatory;†and
+if we refuse to listen to them, no one knows what will happen to us.
+
+‘When a lively-minded ingenuous youth hears all this, what will be his
+conclusion? “Will he,†in the language of Pindar, “make justice his
+high tower, or fortify himself with crooked deceit?†Justice, he
+reflects, without the appearance of justice, is misery and ruin;
+injustice has the promise of a glorious life. Appearance is master of
+truth and lord of happiness. To appearance then I will turn,—I will put
+on the show of virtue and trail behind me the fox of Archilochus. I
+hear some one saying that “wickedness is not easily concealed,†to
+which I reply that “nothing great is easy.†Union and force and
+rhetoric will do much; and if men say that they cannot prevail over the
+gods, still how do we know that there are gods? Only from the poets,
+who acknowledge that they may be appeased by sacrifices. Then why not
+sin and pay for indulgences out of your sin? For if the righteous are
+only unpunished, still they have no further reward, while the wicked
+may be unpunished and have the pleasure of sinning too. But what of the
+world below? Nay, says the argument, there are atoning powers who will
+set that matter right, as the poets, who are the sons of the gods, tell
+us; and this is confirmed by the authority of the State.
+
+‘How can we resist such arguments in favour of injustice? Add good
+manners, and, as the wise tell us, we shall make the best of both
+worlds. Who that is not a miserable caitiff will refrain from smiling
+at the praises of justice? Even if a man knows the better part he will
+not be angry with others; for he knows also that more than human virtue
+is needed to save a man, and that he only praises justice who is
+incapable of injustice.
+
+‘The origin of the evil is that all men from the beginning, heroes,
+poets, instructors of youth, have always asserted “the temporal
+dispensation,†the honours and profits of justice. Had we been taught
+in early youth the power of justice and injustice inherent in the soul,
+and unseen by any human or divine eye, we should not have needed others
+to be our guardians, but every one would have been the guardian of
+himself. This is what I want you to show, Socrates;—other men use
+arguments which rather tend to strengthen the position of Thrasymachus
+that “might is right;†but from you I expect better things. And please,
+as Glaucon said, to exclude reputation; let the just be thought unjust
+and the unjust just, and do you still prove to us the superiority of
+justice’...
+
+The thesis, which for the sake of argument has been maintained by
+Glaucon, is the converse of that of Thrasymachus—not right is the
+interest of the stronger, but right is the necessity of the weaker.
+Starting from the same premises he carries the analysis of society a
+step further back;—might is still right, but the might is the weakness
+of the many combined against the strength of the few.
+
+There have been theories in modern as well as in ancient times which
+have a family likeness to the speculations of Glaucon; e.g. that power
+is the foundation of right; or that a monarch has a divine right to
+govern well or ill; or that virtue is self-love or the love of power;
+or that war is the natural state of man; or that private vices are
+public benefits. All such theories have a kind of plausibility from
+their partial agreement with experience. For human nature oscillates
+between good and evil, and the motives of actions and the origin of
+institutions may be explained to a certain extent on either hypothesis
+according to the character or point of view of a particular thinker.
+The obligation of maintaining authority under all circumstances and
+sometimes by rather questionable means is felt strongly and has become
+a sort of instinct among civilized men. The divine right of kings, or
+more generally of governments, is one of the forms under which this
+natural feeling is expressed. Nor again is there any evil which has not
+some accompaniment of good or pleasure; nor any good which is free from
+some alloy of evil; nor any noble or generous thought which may not be
+attended by a shadow or the ghost of a shadow of self-interest or of
+self-love. We know that all human actions are imperfect; but we do not
+therefore attribute them to the worse rather than to the better motive
+or principle. Such a philosophy is both foolish and false, like that
+opinion of the clever rogue who assumes all other men to be like
+himself. And theories of this sort do not represent the real nature of
+the State, which is based on a vague sense of right gradually corrected
+and enlarged by custom and law (although capable also of perversion),
+any more than they describe the origin of society, which is to be
+sought in the family and in the social and religious feelings of man.
+Nor do they represent the average character of individuals, which
+cannot be explained simply on a theory of evil, but has always a
+counteracting element of good. And as men become better such theories
+appear more and more untruthful to them, because they are more
+conscious of their own disinterestedness. A little experience may make
+a man a cynic; a great deal will bring him back to a truer and kindlier
+view of the mixed nature of himself and his fellow men.
+
+The two brothers ask Socrates to prove to them that the just is happy
+when they have taken from him all that in which happiness is ordinarily
+supposed to consist. Not that there is (1) any absurdity in the attempt
+to frame a notion of justice apart from circumstances. For the ideal
+must always be a paradox when compared with the ordinary conditions of
+human life. Neither the Stoical ideal nor the Christian ideal is true
+as a fact, but they may serve as a basis of education, and may exercise
+an ennobling influence. An ideal is none the worse because ‘some one
+has made the discovery’ that no such ideal was ever realized. And in a
+few exceptional individuals who are raised above the ordinary level of
+humanity, the ideal of happiness may be realized in death and misery.
+This may be the state which the reason deliberately approves, and which
+the utilitarian as well as every other moralist may be bound in certain
+cases to prefer.
+
+Nor again, (2) must we forget that Plato, though he agrees generally
+with the view implied in the argument of the two brothers, is not
+expressing his own final conclusion, but rather seeking to dramatize
+one of the aspects of ethical truth. He is developing his idea
+gradually in a series of positions or situations. He is exhibiting
+Socrates for the first time undergoing the Socratic interrogation.
+Lastly, (3) the word ‘happiness’ involves some degree of confusion
+because associated in the language of modern philosophy with conscious
+pleasure or satisfaction, which was not equally present to his mind.
+
+Glaucon has been drawing a picture of the misery of the just and the
+happiness of the unjust, to which the misery of the tyrant in Book IX
+is the answer and parallel. And still the unjust must appear just; that
+is ‘the homage which vice pays to virtue.’ But now Adeimantus, taking
+up the hint which had been already given by Glaucon, proceeds to show
+that in the opinion of mankind justice is regarded only for the sake of
+rewards and reputation, and points out the advantage which is given to
+such arguments as those of Thrasymachus and Glaucon by the conventional
+morality of mankind. He seems to feel the difficulty of ‘justifying the
+ways of God to man.’ Both the brothers touch upon the question, whether
+the morality of actions is determined by their consequences; and both
+of them go beyond the position of Socrates, that justice belongs to the
+class of goods not desirable for themselves only, but desirable for
+themselves and for their results, to which he recalls them. In their
+attempt to view justice as an internal principle, and in their
+condemnation of the poets, they anticipate him. The common life of
+Greece is not enough for them; they must penetrate deeper into the
+nature of things.
+
+It has been objected that justice is honesty in the sense of Glaucon
+and Adeimantus, but is taken by Socrates to mean all virtue. May we not
+more truly say that the old-fashioned notion of justice is enlarged by
+Socrates, and becomes equivalent to universal order or well-being,
+first in the State, and secondly in the individual? He has found a new
+answer to his old question (Protag.), ‘whether the virtues are one or
+many,’ viz. that one is the ordering principle of the three others. In
+seeking to establish the purely internal nature of justice, he is met
+by the fact that man is a social being, and he tries to harmonise the
+two opposite theses as well as he can. There is no more inconsistency
+in this than was inevitable in his age and country; there is no use in
+turning upon him the cross lights of modern philosophy, which, from
+some other point of view, would appear equally inconsistent. Plato does
+not give the final solution of philosophical questions for us; nor can
+he be judged of by our standard.
+
+The remainder of the Republic is developed out of the question of the
+sons of Ariston. Three points are deserving of remark in what
+immediately follows:—First, that the answer of Socrates is altogether
+indirect. He does not say that happiness consists in the contemplation
+of the idea of justice, and still less will he be tempted to affirm the
+Stoical paradox that the just man can be happy on the rack. But first
+he dwells on the difficulty of the problem and insists on restoring man
+to his natural condition, before he will answer the question at all. He
+too will frame an ideal, but his ideal comprehends not only abstract
+justice, but the whole relations of man. Under the fanciful
+illustration of the large letters he implies that he will only look for
+justice in society, and that from the State he will proceed to the
+individual. His answer in substance amounts to this,—that under
+favourable conditions, i.e. in the perfect State, justice and happiness
+will coincide, and that when justice has been once found, happiness may
+be left to take care of itself. That he falls into some degree of
+inconsistency, when in the tenth book he claims to have got rid of the
+rewards and honours of justice, may be admitted; for he has left those
+which exist in the perfect State. And the philosopher ‘who retires
+under the shelter of a wall’ can hardly have been esteemed happy by
+him, at least not in this world. Still he maintains the true attitude
+of moral action. Let a man do his duty first, without asking whether he
+will be happy or not, and happiness will be the inseparable accident
+which attends him. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his
+righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.’
+
+Secondly, it may be remarked that Plato preserves the genuine character
+of Greek thought in beginning with the State and in going on to the
+individual. First ethics, then politics—this is the order of ideas to
+us; the reverse is the order of history. Only after many struggles of
+thought does the individual assert his right as a moral being. In early
+ages he is not ONE, but one of many, the citizen of a State which is
+prior to him; and he has no notion of good or evil apart from the law
+of his country or the creed of his church. And to this type he is
+constantly tending to revert, whenever the influence of custom, or of
+party spirit, or the recollection of the past becomes too strong for
+him.
+
+Thirdly, we may observe the confusion or identification of the
+individual and the State, of ethics and politics, which pervades early
+Greek speculation, and even in modern times retains a certain degree of
+influence. The subtle difference between the collective and individual
+action of mankind seems to have escaped early thinkers, and we too are
+sometimes in danger of forgetting the conditions of united human
+action, whenever we either elevate politics into ethics, or lower
+ethics to the standard of politics. The good man and the good citizen
+only coincide in the perfect State; and this perfection cannot be
+attained by legislation acting upon them from without, but, if at all,
+by education fashioning them from within.
+
+...Socrates praises the sons of Ariston, ‘inspired offspring of the
+renowned hero,’ as the elegiac poet terms them; but he does not
+understand how they can argue so eloquently on behalf of injustice
+while their character shows that they are uninfluenced by their own
+arguments. He knows not how to answer them, although he is afraid of
+deserting justice in the hour of need. He therefore makes a condition,
+that having weak eyes he shall be allowed to read the large letters
+first and then go on to the smaller, that is, he must look for justice
+in the State first, and will then proceed to the individual.
+Accordingly he begins to construct the State.
+
+Society arises out of the wants of man. His first want is food; his
+second a house; his third a coat. The sense of these needs and the
+possibility of satisfying them by exchange, draw individuals together
+on the same spot; and this is the beginning of a State, which we take
+the liberty to invent, although necessity is the real inventor. There
+must be first a husbandman, secondly a builder, thirdly a weaver, to
+which may be added a cobbler. Four or five citizens at least are
+required to make a city. Now men have different natures, and one man
+will do one thing better than many; and business waits for no man.
+Hence there must be a division of labour into different employments;
+into wholesale and retail trade; into workers, and makers of workmen’s
+tools; into shepherds and husbandmen. A city which includes all this
+will have far exceeded the limit of four or five, and yet not be very
+large. But then again imports will be required, and imports necessitate
+exports, and this implies variety of produce in order to attract the
+taste of purchasers; also merchants and ships. In the city too we must
+have a market and money and retail trades; otherwise buyers and sellers
+will never meet, and the valuable time of the producers will be wasted
+in vain efforts at exchange. If we add hired servants the State will be
+complete. And we may guess that somewhere in the intercourse of the
+citizens with one another justice and injustice will appear.
+
+Here follows a rustic picture of their way of life. They spend their
+days in houses which they have built for themselves; they make their
+own clothes and produce their own corn and wine. Their principal food
+is meal and flour, and they drink in moderation. They live on the best
+of terms with each other, and take care not to have too many children.
+‘But,’ said Glaucon, interposing, ‘are they not to have a relish?’
+Certainly; they will have salt and olives and cheese, vegetables and
+fruits, and chestnuts to roast at the fire. ‘’Tis a city of pigs,
+Socrates.’ Why, I replied, what do you want more? ‘Only the comforts of
+life,—sofas and tables, also sauces and sweets.’ I see; you want not
+only a State, but a luxurious State; and possibly in the more complex
+frame we may sooner find justice and injustice. Then the fine arts must
+go to work—every conceivable instrument and ornament of luxury will be
+wanted. There will be dancers, painters, sculptors, musicians, cooks,
+barbers, tire-women, nurses, artists; swineherds and neatherds too for
+the animals, and physicians to cure the disorders of which luxury is
+the source. To feed all these superfluous mouths we shall need a part
+of our neighbour’s land, and they will want a part of ours. And this is
+the origin of war, which may be traced to the same causes as other
+political evils. Our city will now require the slight addition of a
+camp, and the citizen will be converted into a soldier. But then again
+our old doctrine of the division of labour must not be forgotten. The
+art of war cannot be learned in a day, and there must be a natural
+aptitude for military duties. There will be some warlike natures who
+have this aptitude—dogs keen of scent, swift of foot to pursue, and
+strong of limb to fight. And as spirit is the foundation of courage,
+such natures, whether of men or animals, will be full of spirit. But
+these spirited natures are apt to bite and devour one another; the
+union of gentleness to friends and fierceness against enemies appears
+to be an impossibility, and the guardian of a State requires both
+qualities. Who then can be a guardian? The image of the dog suggests an
+answer. For dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. Your
+dog is a philosopher who judges by the rule of knowing or not knowing;
+and philosophy, whether in man or beast, is the parent of gentleness.
+The human watchdogs must be philosophers or lovers of learning which
+will make them gentle. And how are they to be learned without
+education?
+
+But what shall their education be? Is any better than the old-fashioned
+sort which is comprehended under the name of music and gymnastic? Music
+includes literature, and literature is of two kinds, true and false.
+‘What do you mean?’ he said. I mean that children hear stories before
+they learn gymnastics, and that the stories are either untrue, or have
+at most one or two grains of truth in a bushel of falsehood. Now early
+life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they
+will have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a
+censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others. Some of
+them are very improper, as we may see in the great instances of Homer
+and Hesiod, who not only tell lies but bad lies; stories about Uranus
+and Saturn, which are immoral as well as false, and which should never
+be spoken of to young persons, or indeed at all; or, if at all, then in
+a mystery, after the sacrifice, not of an Eleusinian pig, but of some
+unprocurable animal. Shall our youth be encouraged to beat their
+fathers by the example of Zeus, or our citizens be incited to quarrel
+by hearing or seeing representations of strife among the gods? Shall
+they listen to the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of
+Zeus sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten? Such tales
+may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young are
+incapable of understanding allegory. If any one asks what tales are to
+be allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and not book-makers;
+we only lay down the principles according to which books are to be
+written; to write them is the duty of others.
+
+And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not
+as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the
+poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has
+two casks full of destinies;—or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus
+to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of
+Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to
+destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was
+just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was
+evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will
+allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great
+principle—God is the author of good only.
+
+And the second principle is like unto it:—With God is no variableness
+or change of form. Reason teaches us this; for if we suppose a change
+in God, he must be changed either by another or by himself. By
+another?—but the best works of nature and art and the noblest qualities
+of mind are least liable to be changed by any external force. By
+himself?—but he cannot change for the better; he will hardly change for
+the worse. He remains for ever fairest and best in his own image.
+Therefore we refuse to listen to the poets who tell us of Here begging
+in the likeness of a priestess or of other deities who prowl about at
+night in strange disguises; all that blasphemous nonsense with which
+mothers fool the manhood out of their children must be suppressed. But
+some one will say that God, who is himself unchangeable, may take a
+form in relation to us. Why should he? For gods as well as men hate the
+lie in the soul, or principle of falsehood; and as for any other form
+of lying which is used for a purpose and is regarded as innocent in
+certain exceptional cases—what need have the gods of this? For they are
+not ignorant of antiquity like the poets, nor are they afraid of their
+enemies, nor is any madman a friend of theirs. God then is true, he is
+absolutely true; he changes not, he deceives not, by day or night, by
+word or sign. This is our second great principle—God is true. Away with
+the lying dream of Agamemnon in Homer, and the accusation of Thetis
+against Apollo in Aeschylus...
+
+In order to give clearness to his conception of the State, Plato
+proceeds to trace the first principles of mutual need and of division
+of labour in an imaginary community of four or five citizens. Gradually
+this community increases; the division of labour extends to countries;
+imports necessitate exports; a medium of exchange is required, and
+retailers sit in the market-place to save the time of the producers.
+These are the steps by which Plato constructs the first or primitive
+State, introducing the elements of political economy by the way. As he
+is going to frame a second or civilized State, the simple naturally
+comes before the complex. He indulges, like Rousseau, in a picture of
+primitive life—an idea which has indeed often had a powerful influence
+on the imagination of mankind, but he does not seriously mean to say
+that one is better than the other (Politicus); nor can any inference be
+drawn from the description of the first state taken apart from the
+second, such as Aristotle appears to draw in the Politics. We should
+not interpret a Platonic dialogue any more than a poem or a parable in
+too literal or matter-of-fact a style. On the other hand, when we
+compare the lively fancy of Plato with the dried-up abstractions of
+modern treatises on philosophy, we are compelled to say with
+Protagoras, that the ‘mythus is more interesting’ (Protag.)
+
+Several interesting remarks which in modern times would have a place in
+a treatise on Political Economy are scattered up and down the writings
+of Plato: especially Laws, Population; Free Trade; Adulteration; Wills
+and Bequests; Begging; Eryxias, (though not Plato’s), Value and Demand;
+Republic, Division of Labour. The last subject, and also the origin of
+Retail Trade, is treated with admirable lucidity in the second book of
+the Republic. But Plato never combined his economic ideas into a
+system, and never seems to have recognized that Trade is one of the
+great motive powers of the State and of the world. He would make retail
+traders only of the inferior sort of citizens (Rep., Laws), though he
+remarks, quaintly enough (Laws), that ‘if only the best men and the
+best women everywhere were compelled to keep taverns for a time or to
+carry on retail trade, etc., then we should knew how pleasant and
+agreeable all these things are.’
+
+The disappointment of Glaucon at the ‘city of pigs,’ the ludicrous
+description of the ministers of luxury in the more refined State, and
+the afterthought of the necessity of doctors, the illustration of the
+nature of the guardian taken from the dog, the desirableness of
+offering some almost unprocurable victim when impure mysteries are to
+be celebrated, the behaviour of Zeus to his father and of Hephaestus to
+his mother, are touches of humour which have also a serious meaning. In
+speaking of education Plato rather startles us by affirming that a
+child must be trained in falsehood first and in truth afterwards. Yet
+this is not very different from saying that children must be taught
+through the medium of imagination as well as reason; that their minds
+can only develope gradually, and that there is much which they must
+learn without understanding. This is also the substance of Plato’s
+view, though he must be acknowledged to have drawn the line somewhat
+differently from modern ethical writers, respecting truth and
+falsehood. To us, economies or accommodations would not be allowable
+unless they were required by the human faculties or necessary for the
+communication of knowledge to the simple and ignorant. We should insist
+that the word was inseparable from the intention, and that we must not
+be ‘falsely true,’ i.e. speak or act falsely in support of what was
+right or true. But Plato would limit the use of fictions only by
+requiring that they should have a good moral effect, and that such a
+dangerous weapon as falsehood should be employed by the rulers alone
+and for great objects.
+
+A Greek in the age of Plato attached no importance to the question
+whether his religion was an historical fact. He was just beginning to
+be conscious that the past had a history; but he could see nothing
+beyond Homer and Hesiod. Whether their narratives were true or false
+did not seriously affect the political or social life of Hellas. Men
+only began to suspect that they were fictions when they recognised them
+to be immoral. And so in all religions: the consideration of their
+morality comes first, afterwards the truth of the documents in which
+they are recorded, or of the events natural or supernatural which are
+told of them. But in modern times, and in Protestant countries perhaps
+more than in Catholic, we have been too much inclined to identify the
+historical with the moral; and some have refused to believe in religion
+at all, unless a superhuman accuracy was discernible in every part of
+the record. The facts of an ancient or religious history are amongst
+the most important of all facts; but they are frequently uncertain, and
+we only learn the true lesson which is to be gathered from them when we
+place ourselves above them. These reflections tend to show that the
+difference between Plato and ourselves, though not unimportant, is not
+so great as might at first sight appear. For we should agree with him
+in placing the moral before the historical truth of religion; and,
+generally, in disregarding those errors or misstatements of fact which
+necessarily occur in the early stages of all religions. We know also
+that changes in the traditions of a country cannot be made in a day;
+and are therefore tolerant of many things which science and criticism
+would condemn.
+
+We note in passing that the allegorical interpretation of mythology,
+said to have been first introduced as early as the sixth century before
+Christ by Theagenes of Rhegium, was well established in the age of
+Plato, and here, as in the Phaedrus, though for a different reason, was
+rejected by him. That anachronisms whether of religion or law, when men
+have reached another stage of civilization, should be got rid of by
+fictions is in accordance with universal experience. Great is the art
+of interpretation; and by a natural process, which when once discovered
+was always going on, what could not be altered was explained away. And
+so without any palpable inconsistency there existed side by side two
+forms of religion, the tradition inherited or invented by the poets and
+the customary worship of the temple; on the other hand, there was the
+religion of the philosopher, who was dwelling in the heaven of ideas,
+but did not therefore refuse to offer a cock to Aesculapius, or to be
+seen saying his prayers at the rising of the sun. At length the
+antagonism between the popular and philosophical religion, never so
+great among the Greeks as in our own age, disappeared, and was only
+felt like the difference between the religion of the educated and
+uneducated among ourselves. The Zeus of Homer and Hesiod easily passed
+into the ‘royal mind’ of Plato (Philebus); the giant Heracles became
+the knight-errant and benefactor of mankind. These and still more
+wonderful transformations were readily effected by the ingenuity of
+Stoics and neo-Platonists in the two or three centuries before and
+after Christ. The Greek and Roman religions were gradually permeated by
+the spirit of philosophy; having lost their ancient meaning, they were
+resolved into poetry and morality; and probably were never purer than
+at the time of their decay, when their influence over the world was
+waning.
+
+A singular conception which occurs towards the end of the book is the
+lie in the soul; this is connected with the Platonic and Socratic
+doctrine that involuntary ignorance is worse than voluntary. The lie in
+the soul is a true lie, the corruption of the highest truth, the
+deception of the highest part of the soul, from which he who is
+deceived has no power of delivering himself. For example, to represent
+God as false or immoral, or, according to Plato, as deluding men with
+appearances or as the author of evil; or again, to affirm with
+Protagoras that ‘knowledge is sensation,’ or that ‘being is becoming,’
+or with Thrasymachus ‘that might is right,’ would have been regarded by
+Plato as a lie of this hateful sort. The greatest unconsciousness of
+the greatest untruth, e.g. if, in the language of the Gospels (John),
+‘he who was blind’ were to say ‘I see,’ is another aspect of the state
+of mind which Plato is describing. The lie in the soul may be further
+compared with the sin against the Holy Ghost (Luke), allowing for the
+difference between Greek and Christian modes of speaking. To this is
+opposed the lie in words, which is only such a deception as may occur
+in a play or poem, or allegory or figure of speech, or in any sort of
+accommodation,—which though useless to the gods may be useful to men in
+certain cases. Socrates is here answering the question which he had
+himself raised about the propriety of deceiving a madman; and he is
+also contrasting the nature of God and man. For God is Truth, but
+mankind can only be true by appearing sometimes to be partial, or
+false. Reserving for another place the greater questions of religion or
+education, we may note further, (1) the approval of the old traditional
+education of Greece; (2) the preparation which Plato is making for the
+attack on Homer and the poets; (3) the preparation which he is also
+making for the use of economies in the State; (4) the contemptuous and
+at the same time euphemistic manner in which here as below he alludes
+to the ‘Chronique Scandaleuse’ of the gods.
+
+BOOK III. There is another motive in purifying religion, which is to
+banish fear; for no man can be courageous who is afraid of death, or
+who believes the tales which are repeated by the poets concerning the
+world below. They must be gently requested not to abuse hell; they may
+be reminded that their stories are both untrue and discouraging. Nor
+must they be angry if we expunge obnoxious passages, such as the
+depressing words of Achilles—‘I would rather be a serving-man than rule
+over all the dead;’ and the verses which tell of the squalid mansions,
+the senseless shadows, the flitting soul mourning over lost strength
+and youth, the soul with a gibber going beneath the earth like smoke,
+or the souls of the suitors which flutter about like bats. The terrors
+and horrors of Cocytus and Styx, ghosts and sapless shades, and the
+rest of their Tartarean nomenclature, must vanish. Such tales may have
+their use; but they are not the proper food for soldiers. As little can
+we admit the sorrows and sympathies of the Homeric heroes:—Achilles,
+the son of Thetis, in tears, throwing ashes on his head, or pacing up
+and down the sea-shore in distraction; or Priam, the cousin of the
+gods, crying aloud, rolling in the mire. A good man is not prostrated
+at the loss of children or fortune. Neither is death terrible to him;
+and therefore lamentations over the dead should not be practised by men
+of note; they should be the concern of inferior persons only, whether
+women or men. Still worse is the attribution of such weakness to the
+gods; as when the goddesses say, ‘Alas! my travail!’ and worst of all,
+when the king of heaven himself laments his inability to save Hector,
+or sorrows over the impending doom of his dear Sarpedon. Such a
+character of God, if not ridiculed by our young men, is likely to be
+imitated by them. Nor should our citizens be given to excess of
+laughter—‘Such violent delights’ are followed by a violent re-action.
+The description in the Iliad of the gods shaking their sides at the
+clumsiness of Hephaestus will not be admitted by us. ‘Certainly not.’
+
+Truth should have a high place among the virtues, for falsehood, as we
+were saying, is useless to the gods, and only useful to men as a
+medicine. But this employment of falsehood must remain a privilege of
+state; the common man must not in return tell a lie to the ruler; any
+more than the patient would tell a lie to his physician, or the sailor
+to his captain.
+
+In the next place our youth must be temperate, and temperance consists
+in self-control and obedience to authority. That is a lesson which
+Homer teaches in some places: ‘The Achaeans marched on breathing
+prowess, in silent awe of their leaders;’—but a very different one in
+other places: ‘O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog, but the
+heart of a stag.’ Language of the latter kind will not impress
+self-control on the minds of youth. The same may be said about his
+praises of eating and drinking and his dread of starvation; also about
+the verses in which he tells of the rapturous loves of Zeus and Here,
+or of how Hephaestus once detained Ares and Aphrodite in a net on a
+similar occasion. There is a nobler strain heard in the words:—‘Endure,
+my soul, thou hast endured worse.’ Nor must we allow our citizens to
+receive bribes, or to say, ‘Gifts persuade the gods, gifts reverend
+kings;’ or to applaud the ignoble advice of Phoenix to Achilles that he
+should get money out of the Greeks before he assisted them; or the
+meanness of Achilles himself in taking gifts from Agamemnon; or his
+requiring a ransom for the body of Hector; or his cursing of Apollo; or
+his insolence to the river-god Scamander; or his dedication to the dead
+Patroclus of his own hair which had been already dedicated to the other
+river-god Spercheius; or his cruelty in dragging the body of Hector
+round the walls, and slaying the captives at the pyre: such a
+combination of meanness and cruelty in Cheiron’s pupil is
+inconceivable. The amatory exploits of Peirithous and Theseus are
+equally unworthy. Either these so-called sons of gods were not the sons
+of gods, or they were not such as the poets imagine them, any more than
+the gods themselves are the authors of evil. The youth who believes
+that such things are done by those who have the blood of heaven flowing
+in their veins will be too ready to imitate their example.
+
+Enough of gods and heroes;—what shall we say about men? What the poets
+and story-tellers say—that the wicked prosper and the righteous are
+afflicted, or that justice is another’s gain? Such misrepresentations
+cannot be allowed by us. But in this we are anticipating the definition
+of justice, and had therefore better defer the enquiry.
+
+The subjects of poetry have been sufficiently treated; next follows
+style. Now all poetry is a narrative of events past, present, or to
+come; and narrative is of three kinds, the simple, the imitative, and a
+composition of the two. An instance will make my meaning clear. The
+first scene in Homer is of the last or mixed kind, being partly
+description and partly dialogue. But if you throw the dialogue into the
+‘oratio obliqua,’ the passage will run thus: The priest came and prayed
+Apollo that the Achaeans might take Troy and have a safe return if
+Agamemnon would only give him back his daughter; and the other Greeks
+assented, but Agamemnon was wroth, and so on—The whole then becomes
+descriptive, and the poet is the only speaker left; or, if you omit the
+narrative, the whole becomes dialogue. These are the three styles—which
+of them is to be admitted into our State? ‘Do you ask whether tragedy
+and comedy are to be admitted?’ Yes, but also something more—Is it not
+doubtful whether our guardians are to be imitators at all? Or rather,
+has not the question been already answered, for we have decided that
+one man cannot in his life play many parts, any more than he can act
+both tragedy and comedy, or be rhapsodist and actor at once? Human
+nature is coined into very small pieces, and as our guardians have
+their own business already, which is the care of freedom, they will
+have enough to do without imitating. If they imitate they should
+imitate, not any meanness or baseness, but the good only; for the mask
+which the actor wears is apt to become his face. We cannot allow men to
+play the parts of women, quarrelling, weeping, scolding, or boasting
+against the gods,—least of all when making love or in labour. They must
+not represent slaves, or bullies, or cowards, drunkards, or madmen, or
+blacksmiths, or neighing horses, or bellowing bulls, or sounding
+rivers, or a raging sea. A good or wise man will be willing to perform
+good and wise actions, but he will be ashamed to play an inferior part
+which he has never practised; and he will prefer to employ the
+descriptive style with as little imitation as possible. The man who has
+no self-respect, on the contrary, will imitate anybody and anything;
+sounds of nature and cries of animals alike; his whole performance will
+be imitation of gesture and voice. Now in the descriptive style there
+are few changes, but in the dramatic there are a great many. Poets and
+musicians use either, or a compound of both, and this compound is very
+attractive to youth and their teachers as well as to the vulgar. But
+our State in which one man plays one part only is not adapted for
+complexity. And when one of these polyphonous pantomimic gentlemen
+offers to exhibit himself and his poetry we will show him every
+observance of respect, but at the same time tell him that there is no
+room for his kind in our State; we prefer the rough, honest poet, and
+will not depart from our original models (Laws).
+
+Next as to the music. A song or ode has three parts,—the subject, the
+harmony, and the rhythm; of which the two last are dependent upon the
+first. As we banished strains of lamentation, so we may now banish the
+mixed Lydian harmonies, which are the harmonies of lamentation; and as
+our citizens are to be temperate, we may also banish convivial
+harmonies, such as the Ionian and pure Lydian. Two remain—the Dorian
+and Phrygian, the first for war, the second for peace; the one
+expressive of courage, the other of obedience or instruction or
+religious feeling. And as we reject varieties of harmony, we shall also
+reject the many-stringed, variously-shaped instruments which give
+utterance to them, and in particular the flute, which is more complex
+than any of them. The lyre and the harp may be permitted in the town,
+and the Pan’s-pipe in the fields. Thus we have made a purgation of
+music, and will now make a purgation of metres. These should be like
+the harmonies, simple and suitable to the occasion. There are four
+notes of the tetrachord, and there are three ratios of metre, 3/2, 2/2,
+2/1, which have all their characteristics, and the feet have different
+characteristics as well as the rhythms. But about this you and I must
+ask Damon, the great musician, who speaks, if I remember rightly, of a
+martial measure as well as of dactylic, trochaic, and iambic rhythms,
+which he arranges so as to equalize the syllables with one another,
+assigning to each the proper quantity. We only venture to affirm the
+general principle that the style is to conform to the subject and the
+metre to the style; and that the simplicity and harmony of the soul
+should be reflected in them all. This principle of simplicity has to be
+learnt by every one in the days of his youth, and may be gathered
+anywhere, from the creative and constructive arts, as well as from the
+forms of plants and animals.
+
+Other artists as well as poets should be warned against meanness or
+unseemliness. Sculpture and painting equally with music must conform to
+the law of simplicity. He who violates it cannot be allowed to work in
+our city, and to corrupt the taste of our citizens. For our guardians
+must grow up, not amid images of deformity which will gradually poison
+and corrupt their souls, but in a land of health and beauty where they
+will drink in from every object sweet and harmonious influences. And of
+all these influences the greatest is the education given by music,
+which finds a way into the innermost soul and imparts to it the sense
+of beauty and of deformity. At first the effect is unconscious; but
+when reason arrives, then he who has been thus trained welcomes her as
+the friend whom he always knew. As in learning to read, first we
+acquire the elements or letters separately, and afterwards their
+combinations, and cannot recognize reflections of them until we know
+the letters themselves;—in like manner we must first attain the
+elements or essential forms of the virtues, and then trace their
+combinations in life and experience. There is a music of the soul which
+answers to the harmony of the world; and the fairest object of a
+musical soul is the fair mind in the fair body. Some defect in the
+latter may be excused, but not in the former. True love is the daughter
+of temperance, and temperance is utterly opposed to the madness of
+bodily pleasure. Enough has been said of music, which makes a fair
+ending with love.
+
+Next we pass on to gymnastics; about which I would remark, that the
+soul is related to the body as a cause to an effect, and therefore if
+we educate the mind we may leave the education of the body in her
+charge, and need only give a general outline of the course to be
+pursued. In the first place the guardians must abstain from strong
+drink, for they should be the last persons to lose their wits. Whether
+the habits of the palaestra are suitable to them is more doubtful, for
+the ordinary gymnastic is a sleepy sort of thing, and if left off
+suddenly is apt to endanger health. But our warrior athletes must be
+wide-awake dogs, and must also be inured to all changes of food and
+climate. Hence they will require a simpler kind of gymnastic, akin to
+their simple music; and for their diet a rule may be found in Homer,
+who feeds his heroes on roast meat only, and gives them no fish
+although they are living at the sea-side, nor boiled meats which
+involve an apparatus of pots and pans; and, if I am not mistaken, he
+nowhere mentions sweet sauces. Sicilian cookery and Attic confections
+and Corinthian courtezans, which are to gymnastic what Lydian and
+Ionian melodies are to music, must be forbidden. Where gluttony and
+intemperance prevail the town quickly fills with doctors and pleaders;
+and law and medicine give themselves airs as soon as the freemen of a
+State take an interest in them. But what can show a more disgraceful
+state of education than to have to go abroad for justice because you
+have none of your own at home? And yet there IS a worse stage of the
+same disease—when men have learned to take a pleasure and pride in the
+twists and turns of the law; not considering how much better it would
+be for them so to order their lives as to have no need of a nodding
+justice. And there is a like disgrace in employing a physician, not for
+the cure of wounds or epidemic disorders, but because a man has by
+laziness and luxury contracted diseases which were unknown in the days
+of Asclepius. How simple is the Homeric practice of medicine. Eurypylus
+after he has been wounded drinks a posset of Pramnian wine, which is of
+a heating nature; and yet the sons of Asclepius blame neither the
+damsel who gives him the drink, nor Patroclus who is attending on him.
+The truth is that this modern system of nursing diseases was introduced
+by Herodicus the trainer; who, being of a sickly constitution, by a
+compound of training and medicine tortured first himself and then a
+good many other people, and lived a great deal longer than he had any
+right. But Asclepius would not practise this art, because he knew that
+the citizens of a well-ordered State have no leisure to be ill, and
+therefore he adopted the ‘kill or cure’ method, which artisans and
+labourers employ. ‘They must be at their business,’ they say, ‘and have
+no time for coddling: if they recover, well; if they don’t, there is an
+end of them.’ Whereas the rich man is supposed to be a gentleman who
+can afford to be ill. Do you know a maxim of Phocylides—that ‘when a
+man begins to be rich’ (or, perhaps, a little sooner) ‘he should
+practise virtue’? But how can excessive care of health be inconsistent
+with an ordinary occupation, and yet consistent with that practice of
+virtue which Phocylides inculcates? When a student imagines that
+philosophy gives him a headache, he never does anything; he is always
+unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised no
+such art. They were acting in the interest of the public, and did not
+wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a puny offspring to
+wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly cured; and if a man was
+wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let him eat and
+drink what he liked. But they declined to treat intemperate and
+worthless subjects, even though they might have made large fortunes out
+of them. As to the story of Pindar, that Asclepius was slain by a
+thunderbolt for restoring a rich man to life, that is a lie—following
+our old rule we must say either that he did not take bribes, or that he
+was not the son of a god.
+
+Glaucon then asks Socrates whether the best physicians and the best
+judges will not be those who have had severally the greatest experience
+of diseases and of crimes. Socrates draws a distinction between the two
+professions. The physician should have had experience of disease in his
+own body, for he cures with his mind and not with his body. But the
+judge controls mind by mind; and therefore his mind should not be
+corrupted by crime. Where then is he to gain experience? How is he to
+be wise and also innocent? When young a good man is apt to be deceived
+by evil-doers, because he has no pattern of evil in himself; and
+therefore the judge should be of a certain age; his youth should have
+been innocent, and he should have acquired insight into evil not by the
+practice of it, but by the observation of it in others. This is the
+ideal of a judge; the criminal turned detective is wonderfully
+suspicious, but when in company with good men who have experience, he
+is at fault, for he foolishly imagines that every one is as bad as
+himself. Vice may be known of virtue, but cannot know virtue. This is
+the sort of medicine and this the sort of law which will prevail in our
+State; they will be healing arts to better natures; but the evil body
+will be left to die by the one, and the evil soul will be put to death
+by the other. And the need of either will be greatly diminished by good
+music which will give harmony to the soul, and good gymnastic which
+will give health to the body. Not that this division of music and
+gymnastic really corresponds to soul and body; for they are both
+equally concerned with the soul, which is tamed by the one and aroused
+and sustained by the other. The two together supply our guardians with
+their twofold nature. The passionate disposition when it has too much
+gymnastic is hardened and brutalized, the gentle or philosophic temper
+which has too much music becomes enervated. While a man is allowing
+music to pour like water through the funnel of his ears, the edge of
+his soul gradually wears away, and the passionate or spirited element
+is melted out of him. Too little spirit is easily exhausted; too much
+quickly passes into nervous irritability. So, again, the athlete by
+feeding and training has his courage doubled, but he soon grows stupid;
+he is like a wild beast, ready to do everything by blows and nothing by
+counsel or policy. There are two principles in man, reason and passion,
+and to these, not to the soul and body, the two arts of music and
+gymnastic correspond. He who mingles them in harmonious concord is the
+true musician,—he shall be the presiding genius of our State.
+
+The next question is, Who are to be our rulers? First, the elder must
+rule the younger; and the best of the elders will be the best
+guardians. Now they will be the best who love their subjects most, and
+think that they have a common interest with them in the welfare of the
+state. These we must select; but they must be watched at every epoch of
+life to see whether they have retained the same opinions and held out
+against force and enchantment. For time and persuasion and the love of
+pleasure may enchant a man into a change of purpose, and the force of
+grief and pain may compel him. And therefore our guardians must be men
+who have been tried by many tests, like gold in the refiner’s fire, and
+have been passed first through danger, then through pleasure, and at
+every age have come out of such trials victorious and without stain, in
+full command of themselves and their principles; having all their
+faculties in harmonious exercise for their country’s good. These shall
+receive the highest honours both in life and death. (It would perhaps
+be better to confine the term ‘guardians’ to this select class: the
+younger men may be called ‘auxiliaries.’)
+
+And now for one magnificent lie, in the belief of which, Oh that we
+could train our rulers!—at any rate let us make the attempt with the
+rest of the world. What I am going to tell is only another version of
+the legend of Cadmus; but our unbelieving generation will be slow to
+accept such a story. The tale must be imparted, first to the rulers,
+then to the soldiers, lastly to the people. We will inform them that
+their youth was a dream, and that during the time when they seemed to
+be undergoing their education they were really being fashioned in the
+earth, who sent them up when they were ready; and that they must
+protect and cherish her whose children they are, and regard each other
+as brothers and sisters. ‘I do not wonder at your being ashamed to
+propound such a fiction.’ There is more behind. These brothers and
+sisters have different natures, and some of them God framed to rule,
+whom he fashioned of gold; others he made of silver, to be auxiliaries;
+others again to be husbandmen and craftsmen, and these were formed by
+him of brass and iron. But as they are all sprung from a common stock,
+a golden parent may have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son,
+and then there must be a change of rank; the son of the rich must
+descend, and the child of the artisan rise, in the social scale; for an
+oracle says ‘that the State will come to an end if governed by a man of
+brass or iron.’ Will our citizens ever believe all this? ‘Not in the
+present generation, but in the next, perhaps, Yes.’
+
+Now let the earthborn men go forth under the command of their rulers,
+and look about and pitch their camp in a high place, which will be safe
+against enemies from without, and likewise against insurrections from
+within. There let them sacrifice and set up their tents; for soldiers
+they are to be and not shopkeepers, the watchdogs and guardians of the
+sheep; and luxury and avarice will turn them into wolves and tyrants.
+Their habits and their dwellings should correspond to their education.
+They should have no property; their pay should only meet their
+expenses; and they should have common meals. Gold and silver we will
+tell them that they have from God, and this divine gift in their souls
+they must not alloy with that earthly dross which passes under the name
+of gold. They only of the citizens may not touch it, or be under the
+same roof with it, or drink from it; it is the accursed thing. Should
+they ever acquire houses or lands or money of their own, they will
+become householders and tradesmen instead of guardians, enemies and
+tyrants instead of helpers, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves
+and the rest of the State, will be at hand.
+
+The religious and ethical aspect of Plato’s education will hereafter be
+considered under a separate head. Some lesser points may be more
+conveniently noticed in this place.
+
+1. The constant appeal to the authority of Homer, whom, with grave
+irony, Plato, after the manner of his age, summons as a witness about
+ethics and psychology, as well as about diet and medicine; attempting
+to distinguish the better lesson from the worse, sometimes altering the
+text from design; more than once quoting or alluding to Homer
+inaccurately, after the manner of the early logographers turning the
+Iliad into prose, and delighting to draw far-fetched inferences from
+his words, or to make ludicrous applications of them. He does not, like
+Heracleitus, get into a rage with Homer and Archilochus (Heracl.), but
+uses their words and expressions as vehicles of a higher truth; not on
+a system like Theagenes of Rhegium or Metrodorus, or in later times the
+Stoics, but as fancy may dictate. And the conclusions drawn from them
+are sound, although the premises are fictitious. These fanciful appeals
+to Homer add a charm to Plato’s style, and at the same time they have
+the effect of a satire on the follies of Homeric interpretation. To us
+(and probably to himself), although they take the form of arguments,
+they are really figures of speech. They may be compared with modern
+citations from Scripture, which have often a great rhetorical power
+even when the original meaning of the words is entirely lost sight of.
+The real, like the Platonic Socrates, as we gather from the Memorabilia
+of Xenophon, was fond of making similar adaptations. Great in all ages
+and countries, in religion as well as in law and literature, has been
+the art of interpretation.
+
+2. ‘The style is to conform to the subject and the metre to the style.’
+Notwithstanding the fascination which the word ‘classical’ exercises
+over us, we can hardly maintain that this rule is observed in all the
+Greek poetry which has come down to us. We cannot deny that the thought
+often exceeds the power of lucid expression in Aeschylus and Pindar; or
+that rhetoric gets the better of the thought in the Sophist-poet
+Euripides. Only perhaps in Sophocles is there a perfect harmony of the
+two; in him alone do we find a grace of language like the beauty of a
+Greek statue, in which there is nothing to add or to take away; at
+least this is true of single plays or of large portions of them. The
+connection in the Tragic Choruses and in the Greek lyric poets is not
+unfrequently a tangled thread which in an age before logic the poet was
+unable to draw out. Many thoughts and feelings mingled in his mind, and
+he had no power of disengaging or arranging them. For there is a subtle
+influence of logic which requires to be transferred from prose to
+poetry, just as the music and perfection of language are infused by
+poetry into prose. In all ages the poet has been a bad judge of his own
+meaning (Apol.); for he does not see that the word which is full of
+associations to his own mind is difficult and unmeaning to that of
+another; or that the sequence which is clear to himself is puzzling to
+others. There are many passages in some of our greatest modern poets
+which are far too obscure; in which there is no proportion between
+style and subject, in which any half-expressed figure, any harsh
+construction, any distorted collocation of words, any remote sequence
+of ideas is admitted; and there is no voice ‘coming sweetly from
+nature,’ or music adding the expression of feeling to thought. As if
+there could be poetry without beauty, or beauty without ease and
+clearness. The obscurities of early Greek poets arose necessarily out
+of the state of language and logic which existed in their age. They are
+not examples to be followed by us; for the use of language ought in
+every generation to become clearer and clearer. Like Shakespere, they
+were great in spite, not in consequence, of their imperfections of
+expression. But there is no reason for returning to the necessary
+obscurity which prevailed in the infancy of literature. The English
+poets of the last century were certainly not obscure; and we have no
+excuse for losing what they had gained, or for going back to the
+earlier or transitional age which preceded them. The thought of our own
+times has not out-stripped language; a want of Plato’s ‘art of
+measuring’ is the rule cause of the disproportion between them.
+
+3. In the third book of the Republic a nearer approach is made to a
+theory of art than anywhere else in Plato. His views may be summed up
+as follows:—True art is not fanciful and imitative, but simple and
+ideal,—the expression of the highest moral energy, whether in action or
+repose. To live among works of plastic art which are of this noble and
+simple character, or to listen to such strains, is the best of
+influences,—the true Greek atmosphere, in which youth should be brought
+up. That is the way to create in them a natural good taste, which will
+have a feeling of truth and beauty in all things. For though the poets
+are to be expelled, still art is recognized as another aspect of
+reason—like love in the Symposium, extending over the same sphere, but
+confined to the preliminary education, and acting through the power of
+habit; and this conception of art is not limited to strains of music or
+the forms of plastic art, but pervades all nature and has a wide
+kindred in the world. The Republic of Plato, like the Athens of
+Pericles, has an artistic as well as a political side.
+
+There is hardly any mention in Plato of the creative arts; only in two
+or three passages does he even allude to them (Rep.; Soph.). He is not
+lost in rapture at the great works of Phidias, the Parthenon, the
+Propylea, the statues of Zeus or Athene. He would probably have
+regarded any abstract truth of number or figure as higher than the
+greatest of them. Yet it is hard to suppose that some influence, such
+as he hopes to inspire in youth, did not pass into his own mind from
+the works of art which he saw around him. We are living upon the
+fragments of them, and find in a few broken stones the standard of
+truth and beauty. But in Plato this feeling has no expression; he
+nowhere says that beauty is the object of art; he seems to deny that
+wisdom can take an external form (Phaedrus); he does not distinguish
+the fine from the mechanical arts. Whether or no, like some writers, he
+felt more than he expressed, it is at any rate remarkable that the
+greatest perfection of the fine arts should coincide with an almost
+entire silence about them. In one very striking passage he tells us
+that a work of art, like the State, is a whole; and this conception of
+a whole and the love of the newly-born mathematical sciences may be
+regarded, if not as the inspiring, at any rate as the regulating
+principles of Greek art (Xen. Mem.; and Sophist).
+
+4. Plato makes the true and subtle remark that the physician had better
+not be in robust health; and should have known what illness is in his
+own person. But the judge ought to have had no similar experience of
+evil; he is to be a good man who, having passed his youth in innocence,
+became acquainted late in life with the vices of others. And therefore,
+according to Plato, a judge should not be young, just as a young man
+according to Aristotle is not fit to be a hearer of moral philosophy.
+The bad, on the other hand, have a knowledge of vice, but no knowledge
+of virtue. It may be doubted, however, whether this train of reflection
+is well founded. In a remarkable passage of the Laws it is acknowledged
+that the evil may form a correct estimate of the good. The union of
+gentleness and courage in Book ii. at first seemed to be a paradox, yet
+was afterwards ascertained to be a truth. And Plato might also have
+found that the intuition of evil may be consistent with the abhorrence
+of it. There is a directness of aim in virtue which gives an insight
+into vice. And the knowledge of character is in some degree a natural
+sense independent of any special experience of good or evil.
+
+5. One of the most remarkable conceptions of Plato, because un-Greek
+and also very different from anything which existed at all in his age
+of the world, is the transposition of ranks. In the Spartan state there
+had been enfranchisement of Helots and degradation of citizens under
+special circumstances. And in the ancient Greek aristocracies, merit
+was certainly recognized as one of the elements on which government was
+based. The founders of states were supposed to be their benefactors,
+who were raised by their great actions above the ordinary level of
+humanity; at a later period, the services of warriors and legislators
+were held to entitle them and their descendants to the privileges of
+citizenship and to the first rank in the state. And although the
+existence of an ideal aristocracy is slenderly proven from the remains
+of early Greek history, and we have a difficulty in ascribing such a
+character, however the idea may be defined, to any actual Hellenic
+state—or indeed to any state which has ever existed in the world—still
+the rule of the best was certainly the aspiration of philosophers, who
+probably accommodated a good deal their views of primitive history to
+their own notions of good government. Plato further insists on applying
+to the guardians of his state a series of tests by which all those who
+fell short of a fixed standard were either removed from the governing
+body, or not admitted to it; and this ‘academic’ discipline did to a
+certain extent prevail in Greek states, especially in Sparta. He also
+indicates that the system of caste, which existed in a great part of
+the ancient, and is by no means extinct in the modern European world,
+should be set aside from time to time in favour of merit. He is aware
+how deeply the greater part of mankind resent any interference with the
+order of society, and therefore he proposes his novel idea in the form
+of what he himself calls a ‘monstrous fiction.’ (Compare the ceremony
+of preparation for the two ‘great waves’ in Book v.) Two principles are
+indicated by him: first, that there is a distinction of ranks dependent
+on circumstances prior to the individual: second, that this distinction
+is and ought to be broken through by personal qualities. He adapts
+mythology like the Homeric poems to the wants of the state, making ‘the
+Phoenician tale’ the vehicle of his ideas. Every Greek state had a myth
+respecting its own origin; the Platonic republic may also have a tale
+of earthborn men. The gravity and verisimilitude with which the tale is
+told, and the analogy of Greek tradition, are a sufficient verification
+of the ‘monstrous falsehood.’ Ancient poetry had spoken of a gold and
+silver and brass and iron age succeeding one another, but Plato
+supposes these differences in the natures of men to exist together in a
+single state. Mythology supplies a figure under which the lesson may be
+taught (as Protagoras says, ‘the myth is more interesting’), and also
+enables Plato to touch lightly on new principles without going into
+details. In this passage he shadows forth a general truth, but he does
+not tell us by what steps the transposition of ranks is to be effected.
+Indeed throughout the Republic he allows the lower ranks to fade into
+the distance. We do not know whether they are to carry arms, and
+whether in the fifth book they are or are not included in the
+communistic regulations respecting property and marriage. Nor is there
+any use in arguing strictly either from a few chance words, or from the
+silence of Plato, or in drawing inferences which were beyond his
+vision. Aristotle, in his criticism on the position of the lower
+classes, does not perceive that the poetical creation is ‘like the air,
+invulnerable,’ and cannot be penetrated by the shafts of his logic
+(Pol.).
+
+6. Two paradoxes which strike the modern reader as in the highest
+degree fanciful and ideal, and which suggest to him many reflections,
+are to be found in the third book of the Republic: first, the great
+power of music, so much beyond any influence which is experienced by us
+in modern times, when the art or science has been far more developed,
+and has found the secret of harmony, as well as of melody; secondly,
+the indefinite and almost absolute control which the soul is supposed
+to exercise over the body.
+
+In the first we suspect some degree of exaggeration, such as we may
+also observe among certain masters of the art, not unknown to us, at
+the present day. With this natural enthusiasm, which is felt by a few
+only, there seems to mingle in Plato a sort of Pythagorean reverence
+for numbers and numerical proportion to which Aristotle is a stranger.
+Intervals of sound and number are to him sacred things which have a law
+of their own, not dependent on the variations of sense. They rise above
+sense, and become a connecting link with the world of ideas. But it is
+evident that Plato is describing what to him appears to be also a fact.
+The power of a simple and characteristic melody on the impressible mind
+of the Greek is more than we can easily appreciate. The effect of
+national airs may bear some comparison with it. And, besides all this,
+there is a confusion between the harmony of musical notes and the
+harmony of soul and body, which is so potently inspired by them.
+
+The second paradox leads up to some curious and interesting
+questions—How far can the mind control the body? Is the relation
+between them one of mutual antagonism or of mutual harmony? Are they
+two or one, and is either of them the cause of the other? May we not at
+times drop the opposition between them, and the mode of describing
+them, which is so familiar to us, and yet hardly conveys any precise
+meaning, and try to view this composite creature, man, in a more simple
+manner? Must we not at any rate admit that there is in human nature a
+higher and a lower principle, divided by no distinct line, which at
+times break asunder and take up arms against one another? Or again,
+they are reconciled and move together, either unconsciously in the
+ordinary work of life, or consciously in the pursuit of some noble aim,
+to be attained not without an effort, and for which every thought and
+nerve are strained. And then the body becomes the good friend or ally,
+or servant or instrument of the mind. And the mind has often a
+wonderful and almost superhuman power of banishing disease and weakness
+and calling out a hidden strength. Reason and the desires, the
+intellect and the senses are brought into harmony and obedience so as
+to form a single human being. They are ever parting, ever meeting; and
+the identity or diversity of their tendencies or operations is for the
+most part unnoticed by us. When the mind touches the body through the
+appetites, we acknowledge the responsibility of the one to the other.
+There is a tendency in us which says ‘Drink.’ There is another which
+says, ‘Do not drink; it is not good for you.’ And we all of us know
+which is the rightful superior. We are also responsible for our health,
+although into this sphere there enter some elements of necessity which
+may be beyond our control. Still even in the management of health, care
+and thought, continued over many years, may make us almost free agents,
+if we do not exact too much of ourselves, and if we acknowledge that
+all human freedom is limited by the laws of nature and of mind.
+
+We are disappointed to find that Plato, in the general condemnation
+which he passes on the practice of medicine prevailing in his own day,
+depreciates the effects of diet. He would like to have diseases of a
+definite character and capable of receiving a definite treatment. He is
+afraid of invalidism interfering with the business of life. He does not
+recognize that time is the great healer both of mental and bodily
+disorders; and that remedies which are gradual and proceed little by
+little are safer than those which produce a sudden catastrophe. Neither
+does he see that there is no way in which the mind can more surely
+influence the body than by the control of eating and drinking; or any
+other action or occasion of human life on which the higher freedom of
+the will can be more simple or truly asserted.
+
+7. Lesser matters of style may be remarked.
+
+(1) The affected ignorance of music, which is Plato’s way of expressing
+that he is passing lightly over the subject.
+
+(2) The tentative manner in which here, as in the second book, he
+proceeds with the construction of the State.
+
+(3) The description of the State sometimes as a reality, and then again
+as a work of imagination only; these are the arts by which he sustains
+the reader’s interest.
+
+(4) Connecting links, or the preparation for the entire expulsion of
+the poets in Book X.
+
+(5) The companion pictures of the lover of litigation and the
+valetudinarian, the satirical jest about the maxim of Phocylides, the
+manner in which the image of the gold and silver citizens is taken up
+into the subject, and the argument from the practice of Asclepius,
+should not escape notice.
+
+BOOK IV. Adeimantus said: ‘Suppose a person to argue, Socrates, that
+you make your citizens miserable, and this by their own free-will; they
+are the lords of the city, and yet instead of having, like other men,
+lands and houses and money of their own, they live as mercenaries and
+are always mounting guard.’ You may add, I replied, that they receive
+no pay but only their food, and have no money to spend on a journey or
+a mistress. ‘Well, and what answer do you give?’ My answer is, that our
+guardians may or may not be the happiest of men,—I should not be
+surprised to find in the long-run that they were,—but this is not the
+aim of our constitution, which was designed for the good of the whole
+and not of any one part. If I went to a sculptor and blamed him for
+having painted the eye, which is the noblest feature of the face, not
+purple but black, he would reply: ‘The eye must be an eye, and you
+should look at the statue as a whole.’ ‘Now I can well imagine a fool’s
+paradise, in which everybody is eating and drinking, clothed in purple
+and fine linen, and potters lie on sofas and have their wheel at hand,
+that they may work a little when they please; and cobblers and all the
+other classes of a State lose their distinctive character. And a State
+may get on without cobblers; but when the guardians degenerate into
+boon companions, then the ruin is complete. Remember that we are not
+talking of peasants keeping holiday, but of a State in which every man
+is expected to do his own work. The happiness resides not in this or
+that class, but in the State as a whole. I have another remark to
+make:—A middle condition is best for artisans; they should have money
+enough to buy tools, and not enough to be independent of business. And
+will not the same condition be best for our citizens? If they are poor,
+they will be mean; if rich, luxurious and lazy; and in neither case
+contented. ‘But then how will our poor city be able to go to war
+against an enemy who has money?’ There may be a difficulty in fighting
+against one enemy; against two there will be none. In the first place,
+the contest will be carried on by trained warriors against well-to-do
+citizens: and is not a regular athlete an easy match for two stout
+opponents at least? Suppose also, that before engaging we send
+ambassadors to one of the two cities, saying, ‘Silver and gold we have
+not; do you help us and take our share of the spoil;’—who would fight
+against the lean, wiry dogs, when they might join with them in preying
+upon the fatted sheep? ‘But if many states join their resources, shall
+we not be in danger?’ I am amused to hear you use the word ‘state’ of
+any but our own State. They are ‘states,’ but not ‘a state’—many in
+one. For in every state there are two hostile nations, rich and poor,
+which you may set one against the other. But our State, while she
+remains true to her principles, will be in very deed the mightiest of
+Hellenic states.
+
+To the size of the state there is no limit but the necessity of unity;
+it must be neither too large nor too small to be one. This is a matter
+of secondary importance, like the principle of transposition which was
+intimated in the parable of the earthborn men. The meaning there
+implied was that every man should do that for which he was fitted, and
+be at one with himself, and then the whole city would be united. But
+all these things are secondary, if education, which is the great
+matter, be duly regarded. When the wheel has once been set in motion,
+the speed is always increasing; and each generation improves upon the
+preceding, both in physical and moral qualities. The care of the
+governors should be directed to preserve music and gymnastic from
+innovation; alter the songs of a country, Damon says, and you will soon
+end by altering its laws. The change appears innocent at first, and
+begins in play; but the evil soon becomes serious, working secretly
+upon the characters of individuals, then upon social and commercial
+relations, and lastly upon the institutions of a state; and there is
+ruin and confusion everywhere. But if education remains in the
+established form, there will be no danger. A restorative process will
+be always going on; the spirit of law and order will raise up what has
+fallen down. Nor will any regulations be needed for the lesser matters
+of life—rules of deportment or fashions of dress. Like invites like for
+good or for evil. Education will correct deficiencies and supply the
+power of self-government. Far be it from us to enter into the
+particulars of legislation; let the guardians take care of education,
+and education will take care of all other things.
+
+But without education they may patch and mend as they please; they will
+make no progress, any more than a patient who thinks to cure himself by
+some favourite remedy and will not give up his luxurious mode of
+living. If you tell such persons that they must first alter their
+habits, then they grow angry; they are charming people. ‘Charming,—nay,
+the very reverse.’ Evidently these gentlemen are not in your good
+graces, nor the state which is like them. And such states there are
+which first ordain under penalty of death that no one shall alter the
+constitution, and then suffer themselves to be flattered into and out
+of anything; and he who indulges them and fawns upon them, is their
+leader and saviour. ‘Yes, the men are as bad as the states.’ But do you
+not admire their cleverness? ‘Nay, some of them are stupid enough to
+believe what the people tell them.’ And when all the world is telling a
+man that he is six feet high, and he has no measure, how can he believe
+anything else? But don’t get into a passion: to see our statesmen
+trying their nostrums, and fancying that they can cut off at a blow the
+Hydra-like rogueries of mankind, is as good as a play. Minute
+enactments are superfluous in good states, and are useless in bad ones.
+
+And now what remains of the work of legislation? Nothing for us; but to
+Apollo the god of Delphi we leave the ordering of the greatest of all
+things—that is to say, religion. Only our ancestral deity sitting upon
+the centre and navel of the earth will be trusted by us if we have any
+sense, in an affair of such magnitude. No foreign god shall be supreme
+in our realms...
+
+Here, as Socrates would say, let us ‘reflect on’ (Greek) what has
+preceded: thus far we have spoken not of the happiness of the citizens,
+but only of the well-being of the State. They may be the happiest of
+men, but our principal aim in founding the State was not to make them
+happy. They were to be guardians, not holiday-makers. In this pleasant
+manner is presented to us the famous question both of ancient and
+modern philosophy, touching the relation of duty to happiness, of right
+to utility.
+
+First duty, then happiness, is the natural order of our moral ideas.
+The utilitarian principle is valuable as a corrective of error, and
+shows to us a side of ethics which is apt to be neglected. It may be
+admitted further that right and utility are co-extensive, and that he
+who makes the happiness of mankind his object has one of the highest
+and noblest motives of human action. But utility is not the historical
+basis of morality; nor the aspect in which moral and religious ideas
+commonly occur to the mind. The greatest happiness of all is, as we
+believe, the far-off result of the divine government of the universe.
+The greatest happiness of the individual is certainly to be found in a
+life of virtue and goodness. But we seem to be more assured of a law of
+right than we can be of a divine purpose, that ‘all mankind should be
+saved;’ and we infer the one from the other. And the greatest happiness
+of the individual may be the reverse of the greatest happiness in the
+ordinary sense of the term, and may be realised in a life of pain, or
+in a voluntary death. Further, the word ‘happiness’ has several
+ambiguities; it may mean either pleasure or an ideal life, happiness
+subjective or objective, in this world or in another, of ourselves only
+or of our neighbours and of all men everywhere. By the modern founder
+of Utilitarianism the self-regarding and disinterested motives of
+action are included under the same term, although they are commonly
+opposed by us as benevolence and self-love. The word happiness has not
+the definiteness or the sacredness of ‘truth’ and ‘right’; it does not
+equally appeal to our higher nature, and has not sunk into the
+conscience of mankind. It is associated too much with the comforts and
+conveniences of life; too little with ‘the goods of the soul which we
+desire for their own sake.’ In a great trial, or danger, or temptation,
+or in any great and heroic action, it is scarcely thought of. For these
+reasons ‘the greatest happiness’ principle is not the true foundation
+of ethics. But though not the first principle, it is the second, which
+is like unto it, and is often of easier application. For the larger
+part of human actions are neither right nor wrong, except in so far as
+they tend to the happiness of mankind (Introd. to Gorgias and
+Philebus).
+
+The same question reappears in politics, where the useful or expedient
+seems to claim a larger sphere and to have a greater authority. For
+concerning political measures, we chiefly ask: How will they affect the
+happiness of mankind? Yet here too we may observe that what we term
+expediency is merely the law of right limited by the conditions of
+human society. Right and truth are the highest aims of government as
+well as of individuals; and we ought not to lose sight of them because
+we cannot directly enforce them. They appeal to the better mind of
+nations; and sometimes they are too much for merely temporal interests
+to resist. They are the watchwords which all men use in matters of
+public policy, as well as in their private dealings; the peace of
+Europe may be said to depend upon them. In the most commercial and
+utilitarian states of society the power of ideas remains. And all the
+higher class of statesmen have in them something of that idealism which
+Pericles is said to have gathered from the teaching of Anaxagoras. They
+recognise that the true leader of men must be above the motives of
+ambition, and that national character is of greater value than material
+comfort and prosperity. And this is the order of thought in Plato;
+first, he expects his citizens to do their duty, and then under
+favourable circumstances, that is to say, in a well-ordered State,
+their happiness is assured. That he was far from excluding the modern
+principle of utility in politics is sufficiently evident from other
+passages; in which ‘the most beneficial is affirmed to be the most
+honourable’, and also ‘the most sacred’.
+
+We may note
+
+(1) The manner in which the objection of Adeimantus here, is designed
+to draw out and deepen the argument of Socrates.
+
+(2) The conception of a whole as lying at the foundation both of
+politics and of art, in the latter supplying the only principle of
+criticism, which, under the various names of harmony, symmetry,
+measure, proportion, unity, the Greek seems to have applied to works of
+art.
+
+(3) The requirement that the State should be limited in size, after the
+traditional model of a Greek state; as in the Politics of Aristotle,
+the fact that the cities of Hellas were small is converted into a
+principle.
+
+(4) The humorous pictures of the lean dogs and the fatted sheep, of the
+light active boxer upsetting two stout gentlemen at least, of the
+‘charming’ patients who are always making themselves worse; or again,
+the playful assumption that there is no State but our own; or the grave
+irony with which the statesman is excused who believes that he is six
+feet high because he is told so, and having nothing to measure with is
+to be pardoned for his ignorance—he is too amusing for us to be
+seriously angry with him.
+
+(5) The light and superficial manner in which religion is passed over
+when provision has been made for two great principles,—first, that
+religion shall be based on the highest conception of the gods,
+secondly, that the true national or Hellenic type shall be
+maintained...
+
+Socrates proceeds: But where amid all this is justice? Son of Ariston,
+tell me where. Light a candle and search the city, and get your brother
+and the rest of our friends to help in seeking for her. ‘That won’t
+do,’ replied Glaucon, ‘you yourself promised to make the search and
+talked about the impiety of deserting justice.’ Well, I said, I will
+lead the way, but do you follow. My notion is, that our State being
+perfect will contain all the four virtues—wisdom, courage, temperance,
+justice. If we eliminate the three first, the unknown remainder will be
+justice.
+
+First then, of wisdom: the State which we have called into being will
+be wise because politic. And policy is one among many kinds of
+skill,—not the skill of the carpenter, or of the worker in metal, or of
+the husbandman, but the skill of him who advises about the interests of
+the whole State. Of such a kind is the skill of the guardians, who are
+a small class in number, far smaller than the blacksmiths; but in them
+is concentrated the wisdom of the State. And if this small ruling class
+have wisdom, then the whole State will be wise.
+
+Our second virtue is courage, which we have no difficulty in finding in
+another class—that of soldiers. Courage may be defined as a sort of
+salvation—the never-failing salvation of the opinions which law and
+education have prescribed concerning dangers. You know the way in which
+dyers first prepare the white ground and then lay on the dye of purple
+or of any other colour. Colours dyed in this way become fixed, and no
+soap or lye will ever wash them out. Now the ground is education, and
+the laws are the colours; and if the ground is properly laid, neither
+the soap of pleasure nor the lye of pain or fear will ever wash them
+out. This power which preserves right opinion about danger I would ask
+you to call ‘courage,’ adding the epithet ‘political’ or ‘civilized’ in
+order to distinguish it from mere animal courage and from a higher
+courage which may hereafter be discussed.
+
+Two virtues remain; temperance and justice. More than the preceding
+virtues temperance suggests the idea of harmony. Some light is thrown
+upon the nature of this virtue by the popular description of a man as
+‘master of himself’—which has an absurd sound, because the master is
+also the servant. The expression really means that the better principle
+in a man masters the worse. There are in cities whole classes—women,
+slaves and the like—who correspond to the worse, and a few only to the
+better; and in our State the former class are held under control by the
+latter. Now to which of these classes does temperance belong? ‘To both
+of them.’ And our State if any will be the abode of temperance; and we
+were right in describing this virtue as a harmony which is diffused
+through the whole, making the dwellers in the city to be of one mind,
+and attuning the upper and middle and lower classes like the strings of
+an instrument, whether you suppose them to differ in wisdom, strength
+or wealth.
+
+And now we are near the spot; let us draw in and surround the cover and
+watch with all our eyes, lest justice should slip away and escape. Tell
+me, if you see the thicket move first. ‘Nay, I would have you lead.’
+Well then, offer up a prayer and follow. The way is dark and difficult;
+but we must push on. I begin to see a track. ‘Good news.’ Why, Glaucon,
+our dulness of scent is quite ludicrous! While we are straining our
+eyes into the distance, justice is tumbling out at our feet. We are as
+bad as people looking for a thing which they have in their hands. Have
+you forgotten our old principle of the division of labour, or of every
+man doing his own business, concerning which we spoke at the foundation
+of the State—what but this was justice? Is there any other virtue
+remaining which can compete with wisdom and temperance and courage in
+the scale of political virtue? For ‘every one having his own’ is the
+great object of government; and the great object of trade is that every
+man should do his own business. Not that there is much harm in a
+carpenter trying to be a cobbler, or a cobbler transforming himself
+into a carpenter; but great evil may arise from the cobbler leaving his
+last and turning into a guardian or legislator, or when a single
+individual is trainer, warrior, legislator, all in one. And this evil
+is injustice, or every man doing another’s business. I do not say that
+as yet we are in a condition to arrive at a final conclusion. For the
+definition which we believe to hold good in states has still to be
+tested by the individual. Having read the large letters we will now
+come back to the small. From the two together a brilliant light may be
+struck out...
+
+Socrates proceeds to discover the nature of justice by a method of
+residues. Each of the first three virtues corresponds to one of the
+three parts of the soul and one of the three classes in the State,
+although the third, temperance, has more of the nature of a harmony
+than the first two. If there be a fourth virtue, that can only be
+sought for in the relation of the three parts in the soul or classes in
+the State to one another. It is obvious and simple, and for that very
+reason has not been found out. The modern logician will be inclined to
+object that ideas cannot be separated like chemical substances, but
+that they run into one another and may be only different aspects or
+names of the same thing, and such in this instance appears to be the
+case. For the definition here given of justice is verbally the same as
+one of the definitions of temperance given by Socrates in the
+Charmides, which however is only provisional, and is afterwards
+rejected. And so far from justice remaining over when the other virtues
+are eliminated, the justice and temperance of the Republic can with
+difficulty be distinguished. Temperance appears to be the virtue of a
+part only, and one of three, whereas justice is a universal virtue of
+the whole soul. Yet on the other hand temperance is also described as a
+sort of harmony, and in this respect is akin to justice. Justice seems
+to differ from temperance in degree rather than in kind; whereas
+temperance is the harmony of discordant elements, justice is the
+perfect order by which all natures and classes do their own business,
+the right man in the right place, the division and co-operation of all
+the citizens. Justice, again, is a more abstract notion than the other
+virtues, and therefore, from Plato’s point of view, the foundation of
+them, to which they are referred and which in idea precedes them. The
+proposal to omit temperance is a mere trick of style intended to avoid
+monotony.
+
+There is a famous question discussed in one of the earlier Dialogues of
+Plato (Protagoras; Arist. Nic. Ethics), ‘Whether the virtues are one or
+many?’ This receives an answer which is to the effect that there are
+four cardinal virtues (now for the first time brought together in
+ethical philosophy), and one supreme over the rest, which is not like
+Aristotle’s conception of universal justice, virtue relative to others,
+but the whole of virtue relative to the parts. To this universal
+conception of justice or order in the first education and in the moral
+nature of man, the still more universal conception of the good in the
+second education and in the sphere of speculative knowledge seems to
+succeed. Both might be equally described by the terms ‘law,’ ‘order,’
+‘harmony;’ but while the idea of good embraces ‘all time and all
+existence,’ the conception of justice is not extended beyond man.
+
+...Socrates is now going to identify the individual and the State. But
+first he must prove that there are three parts of the individual soul.
+His argument is as follows:—Quantity makes no difference in quality.
+The word ‘just,’ whether applied to the individual or to the State, has
+the same meaning. And the term ‘justice’ implied that the same three
+principles in the State and in the individual were doing their own
+business. But are they really three or one? The question is difficult,
+and one which can hardly be solved by the methods which we are now
+using; but the truer and longer way would take up too much of our time.
+‘The shorter will satisfy me.’ Well then, you would admit that the
+qualities of states mean the qualities of the individuals who compose
+them? The Scythians and Thracians are passionate, our own race
+intellectual, and the Egyptians and Phoenicians covetous, because the
+individual members of each have such and such a character; the
+difficulty is to determine whether the several principles are one or
+three; whether, that is to say, we reason with one part of our nature,
+desire with another, are angry with another, or whether the whole soul
+comes into play in each sort of action. This enquiry, however, requires
+a very exact definition of terms. The same thing in the same relation
+cannot be affected in two opposite ways. But there is no impossibility
+in a man standing still, yet moving his arms, or in a top which is
+fixed on one spot going round upon its axis. There is no necessity to
+mention all the possible exceptions; let us provisionally assume that
+opposites cannot do or be or suffer opposites in the same relation. And
+to the class of opposites belong assent and dissent, desire and
+avoidance. And one form of desire is thirst and hunger: and here arises
+a new point—thirst is thirst of drink, hunger is hunger of food; not of
+warm drink or of a particular kind of food, with the single exception
+of course that the very fact of our desiring anything implies that it
+is good. When relative terms have no attributes, their correlatives
+have no attributes; when they have attributes, their correlatives also
+have them. For example, the term ‘greater’ is simply relative to
+‘less,’ and knowledge refers to a subject of knowledge. But on the
+other hand, a particular knowledge is of a particular subject. Again,
+every science has a distinct character, which is defined by an object;
+medicine, for example, is the science of health, although not to be
+confounded with health. Having cleared our ideas thus far, let us
+return to the original instance of thirst, which has a definite
+object—drink. Now the thirsty soul may feel two distinct impulses; the
+animal one saying ‘Drink;’ the rational one, which says ‘Do not drink.’
+The two impulses are contradictory; and therefore we may assume that
+they spring from distinct principles in the soul. But is passion a
+third principle, or akin to desire? There is a story of a certain
+Leontius which throws some light on this question. He was coming up
+from the Piraeus outside the north wall, and he passed a spot where
+there were dead bodies lying by the executioner. He felt a longing
+desire to see them and also an abhorrence of them; at first he turned
+away and shut his eyes, then, suddenly tearing them open, he
+said,—‘Take your fill, ye wretches, of the fair sight.’ Now is there
+not here a third principle which is often found to come to the
+assistance of reason against desire, but never of desire against
+reason? This is passion or spirit, of the separate existence of which
+we may further convince ourselves by putting the following case:—When a
+man suffers justly, if he be of a generous nature he is not indignant
+at the hardships which he undergoes: but when he suffers unjustly, his
+indignation is his great support; hunger and thirst cannot tame him;
+the spirit within him must do or die, until the voice of the shepherd,
+that is, of reason, bidding his dog bark no more, is heard within. This
+shows that passion is the ally of reason. Is passion then the same with
+reason? No, for the former exists in children and brutes; and Homer
+affords a proof of the distinction between them when he says, ‘He smote
+his breast, and thus rebuked his soul.’
+
+And now, at last, we have reached firm ground, and are able to infer
+that the virtues of the State and of the individual are the same. For
+wisdom and courage and justice in the State are severally the wisdom
+and courage and justice in the individuals who form the State. Each of
+the three classes will do the work of its own class in the State, and
+each part in the individual soul; reason, the superior, and passion,
+the inferior, will be harmonized by the influence of music and
+gymnastic. The counsellor and the warrior, the head and the arm, will
+act together in the town of Mansoul, and keep the desires in proper
+subjection. The courage of the warrior is that quality which preserves
+a right opinion about dangers in spite of pleasures and pains. The
+wisdom of the counsellor is that small part of the soul which has
+authority and reason. The virtue of temperance is the friendship of the
+ruling and the subject principles, both in the State and in the
+individual. Of justice we have already spoken; and the notion already
+given of it may be confirmed by common instances. Will the just state
+or the just individual steal, lie, commit adultery, or be guilty of
+impiety to gods and men? ‘No.’ And is not the reason of this that the
+several principles, whether in the state or in the individual, do their
+own business? And justice is the quality which makes just men and just
+states. Moreover, our old division of labour, which required that there
+should be one man for one use, was a dream or anticipation of what was
+to follow; and that dream has now been realized in justice, which
+begins by binding together the three chords of the soul, and then acts
+harmoniously in every relation of life. And injustice, which is the
+insubordination and disobedience of the inferior elements in the soul,
+is the opposite of justice, and is inharmonious and unnatural, being to
+the soul what disease is to the body; for in the soul as well as in the
+body, good or bad actions produce good or bad habits. And virtue is the
+health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice is the disease
+and weakness and deformity of the soul.
+
+Again the old question returns upon us: Is justice or injustice the
+more profitable? The question has become ridiculous. For injustice,
+like mortal disease, makes life not worth having. Come up with me to
+the hill which overhangs the city and look down upon the single form of
+virtue, and the infinite forms of vice, among which are four special
+ones, characteristic both of states and of individuals. And the state
+which corresponds to the single form of virtue is that which we have
+been describing, wherein reason rules under one of two names—monarchy
+and aristocracy. Thus there are five forms in all, both of states and
+of souls...
+
+In attempting to prove that the soul has three separate faculties,
+Plato takes occasion to discuss what makes difference of faculties. And
+the criterion which he proposes is difference in the working of the
+faculties. The same faculty cannot produce contradictory effects. But
+the path of early reasoners is beset by thorny entanglements, and he
+will not proceed a step without first clearing the ground. This leads
+him into a tiresome digression, which is intended to explain the nature
+of contradiction. First, the contradiction must be at the same time and
+in the same relation. Secondly, no extraneous word must be introduced
+into either of the terms in which the contradictory proposition is
+expressed: for example, thirst is of drink, not of warm drink. He
+implies, what he does not say, that if, by the advice of reason, or by
+the impulse of anger, a man is restrained from drinking, this proves
+that thirst, or desire under which thirst is included, is distinct from
+anger and reason. But suppose that we allow the term ‘thirst’ or
+‘desire’ to be modified, and say an ‘angry thirst,’ or a ‘revengeful
+desire,’ then the two spheres of desire and anger overlap and become
+confused. This case therefore has to be excluded. And still there
+remains an exception to the rule in the use of the term ‘good,’ which
+is always implied in the object of desire. These are the discussions of
+an age before logic; and any one who is wearied by them should remember
+that they are necessary to the clearing up of ideas in the first
+development of the human faculties.
+
+The psychology of Plato extends no further than the division of the
+soul into the rational, irascible, and concupiscent elements, which, as
+far as we know, was first made by him, and has been retained by
+Aristotle and succeeding ethical writers. The chief difficulty in this
+early analysis of the mind is to define exactly the place of the
+irascible faculty (Greek), which may be variously described under the
+terms righteous indignation, spirit, passion. It is the foundation of
+courage, which includes in Plato moral courage, the courage of enduring
+pain, and of surmounting intellectual difficulties, as well as of
+meeting dangers in war. Though irrational, it inclines to side with the
+rational: it cannot be aroused by punishment when justly inflicted: it
+sometimes takes the form of an enthusiasm which sustains a man in the
+performance of great actions. It is the ‘lion heart’ with which the
+reason makes a treaty. On the other hand it is negative rather than
+positive; it is indignant at wrong or falsehood, but does not, like
+Love in the Symposium and Phaedrus, aspire to the vision of Truth or
+Good. It is the peremptory military spirit which prevails in the
+government of honour. It differs from anger (Greek), this latter term
+having no accessory notion of righteous indignation. Although Aristotle
+has retained the word, yet we may observe that ‘passion’ (Greek) has
+with him lost its affinity to the rational and has become
+indistinguishable from ‘anger’ (Greek). And to this vernacular use
+Plato himself in the Laws seems to revert, though not always. By modern
+philosophy too, as well as in our ordinary conversation, the words
+anger or passion are employed almost exclusively in a bad sense; there
+is no connotation of a just or reasonable cause by which they are
+aroused. The feeling of ‘righteous indignation’ is too partial and
+accidental to admit of our regarding it as a separate virtue or habit.
+We are tempted also to doubt whether Plato is right in supposing that
+an offender, however justly condemned, could be expected to acknowledge
+the justice of his sentence; this is the spirit of a philosopher or
+martyr rather than of a criminal.
+
+We may observe how nearly Plato approaches Aristotle’s famous thesis,
+that ‘good actions produce good habits.’ The words ‘as healthy
+practices (Greek) produce health, so do just practices produce
+justice,’ have a sound very like the Nicomachean Ethics. But we note
+also that an incidental remark in Plato has become a far-reaching
+principle in Aristotle, and an inseparable part of a great Ethical
+system.
+
+There is a difficulty in understanding what Plato meant by ‘the longer
+way’: he seems to intimate some metaphysic of the future which will not
+be satisfied with arguing from the principle of contradiction. In the
+sixth and seventh books (compare Sophist and Parmenides) he has given
+us a sketch of such a metaphysic; but when Glaucon asks for the final
+revelation of the idea of good, he is put off with the declaration that
+he has not yet studied the preliminary sciences. How he would have
+filled up the sketch, or argued about such questions from a higher
+point of view, we can only conjecture. Perhaps he hoped to find some a
+priori method of developing the parts out of the whole; or he might
+have asked which of the ideas contains the other ideas, and possibly
+have stumbled on the Hegelian identity of the ‘ego’ and the
+‘universal.’ Or he may have imagined that ideas might be constructed in
+some manner analogous to the construction of figures and numbers in the
+mathematical sciences. The most certain and necessary truth was to
+Plato the universal; and to this he was always seeking to refer all
+knowledge or opinion, just as in modern times we seek to rest them on
+the opposite pole of induction and experience. The aspirations of
+metaphysicians have always tended to pass beyond the limits of human
+thought and language: they seem to have reached a height at which they
+are ‘moving about in worlds unrealized,’ and their conceptions,
+although profoundly affecting their own minds, become invisible or
+unintelligible to others. We are not therefore surprized to find that
+Plato himself has nowhere clearly explained his doctrine of ideas; or
+that his school in a later generation, like his contemporaries Glaucon
+and Adeimantus, were unable to follow him in this region of
+speculation. In the Sophist, where he is refuting the scepticism which
+maintained either that there was no such thing as predication, or that
+all might be predicated of all, he arrives at the conclusion that some
+ideas combine with some, but not all with all. But he makes only one or
+two steps forward on this path; he nowhere attains to any connected
+system of ideas, or even to a knowledge of the most elementary
+relations of the sciences to one another.
+
+BOOK V. I was going to enumerate the four forms of vice or decline in
+states, when Polemarchus—he was sitting a little farther from me than
+Adeimantus—taking him by the coat and leaning towards him, said
+something in an undertone, of which I only caught the words, ‘Shall we
+let him off?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said Adeimantus, raising his voice.
+Whom, I said, are you not going to let off? ‘You,’ he said. Why?
+‘Because we think that you are not dealing fairly with us in omitting
+women and children, of whom you have slily disposed under the general
+formula that friends have all things in common.’ And was I not right?
+‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but there are many sorts of communism or community,
+and we want to know which of them is right. The company, as you have
+just heard, are resolved to have a further explanation.’ Thrasymachus
+said, ‘Do you think that we have come hither to dig for gold, or to
+hear you discourse?’ Yes, I said; but the discourse should be of a
+reasonable length. Glaucon added, ‘Yes, Socrates, and there is reason
+in spending the whole of life in such discussions; but pray, without
+more ado, tell us how this community is to be carried out, and how the
+interval between birth and education is to be filled up.’ Well, I said,
+the subject has several difficulties—What is possible? is the first
+question. What is desirable? is the second. ‘Fear not,’ he replied,
+‘for you are speaking among friends.’ That, I replied, is a sorry
+consolation; I shall destroy my friends as well as myself. Not that I
+mind a little innocent laughter; but he who kills the truth is a
+murderer. ‘Then,’ said Glaucon, laughing, ‘in case you should murder us
+we will acquit you beforehand, and you shall be held free from the
+guilt of deceiving us.’
+
+Socrates proceeds:—The guardians of our state are to be watch-dogs, as
+we have already said. Now dogs are not divided into hes and shes—we do
+not take the masculine gender out to hunt and leave the females at home
+to look after their puppies. They have the same employments—the only
+difference between them is that the one sex is stronger and the other
+weaker. But if women are to have the same employments as men, they must
+have the same education—they must be taught music and gymnastics, and
+the art of war. I know that a great joke will be made of their riding
+on horseback and carrying weapons; the sight of the naked old wrinkled
+women showing their agility in the palaestra will certainly not be a
+vision of beauty, and may be expected to become a famous jest. But we
+must not mind the wits; there was a time when they might have laughed
+at our present gymnastics. All is habit: people have at last found out
+that the exposure is better than the concealment of the person, and now
+they laugh no more. Evil only should be the subject of ridicule.
+
+The first question is, whether women are able either wholly or
+partially to share in the employments of men. And here we may be
+charged with inconsistency in making the proposal at all. For we
+started originally with the division of labour; and the diversity of
+employments was based on the difference of natures. But is there no
+difference between men and women? Nay, are they not wholly different?
+THERE was the difficulty, Glaucon, which made me unwilling to speak of
+family relations. However, when a man is out of his depth, whether in a
+pool or in an ocean, he can only swim for his life; and we must try to
+find a way of escape, if we can.
+
+The argument is, that different natures have different uses, and the
+natures of men and women are said to differ. But this is only a verbal
+opposition. We do not consider that the difference may be purely
+nominal and accidental; for example, a bald man and a hairy man are
+opposed in a single point of view, but you cannot infer that because a
+bald man is a cobbler a hairy man ought not to be a cobbler. Now why is
+such an inference erroneous? Simply because the opposition between them
+is partial only, like the difference between a male physician and a
+female physician, not running through the whole nature, like the
+difference between a physician and a carpenter. And if the difference
+of the sexes is only that the one beget and the other bear children,
+this does not prove that they ought to have distinct educations.
+Admitting that women differ from men in capacity, do not men equally
+differ from one another? Has not nature scattered all the qualities
+which our citizens require indifferently up and down among the two
+sexes? and even in their peculiar pursuits, are not women often, though
+in some cases superior to men, ridiculously enough surpassed by them?
+Women are the same in kind as men, and have the same aptitude or want
+of aptitude for medicine or gymnastic or war, but in a less degree. One
+woman will be a good guardian, another not; and the good must be chosen
+to be the colleagues of our guardians. If however their natures are the
+same, the inference is that their education must also be the same;
+there is no longer anything unnatural or impossible in a woman learning
+music and gymnastic. And the education which we give them will be the
+very best, far superior to that of cobblers, and will train up the very
+best women, and nothing can be more advantageous to the State than
+this. Therefore let them strip, clothed in their chastity, and share in
+the toils of war and in the defence of their country; he who laughs at
+them is a fool for his pains.
+
+The first wave is past, and the argument is compelled to admit that men
+and women have common duties and pursuits. A second and greater wave is
+rolling in—community of wives and children; is this either expedient or
+possible? The expediency I do not doubt; I am not so sure of the
+possibility. ‘Nay, I think that a considerable doubt will be
+entertained on both points.’ I meant to have escaped the trouble of
+proving the first, but as you have detected the little stratagem I must
+even submit. Only allow me to feed my fancy like the solitary in his
+walks, with a dream of what might be, and then I will return to the
+question of what can be.
+
+In the first place our rulers will enforce the laws and make new ones
+where they are wanted, and their allies or ministers will obey. You, as
+legislator, have already selected the men; and now you shall select the
+women. After the selection has been made, they will dwell in common
+houses and have their meals in common, and will be brought together by
+a necessity more certain than that of mathematics. But they cannot be
+allowed to live in licentiousness; that is an unholy thing, which the
+rulers are determined to prevent. For the avoidance of this, holy
+marriage festivals will be instituted, and their holiness will be in
+proportion to their usefulness. And here, Glaucon, I should like to ask
+(as I know that you are a breeder of birds and animals), Do you not
+take the greatest care in the mating? ‘Certainly.’ And there is no
+reason to suppose that less care is required in the marriage of human
+beings. But then our rulers must be skilful physicians of the State,
+for they will often need a strong dose of falsehood in order to bring
+about desirable unions between their subjects. The good must be paired
+with the good, and the bad with the bad, and the offspring of the one
+must be reared, and of the other destroyed; in this way the flock will
+be preserved in prime condition. Hymeneal festivals will be celebrated
+at times fixed with an eye to population, and the brides and
+bridegrooms will meet at them; and by an ingenious system of lots the
+rulers will contrive that the brave and the fair come together, and
+that those of inferior breed are paired with inferiors—the latter will
+ascribe to chance what is really the invention of the rulers. And when
+children are born, the offspring of the brave and fair will be carried
+to an enclosure in a certain part of the city, and there attended by
+suitable nurses; the rest will be hurried away to places unknown. The
+mothers will be brought to the fold and will suckle the children; care
+however must be taken that none of them recognise their own offspring;
+and if necessary other nurses may also be hired. The trouble of
+watching and getting up at night will be transferred to attendants.
+‘Then the wives of our guardians will have a fine easy time when they
+are having children.’ And quite right too, I said, that they should.
+
+The parents ought to be in the prime of life, which for a man may be
+reckoned at thirty years—from twenty-five, when he has ‘passed the
+point at which the speed of life is greatest,’ to fifty-five; and at
+twenty years for a woman—from twenty to forty. Any one above or below
+those ages who partakes in the hymeneals shall be guilty of impiety;
+also every one who forms a marriage connexion at other times without
+the consent of the rulers. This latter regulation applies to those who
+are within the specified ages, after which they may range at will,
+provided they avoid the prohibited degrees of parents and children, or
+of brothers and sisters, which last, however, are not absolutely
+prohibited, if a dispensation be procured. ‘But how shall we know the
+degrees of affinity, when all things are common?’ The answer is, that
+brothers and sisters are all such as are born seven or nine months
+after the espousals, and their parents those who are then espoused, and
+every one will have many children and every child many parents.
+
+Socrates proceeds: I have now to prove that this scheme is advantageous
+and also consistent with our entire polity. The greatest good of a
+State is unity; the greatest evil, discord and distraction. And there
+will be unity where there are no private pleasures or pains or
+interests—where if one member suffers all the members suffer, if one
+citizen is touched all are quickly sensitive; and the least hurt to the
+little finger of the State runs through the whole body and vibrates to
+the soul. For the true State, like an individual, is injured as a whole
+when any part is affected. Every State has subjects and rulers, who in
+a democracy are called rulers, and in other States masters: but in our
+State they are called saviours and allies; and the subjects who in
+other States are termed slaves, are by us termed nurturers and
+paymasters, and those who are termed comrades and colleagues in other
+places, are by us called fathers and brothers. And whereas in other
+States members of the same government regard one of their colleagues as
+a friend and another as an enemy, in our State no man is a stranger to
+another; for every citizen is connected with every other by ties of
+blood, and these names and this way of speaking will have a
+corresponding reality—brother, father, sister, mother, repeated from
+infancy in the ears of children, will not be mere words. Then again the
+citizens will have all things in common, in having common property they
+will have common pleasures and pains.
+
+Can there be strife and contention among those who are of one mind; or
+lawsuits about property when men have nothing but their bodies which
+they call their own; or suits about violence when every one is bound to
+defend himself? The permission to strike when insulted will be an
+‘antidote’ to the knife and will prevent disturbances in the State. But
+no younger man will strike an elder; reverence will prevent him from
+laying hands on his kindred, and he will fear that the rest of the
+family may retaliate. Moreover, our citizens will be rid of the lesser
+evils of life; there will be no flattery of the rich, no sordid
+household cares, no borrowing and not paying. Compared with the
+citizens of other States, ours will be Olympic victors, and crowned
+with blessings greater still—they and their children having a better
+maintenance during life, and after death an honourable burial. Nor has
+the happiness of the individual been sacrificed to the happiness of the
+State; our Olympic victor has not been turned into a cobbler, but he
+has a happiness beyond that of any cobbler. At the same time, if any
+conceited youth begins to dream of appropriating the State to himself,
+he must be reminded that ‘half is better than the whole.’ ‘I should
+certainly advise him to stay where he is when he has the promise of
+such a brave life.’
+
+But is such a community possible?—as among the animals, so also among
+men; and if possible, in what way possible? About war there is no
+difficulty; the principle of communism is adapted to military service.
+Parents will take their children to look on at a battle, just as
+potters’ boys are trained to the business by looking on at the wheel.
+And to the parents themselves, as to other animals, the sight of their
+young ones will prove a great incentive to bravery. Young warriors must
+learn, but they must not run into danger, although a certain degree of
+risk is worth incurring when the benefit is great. The young creatures
+should be placed under the care of experienced veterans, and they
+should have wings—that is to say, swift and tractable steeds on which
+they may fly away and escape. One of the first things to be done is to
+teach a youth to ride.
+
+Cowards and deserters shall be degraded to the class of husbandmen;
+gentlemen who allow themselves to be taken prisoners, may be presented
+to the enemy. But what shall be done to the hero? First of all he shall
+be crowned by all the youths in the army; secondly, he shall receive
+the right hand of fellowship; and thirdly, do you think that there is
+any harm in his being kissed? We have already determined that he shall
+have more wives than others, in order that he may have as many children
+as possible. And at a feast he shall have more to eat; we have the
+authority of Homer for honouring brave men with ‘long chines,’ which is
+an appropriate compliment, because meat is a very strengthening thing.
+Fill the bowl then, and give the best seats and meats to the brave—may
+they do them good! And he who dies in battle will be at once declared
+to be of the golden race, and will, as we believe, become one of
+Hesiod’s guardian angels. He shall be worshipped after death in the
+manner prescribed by the oracle; and not only he, but all other
+benefactors of the State who die in any other way, shall be admitted to
+the same honours.
+
+The next question is, How shall we treat our enemies? Shall Hellenes be
+enslaved? No; for there is too great a risk of the whole race passing
+under the yoke of the barbarians. Or shall the dead be despoiled?
+Certainly not; for that sort of thing is an excuse for skulking, and
+has been the ruin of many an army. There is meanness and feminine
+malice in making an enemy of the dead body, when the soul which was the
+owner has fled—like a dog who cannot reach his assailants, and quarrels
+with the stones which are thrown at him instead. Again, the arms of
+Hellenes should not be offered up in the temples of the Gods; they are
+a pollution, for they are taken from brethren. And on similar grounds
+there should be a limit to the devastation of Hellenic territory—the
+houses should not be burnt, nor more than the annual produce carried
+off. For war is of two kinds, civil and foreign; the first of which is
+properly termed ‘discord,’ and only the second ‘war;’ and war between
+Hellenes is in reality civil war—a quarrel in a family, which is ever
+to be regarded as unpatriotic and unnatural, and ought to be prosecuted
+with a view to reconciliation in a true phil-Hellenic spirit, as of
+those who would chasten but not utterly enslave. The war is not against
+a whole nation who are a friendly multitude of men, women, and
+children, but only against a few guilty persons; when they are punished
+peace will be restored. That is the way in which Hellenes should war
+against one another—and against barbarians, as they war against one
+another now.
+
+‘But, my dear Socrates, you are forgetting the main question: Is such a
+State possible? I grant all and more than you say about the blessedness
+of being one family—fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters, going out to
+war together; but I want to ascertain the possibility of this ideal
+State.’ You are too unmerciful. The first wave and the second wave I
+have hardly escaped, and now you will certainly drown me with the
+third. When you see the towering crest of the wave, I expect you to
+take pity. ‘Not a whit.’
+
+Well, then, we were led to form our ideal polity in the search after
+justice, and the just man answered to the just State. Is this ideal at
+all the worse for being impracticable? Would the picture of a perfectly
+beautiful man be any the worse because no such man ever lived? Can any
+reality come up to the idea? Nature will not allow words to be fully
+realized; but if I am to try and realize the ideal of the State in a
+measure, I think that an approach may be made to the perfection of
+which I dream by one or two, I do not say slight, but possible changes
+in the present constitution of States. I would reduce them to a single
+one—the great wave, as I call it. Until, then, kings are philosophers,
+or philosophers are kings, cities will never cease from ill: no, nor
+the human race; nor will our ideal polity ever come into being. I know
+that this is a hard saying, which few will be able to receive.
+‘Socrates, all the world will take off his coat and rush upon you with
+sticks and stones, and therefore I would advise you to prepare an
+answer.’ You got me into the scrape, I said. ‘And I was right,’ he
+replied; ‘however, I will stand by you as a sort of do-nothing,
+well-meaning ally.’ Having the help of such a champion, I will do my
+best to maintain my position. And first, I must explain of whom I speak
+and what sort of natures these are who are to be philosophers and
+rulers. As you are a man of pleasure, you will not have forgotten how
+indiscriminate lovers are in their attachments; they love all, and turn
+blemishes into beauties. The snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning
+grace; the beak of another has a royal look; the featureless are
+faultless; the dark are manly, the fair angels; the sickly have a new
+term of endearment invented expressly for them, which is ‘honey-pale.’
+Lovers of wine and lovers of ambition also desire the objects of their
+affection in every form. Now here comes the point:—The philosopher too
+is a lover of knowledge in every form; he has an insatiable curiosity.
+‘But will curiosity make a philosopher? Are the lovers of sights and
+sounds, who let out their ears to every chorus at the Dionysiac
+festivals, to be called philosophers?’ They are not true philosophers,
+but only an imitation. ‘Then how are we to describe the true?’
+
+You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, such as justice,
+beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their various
+combinations appear to be many. Those who recognize these realities are
+philosophers; whereas the other class hear sounds and see colours, and
+understand their use in the arts, but cannot attain to the true or
+waking vision of absolute justice or beauty or truth; they have not the
+light of knowledge, but of opinion, and what they see is a dream only.
+Perhaps he of whom we say the last will be angry with us; can we pacify
+him without revealing the disorder of his mind? Suppose we say that, if
+he has knowledge we rejoice to hear it, but knowledge must be of
+something which is, as ignorance is of something which is not; and
+there is a third thing, which both is and is not, and is matter of
+opinion only. Opinion and knowledge, then, having distinct objects,
+must also be distinct faculties. And by faculties I mean powers unseen
+and distinguishable only by the difference in their objects, as opinion
+and knowledge differ, since the one is liable to err, but the other is
+unerring and is the mightiest of all our faculties. If being is the
+object of knowledge, and not-being of ignorance, and these are the
+extremes, opinion must lie between them, and may be called darker than
+the one and brighter than the other. This intermediate or contingent
+matter is and is not at the same time, and partakes both of existence
+and of non-existence. Now I would ask my good friend, who denies
+abstract beauty and justice, and affirms a many beautiful and a many
+just, whether everything he sees is not in some point of view
+different—the beautiful ugly, the pious impious, the just unjust? Is
+not the double also the half, and are not heavy and light relative
+terms which pass into one another? Everything is and is not, as in the
+old riddle—‘A man and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a
+bird with a stone and not a stone.’ The mind cannot be fixed on either
+alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted
+objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being
+and not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable
+objects are the proper matter of knowledge. And he who grovels in the
+world of sense, and has only this uncertain perception of things, is
+not a philosopher, but a lover of opinion only...
+
+The fifth book is the new beginning of the Republic, in which the
+community of property and of family are first maintained, and the
+transition is made to the kingdom of philosophers. For both of these
+Plato, after his manner, has been preparing in some chance words of
+Book IV, which fall unperceived on the reader’s mind, as they are
+supposed at first to have fallen on the ear of Glaucon and Adeimantus.
+The ‘paradoxes,’ as Morgenstern terms them, of this book of the
+Republic will be reserved for another place; a few remarks on the
+style, and some explanations of difficulties, may be briefly added.
+
+First, there is the image of the waves, which serves for a sort of
+scheme or plan of the book. The first wave, the second wave, the third
+and greatest wave come rolling in, and we hear the roar of them. All
+that can be said of the extravagance of Plato’s proposals is
+anticipated by himself. Nothing is more admirable than the hesitation
+with which he proposes the solemn text, ‘Until kings are philosophers,’
+etc.; or the reaction from the sublime to the ridiculous, when Glaucon
+describes the manner in which the new truth will be received by
+mankind.
+
+Some defects and difficulties may be noted in the execution of the
+communistic plan. Nothing is told us of the application of communism to
+the lower classes; nor is the table of prohibited degrees capable of
+being made out. It is quite possible that a child born at one hymeneal
+festival may marry one of its own brothers or sisters, or even one of
+its parents, at another. Plato is afraid of incestuous unions, but at
+the same time he does not wish to bring before us the fact that the
+city would be divided into families of those born seven and nine months
+after each hymeneal festival. If it were worth while to argue seriously
+about such fancies, we might remark that while all the old affinities
+are abolished, the newly prohibited affinity rests not on any natural
+or rational principle, but only upon the accident of children having
+been born in the same month and year. Nor does he explain how the lots
+could be so manipulated by the legislature as to bring together the
+fairest and best. The singular expression which is employed to describe
+the age of five-and-twenty may perhaps be taken from some poet.
+
+In the delineation of the philosopher, the illustrations of the nature
+of philosophy derived from love are more suited to the apprehension of
+Glaucon, the Athenian man of pleasure, than to modern tastes or
+feelings. They are partly facetious, but also contain a germ of truth.
+That science is a whole, remains a true principle of inductive as well
+as of metaphysical philosophy; and the love of universal knowledge is
+still the characteristic of the philosopher in modern as well as in
+ancient times.
+
+At the end of the fifth book Plato introduces the figment of contingent
+matter, which has exercised so great an influence both on the Ethics
+and Theology of the modern world, and which occurs here for the first
+time in the history of philosophy. He did not remark that the degrees
+of knowledge in the subject have nothing corresponding to them in the
+object. With him a word must answer to an idea; and he could not
+conceive of an opinion which was an opinion about nothing. The
+influence of analogy led him to invent ‘parallels and conjugates’ and
+to overlook facts. To us some of his difficulties are puzzling only
+from their simplicity: we do not perceive that the answer to them ‘is
+tumbling out at our feet.’ To the mind of early thinkers, the
+conception of not-being was dark and mysterious; they did not see that
+this terrible apparition which threatened destruction to all knowledge
+was only a logical determination. The common term under which, through
+the accidental use of language, two entirely different ideas were
+included was another source of confusion. Thus through the ambiguity of
+(Greek) Plato, attempting to introduce order into the first chaos of
+human thought, seems to have confused perception and opinion, and to
+have failed to distinguish the contingent from the relative. In the
+Theaetetus the first of these difficulties begins to clear up; in the
+Sophist the second; and for this, as well as for other reasons, both
+these dialogues are probably to be regarded as later than the Republic.
+
+BOOK VI. Having determined that the many have no knowledge of true
+being, and have no clear patterns in their minds of justice, beauty,
+truth, and that philosophers have such patterns, we have now to ask
+whether they or the many shall be rulers in our State. But who can
+doubt that philosophers should be chosen, if they have the other
+qualities which are required in a ruler? For they are lovers of the
+knowledge of the eternal and of all truth; they are haters of
+falsehood; their meaner desires are absorbed in the interests of
+knowledge; they are spectators of all time and all existence; and in
+the magnificence of their contemplation the life of man is as nothing
+to them, nor is death fearful. Also they are of a social, gracious
+disposition, equally free from cowardice and arrogance. They learn and
+remember easily; they have harmonious, well-regulated minds; truth
+flows to them sweetly by nature. Can the god of Jealousy himself find
+any fault with such an assemblage of good qualities?
+
+Here Adeimantus interposes:—‘No man can answer you, Socrates; but every
+man feels that this is owing to his own deficiency in argument. He is
+driven from one position to another, until he has nothing more to say,
+just as an unskilful player at draughts is reduced to his last move by
+a more skilled opponent. And yet all the time he may be right. He may
+know, in this very instance, that those who make philosophy the
+business of their lives, generally turn out rogues if they are bad men,
+and fools if they are good. What do you say?’ I should say that he is
+quite right. ‘Then how is such an admission reconcileable with the
+doctrine that philosophers should be kings?’
+
+I shall answer you in a parable which will also let you see how poor a
+hand I am at the invention of allegories. The relation of good men to
+their governments is so peculiar, that in order to defend them I must
+take an illustration from the world of fiction. Conceive the captain of
+a ship, taller by a head and shoulders than any of the crew, yet a
+little deaf, a little blind, and rather ignorant of the seaman’s art.
+The sailors want to steer, although they know nothing of the art; and
+they have a theory that it cannot be learned. If the helm is refused
+them, they drug the captain’s posset, bind him hand and foot, and take
+possession of the ship. He who joins in the mutiny is termed a good
+pilot and what not; they have no conception that the true pilot must
+observe the winds and the stars, and must be their master, whether they
+like it or not;—such an one would be called by them fool, prater,
+star-gazer. This is my parable; which I will beg you to interpret for
+me to those gentlemen who ask why the philosopher has such an evil
+name, and to explain to them that not he, but those who will not use
+him, are to blame for his uselessness. The philosopher should not beg
+of mankind to be put in authority over them. The wise man should not
+seek the rich, as the proverb bids, but every man, whether rich or
+poor, must knock at the door of the physician when he has need of him.
+Now the pilot is the philosopher—he whom in the parable they call
+star-gazer, and the mutinous sailors are the mob of politicians by whom
+he is rendered useless. Not that these are the worst enemies of
+philosophy, who is far more dishonoured by her own professing sons when
+they are corrupted by the world. Need I recall the original image of
+the philosopher? Did we not say of him just now, that he loved truth
+and hated falsehood, and that he could not rest in the multiplicity of
+phenomena, but was led by a sympathy in his own nature to the
+contemplation of the absolute? All the virtues as well as truth, who is
+the leader of them, took up their abode in his soul. But as you were
+observing, if we turn aside to view the reality, we see that the
+persons who were thus described, with the exception of a small and
+useless class, are utter rogues.
+
+The point which has to be considered, is the origin of this corruption
+in nature. Every one will admit that the philosopher, in our
+description of him, is a rare being. But what numberless causes tend to
+destroy these rare beings! There is no good thing which may not be a
+cause of evil—health, wealth, strength, rank, and the virtues
+themselves, when placed under unfavourable circumstances. For as in the
+animal or vegetable world the strongest seeds most need the
+accompaniment of good air and soil, so the best of human characters
+turn out the worst when they fall upon an unsuitable soil; whereas weak
+natures hardly ever do any considerable good or harm; they are not the
+stuff out of which either great criminals or great heroes are made. The
+philosopher follows the same analogy: he is either the best or the
+worst of all men. Some persons say that the Sophists are the corrupters
+of youth; but is not public opinion the real Sophist who is everywhere
+present—in those very persons, in the assembly, in the courts, in the
+camp, in the applauses and hisses of the theatre re-echoed by the
+surrounding hills? Will not a young man’s heart leap amid these
+discordant sounds? and will any education save him from being carried
+away by the torrent? Nor is this all. For if he will not yield to
+opinion, there follows the gentle compulsion of exile or death. What
+principle of rival Sophists or anybody else can overcome in such an
+unequal contest? Characters there may be more than human, who are
+exceptions—God may save a man, but not his own strength. Further, I
+would have you consider that the hireling Sophist only gives back to
+the world their own opinions; he is the keeper of the monster, who
+knows how to flatter or anger him, and observes the meaning of his
+inarticulate grunts. Good is what pleases him, evil what he dislikes;
+truth and beauty are determined only by the taste of the brute. Such is
+the Sophist’s wisdom, and such is the condition of those who make
+public opinion the test of truth, whether in art or in morals. The
+curse is laid upon them of being and doing what it approves, and when
+they attempt first principles the failure is ludicrous. Think of all
+this and ask yourself whether the world is more likely to be a believer
+in the unity of the idea, or in the multiplicity of phenomena. And the
+world if not a believer in the idea cannot be a philosopher, and must
+therefore be a persecutor of philosophers. There is another evil:—the
+world does not like to lose the gifted nature, and so they flatter the
+young (Alcibiades) into a magnificent opinion of his own capacity; the
+tall, proper youth begins to expand, and is dreaming of kingdoms and
+empires. If at this instant a friend whispers to him, ‘Now the gods
+lighten thee; thou art a great fool’ and must be educated—do you think
+that he will listen? Or suppose a better sort of man who is attracted
+towards philosophy, will they not make Herculean efforts to spoil and
+corrupt him? Are we not right in saying that the love of knowledge, no
+less than riches, may divert him? Men of this class (Critias) often
+become politicians—they are the authors of great mischief in states,
+and sometimes also of great good. And thus philosophy is deserted by
+her natural protectors, and others enter in and dishonour her. Vulgar
+little minds see the land open and rush from the prisons of the arts
+into her temple. A clever mechanic having a soul coarse as his body,
+thinks that he will gain caste by becoming her suitor. For philosophy,
+even in her fallen estate, has a dignity of her own—and he, like a bald
+little blacksmith’s apprentice as he is, having made some money and got
+out of durance, washes and dresses himself as a bridegroom and marries
+his master’s daughter. What will be the issue of such marriages? Will
+they not be vile and bastard, devoid of truth and nature? ‘They will.’
+Small, then, is the remnant of genuine philosophers; there may be a few
+who are citizens of small states, in which politics are not worth
+thinking of, or who have been detained by Theages’ bridle of ill
+health; for my own case of the oracular sign is almost unique, and too
+rare to be worth mentioning. And these few when they have tasted the
+pleasures of philosophy, and have taken a look at that den of thieves
+and place of wild beasts, which is human life, will stand aside from
+the storm under the shelter of a wall, and try to preserve their own
+innocence and to depart in peace. ‘A great work, too, will have been
+accomplished by them.’ Great, yes, but not the greatest; for man is a
+social being, and can only attain his highest development in the
+society which is best suited to him.
+
+Enough, then, of the causes why philosophy has such an evil name.
+Another question is, Which of existing states is suited to her? Not one
+of them; at present she is like some exotic seed which degenerates in a
+strange soil; only in her proper state will she be shown to be of
+heavenly growth. ‘And is her proper state ours or some other?’ Ours in
+all points but one, which was left undetermined. You may remember our
+saying that some living mind or witness of the legislator was needed in
+states. But we were afraid to enter upon a subject of such difficulty,
+and now the question recurs and has not grown easier:—How may
+philosophy be safely studied? Let us bring her into the light of day,
+and make an end of the inquiry.
+
+In the first place, I say boldly that nothing can be worse than the
+present mode of study. Persons usually pick up a little philosophy in
+early youth, and in the intervals of business, but they never master
+the real difficulty, which is dialectic. Later, perhaps, they
+occasionally go to a lecture on philosophy. Years advance, and the sun
+of philosophy, unlike that of Heracleitus, sets never to rise again.
+This order of education should be reversed; it should begin with
+gymnastics in youth, and as the man strengthens, he should increase the
+gymnastics of his soul. Then, when active life is over, let him finally
+return to philosophy. ‘You are in earnest, Socrates, but the world will
+be equally earnest in withstanding you—no more than Thrasymachus.’ Do
+not make a quarrel between Thrasymachus and me, who were never enemies
+and are now good friends enough. And I shall do my best to convince him
+and all mankind of the truth of my words, or at any rate to prepare for
+the future when, in another life, we may again take part in similar
+discussions. ‘That will be a long time hence.’ Not long in comparison
+with eternity. The many will probably remain incredulous, for they have
+never seen the natural unity of ideas, but only artificial
+juxtapositions; not free and generous thoughts, but tricks of
+controversy and quips of law;—a perfect man ruling in a perfect state,
+even a single one they have not known. And we foresaw that there was no
+chance of perfection either in states or individuals until a necessity
+was laid upon philosophers—not the rogues, but those whom we called the
+useless class—of holding office; or until the sons of kings were
+inspired with a true love of philosophy. Whether in the infinity of
+past time there has been, or is in some distant land, or ever will be
+hereafter, an ideal such as we have described, we stoutly maintain that
+there has been, is, and will be such a state whenever the Muse of
+philosophy rules. Will you say that the world is of another mind? O, my
+friend, do not revile the world! They will soon change their opinion if
+they are gently entreated, and are taught the true nature of the
+philosopher. Who can hate a man who loves him? Or be jealous of one who
+has no jealousy? Consider, again, that the many hate not the true but
+the false philosophers—the pretenders who force their way in without
+invitation, and are always speaking of persons and not of principles,
+which is unlike the spirit of philosophy. For the true philosopher
+despises earthly strife; his eye is fixed on the eternal order in
+accordance with which he moulds himself into the Divine image (and not
+himself only, but other men), and is the creator of the virtues private
+as well as public. When mankind see that the happiness of states is
+only to be found in that image, will they be angry with us for
+attempting to delineate it? ‘Certainly not. But what will be the
+process of delineation?’ The artist will do nothing until he has made a
+tabula rasa; on this he will inscribe the constitution of a state,
+glancing often at the divine truth of nature, and from that deriving
+the godlike among men, mingling the two elements, rubbing out and
+painting in, until there is a perfect harmony or fusion of the divine
+and human. But perhaps the world will doubt the existence of such an
+artist. What will they doubt? That the philosopher is a lover of truth,
+having a nature akin to the best?—and if they admit this will they
+still quarrel with us for making philosophers our kings? ‘They will be
+less disposed to quarrel.’ Let us assume then that they are pacified.
+Still, a person may hesitate about the probability of the son of a king
+being a philosopher. And we do not deny that they are very liable to be
+corrupted; but yet surely in the course of ages there might be one
+exception—and one is enough. If one son of a king were a philosopher,
+and had obedient citizens, he might bring the ideal polity into being.
+Hence we conclude that our laws are not only the best, but that they
+are also possible, though not free from difficulty.
+
+I gained nothing by evading the troublesome questions which arose
+concerning women and children. I will be wiser now and acknowledge that
+we must go to the bottom of another question: What is to be the
+education of our guardians? It was agreed that they were to be lovers
+of their country, and were to be tested in the refiner’s fire of
+pleasures and pains, and those who came forth pure and remained fixed
+in their principles were to have honours and rewards in life and after
+death. But at this point, the argument put on her veil and turned into
+another path. I hesitated to make the assertion which I now
+hazard,—that our guardians must be philosophers. You remember all the
+contradictory elements, which met in the philosopher—how difficult to
+find them all in a single person! Intelligence and spirit are not often
+combined with steadiness; the stolid, fearless, nature is averse to
+intellectual toil. And yet these opposite elements are all necessary,
+and therefore, as we were saying before, the aspirant must be tested in
+pleasures and dangers; and also, as we must now further add, in the
+highest branches of knowledge. You will remember, that when we spoke of
+the virtues mention was made of a longer road, which you were satisfied
+to leave unexplored. ‘Enough seemed to have been said.’ Enough, my
+friend; but what is enough while anything remains wanting? Of all men
+the guardian must not faint in the search after truth; he must be
+prepared to take the longer road, or he will never reach that higher
+region which is above the four virtues; and of the virtues too he must
+not only get an outline, but a clear and distinct vision. (Strange that
+we should be so precise about trifles, so careless about the highest
+truths!) ‘And what are the highest?’ You to pretend unconsciousness,
+when you have so often heard me speak of the idea of good, about which
+we know so little, and without which though a man gain the world he has
+no profit of it! Some people imagine that the good is wisdom; but this
+involves a circle,—the good, they say, is wisdom, wisdom has to do with
+the good. According to others the good is pleasure; but then comes the
+absurdity that good is bad, for there are bad pleasures as well as
+good. Again, the good must have reality; a man may desire the
+appearance of virtue, but he will not desire the appearance of good.
+Ought our guardians then to be ignorant of this supreme principle, of
+which every man has a presentiment, and without which no man has any
+real knowledge of anything? ‘But, Socrates, what is this supreme
+principle, knowledge or pleasure, or what? You may think me
+troublesome, but I say that you have no business to be always repeating
+the doctrines of others instead of giving us your own.’ Can I say what
+I do not know? ‘You may offer an opinion.’ And will the blindness and
+crookedness of opinion content you when you might have the light and
+certainty of science? ‘I will only ask you to give such an explanation
+of the good as you have given already of temperance and justice.’ I
+wish that I could, but in my present mood I cannot reach to the height
+of the knowledge of the good. To the parent or principal I cannot
+introduce you, but to the child begotten in his image, which I may
+compare with the interest on the principal, I will. (Audit the account,
+and do not let me give you a false statement of the debt.) You remember
+our old distinction of the many beautiful and the one beautiful, the
+particular and the universal, the objects of sight and the objects of
+thought? Did you ever consider that the objects of sight imply a
+faculty of sight which is the most complex and costly of our senses,
+requiring not only objects of sense, but also a medium, which is light;
+without which the sight will not distinguish between colours and all
+will be a blank? For light is the noble bond between the perceiving
+faculty and the thing perceived, and the god who gives us light is the
+sun, who is the eye of the day, but is not to be confounded with the
+eye of man. This eye of the day or sun is what I call the child of the
+good, standing in the same relation to the visible world as the good to
+the intellectual. When the sun shines the eye sees, and in the
+intellectual world where truth is, there is sight and light. Now that
+which is the sun of intelligent natures, is the idea of good, the cause
+of knowledge and truth, yet other and fairer than they are, and
+standing in the same relation to them in which the sun stands to light.
+O inconceivable height of beauty, which is above knowledge and above
+truth! (‘You cannot surely mean pleasure,’ he said. Peace, I replied.)
+And this idea of good, like the sun, is also the cause of growth, and
+the author not of knowledge only, but of being, yet greater far than
+either in dignity and power. ‘That is a reach of thought more than
+human; but, pray, go on with the image, for I suspect that there is
+more behind.’ There is, I said; and bearing in mind our two suns or
+principles, imagine further their corresponding worlds—one of the
+visible, the other of the intelligible; you may assist your fancy by
+figuring the distinction under the image of a line divided into two
+unequal parts, and may again subdivide each part into two lesser
+segments representative of the stages of knowledge in either sphere.
+The lower portion of the lower or visible sphere will consist of
+shadows and reflections, and its upper and smaller portion will contain
+real objects in the world of nature or of art. The sphere of the
+intelligible will also have two divisions,—one of mathematics, in which
+there is no ascent but all is descent; no inquiring into premises, but
+only drawing of inferences. In this division the mind works with
+figures and numbers, the images of which are taken not from the
+shadows, but from the objects, although the truth of them is seen only
+with the mind’s eye; and they are used as hypotheses without being
+analysed. Whereas in the other division reason uses the hypotheses as
+stages or steps in the ascent to the idea of good, to which she fastens
+them, and then again descends, walking firmly in the region of ideas,
+and of ideas only, in her ascent as well as descent, and finally
+resting in them. ‘I partly understand,’ he replied; ‘you mean that the
+ideas of science are superior to the hypothetical, metaphorical
+conceptions of geometry and the other arts or sciences, whichever is to
+be the name of them; and the latter conceptions you refuse to make
+subjects of pure intellect, because they have no first principle,
+although when resting on a first principle, they pass into the higher
+sphere.’ You understand me very well, I said. And now to those four
+divisions of knowledge you may assign four corresponding faculties—pure
+intelligence to the highest sphere; active intelligence to the second;
+to the third, faith; to the fourth, the perception of shadows—and the
+clearness of the several faculties will be in the same ratio as the
+truth of the objects to which they are related...
+
+Like Socrates, we may recapitulate the virtues of the philosopher. In
+language which seems to reach beyond the horizon of that age and
+country, he is described as ‘the spectator of all time and all
+existence.’ He has the noblest gifts of nature, and makes the highest
+use of them. All his desires are absorbed in the love of wisdom, which
+is the love of truth. None of the graces of a beautiful soul are
+wanting in him; neither can he fear death, or think much of human life.
+The ideal of modern times hardly retains the simplicity of the antique;
+there is not the same originality either in truth or error which
+characterized the Greeks. The philosopher is no longer living in the
+unseen, nor is he sent by an oracle to convince mankind of ignorance;
+nor does he regard knowledge as a system of ideas leading upwards by
+regular stages to the idea of good. The eagerness of the pursuit has
+abated; there is more division of labour and less of comprehensive
+reflection upon nature and human life as a whole; more of exact
+observation and less of anticipation and inspiration. Still, in the
+altered conditions of knowledge, the parallel is not wholly lost; and
+there may be a use in translating the conception of Plato into the
+language of our own age. The philosopher in modern times is one who
+fixes his mind on the laws of nature in their sequence and connexion,
+not on fragments or pictures of nature; on history, not on controversy;
+on the truths which are acknowledged by the few, not on the opinions of
+the many. He is aware of the importance of ‘classifying according to
+nature,’ and will try to ‘separate the limbs of science without
+breaking them’ (Phaedr.). There is no part of truth, whether great or
+small, which he will dishonour; and in the least things he will discern
+the greatest (Parmen.). Like the ancient philosopher he sees the world
+pervaded by analogies, but he can also tell ‘why in some cases a single
+instance is sufficient for an induction’ (Mill’s Logic), while in other
+cases a thousand examples would prove nothing. He inquires into a
+portion of knowledge only, because the whole has grown too vast to be
+embraced by a single mind or life. He has a clearer conception of the
+divisions of science and of their relation to the mind of man than was
+possible to the ancients. Like Plato, he has a vision of the unity of
+knowledge, not as the beginning of philosophy to be attained by a study
+of elementary mathematics, but as the far-off result of the working of
+many minds in many ages. He is aware that mathematical studies are
+preliminary to almost every other; at the same time, he will not reduce
+all varieties of knowledge to the type of mathematics. He too must have
+a nobility of character, without which genius loses the better half of
+greatness. Regarding the world as a point in immensity, and each
+individual as a link in a never-ending chain of existence, he will not
+think much of his own life, or be greatly afraid of death.
+
+Adeimantus objects first of all to the form of the Socratic reasoning,
+thus showing that Plato is aware of the imperfection of his own method.
+He brings the accusation against himself which might be brought against
+him by a modern logician—that he extracts the answer because he knows
+how to put the question. In a long argument words are apt to change
+their meaning slightly, or premises may be assumed or conclusions
+inferred with rather too much certainty or universality; the variation
+at each step may be unobserved, and yet at last the divergence becomes
+considerable. Hence the failure of attempts to apply arithmetical or
+algebraic formulae to logic. The imperfection, or rather the higher and
+more elastic nature of language, does not allow words to have the
+precision of numbers or of symbols. And this quality in language
+impairs the force of an argument which has many steps.
+
+The objection, though fairly met by Socrates in this particular
+instance, may be regarded as implying a reflection upon the Socratic
+mode of reasoning. And here, as elsewhere, Plato seems to intimate that
+the time had come when the negative and interrogative method of
+Socrates must be superseded by a positive and constructive one, of
+which examples are given in some of the later dialogues. Adeimantus
+further argues that the ideal is wholly at variance with facts; for
+experience proves philosophers to be either useless or rogues. Contrary
+to all expectation Socrates has no hesitation in admitting the truth of
+this, and explains the anomaly in an allegory, first characteristically
+depreciating his own inventive powers. In this allegory the people are
+distinguished from the professional politicians, and, as elsewhere, are
+spoken of in a tone of pity rather than of censure under the image of
+‘the noble captain who is not very quick in his perceptions.’
+
+The uselessness of philosophers is explained by the circumstance that
+mankind will not use them. The world in all ages has been divided
+between contempt and fear of those who employ the power of ideas and
+know no other weapons. Concerning the false philosopher, Socrates
+argues that the best is most liable to corruption; and that the finer
+nature is more likely to suffer from alien conditions. We too observe
+that there are some kinds of excellence which spring from a peculiar
+delicacy of constitution; as is evidently true of the poetical and
+imaginative temperament, which often seems to depend on impressions,
+and hence can only breathe or live in a certain atmosphere. The man of
+genius has greater pains and greater pleasures, greater powers and
+greater weaknesses, and often a greater play of character than is to be
+found in ordinary men. He can assume the disguise of virtue or
+disinterestedness without having them, or veil personal enmity in the
+language of patriotism and philosophy,—he can say the word which all
+men are thinking, he has an insight which is terrible into the follies
+and weaknesses of his fellow-men. An Alcibiades, a Mirabeau, or a
+Napoleon the First, are born either to be the authors of great evils in
+states, or ‘of great good, when they are drawn in that direction.’
+
+Yet the thesis, ‘corruptio optimi pessima,’ cannot be maintained
+generally or without regard to the kind of excellence which is
+corrupted. The alien conditions which are corrupting to one nature, may
+be the elements of culture to another. In general a man can only
+receive his highest development in a congenial state or family, among
+friends or fellow-workers. But also he may sometimes be stirred by
+adverse circumstances to such a degree that he rises up against them
+and reforms them. And while weaker or coarser characters will extract
+good out of evil, say in a corrupt state of the church or of society,
+and live on happily, allowing the evil to remain, the finer or stronger
+natures may be crushed or spoiled by surrounding influences—may become
+misanthrope and philanthrope by turns; or in a few instances, like the
+founders of the monastic orders, or the Reformers, owing to some
+peculiarity in themselves or in their age, may break away entirely from
+the world and from the church, sometimes into great good, sometimes
+into great evil, sometimes into both. And the same holds in the lesser
+sphere of a convent, a school, a family.
+
+Plato would have us consider how easily the best natures are
+overpowered by public opinion, and what efforts the rest of mankind
+will make to get possession of them. The world, the church, their own
+profession, any political or party organization, are always carrying
+them off their legs and teaching them to apply high and holy names to
+their own prejudices and interests. The ‘monster’ corporation to which
+they belong judges right and truth to be the pleasure of the community.
+The individual becomes one with his order; or, if he resists, the world
+is too much for him, and will sooner or later be revenged on him. This
+is, perhaps, a one-sided but not wholly untrue picture of the maxims
+and practice of mankind when they ‘sit down together at an assembly,’
+either in ancient or modern times.
+
+When the higher natures are corrupted by politics, the lower take
+possession of the vacant place of philosophy. This is described in one
+of those continuous images in which the argument, to use a Platonic
+expression, ‘veils herself,’ and which is dropped and reappears at
+intervals. The question is asked,—Why are the citizens of states so
+hostile to philosophy? The answer is, that they do not know her. And
+yet there is also a better mind of the many; they would believe if they
+were taught. But hitherto they have only known a conventional imitation
+of philosophy, words without thoughts, systems which have no life in
+them; a (divine) person uttering the words of beauty and freedom, the
+friend of man holding communion with the Eternal, and seeking to frame
+the state in that image, they have never known. The same double feeling
+respecting the mass of mankind has always existed among men. The first
+thought is that the people are the enemies of truth and right; the
+second, that this only arises out of an accidental error and confusion,
+and that they do not really hate those who love them, if they could be
+educated to know them.
+
+In the latter part of the sixth book, three questions have to be
+considered: 1st, the nature of the longer and more circuitous way,
+which is contrasted with the shorter and more imperfect method of Book
+IV; 2nd, the heavenly pattern or idea of the state; 3rd, the relation
+of the divisions of knowledge to one another and to the corresponding
+faculties of the soul:
+
+1. Of the higher method of knowledge in Plato we have only a glimpse.
+Neither here nor in the Phaedrus or Symposium, nor yet in the Philebus
+or Sophist, does he give any clear explanation of his meaning. He would
+probably have described his method as proceeding by regular steps to a
+system of universal knowledge, which inferred the parts from the whole
+rather than the whole from the parts. This ideal logic is not practised
+by him in the search after justice, or in the analysis of the parts of
+the soul; there, like Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues
+from experience and the common use of language. But at the end of the
+sixth book he conceives another and more perfect method, in which all
+ideas are only steps or grades or moments of thought, forming a
+connected whole which is self-supporting, and in which consistency is
+the test of truth. He does not explain to us in detail the nature of
+the process. Like many other thinkers both in ancient and modern times
+his mind seems to be filled with a vacant form which he is unable to
+realize. He supposes the sciences to have a natural order and connexion
+in an age when they can hardly be said to exist. He is hastening on to
+the ‘end of the intellectual world’ without even making a beginning of
+them.
+
+In modern times we hardly need to be reminded that the process of
+acquiring knowledge is here confused with the contemplation of absolute
+knowledge. In all science a priori and a posteriori truths mingle in
+various proportions. The a priori part is that which is derived from
+the most universal experience of men, or is universally accepted by
+them; the a posteriori is that which grows up around the more general
+principles and becomes imperceptibly one with them. But Plato
+erroneously imagines that the synthesis is separable from the analysis,
+and that the method of science can anticipate science. In entertaining
+such a vision of a priori knowledge he is sufficiently justified, or at
+least his meaning may be sufficiently explained by the similar attempts
+of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and even of Bacon himself, in modern
+philosophy. Anticipations or divinations, or prophetic glimpses of
+truths whether concerning man or nature, seem to stand in the same
+relation to ancient philosophy which hypotheses bear to modern
+inductive science. These ‘guesses at truth’ were not made at random;
+they arose from a superficial impression of uniformities and first
+principles in nature which the genius of the Greek, contemplating the
+expanse of heaven and earth, seemed to recognize in the distance. Nor
+can we deny that in ancient times knowledge must have stood still, and
+the human mind been deprived of the very instruments of thought, if
+philosophy had been strictly confined to the results of experience.
+
+2. Plato supposes that when the tablet has been made blank the artist
+will fill in the lineaments of the ideal state. Is this a pattern laid
+up in heaven, or mere vacancy on which he is supposed to gaze with
+wondering eye? The answer is, that such ideals are framed partly by the
+omission of particulars, partly by imagination perfecting the form
+which experience supplies (Phaedo). Plato represents these ideals in a
+figure as belonging to another world; and in modern times the idea will
+sometimes seem to precede, at other times to co-operate with the hand
+of the artist. As in science, so also in creative art, there is a
+synthetical as well as an analytical method. One man will have the
+whole in his mind before he begins; to another the processes of mind
+and hand will be simultaneous.
+
+3. There is no difficulty in seeing that Plato’s divisions of knowledge
+are based, first, on the fundamental antithesis of sensible and
+intellectual which pervades the whole pre-Socratic philosophy; in which
+is implied also the opposition of the permanent and transient, of the
+universal and particular. But the age of philosophy in which he lived
+seemed to require a further distinction;—numbers and figures were
+beginning to separate from ideas. The world could no longer regard
+justice as a cube, and was learning to see, though imperfectly, that
+the abstractions of sense were distinct from the abstractions of mind.
+Between the Eleatic being or essence and the shadows of phenomena, the
+Pythagorean principle of number found a place, and was, as Aristotle
+remarks, a conducting medium from one to the other. Hence Plato is led
+to introduce a third term which had not hitherto entered into the
+scheme of his philosophy. He had observed the use of mathematics in
+education; they were the best preparation for higher studies. The
+subjective relation between them further suggested an objective one;
+although the passage from one to the other is really imaginary
+(Metaph.). For metaphysical and moral philosophy has no connexion with
+mathematics; number and figure are the abstractions of time and space,
+not the expressions of purely intellectual conceptions. When divested
+of metaphor, a straight line or a square has no more to do with right
+and justice than a crooked line with vice. The figurative association
+was mistaken for a real one; and thus the three latter divisions of the
+Platonic proportion were constructed.
+
+There is more difficulty in comprehending how he arrived at the first
+term of the series, which is nowhere else mentioned, and has no
+reference to any other part of his system. Nor indeed does the relation
+of shadows to objects correspond to the relation of numbers to ideas.
+Probably Plato has been led by the love of analogy (Timaeus) to make
+four terms instead of three, although the objects perceived in both
+divisions of the lower sphere are equally objects of sense. He is also
+preparing the way, as his manner is, for the shadows of images at the
+beginning of the seventh book, and the imitation of an imitation in the
+tenth. The line may be regarded as reaching from unity to infinity, and
+is divided into two unequal parts, and subdivided into two more; each
+lower sphere is the multiplication of the preceding. Of the four
+faculties, faith in the lower division has an intermediate position
+(cp. for the use of the word faith or belief, (Greek), Timaeus),
+contrasting equally with the vagueness of the perception of shadows
+(Greek) and the higher certainty of understanding (Greek) and reason
+(Greek).
+
+The difference between understanding and mind or reason (Greek) is
+analogous to the difference between acquiring knowledge in the parts
+and the contemplation of the whole. True knowledge is a whole, and is
+at rest; consistency and universality are the tests of truth. To this
+self-evidencing knowledge of the whole the faculty of mind is supposed
+to correspond. But there is a knowledge of the understanding which is
+incomplete and in motion always, because unable to rest in the
+subordinate ideas. Those ideas are called both images and
+hypotheses—images because they are clothed in sense, hypotheses because
+they are assumptions only, until they are brought into connexion with
+the idea of good.
+
+The general meaning of the passage, ‘Noble, then, is the bond which
+links together sight...And of this kind I spoke as the intelligible...’
+so far as the thought contained in it admits of being translated into
+the terms of modern philosophy, may be described or explained as
+follows:—There is a truth, one and self-existent, to which by the help
+of a ladder let down from above, the human intelligence may ascend.
+This unity is like the sun in the heavens, the light by which all
+things are seen, the being by which they are created and sustained. It
+is the IDEA of good. And the steps of the ladder leading up to this
+highest or universal existence are the mathematical sciences, which
+also contain in themselves an element of the universal. These, too, we
+see in a new manner when we connect them with the idea of good. They
+then cease to be hypotheses or pictures, and become essential parts of
+a higher truth which is at once their first principle and their final
+cause.
+
+We cannot give any more precise meaning to this remarkable passage, but
+we may trace in it several rudiments or vestiges of thought which are
+common to us and to Plato: such as (1) the unity and correlation of the
+sciences, or rather of science, for in Plato’s time they were not yet
+parted off or distinguished; (2) the existence of a Divine Power, or
+life or idea or cause or reason, not yet conceived or no longer
+conceived as in the Timaeus and elsewhere under the form of a person;
+(3) the recognition of the hypothetical and conditional character of
+the mathematical sciences, and in a measure of every science when
+isolated from the rest; (4) the conviction of a truth which is
+invisible, and of a law, though hardly a law of nature, which permeates
+the intellectual rather than the visible world.
+
+The method of Socrates is hesitating and tentative, awaiting the fuller
+explanation of the idea of good, and of the nature of dialectic in the
+seventh book. The imperfect intelligence of Glaucon, and the reluctance
+of Socrates to make a beginning, mark the difficulty of the subject.
+The allusion to Theages’ bridle, and to the internal oracle, or demonic
+sign, of Socrates, which here, as always in Plato, is only prohibitory;
+the remark that the salvation of any remnant of good in the present
+evil state of the world is due to God only; the reference to a future
+state of existence, which is unknown to Glaucon in the tenth book, and
+in which the discussions of Socrates and his disciples would be
+resumed; the surprise in the answers; the fanciful irony of Socrates,
+where he pretends that he can only describe the strange position of the
+philosopher in a figure of speech; the original observation that the
+Sophists, after all, are only the representatives and not the leaders
+of public opinion; the picture of the philosopher standing aside in the
+shower of sleet under a wall; the figure of ‘the great beast’ followed
+by the expression of good-will towards the common people who would not
+have rejected the philosopher if they had known him; the ‘right noble
+thought’ that the highest truths demand the greatest exactness; the
+hesitation of Socrates in returning once more to his well-worn theme of
+the idea of good; the ludicrous earnestness of Glaucon; the comparison
+of philosophy to a deserted maiden who marries beneath her—are some of
+the most interesting characteristics of the sixth book.
+
+Yet a few more words may be added, on the old theme, which was so oft
+discussed in the Socratic circle, of which we, like Glaucon and
+Adeimantus, would fain, if possible, have a clearer notion. Like them,
+we are dissatisfied when we are told that the idea of good can only be
+revealed to a student of the mathematical sciences, and we are inclined
+to think that neither we nor they could have been led along that path
+to any satisfactory goal. For we have learned that differences of
+quantity cannot pass into differences of quality, and that the
+mathematical sciences can never rise above themselves into the sphere
+of our higher thoughts, although they may sometimes furnish symbols and
+expressions of them, and may train the mind in habits of abstraction
+and self-concentration. The illusion which was natural to an ancient
+philosopher has ceased to be an illusion to us. But if the process by
+which we are supposed to arrive at the idea of good be really
+imaginary, may not the idea itself be also a mere abstraction? We
+remark, first, that in all ages, and especially in primitive
+philosophy, words such as being, essence, unity, good, have exerted an
+extraordinary influence over the minds of men. The meagreness or
+negativeness of their content has been in an inverse ratio to their
+power. They have become the forms under which all things were
+comprehended. There was a need or instinct in the human soul which they
+satisfied; they were not ideas, but gods, and to this new mythology the
+men of a later generation began to attach the powers and associations
+of the elder deities.
+
+The idea of good is one of those sacred words or forms of thought,
+which were beginning to take the place of the old mythology. It meant
+unity, in which all time and all existence were gathered up. It was the
+truth of all things, and also the light in which they shone forth, and
+became evident to intelligences human and divine. It was the cause of
+all things, the power by which they were brought into being. It was the
+universal reason divested of a human personality. It was the life as
+well as the light of the world, all knowledge and all power were
+comprehended in it. The way to it was through the mathematical
+sciences, and these too were dependent on it. To ask whether God was
+the maker of it, or made by it, would be like asking whether God could
+be conceived apart from goodness, or goodness apart from God. The God
+of the Timaeus is not really at variance with the idea of good; they
+are aspects of the same, differing only as the personal from the
+impersonal, or the masculine from the neuter, the one being the
+expression or language of mythology, the other of philosophy.
+
+This, or something like this, is the meaning of the idea of good as
+conceived by Plato. Ideas of number, order, harmony, development may
+also be said to enter into it. The paraphrase which has just been given
+of it goes beyond the actual words of Plato. We have perhaps arrived at
+the stage of philosophy which enables us to understand what he is
+aiming at, better than he did himself. We are beginning to realize what
+he saw darkly and at a distance. But if he could have been told that
+this, or some conception of the same kind, but higher than this, was
+the truth at which he was aiming, and the need which he sought to
+supply, he would gladly have recognized that more was contained in his
+own thoughts than he himself knew. As his words are few and his manner
+reticent and tentative, so must the style of his interpreter be. We
+should not approach his meaning more nearly by attempting to define it
+further. In translating him into the language of modern thought, we
+might insensibly lose the spirit of ancient philosophy. It is
+remarkable that although Plato speaks of the idea of good as the first
+principle of truth and being, it is nowhere mentioned in his writings
+except in this passage. Nor did it retain any hold upon the minds of
+his disciples in a later generation; it was probably unintelligible to
+them. Nor does the mention of it in Aristotle appear to have any
+reference to this or any other passage in his extant writings.
+
+BOOK VII. And now I will describe in a figure the enlightenment or
+unenlightenment of our nature:—Imagine human beings living in an
+underground den which is open towards the light; they have been there
+from childhood, having their necks and legs chained, and can only see
+into the den. At a distance there is a fire, and between the fire and
+the prisoners a raised way, and a low wall is built along the way, like
+the screen over which marionette players show their puppets. Behind the
+wall appear moving figures, who hold in their hands various works of
+art, and among them images of men and animals, wood and stone, and some
+of the passers-by are talking and others silent. ‘A strange parable,’
+he said, ‘and strange captives.’ They are ourselves, I replied; and
+they see only the shadows of the images which the fire throws on the
+wall of the den; to these they give names, and if we add an echo which
+returns from the wall, the voices of the passengers will seem to
+proceed from the shadows. Suppose now that you suddenly turn them round
+and make them look with pain and grief to themselves at the real
+images; will they believe them to be real? Will not their eyes be
+dazzled, and will they not try to get away from the light to something
+which they are able to behold without blinking? And suppose further,
+that they are dragged up a steep and rugged ascent into the presence of
+the sun himself, will not their sight be darkened with the excess of
+light? Some time will pass before they get the habit of perceiving at
+all; and at first they will be able to perceive only shadows and
+reflections in the water; then they will recognize the moon and the
+stars, and will at length behold the sun in his own proper place as he
+is. Last of all they will conclude:—This is he who gives us the year
+and the seasons, and is the author of all that we see. How will they
+rejoice in passing from darkness to light! How worthless to them will
+seem the honours and glories of the den! But now imagine further, that
+they descend into their old habitations;—in that underground dwelling
+they will not see as well as their fellows, and will not be able to
+compete with them in the measurement of the shadows on the wall; there
+will be many jokes about the man who went on a visit to the sun and
+lost his eyes, and if they find anybody trying to set free and
+enlighten one of their number, they will put him to death, if they can
+catch him. Now the cave or den is the world of sight, the fire is the
+sun, the way upwards is the way to knowledge, and in the world of
+knowledge the idea of good is last seen and with difficulty, but when
+seen is inferred to be the author of good and right—parent of the lord
+of light in this world, and of truth and understanding in the other. He
+who attains to the beatific vision is always going upwards; he is
+unwilling to descend into political assemblies and courts of law; for
+his eyes are apt to blink at the images or shadows of images which they
+behold in them—he cannot enter into the ideas of those who have never
+in their lives understood the relation of the shadow to the substance.
+But blindness is of two kinds, and may be caused either by passing out
+of darkness into light or out of light into darkness, and a man of
+sense will distinguish between them, and will not laugh equally at both
+of them, but the blindness which arises from fulness of light he will
+deem blessed, and pity the other; or if he laugh at the puzzled soul
+looking at the sun, he will have more reason to laugh than the
+inhabitants of the den at those who descend from above. There is a
+further lesson taught by this parable of ours. Some persons fancy that
+instruction is like giving eyes to the blind, but we say that the
+faculty of sight was always there, and that the soul only requires to
+be turned round towards the light. And this is conversion; other
+virtues are almost like bodily habits, and may be acquired in the same
+manner, but intelligence has a diviner life, and is indestructible,
+turning either to good or evil according to the direction given. Did
+you never observe how the mind of a clever rogue peers out of his eyes,
+and the more clearly he sees, the more evil he does? Now if you take
+such an one, and cut away from him those leaden weights of pleasure and
+desire which bind his soul to earth, his intelligence will be turned
+round, and he will behold the truth as clearly as he now discerns his
+meaner ends. And have we not decided that our rulers must neither be so
+uneducated as to have no fixed rule of life, nor so over-educated as to
+be unwilling to leave their paradise for the business of the world? We
+must choose out therefore the natures who are most likely to ascend to
+the light and knowledge of the good; but we must not allow them to
+remain in the region of light; they must be forced down again among the
+captives in the den to partake of their labours and honours. ‘Will they
+not think this a hardship?’ You should remember that our purpose in
+framing the State was not that our citizens should do what they like,
+but that they should serve the State for the common good of all. May we
+not fairly say to our philosopher,—Friend, we do you no wrong; for in
+other States philosophy grows wild, and a wild plant owes nothing to
+the gardener, but you have been trained by us to be the rulers and
+kings of our hive, and therefore we must insist on your descending into
+the den. You must, each of you, take your turn, and become able to use
+your eyes in the dark, and with a little practice you will see far
+better than those who quarrel about the shadows, whose knowledge is a
+dream only, whilst yours is a waking reality. It may be that the saint
+or philosopher who is best fitted, may also be the least inclined to
+rule, but necessity is laid upon him, and he must no longer live in the
+heaven of ideas. And this will be the salvation of the State. For those
+who rule must not be those who are desirous to rule; and, if you can
+offer to our citizens a better life than that of rulers generally is,
+there will be a chance that the rich, not only in this world’s goods,
+but in virtue and wisdom, may bear rule. And the only life which is
+better than the life of political ambition is that of philosophy, which
+is also the best preparation for the government of a State.
+
+Then now comes the question,—How shall we create our rulers; what way
+is there from darkness to light? The change is effected by philosophy;
+it is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the conversion of a
+soul from night to day, from becoming to being. And what training will
+draw the soul upwards? Our former education had two branches,
+gymnastic, which was occupied with the body, and music, the sister art,
+which infused a natural harmony into mind and literature; but neither
+of these sciences gave any promise of doing what we want. Nothing
+remains to us but that universal or primary science of which all the
+arts and sciences are partakers, I mean number or calculation. ‘Very
+true.’ Including the art of war? ‘Yes, certainly.’ Then there is
+something ludicrous about Palamedes in the tragedy, coming in and
+saying that he had invented number, and had counted the ranks and set
+them in order. For if Agamemnon could not count his feet (and without
+number how could he?) he must have been a pretty sort of general
+indeed. No man should be a soldier who cannot count, and indeed he is
+hardly to be called a man. But I am not speaking of these practical
+applications of arithmetic, for number, in my view, is rather to be
+regarded as a conductor to thought and being. I will explain what I
+mean by the last expression:—Things sensible are of two kinds; the one
+class invite or stimulate the mind, while in the other the mind
+acquiesces. Now the stimulating class are the things which suggest
+contrast and relation. For example, suppose that I hold up to the eyes
+three fingers—a fore finger, a middle finger, a little finger—the sight
+equally recognizes all three fingers, but without number cannot further
+distinguish them. Or again, suppose two objects to be relatively great
+and small, these ideas of greatness and smallness are supplied not by
+the sense, but by the mind. And the perception of their contrast or
+relation quickens and sets in motion the mind, which is puzzled by the
+confused intimations of sense, and has recourse to number in order to
+find out whether the things indicated are one or more than one. Number
+replies that they are two and not one, and are to be distinguished from
+one another. Again, the sight beholds great and small, but only in a
+confused chaos, and not until they are distinguished does the question
+arise of their respective natures; we are thus led on to the
+distinction between the visible and intelligible. That was what I meant
+when I spoke of stimulants to the intellect; I was thinking of the
+contradictions which arise in perception. The idea of unity, for
+example, like that of a finger, does not arouse thought unless
+involving some conception of plurality; but when the one is also the
+opposite of one, the contradiction gives rise to reflection; an example
+of this is afforded by any object of sight. All number has also an
+elevating effect; it raises the mind out of the foam and flux of
+generation to the contemplation of being, having lesser military and
+retail uses also. The retail use is not required by us; but as our
+guardian is to be a soldier as well as a philosopher, the military one
+may be retained. And to our higher purpose no science can be better
+adapted; but it must be pursued in the spirit of a philosopher, not of
+a shopkeeper. It is concerned, not with visible objects, but with
+abstract truth; for numbers are pure abstractions—the true
+arithmetician indignantly denies that his unit is capable of division.
+When you divide, he insists that you are only multiplying; his ‘one’ is
+not material or resolvable into fractions, but an unvarying and
+absolute equality; and this proves the purely intellectual character of
+his study. Note also the great power which arithmetic has of sharpening
+the wits; no other discipline is equally severe, or an equal test of
+general ability, or equally improving to a stupid person.
+
+Let our second branch of education be geometry. ‘I can easily see,’
+replied Glaucon, ‘that the skill of the general will be doubled by his
+knowledge of geometry.’ That is a small matter; the use of geometry, to
+which I refer, is the assistance given by it in the contemplation of
+the idea of good, and the compelling the mind to look at true being,
+and not at generation only. Yet the present mode of pursuing these
+studies, as any one who is the least of a mathematician is aware, is
+mean and ridiculous; they are made to look downwards to the arts, and
+not upwards to eternal existence. The geometer is always talking of
+squaring, subtending, apposing, as if he had in view action; whereas
+knowledge is the real object of the study. It should elevate the soul,
+and create the mind of philosophy; it should raise up what has fallen
+down, not to speak of lesser uses in war and military tactics, and in
+the improvement of the faculties.
+
+Shall we propose, as a third branch of our education, astronomy? ‘Very
+good,’ replied Glaucon; ‘the knowledge of the heavens is necessary at
+once for husbandry, navigation, military tactics.’ I like your way of
+giving useful reasons for everything in order to make friends of the
+world. And there is a difficulty in proving to mankind that education
+is not only useful information but a purification of the eye of the
+soul, which is better than the bodily eye, for by this alone is truth
+seen. Now, will you appeal to mankind in general or to the philosopher?
+or would you prefer to look to yourself only? ‘Every man is his own
+best friend.’ Then take a step backward, for we are out of order, and
+insert the third dimension which is of solids, after the second which
+is of planes, and then you may proceed to solids in motion. But solid
+geometry is not popular and has not the patronage of the State, nor is
+the use of it fully recognized; the difficulty is great, and the
+votaries of the study are conceited and impatient. Still the charm of
+the pursuit wins upon men, and, if government would lend a little
+assistance, there might be great progress made. ‘Very true,’ replied
+Glaucon; ‘but do I understand you now to begin with plane geometry, and
+to place next geometry of solids, and thirdly, astronomy, or the motion
+of solids?’ Yes, I said; my hastiness has only hindered us.
+
+‘Very good, and now let us proceed to astronomy, about which I am
+willing to speak in your lofty strain. No one can fail to see that the
+contemplation of the heavens draws the soul upwards.’ I am an
+exception, then; astronomy as studied at present appears to me to draw
+the soul not upwards, but downwards. Star-gazing is just looking up at
+the ceiling—no better; a man may lie on his back on land or on water—he
+may look up or look down, but there is no science in that. The vision
+of knowledge of which I speak is seen not with the eyes, but with the
+mind. All the magnificence of the heavens is but the embroidery of a
+copy which falls far short of the divine Original, and teaches nothing
+about the absolute harmonies or motions of things. Their beauty is like
+the beauty of figures drawn by the hand of Daedalus or any other great
+artist, which may be used for illustration, but no mathematician would
+seek to obtain from them true conceptions of equality or numerical
+relations. How ridiculous then to look for these in the map of the
+heavens, in which the imperfection of matter comes in everywhere as a
+disturbing element, marring the symmetry of day and night, of months
+and years, of the sun and stars in their courses. Only by problems can
+we place astronomy on a truly scientific basis. Let the heavens alone,
+and exert the intellect.
+
+Still, mathematics admit of other applications, as the Pythagoreans
+say, and we agree. There is a sister science of harmonical motion,
+adapted to the ear as astronomy is to the eye, and there may be other
+applications also. Let us inquire of the Pythagoreans about them, not
+forgetting that we have an aim higher than theirs, which is the
+relation of these sciences to the idea of good. The error which
+pervades astronomy also pervades harmonics. The musicians put their
+ears in the place of their minds. ‘Yes,’ replied Glaucon, ‘I like to
+see them laying their ears alongside of their neighbours’ faces—some
+saying, “That’s a new note,†others declaring that the two notes are
+the same.’ Yes, I said; but you mean the empirics who are always
+twisting and torturing the strings of the lyre, and quarrelling about
+the tempers of the strings; I am referring rather to the Pythagorean
+harmonists, who are almost equally in error. For they investigate only
+the numbers of the consonances which are heard, and ascend no
+higher,—of the true numerical harmony which is unheard, and is only to
+be found in problems, they have not even a conception. ‘That last,’ he
+said, ‘must be a marvellous thing.’ A thing, I replied, which is only
+useful if pursued with a view to the good.
+
+All these sciences are the prelude of the strain, and are profitable if
+they are regarded in their natural relations to one another. ‘I dare
+say, Socrates,’ said Glaucon; ‘but such a study will be an endless
+business.’ What study do you mean—of the prelude, or what? For all
+these things are only the prelude, and you surely do not suppose that a
+mere mathematician is also a dialectician? ‘Certainly not. I have
+hardly ever known a mathematician who could reason.’ And yet, Glaucon,
+is not true reasoning that hymn of dialectic which is the music of the
+intellectual world, and which was by us compared to the effort of
+sight, when from beholding the shadows on the wall we arrived at last
+at the images which gave the shadows? Even so the dialectical faculty
+withdrawing from sense arrives by the pure intellect at the
+contemplation of the idea of good, and never rests but at the very end
+of the intellectual world. And the royal road out of the cave into the
+light, and the blinking of the eyes at the sun and turning to
+contemplate the shadows of reality, not the shadows of an image
+only—this progress and gradual acquisition of a new faculty of sight by
+the help of the mathematical sciences, is the elevation of the soul to
+the contemplation of the highest ideal of being.
+
+‘So far, I agree with you. But now, leaving the prelude, let us proceed
+to the hymn. What, then, is the nature of dialectic, and what are the
+paths which lead thither?’ Dear Glaucon, you cannot follow me here.
+There can be no revelation of the absolute truth to one who has not
+been disciplined in the previous sciences. But that there is a science
+of absolute truth, which is attained in some way very different from
+those now practised, I am confident. For all other arts or sciences are
+relative to human needs and opinions; and the mathematical sciences are
+but a dream or hypothesis of true being, and never analyse their own
+principles. Dialectic alone rises to the principle which is above
+hypotheses, converting and gently leading the eye of the soul out of
+the barbarous slough of ignorance into the light of the upper world,
+with the help of the sciences which we have been describing—sciences,
+as they are often termed, although they require some other name,
+implying greater clearness than opinion and less clearness than
+science, and this in our previous sketch was understanding. And so we
+get four names—two for intellect, and two for opinion,—reason or mind,
+understanding, faith, perception of shadows—which make a proportion—
+being:becoming::intellect:opinion—and science:belief::understanding:
+perception of shadows. Dialectic may be further described as that
+science which defines and explains the essence or being of each nature,
+which distinguishes and abstracts the good, and is ready to do battle
+against all opponents in the cause of good. To him who is not a
+dialectician life is but a sleepy dream; and many a man is in his grave
+before his is well waked up. And would you have the future rulers of
+your ideal State intelligent beings, or stupid as posts? ‘Certainly not
+the latter.’ Then you must train them in dialectic, which will teach
+them to ask and answer questions, and is the coping-stone of the
+sciences.
+
+I dare say that you have not forgotten how our rulers were chosen; and
+the process of selection may be carried a step further:—As before, they
+must be constant and valiant, good-looking, and of noble manners, but
+now they must also have natural ability which education will improve;
+that is to say, they must be quick at learning, capable of mental toil,
+retentive, solid, diligent natures, who combine intellectual with moral
+virtues; not lame and one-sided, diligent in bodily exercise and
+indolent in mind, or conversely; not a maimed soul, which hates
+falsehood and yet unintentionally is always wallowing in the mire of
+ignorance; not a bastard or feeble person, but sound in wind and limb,
+and in perfect condition for the great gymnastic trial of the mind.
+Justice herself can find no fault with natures such as these; and they
+will be the saviours of our State; disciples of another sort would only
+make philosophy more ridiculous than she is at present. Forgive my
+enthusiasm; I am becoming excited; but when I see her trampled
+underfoot, I am angry at the authors of her disgrace. ‘I did not notice
+that you were more excited than you ought to have been.’ But I felt
+that I was. Now do not let us forget another point in the selection of
+our disciples—that they must be young and not old. For Solon is
+mistaken in saying that an old man can be always learning; youth is the
+time of study, and here we must remember that the mind is free and
+dainty, and, unlike the body, must not be made to work against the
+grain. Learning should be at first a sort of play, in which the natural
+bent is detected. As in training them for war, the young dogs should at
+first only taste blood; but when the necessary gymnastics are over
+which during two or three years divide life between sleep and bodily
+exercise, then the education of the soul will become a more serious
+matter. At twenty years of age, a selection must be made of the more
+promising disciples, with whom a new epoch of education will begin. The
+sciences which they have hitherto learned in fragments will now be
+brought into relation with each other and with true being; for the
+power of combining them is the test of speculative and dialectical
+ability. And afterwards at thirty a further selection shall be made of
+those who are able to withdraw from the world of sense into the
+abstraction of ideas. But at this point, judging from present
+experience, there is a danger that dialectic may be the source of many
+evils. The danger may be illustrated by a parallel case:—Imagine a
+person who has been brought up in wealth and luxury amid a crowd of
+flatterers, and who is suddenly informed that he is a supposititious
+son. He has hitherto honoured his reputed parents and disregarded the
+flatterers, and now he does the reverse. This is just what happens with
+a man’s principles. There are certain doctrines which he learnt at home
+and which exercised a parental authority over him. Presently he finds
+that imputations are cast upon them; a troublesome querist comes and
+asks, ‘What is the just and good?’ or proves that virtue is vice and
+vice virtue, and his mind becomes unsettled, and he ceases to love,
+honour, and obey them as he has hitherto done. He is seduced into the
+life of pleasure, and becomes a lawless person and a rogue. The case of
+such speculators is very pitiable, and, in order that our thirty years’
+old pupils may not require this pity, let us take every possible care
+that young persons do not study philosophy too early. For a young man
+is a sort of puppy who only plays with an argument; and is reasoned
+into and out of his opinions every day; he soon begins to believe
+nothing, and brings himself and philosophy into discredit. A man of
+thirty does not run on in this way; he will argue and not merely
+contradict, and adds new honour to philosophy by the sobriety of his
+conduct. What time shall we allow for this second gymnastic training of
+the soul?—say, twice the time required for the gymnastics of the body;
+six, or perhaps five years, to commence at thirty, and then for fifteen
+years let the student go down into the den, and command armies, and
+gain experience of life. At fifty let him return to the end of all
+things, and have his eyes uplifted to the idea of good, and order his
+life after that pattern; if necessary, taking his turn at the helm of
+State, and training up others to be his successors. When his time comes
+he shall depart in peace to the islands of the blest. He shall be
+honoured with sacrifices, and receive such worship as the Pythian
+oracle approves.
+
+‘You are a statuary, Socrates, and have made a perfect image of our
+governors.’ Yes, and of our governesses, for the women will share in
+all things with the men. And you will admit that our State is not a
+mere aspiration, but may really come into being when there shall arise
+philosopher-kings, one or more, who will despise earthly vanities, and
+will be the servants of justice only. ‘And how will they begin their
+work?’ Their first act will be to send away into the country all those
+who are more than ten years of age, and to proceed with those who are
+left...
+
+At the commencement of the sixth book, Plato anticipated his
+explanation of the relation of the philosopher to the world in an
+allegory, in this, as in other passages, following the order which he
+prescribes in education, and proceeding from the concrete to the
+abstract. At the commencement of Book VII, under the figure of a cave
+having an opening towards a fire and a way upwards to the true light,
+he returns to view the divisions of knowledge, exhibiting familiarly,
+as in a picture, the result which had been hardly won by a great effort
+of thought in the previous discussion; at the same time casting a
+glance onward at the dialectical process, which is represented by the
+way leading from darkness to light. The shadows, the images, the
+reflection of the sun and stars in the water, the stars and sun
+themselves, severally correspond,—the first, to the realm of fancy and
+poetry,—the second, to the world of sense,—the third, to the
+abstractions or universals of sense, of which the mathematical sciences
+furnish the type,—the fourth and last to the same abstractions, when
+seen in the unity of the idea, from which they derive a new meaning and
+power. The true dialectical process begins with the contemplation of
+the real stars, and not mere reflections of them, and ends with the
+recognition of the sun, or idea of good, as the parent not only of
+light but of warmth and growth. To the divisions of knowledge the
+stages of education partly answer:—first, there is the early education
+of childhood and youth in the fancies of the poets, and in the laws and
+customs of the State;—then there is the training of the body to be a
+warrior athlete, and a good servant of the mind;—and thirdly, after an
+interval follows the education of later life, which begins with
+mathematics and proceeds to philosophy in general.
+
+There seem to be two great aims in the philosophy of Plato,—first, to
+realize abstractions; secondly, to connect them. According to him, the
+true education is that which draws men from becoming to being, and to a
+comprehensive survey of all being. He desires to develop in the human
+mind the faculty of seeing the universal in all things; until at last
+the particulars of sense drop away and the universal alone remains. He
+then seeks to combine the universals which he has disengaged from
+sense, not perceiving that the correlation of them has no other basis
+but the common use of language. He never understands that abstractions,
+as Hegel says, are ‘mere abstractions’—of use when employed in the
+arrangement of facts, but adding nothing to the sum of knowledge when
+pursued apart from them, or with reference to an imaginary idea of
+good. Still the exercise of the faculty of abstraction apart from facts
+has enlarged the mind, and played a great part in the education of the
+human race. Plato appreciated the value of this faculty, and saw that
+it might be quickened by the study of number and relation. All things
+in which there is opposition or proportion are suggestive of
+reflection. The mere impression of sense evokes no power of thought or
+of mind, but when sensible objects ask to be compared and
+distinguished, then philosophy begins. The science of arithmetic first
+suggests such distinctions. The follow in order the other sciences of
+plain and solid geometry, and of solids in motion, one branch of which
+is astronomy or the harmony of the spheres,—to this is appended the
+sister science of the harmony of sounds. Plato seems also to hint at
+the possibility of other applications of arithmetical or mathematical
+proportions, such as we employ in chemistry and natural philosophy,
+such as the Pythagoreans and even Aristotle make use of in Ethics and
+Politics, e.g. his distinction between arithmetical and geometrical
+proportion in the Ethics (Book V), or between numerical and
+proportional equality in the Politics.
+
+The modern mathematician will readily sympathise with Plato’s delight
+in the properties of pure mathematics. He will not be disinclined to
+say with him:—Let alone the heavens, and study the beauties of number
+and figure in themselves. He too will be apt to depreciate their
+application to the arts. He will observe that Plato has a conception of
+geometry, in which figures are to be dispensed with; thus in a distant
+and shadowy way seeming to anticipate the possibility of working
+geometrical problems by a more general mode of analysis. He will remark
+with interest on the backward state of solid geometry, which, alas! was
+not encouraged by the aid of the State in the age of Plato; and he will
+recognize the grasp of Plato’s mind in his ability to conceive of one
+science of solids in motion including the earth as well as the
+heavens,—not forgetting to notice the intimation to which allusion has
+been already made, that besides astronomy and harmonics the science of
+solids in motion may have other applications. Still more will he be
+struck with the comprehensiveness of view which led Plato, at a time
+when these sciences hardly existed, to say that they must be studied in
+relation to one another, and to the idea of good, or common principle
+of truth and being. But he will also see (and perhaps without surprise)
+that in that stage of physical and mathematical knowledge, Plato has
+fallen into the error of supposing that he can construct the heavens a
+priori by mathematical problems, and determine the principles of
+harmony irrespective of the adaptation of sounds to the human ear. The
+illusion was a natural one in that age and country. The simplicity and
+certainty of astronomy and harmonics seemed to contrast with the
+variation and complexity of the world of sense; hence the circumstance
+that there was some elementary basis of fact, some measurement of
+distance or time or vibrations on which they must ultimately rest, was
+overlooked by him. The modern predecessors of Newton fell into errors
+equally great; and Plato can hardly be said to have been very far
+wrong, or may even claim a sort of prophetic insight into the subject,
+when we consider that the greater part of astronomy at the present day
+consists of abstract dynamics, by the help of which most astronomical
+discoveries have been made.
+
+The metaphysical philosopher from his point of view recognizes
+mathematics as an instrument of education,—which strengthens the power
+of attention, developes the sense of order and the faculty of
+construction, and enables the mind to grasp under simple formulae the
+quantitative differences of physical phenomena. But while acknowledging
+their value in education, he sees also that they have no connexion with
+our higher moral and intellectual ideas. In the attempt which Plato
+makes to connect them, we easily trace the influences of ancient
+Pythagorean notions. There is no reason to suppose that he is speaking
+of the ideal numbers; but he is describing numbers which are pure
+abstractions, to which he assigns a real and separate existence, which,
+as ‘the teachers of the art’ (meaning probably the Pythagoreans) would
+have affirmed, repel all attempts at subdivision, and in which unity
+and every other number are conceived of as absolute. The truth and
+certainty of numbers, when thus disengaged from phenomena, gave them a
+kind of sacredness in the eyes of an ancient philosopher. Nor is it
+easy to say how far ideas of order and fixedness may have had a moral
+and elevating influence on the minds of men, ‘who,’ in the words of the
+Timaeus, ‘might learn to regulate their erring lives according to
+them.’ It is worthy of remark that the old Pythagorean ethical symbols
+still exist as figures of speech among ourselves. And those who in
+modern times see the world pervaded by universal law, may also see an
+anticipation of this last word of modern philosophy in the Platonic
+idea of good, which is the source and measure of all things, and yet
+only an abstraction (Philebus).
+
+Two passages seem to require more particular explanations. First, that
+which relates to the analysis of vision. The difficulty in this passage
+may be explained, like many others, from differences in the modes of
+conception prevailing among ancient and modern thinkers. To us, the
+perceptions of sense are inseparable from the act of the mind which
+accompanies them. The consciousness of form, colour, distance, is
+indistinguishable from the simple sensation, which is the medium of
+them. Whereas to Plato sense is the Heraclitean flux of sense, not the
+vision of objects in the order in which they actually present
+themselves to the experienced sight, but as they may be imagined to
+appear confused and blurred to the half-awakened eye of the infant. The
+first action of the mind is aroused by the attempt to set in order this
+chaos, and the reason is required to frame distinct conceptions under
+which the confused impressions of sense may be arranged. Hence arises
+the question, ‘What is great, what is small?’ and thus begins the
+distinction of the visible and the intelligible.
+
+The second difficulty relates to Plato’s conception of harmonics. Three
+classes of harmonists are distinguished by him:—first, the
+Pythagoreans, whom he proposes to consult as in the previous discussion
+on music he was to consult Damon—they are acknowledged to be masters in
+the art, but are altogether deficient in the knowledge of its higher
+import and relation to the good; secondly, the mere empirics, whom
+Glaucon appears to confuse with them, and whom both he and Socrates
+ludicrously describe as experimenting by mere auscultation on the
+intervals of sounds. Both of these fall short in different degrees of
+the Platonic idea of harmony, which must be studied in a purely
+abstract way, first by the method of problems, and secondly as a part
+of universal knowledge in relation to the idea of good.
+
+The allegory has a political as well as a philosophical meaning. The
+den or cave represents the narrow sphere of politics or law (compare
+the description of the philosopher and lawyer in the Theaetetus), and
+the light of the eternal ideas is supposed to exercise a disturbing
+influence on the minds of those who return to this lower world. In
+other words, their principles are too wide for practical application;
+they are looking far away into the past and future, when their business
+is with the present. The ideal is not easily reduced to the conditions
+of actual life, and may often be at variance with them. And at first,
+those who return are unable to compete with the inhabitants of the den
+in the measurement of the shadows, and are derided and persecuted by
+them; but after a while they see the things below in far truer
+proportions than those who have never ascended into the upper world.
+The difference between the politician turned into a philosopher and the
+philosopher turned into a politician, is symbolized by the two kinds of
+disordered eyesight, the one which is experienced by the captive who is
+transferred from darkness to day, the other, of the heavenly messenger
+who voluntarily for the good of his fellow-men descends into the den.
+In what way the brighter light is to dawn on the inhabitants of the
+lower world, or how the idea of good is to become the guiding principle
+of politics, is left unexplained by Plato. Like the nature and
+divisions of dialectic, of which Glaucon impatiently demands to be
+informed, perhaps he would have said that the explanation could not be
+given except to a disciple of the previous sciences. (Symposium.)
+
+Many illustrations of this part of the Republic may be found in modern
+Politics and in daily life. For among ourselves, too, there have been
+two sorts of Politicians or Statesmen, whose eyesight has become
+disordered in two different ways. First, there have been great men who,
+in the language of Burke, ‘have been too much given to general maxims,’
+who, like J.S. Mill or Burke himself, have been theorists or
+philosophers before they were politicians, or who, having been students
+of history, have allowed some great historical parallel, such as the
+English Revolution of 1688, or possibly Athenian democracy or Roman
+Imperialism, to be the medium through which they viewed contemporary
+events. Or perhaps the long projecting shadow of some existing
+institution may have darkened their vision. The Church of the future,
+the Commonwealth of the future, the Society of the future, have so
+absorbed their minds, that they are unable to see in their true
+proportions the Politics of to-day. They have been intoxicated with
+great ideas, such as liberty, or equality, or the greatest happiness of
+the greatest number, or the brotherhood of humanity, and they no longer
+care to consider how these ideas must be limited in practice or
+harmonized with the conditions of human life. They are full of light,
+but the light to them has become only a sort of luminous mist or
+blindness. Almost every one has known some enthusiastic half-educated
+person, who sees everything at false distances, and in erroneous
+proportions.
+
+With this disorder of eyesight may be contrasted another—of those who
+see not far into the distance, but what is near only; who have been
+engaged all their lives in a trade or a profession; who are limited to
+a set or sect of their own. Men of this kind have no universal except
+their own interests or the interests of their class, no principle but
+the opinion of persons like themselves, no knowledge of affairs beyond
+what they pick up in the streets or at their club. Suppose them to be
+sent into a larger world, to undertake some higher calling, from being
+tradesmen to turn generals or politicians, from being schoolmasters to
+become philosophers:—or imagine them on a sudden to receive an inward
+light which reveals to them for the first time in their lives a higher
+idea of God and the existence of a spiritual world, by this sudden
+conversion or change is not their daily life likely to be upset; and on
+the other hand will not many of their old prejudices and narrownesses
+still adhere to them long after they have begun to take a more
+comprehensive view of human things? From familiar examples like these
+we may learn what Plato meant by the eyesight which is liable to two
+kinds of disorders.
+
+Nor have we any difficulty in drawing a parallel between the young
+Athenian in the fifth century before Christ who became unsettled by new
+ideas, and the student of a modern University who has been the subject
+of a similar ‘aufklärung.’ We too observe that when young men begin to
+criticise customary beliefs, or to analyse the constitution of human
+nature, they are apt to lose hold of solid principle (ἅπαν τὸ βέβαιον
+αá½Ï„ῶν á¼Î¾Î¿á½·Ï‡ÎµÏ„αι). They are like trees which have been frequently
+transplanted. The earth about them is loose, and they have no roots
+reaching far into the soil. They ‘light upon every flower,’ following
+their own wayward wills, or because the wind blows them. They catch
+opinions, as diseases are caught—when they are in the air. Borne hither
+and thither, ‘they speedily fall into beliefs’ the opposite of those in
+which they were brought up. They hardly retain the distinction of right
+and wrong; they seem to think one thing as good as another. They
+suppose themselves to be searching after truth when they are playing
+the game of ‘follow my leader.’ They fall in love ‘at first sight’ with
+paradoxes respecting morality, some fancy about art, some novelty or
+eccentricity in religion, and like lovers they are so absorbed for a
+time in their new notion that they can think of nothing else. The
+resolution of some philosophical or theological question seems to them
+more interesting and important than any substantial knowledge of
+literature or science or even than a good life. Like the youth in the
+Philebus, they are ready to discourse to any one about a new
+philosophy. They are generally the disciples of some eminent professor
+or sophist, whom they rather imitate than understand. They may be
+counted happy if in later years they retain some of the simple truths
+which they acquired in early education, and which they may, perhaps,
+find to be worth all the rest. Such is the picture which Plato draws
+and which we only reproduce, partly in his own words, of the dangers
+which beset youth in times of transition, when old opinions are fading
+away and the new are not yet firmly established. Their condition is
+ingeniously compared by him to that of a supposititious son, who has
+made the discovery that his reputed parents are not his real ones, and,
+in consequence, they have lost their authority over him.
+
+The distinction between the mathematician and the dialectician is also
+noticeable. Plato is very well aware that the faculty of the
+mathematician is quite distinct from the higher philosophical sense
+which recognizes and combines first principles. The contempt which he
+expresses for distinctions of words, the danger of involuntary
+falsehood, the apology which Socrates makes for his earnestness of
+speech, are highly characteristic of the Platonic style and mode of
+thought. The quaint notion that if Palamedes was the inventor of number
+Agamemnon could not have counted his feet; the art by which we are made
+to believe that this State of ours is not a dream only; the gravity
+with which the first step is taken in the actual creation of the State,
+namely, the sending out of the city all who had arrived at ten years of
+age, in order to expedite the business of education by a generation,
+are also truly Platonic. (For the last, compare the passage at the end
+of the third book, in which he expects the lie about the earthborn men
+to be believed in the second generation.)
+
+BOOK VIII. And so we have arrived at the conclusion, that in the
+perfect State wives and children are to be in common; and the education
+and pursuits of men and women, both in war and peace, are to be common,
+and kings are to be philosophers and warriors, and the soldiers of the
+State are to live together, having all things in common; and they are
+to be warrior athletes, receiving no pay but only their food, from the
+other citizens. Now let us return to the point at which we digressed.
+‘That is easily done,’ he replied: ‘You were speaking of the State
+which you had constructed, and of the individual who answered to this,
+both of whom you affirmed to be good; and you said that of inferior
+States there were four forms and four individuals corresponding to
+them, which although deficient in various degrees, were all of them
+worth inspecting with a view to determining the relative happiness or
+misery of the best or worst man. Then Polemarchus and Adeimantus
+interrupted you, and this led to another argument,—and so here we are.’
+Suppose that we put ourselves again in the same position, and do you
+repeat your question. ‘I should like to know of what constitutions you
+were speaking?’ Besides the perfect State there are only four of any
+note in Hellas:—first, the famous Lacedaemonian or Cretan commonwealth;
+secondly, oligarchy, a State full of evils; thirdly, democracy, which
+follows next in order; fourthly, tyranny, which is the disease or death
+of all government. Now, States are not made of ‘oak and rock,’ but of
+flesh and blood; and therefore as there are five States there must be
+five human natures in individuals, which correspond to them. And first,
+there is the ambitious nature, which answers to the Lacedaemonian
+State; secondly, the oligarchical nature; thirdly, the democratical;
+and fourthly, the tyrannical. This last will have to be compared with
+the perfectly just, which is the fifth, that we may know which is the
+happier, and then we shall be able to determine whether the argument of
+Thrasymachus or our own is the more convincing. And as before we began
+with the State and went on to the individual, so now, beginning with
+timocracy, let us go on to the timocratical man, and then proceed to
+the other forms of government, and the individuals who answer to them.
+
+But how did timocracy arise out of the perfect State? Plainly, like all
+changes of government, from division in the rulers. But whence came
+division? ‘Sing, heavenly Muses,’ as Homer says;—let them condescend to
+answer us, as if we were children, to whom they put on a solemn face in
+jest. ‘And what will they say?’ They will say that human things are
+fated to decay, and even the perfect State will not escape from this
+law of destiny, when ‘the wheel comes full circle’ in a period short or
+long. Plants or animals have times of fertility and sterility, which
+the intelligence of rulers because alloyed by sense will not enable
+them to ascertain, and children will be born out of season. For whereas
+divine creations are in a perfect cycle or number, the human creation
+is in a number which declines from perfection, and has four terms and
+three intervals of numbers, increasing, waning, assimilating,
+dissimilating, and yet perfectly commensurate with each other. The base
+of the number with a fourth added (or which is 3:4), multiplied by five
+and cubed, gives two harmonies:—the first a square number, which is a
+hundred times the base (or a hundred times a hundred); the second, an
+oblong, being a hundred squares of the rational diameter of a figure
+the side of which is five, subtracting one from each square or two
+perfect squares from all, and adding a hundred cubes of three. This
+entire number is geometrical and contains the rule or law of
+generation. When this law is neglected marriages will be unpropitious;
+the inferior offspring who are then born will in time become the
+rulers; the State will decline, and education fall into decay;
+gymnastic will be preferred to music, and the gold and silver and brass
+and iron will form a chaotic mass—thus division will arise. Such is the
+Muses’ answer to our question. ‘And a true answer, of course:—but what
+more have they to say?’ They say that the two races, the iron and
+brass, and the silver and gold, will draw the State different ways;—the
+one will take to trade and moneymaking, and the others, having the true
+riches and not caring for money, will resist them: the contest will end
+in a compromise; they will agree to have private property, and will
+enslave their fellow-citizens who were once their friends and
+nurturers. But they will retain their warlike character, and will be
+chiefly occupied in fighting and exercising rule. Thus arises
+timocracy, which is intermediate between aristocracy and oligarchy.
+
+The new form of government resembles the ideal in obedience to rulers
+and contempt for trade, and having common meals, and in devotion to
+warlike and gymnastic exercises. But corruption has crept into
+philosophy, and simplicity of character, which was once her note, is
+now looked for only in the military class. Arts of war begin to prevail
+over arts of peace; the ruler is no longer a philosopher; as in
+oligarchies, there springs up among them an extravagant love of
+gain—get another man’s and save your own, is their principle; and they
+have dark places in which they hoard their gold and silver, for the use
+of their women and others; they take their pleasures by stealth, like
+boys who are running away from their father—the law; and their
+education is not inspired by the Muse, but imposed by the strong arm of
+power. The leading characteristic of this State is party spirit and
+ambition.
+
+And what manner of man answers to such a State? ‘In love of
+contention,’ replied Adeimantus, ‘he will be like our friend Glaucon.’
+In that respect, perhaps, but not in others. He is self-asserting and
+ill-educated, yet fond of literature, although not himself a
+speaker,—fierce with slaves, but obedient to rulers, a lover of power
+and honour, which he hopes to gain by deeds of arms,—fond, too, of
+gymnastics and of hunting. As he advances in years he grows avaricious,
+for he has lost philosophy, which is the only saviour and guardian of
+men. His origin is as follows:—His father is a good man dwelling in an
+ill-ordered State, who has retired from politics in order that he may
+lead a quiet life. His mother is angry at her loss of precedence among
+other women; she is disgusted at her husband’s selfishness, and she
+expatiates to her son on the unmanliness and indolence of his father.
+The old family servant takes up the tale, and says to the youth:—‘When
+you grow up you must be more of a man than your father.’ All the world
+are agreed that he who minds his own business is an idiot, while a
+busybody is highly honoured and esteemed. The young man compares this
+spirit with his father’s words and ways, and as he is naturally well
+disposed, although he has suffered from evil influences, he rests at a
+middle point and becomes ambitious and a lover of honour.
+
+And now let us set another city over against another man. The next form
+of government is oligarchy, in which the rule is of the rich only; nor
+is it difficult to see how such a State arises. The decline begins with
+the possession of gold and silver; illegal modes of expenditure are
+invented; one draws another on, and the multitude are infected; riches
+outweigh virtue; lovers of money take the place of lovers of honour;
+misers of politicians; and, in time, political privileges are confined
+by law to the rich, who do not shrink from violence in order to effect
+their purposes.
+
+Thus much of the origin,—let us next consider the evils of oligarchy.
+Would a man who wanted to be safe on a voyage take a bad pilot because
+he was rich, or refuse a good one because he was poor? And does not the
+analogy apply still more to the State? And there are yet greater evils:
+two nations are struggling together in one—the rich and the poor; and
+the rich dare not put arms into the hands of the poor, and are
+unwilling to pay for defenders out of their own money. And have we not
+already condemned that State in which the same persons are warriors as
+well as shopkeepers? The greatest evil of all is that a man may sell
+his property and have no place in the State; while there is one class
+which has enormous wealth, the other is entirely destitute. But observe
+that these destitutes had not really any more of the governing nature
+in them when they were rich than now that they are poor; they were
+miserable spendthrifts always. They are the drones of the hive; only
+whereas the actual drone is unprovided by nature with a sting, the
+two-legged things whom we call drones are some of them without stings
+and some of them have dreadful stings; in other words, there are
+paupers and there are rogues. These are never far apart; and in
+oligarchical cities, where nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a
+ruler, you will find abundance of both. And this evil state of society
+originates in bad education and bad government.
+
+Like State, like man,—the change in the latter begins with the
+representative of timocracy; he walks at first in the ways of his
+father, who may have been a statesman, or general, perhaps; and
+presently he sees him ‘fallen from his high estate,’ the victim of
+informers, dying in prison or exile, or by the hand of the executioner.
+The lesson which he thus receives, makes him cautious; he leaves
+politics, represses his pride, and saves pence. Avarice is enthroned as
+his bosom’s lord, and assumes the style of the Great King; the rational
+and spirited elements sit humbly on the ground at either side, the one
+immersed in calculation, the other absorbed in the admiration of
+wealth. The love of honour turns to love of money; the conversion is
+instantaneous. The man is mean, saving, toiling, the slave of one
+passion which is the master of the rest: Is he not the very image of
+the State? He has had no education, or he would never have allowed the
+blind god of riches to lead the dance within him. And being uneducated
+he will have many slavish desires, some beggarly, some knavish,
+breeding in his soul. If he is the trustee of an orphan, and has the
+power to defraud, he will soon prove that he is not without the will,
+and that his passions are only restrained by fear and not by reason.
+Hence he leads a divided existence; in which the better desires mostly
+prevail. But when he is contending for prizes and other distinctions,
+he is afraid to incur a loss which is to be repaid only by barren
+honour; in time of war he fights with a small part of his resources,
+and usually keeps his money and loses the victory.
+
+Next comes democracy and the democratic man, out of oligarchy and the
+oligarchical man. Insatiable avarice is the ruling passion of an
+oligarchy; and they encourage expensive habits in order that they may
+gain by the ruin of extravagant youth. Thus men of family often lose
+their property or rights of citizenship; but they remain in the city,
+full of hatred against the new owners of their estates and ripe for
+revolution. The usurer with stooping walk pretends not to see them; he
+passes by, and leaves his sting—that is, his money—in some other
+victim; and many a man has to pay the parent or principal sum
+multiplied into a family of children, and is reduced into a state of
+dronage by him. The only way of diminishing the evil is either to limit
+a man in his use of his property, or to insist that he shall lend at
+his own risk. But the ruling class do not want remedies; they care only
+for money, and are as careless of virtue as the poorest of the
+citizens. Now there are occasions on which the governors and the
+governed meet together,—at festivals, on a journey, voyaging or
+fighting. The sturdy pauper finds that in the hour of danger he is not
+despised; he sees the rich man puffing and panting, and draws the
+conclusion which he privately imparts to his companions,—‘that our
+people are not good for much;’ and as a sickly frame is made ill by a
+mere touch from without, or sometimes without external impulse is ready
+to fall to pieces of itself, so from the least cause, or with none at
+all, the city falls ill and fights a battle for life or death. And
+democracy comes into power when the poor are the victors, killing some
+and exiling some, and giving equal shares in the government to all the
+rest.
+
+The manner of life in such a State is that of democrats; there is
+freedom and plainness of speech, and every man does what is right in
+his own eyes, and has his own way of life. Hence arise the most various
+developments of character; the State is like a piece of embroidery of
+which the colours and figures are the manners of men, and there are
+many who, like women and children, prefer this variety to real beauty
+and excellence. The State is not one but many, like a bazaar at which
+you can buy anything. The great charm is, that you may do as you like;
+you may govern if you like, let it alone if you like; go to war and
+make peace if you feel disposed, and all quite irrespective of anybody
+else. When you condemn men to death they remain alive all the same; a
+gentleman is desired to go into exile, and he stalks about the streets
+like a hero; and nobody sees him or cares for him. Observe, too, how
+grandly Democracy sets her foot upon all our fine theories of
+education,—how little she cares for the training of her statesmen! The
+only qualification which she demands is the profession of patriotism.
+Such is democracy;—a pleasing, lawless, various sort of government,
+distributing equality to equals and unequals alike.
+
+Let us now inspect the individual democrat; and first, as in the case
+of the State, we will trace his antecedents. He is the son of a miserly
+oligarch, and has been taught by him to restrain the love of
+unnecessary pleasures. Perhaps I ought to explain this latter
+term:—Necessary pleasures are those which are good, and which we cannot
+do without; unnecessary pleasures are those which do no good, and of
+which the desire might be eradicated by early training. For example,
+the pleasures of eating and drinking are necessary and healthy, up to a
+certain point; beyond that point they are alike hurtful to body and
+mind, and the excess may be avoided. When in excess, they may be
+rightly called expensive pleasures, in opposition to the useful ones.
+And the drone, as we called him, is the slave of these unnecessary
+pleasures and desires, whereas the miserly oligarch is subject only to
+the necessary.
+
+The oligarch changes into the democrat in the following manner:—The
+youth who has had a miserly bringing up, gets a taste of the drone’s
+honey; he meets with wild companions, who introduce him to every new
+pleasure. As in the State, so in the individual, there are allies on
+both sides, temptations from without and passions from within; there is
+reason also and external influences of parents and friends in alliance
+with the oligarchical principle; and the two factions are in violent
+conflict with one another. Sometimes the party of order prevails, but
+then again new desires and new disorders arise, and the whole mob of
+passions gets possession of the Acropolis, that is to say, the soul,
+which they find void and unguarded by true words and works. Falsehoods
+and illusions ascend to take their place; the prodigal goes back into
+the country of the Lotophagi or drones, and openly dwells there. And if
+any offer of alliance or parley of individual elders comes from home,
+the false spirits shut the gates of the castle and permit no one to
+enter,—there is a battle, and they gain the victory; and straightway
+making alliance with the desires, they banish modesty, which they call
+folly, and send temperance over the border. When the house has been
+swept and garnished, they dress up the exiled vices, and, crowning them
+with garlands, bring them back under new names. Insolence they call
+good breeding, anarchy freedom, waste magnificence, impudence courage.
+Such is the process by which the youth passes from the necessary
+pleasures to the unnecessary. After a while he divides his time
+impartially between them; and perhaps, when he gets older and the
+violence of passion has abated, he restores some of the exiles and
+lives in a sort of equilibrium, indulging first one pleasure and then
+another; and if reason comes and tells him that some pleasures are good
+and honourable, and others bad and vile, he shakes his head and says
+that he can make no distinction between them. Thus he lives in the
+fancy of the hour; sometimes he takes to drink, and then he turns
+abstainer; he practises in the gymnasium or he does nothing at all;
+then again he would be a philosopher or a politician; or again, he
+would be a warrior or a man of business; he is
+
+‘Every thing by starts and nothing long.’
+
+
+There remains still the finest and fairest of all men and all
+States—tyranny and the tyrant. Tyranny springs from democracy much as
+democracy springs from oligarchy. Both arise from excess; the one from
+excess of wealth, the other from excess of freedom. ‘The great natural
+good of life,’ says the democrat, ‘is freedom.’ And this exclusive love
+of freedom and regardlessness of everything else, is the cause of the
+change from democracy to tyranny. The State demands the strong wine of
+freedom, and unless her rulers give her a plentiful draught, punishes
+and insults them; equality and fraternity of governors and governed is
+the approved principle. Anarchy is the law, not of the State only, but
+of private houses, and extends even to the animals. Father and son,
+citizen and foreigner, teacher and pupil, old and young, are all on a
+level; fathers and teachers fear their sons and pupils, and the wisdom
+of the young man is a match for the elder, and the old imitate the
+jaunty manners of the young because they are afraid of being thought
+morose. Slaves are on a level with their masters and mistresses, and
+there is no difference between men and women. Nay, the very animals in
+a democratic State have a freedom which is unknown in other places. The
+she-dogs are as good as their she-mistresses, and horses and asses
+march along with dignity and run their noses against anybody who comes
+in their way. ‘That has often been my experience.’ At last the citizens
+become so sensitive that they cannot endure the yoke of laws, written
+or unwritten; they would have no man call himself their master. Such is
+the glorious beginning of things out of which tyranny springs.
+‘Glorious, indeed; but what is to follow?’ The ruin of oligarchy is the
+ruin of democracy; for there is a law of contraries; the excess of
+freedom passes into the excess of slavery, and the greater the freedom
+the greater the slavery. You will remember that in the oligarchy were
+found two classes—rogues and paupers, whom we compared to drones with
+and without stings. These two classes are to the State what phlegm and
+bile are to the human body; and the State-physician, or legislator,
+must get rid of them, just as the bee-master keeps the drones out of
+the hive. Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more
+numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert
+and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the
+keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and
+prevent their opponents from being heard. And there is another class in
+democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be
+squeezed when the drones have need of their possessions; there is
+moreover a third class, who are the labourers and the artisans, and
+they make up the mass of the people. When the people meet, they are
+omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together unless they are
+attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey,
+of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a
+taste only to the mob. Their victims attempt to resist; they are driven
+mad by the stings of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in
+self-defence. Then follow informations and convictions for treason. The
+people have some protector whom they nurse into greatness, and from
+this root the tree of tyranny springs. The nature of the change is
+indicated in the old fable of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, which tells
+how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other victims
+will turn into a wolf. Even so the protector, who tastes human blood,
+and slays some and exiles others with or without law, who hints at
+abolition of debts and division of lands, must either perish or become
+a wolf—that is, a tyrant. Perhaps he is driven out, but he soon comes
+back from exile; and then if his enemies cannot get rid of him by
+lawful means, they plot his assassination. Thereupon the friend of the
+people makes his well-known request to them for a body-guard, which
+they readily grant, thinking only of his danger and not of their own.
+Now let the rich man make to himself wings, for he will never run away
+again if he does not do so then. And the Great Protector, having
+crushed all his rivals, stands proudly erect in the chariot of State, a
+full-blown tyrant: Let us enquire into the nature of his happiness.
+
+In the early days of his tyranny he smiles and beams upon everybody; he
+is not a ‘dominus,’ no, not he: he has only come to put an end to debt
+and the monopoly of land. Having got rid of foreign enemies, he makes
+himself necessary to the State by always going to war. He is thus
+enabled to depress the poor by heavy taxes, and so keep them at work;
+and he can get rid of bolder spirits by handing them over to the enemy.
+Then comes unpopularity; some of his old associates have the courage to
+oppose him. The consequence is, that he has to make a purgation of the
+State; but, unlike the physician who purges away the bad, he must get
+rid of the high-spirited, the wise and the wealthy; for he has no
+choice between death and a life of shame and dishonour. And the more
+hated he is, the more he will require trusty guards; but how will he
+obtain them? ‘They will come flocking like birds—for pay.’ Will he not
+rather obtain them on the spot? He will take the slaves from their
+owners and make them his body-guard; these are his trusted friends, who
+admire and look up to him. Are not the tragic poets wise who magnify
+and exalt the tyrant, and say that he is wise by association with the
+wise? And are not their praises of tyranny alone a sufficient reason
+why we should exclude them from our State? They may go to other cities,
+and gather the mob about them with fine words, and change commonwealths
+into tyrannies and democracies, receiving honours and rewards for their
+services; but the higher they and their friends ascend constitution
+hill, the more their honour will fail and become ‘too asthmatic to
+mount.’ To return to the tyrant—How will he support that rare army of
+his? First, by robbing the temples of their treasures, which will
+enable him to lighten the taxes; then he will take all his father’s
+property, and spend it on his companions, male or female. Now his
+father is the demus, and if the demus gets angry, and says that a great
+hulking son ought not to be a burden on his parents, and bids him and
+his riotous crew begone, then will the parent know what a monster he
+has been nurturing, and that the son whom he would fain expel is too
+strong for him. ‘You do not mean to say that he will beat his father?’
+Yes, he will, after having taken away his arms. ‘Then he is a parricide
+and a cruel, unnatural son.’ And the people have jumped from the fear
+of slavery into slavery, out of the smoke into the fire. Thus liberty,
+when out of all order and reason, passes into the worst form of
+servitude...
+
+In the previous books Plato has described the ideal State; now he
+returns to the perverted or declining forms, on which he had lightly
+touched at the end of Book IV. These he describes in a succession of
+parallels between the individuals and the States, tracing the origin of
+either in the State or individual which has preceded them. He begins by
+asking the point at which he digressed; and is thus led shortly to
+recapitulate the substance of the three former books, which also
+contain a parallel of the philosopher and the State.
+
+Of the first decline he gives no intelligible account; he would not
+have liked to admit the most probable causes of the fall of his ideal
+State, which to us would appear to be the impracticability of communism
+or the natural antagonism of the ruling and subject classes. He throws
+a veil of mystery over the origin of the decline, which he attributes
+to ignorance of the law of population. Of this law the famous
+geometrical figure or number is the expression. Like the ancients in
+general, he had no idea of the gradual perfectibility of man or of the
+education of the human race. His ideal was not to be attained in the
+course of ages, but was to spring in full armour from the head of the
+legislator. When good laws had been given, he thought only of the
+manner in which they were likely to be corrupted, or of how they might
+be filled up in detail or restored in accordance with their original
+spirit. He appears not to have reflected upon the full meaning of his
+own words, ‘In the brief space of human life, nothing great can be
+accomplished’; or again, as he afterwards says in the Laws, ‘Infinite
+time is the maker of cities.’ The order of constitutions which is
+adopted by him represents an order of thought rather than a succession
+of time, and may be considered as the first attempt to frame a
+philosophy of history.
+
+The first of these declining States is timocracy, or the government of
+soldiers and lovers of honour, which answers to the Spartan State; this
+is a government of force, in which education is not inspired by the
+Muses, but imposed by the law, and in which all the finer elements of
+organization have disappeared. The philosopher himself has lost the
+love of truth, and the soldier, who is of a simpler and honester
+nature, rules in his stead. The individual who answers to timocracy has
+some noticeable qualities. He is described as ill educated, but, like
+the Spartan, a lover of literature; and although he is a harsh master
+to his servants he has no natural superiority over them. His character
+is based upon a reaction against the circumstances of his father, who
+in a troubled city has retired from politics; and his mother, who is
+dissatisfied at her own position, is always urging him towards the life
+of political ambition. Such a character may have had this origin, and
+indeed Livy attributes the Licinian laws to a feminine jealousy of a
+similar kind. But there is obviously no connection between the manner
+in which the timocratic State springs out of the ideal, and the mere
+accident by which the timocratic man is the son of a retired statesman.
+
+The two next stages in the decline of constitutions have even less
+historical foundation. For there is no trace in Greek history of a
+polity like the Spartan or Cretan passing into an oligarchy of wealth,
+or of the oligarchy of wealth passing into a democracy. The order of
+history appears to be different; first, in the Homeric times there is
+the royal or patriarchal form of government, which a century or two
+later was succeeded by an oligarchy of birth rather than of wealth, and
+in which wealth was only the accident of the hereditary possession of
+land and power. Sometimes this oligarchical government gave way to a
+government based upon a qualification of property, which, according to
+Aristotle’s mode of using words, would have been called a timocracy;
+and this in some cities, as at Athens, became the conducting medium to
+democracy. But such was not the necessary order of succession in
+States; nor, indeed, can any order be discerned in the endless
+fluctuation of Greek history (like the tides in the Euripus), except,
+perhaps, in the almost uniform tendency from monarchy to aristocracy in
+the earliest times. At first sight there appears to be a similar
+inversion in the last step of the Platonic succession; for tyranny,
+instead of being the natural end of democracy, in early Greek history
+appears rather as a stage leading to democracy; the reign of
+Peisistratus and his sons is an episode which comes between the
+legislation of Solon and the constitution of Cleisthenes; and some
+secret cause common to them all seems to have led the greater part of
+Hellas at her first appearance in the dawn of history, e.g. Athens,
+Argos, Corinth, Sicyon, and nearly every State with the exception of
+Sparta, through a similar stage of tyranny which ended either in
+oligarchy or democracy. But then we must remember that Plato is
+describing rather the contemporary governments of the Sicilian States,
+which alternated between democracy and tyranny, than the ancient
+history of Athens or Corinth.
+
+The portrait of the tyrant himself is just such as the later Greek
+delighted to draw of Phalaris and Dionysius, in which, as in the lives
+of mediaeval saints or mythic heroes, the conduct and actions of one
+were attributed to another in order to fill up the outline. There was
+no enormity which the Greek was not today to believe of them; the
+tyrant was the negation of government and law; his assassination was
+glorious; there was no crime, however unnatural, which might not with
+probability be attributed to him. In this, Plato was only following the
+common thought of his countrymen, which he embellished and exaggerated
+with all the power of his genius. There is no need to suppose that he
+drew from life; or that his knowledge of tyrants is derived from a
+personal acquaintance with Dionysius. The manner in which he speaks of
+them would rather tend to render doubtful his ever having ‘consorted’
+with them, or entertained the schemes, which are attributed to him in
+the Epistles, of regenerating Sicily by their help.
+
+Plato in a hyperbolical and serio-comic vein exaggerates the follies of
+democracy which he also sees reflected in social life. To him democracy
+is a state of individualism or dissolution; in which every one is doing
+what is right in his own eyes. Of a people animated by a common spirit
+of liberty, rising as one man to repel the Persian host, which is the
+leading idea of democracy in Herodotus and Thucydides, he never seems
+to think. But if he is not a believer in liberty, still less is he a
+lover of tyranny. His deeper and more serious condemnation is reserved
+for the tyrant, who is the ideal of wickedness and also of weakness,
+and who in his utter helplessness and suspiciousness is leading an
+almost impossible existence, without that remnant of good which, in
+Plato’s opinion, was required to give power to evil (Book I). This
+ideal of wickedness living in helpless misery, is the reverse of that
+other portrait of perfect injustice ruling in happiness and splendour,
+which first of all Thrasymachus, and afterwards the sons of Ariston had
+drawn, and is also the reverse of the king whose rule of life is the
+good of his subjects.
+
+Each of these governments and individuals has a corresponding ethical
+gradation: the ideal State is under the rule of reason, not
+extinguishing but harmonizing the passions, and training them in
+virtue; in the timocracy and the timocratic man the constitution,
+whether of the State or of the individual, is based, first, upon
+courage, and secondly, upon the love of honour; this latter virtue,
+which is hardly to be esteemed a virtue, has superseded all the rest.
+In the second stage of decline the virtues have altogether disappeared,
+and the love of gain has succeeded to them; in the third stage, or
+democracy, the various passions are allowed to have free play, and the
+virtues and vices are impartially cultivated. But this freedom, which
+leads to many curious extravagances of character, is in reality only a
+state of weakness and dissipation. At last, one monster passion takes
+possession of the whole nature of man—this is tyranny. In all of them
+excess—the excess first of wealth and then of freedom, is the element
+of decay.
+
+The eighth book of the Republic abounds in pictures of life and
+fanciful allusions; the use of metaphorical language is carried to a
+greater extent than anywhere else in Plato. We may remark,
+
+(1), the description of the two nations in one, which become more and
+more divided in the Greek Republics, as in feudal times, and perhaps
+also in our own;
+
+(2), the notion of democracy expressed in a sort of Pythagorean formula
+as equality among unequals;
+
+(3), the free and easy ways of men and animals, which are
+characteristic of liberty, as foreign mercenaries and universal
+mistrust are of the tyrant;
+
+(4), the proposal that mere debts should not be recoverable by law is a
+speculation which has often been entertained by reformers of the law in
+modern times, and is in harmony with the tendencies of modern
+legislation. Debt and land were the two great difficulties of the
+ancient lawgiver: in modern times we may be said to have almost, if not
+quite, solved the first of these difficulties, but hardly the second.
+
+Still more remarkable are the corresponding portraits of individuals:
+there is the family picture of the father and mother and the old
+servant of the timocratical man, and the outward respectability and
+inherent meanness of the oligarchical; the uncontrolled licence and
+freedom of the democrat, in which the young Alcibiades seems to be
+depicted, doing right or wrong as he pleases, and who at last, like the
+prodigal, goes into a far country (note here the play of language by
+which the democratic man is himself represented under the image of a
+State having a citadel and receiving embassies); and there is the
+wild-beast nature, which breaks loose in his successor. The hit about
+the tyrant being a parricide; the representation of the tyrant’s life
+as an obscene dream; the rhetorical surprise of a more miserable than
+the most miserable of men in Book IX; the hint to the poets that if
+they are the friends of tyrants there is no place for them in a
+constitutional State, and that they are too clever not to see the
+propriety of their own expulsion; the continuous image of the drones
+who are of two kinds, swelling at last into the monster drone having
+wings (Book IX),—are among Plato’s happiest touches.
+
+There remains to be considered the great difficulty of this book of the
+Republic, the so-called number of the State. This is a puzzle almost as
+great as the Number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation, and though
+apparently known to Aristotle, is referred to by Cicero as a proverb of
+obscurity (Ep. ad Att.). And some have imagined that there is no answer
+to the puzzle, and that Plato has been practising upon his readers. But
+such a deception as this is inconsistent with the manner in which
+Aristotle speaks of the number (Pol.), and would have been ridiculous
+to any reader of the Republic who was acquainted with Greek
+mathematics. As little reason is there for supposing that Plato
+intentionally used obscure expressions; the obscurity arises from our
+want of familiarity with the subject. On the other hand, Plato himself
+indicates that he is not altogether serious, and in describing his
+number as a solemn jest of the Muses, he appears to imply some degree
+of satire on the symbolical use of number. (Compare Cratylus; Protag.)
+
+Our hope of understanding the passage depends principally on an
+accurate study of the words themselves; on which a faint light is
+thrown by the parallel passage in the ninth book. Another help is the
+allusion in Aristotle, who makes the important remark that the latter
+part of the passage (Greek) describes a solid figure. (Pol.—‘He only
+says that nothing is abiding, but that all things change in a certain
+cycle; and that the origin of the change is a base of numbers which are
+in the ratio of 4:3; and this when combined with a figure of five gives
+two harmonies; he means when the number of this figure becomes solid.’)
+Some further clue may be gathered from the appearance of the
+Pythagorean triangle, which is denoted by the numbers 3, 4, 5, and in
+which, as in every right-angled triangle, the squares of the two lesser
+sides equal the square of the hypotenuse (9 + 16 = 25).
+
+Plato begins by speaking of a perfect or cyclical number (Tim.), i.e. a
+number in which the sum of the divisors equals the whole; this is the
+divine or perfect number in which all lesser cycles or revolutions are
+complete. He also speaks of a human or imperfect number, having four
+terms and three intervals of numbers which are related to one another
+in certain proportions; these he converts into figures, and finds in
+them when they have been raised to the third power certain elements of
+number, which give two ‘harmonies,’ the one square, the other oblong;
+but he does not say that the square number answers to the divine, or
+the oblong number to the human cycle; nor is any intimation given that
+the first or divine number represents the period of the world, the
+second the period of the state, or of the human race as Zeller
+supposes; nor is the divine number afterwards mentioned (Arist.). The
+second is the number of generations or births, and presides over them
+in the same mysterious manner in which the stars preside over them, or
+in which, according to the Pythagoreans, opportunity, justice,
+marriage, are represented by some number or figure. This is probably
+the number 216.
+
+The explanation given in the text supposes the two harmonies to make up
+the number 8000. This explanation derives a certain plausibility from
+the circumstance that 8000 is the ancient number of the Spartan
+citizens (Herod.), and would be what Plato might have called ‘a number
+which nearly concerns the population of a city’; the mysterious
+disappearance of the Spartan population may possibly have suggested to
+him the first cause of his decline of States. The lesser or square
+‘harmony,’ of 400, might be a symbol of the guardians,—the larger or
+oblong ‘harmony,’ of the people, and the numbers 3, 4, 5 might refer
+respectively to the three orders in the State or parts of the soul, the
+four virtues, the five forms of government. The harmony of the musical
+scale, which is elsewhere used as a symbol of the harmony of the state,
+is also indicated. For the numbers 3, 4, 5, which represent the sides
+of the Pythagorean triangle, also denote the intervals of the scale.
+
+The terms used in the statement of the problem may be explained as
+follows. A perfect number (Greek), as already stated, is one which is
+equal to the sum of its divisors. Thus 6, which is the first perfect or
+cyclical number, = 1 + 2 + 3. The words (Greek), ‘terms’ or ‘notes,’
+and (Greek), ‘intervals,’ are applicable to music as well as to number
+and figure. (Greek) is the ‘base’ on which the whole calculation
+depends, or the ‘lowest term’ from which it can be worked out. The
+words (Greek) have been variously translated—‘squared and cubed’
+(Donaldson), ‘equalling and equalled in power’ (Weber), ‘by involution
+and evolution,’ i.e. by raising the power and extracting the root (as
+in the translation). Numbers are called ‘like and unlike’ (Greek) when
+the factors or the sides of the planes and cubes which they represent
+are or are not in the same ratio: e.g. 8 and 27 = 2 cubed and 3 cubed;
+and conversely. ‘Waxing’ (Greek) numbers, called also ‘increasing’
+(Greek), are those which are exceeded by the sum of their divisors:
+e.g. 12 and 18 are less than 16 and 21. ‘Waning’ (Greek) numbers,
+called also ‘decreasing’ (Greek) are those which succeed the sum of
+their divisors: e.g. 8 and 27 exceed 7 and 13. The words translated
+‘commensurable and agreeable to one another’ (Greek) seem to be
+different ways of describing the same relation, with more or less
+precision. They are equivalent to ‘expressible in terms having the same
+relation to one another,’ like the series 8, 12, 18, 27, each of which
+numbers is in the relation of (1 and 1/2) to the preceding. The ‘base,’
+or ‘fundamental number, which has 1/3 added to it’ (1 and 1/3) = 4/3 or
+a musical fourth. (Greek) is a ‘proportion’ of numbers as of musical
+notes, applied either to the parts or factors of a single number or to
+the relation of one number to another. The first harmony is a ‘square’
+number (Greek); the second harmony is an ‘oblong’ number (Greek), i.e.
+a number representing a figure of which the opposite sides only are
+equal. (Greek) = ‘numbers squared from’ or ‘upon diameters’; (Greek) =
+‘rational,’ i.e. omitting fractions, (Greek), ‘irrational,’ i.e.
+including fractions; e.g. 49 is a square of the rational diameter of a
+figure the side of which = 5: 50, of an irrational diameter of the
+same. For several of the explanations here given and for a good deal
+besides I am indebted to an excellent article on the Platonic Number by
+Dr. Donaldson (Proc. of the Philol. Society).
+
+The conclusions which he draws from these data are summed up by him as
+follows. Having assumed that the number of the perfect or divine cycle
+is the number of the world, and the number of the imperfect cycle the
+number of the state, he proceeds: ‘The period of the world is defined
+by the perfect number 6, that of the state by the cube of that number
+or 216, which is the product of the last pair of terms in the Platonic
+Tetractys (a series of seven terms, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27); and if we
+take this as the basis of our computation, we shall have two cube
+numbers (Greek), viz. 8 and 27; and the mean proportionals between
+these, viz. 12 and 18, will furnish three intervals and four terms, and
+these terms and intervals stand related to one another in the
+sesqui-altera ratio, i.e. each term is to the preceding as 3/2. Now if
+we remember that the number 216 = 8 x 27 = 3 cubed + 4 cubed + 5 cubed,
+and 3 squared + 4 squared = 5 squared, we must admit that this number
+implies the numbers 3, 4, 5, to which musicians attach so much
+importance. And if we combine the ratio 4/3 with the number 5, or
+multiply the ratios of the sides by the hypotenuse, we shall by first
+squaring and then cubing obtain two expressions, which denote the ratio
+of the two last pairs of terms in the Platonic Tetractys, the former
+multiplied by the square, the latter by the cube of the number 10, the
+sum of the first four digits which constitute the Platonic Tetractys.’
+The two (Greek) he elsewhere explains as follows: ‘The first (Greek) is
+(Greek), in other words (4/3 x 5) all squared = 100 x 2 squared over 3
+squared. The second (Greek), a cube of the same root, is described as
+100 multiplied (alpha) by the rational diameter of 5 diminished by
+unity, i.e., as shown above, 48: (beta) by two incommensurable
+diameters, i.e. the two first irrationals, or 2 and 3: and (gamma) by
+the cube of 3, or 27. Thus we have (48 + 5 + 27) 100 = 1000 x 2 cubed.
+This second harmony is to be the cube of the number of which the former
+harmony is the square, and therefore must be divided by the cube of 3.
+In other words, the whole expression will be: (1), for the first
+harmony, 400/9: (2), for the second harmony, 8000/27.’
+
+The reasons which have inclined me to agree with Dr. Donaldson and also
+with Schleiermacher in supposing that 216 is the Platonic number of
+births are: (1) that it coincides with the description of the number
+given in the first part of the passage (Greek...): (2) that the number
+216 with its permutations would have been familiar to a Greek
+mathematician, though unfamiliar to us: (3) that 216 is the cube of 6,
+and also the sum of 3 cubed, 4 cubed, 5 cubed, the numbers 3, 4, 5
+representing the Pythagorean triangle, of which the sides when squared
+equal the square of the hypotenuse (9 + 16 = 25): (4) that it is also
+the period of the Pythagorean Metempsychosis: (5) the three ultimate
+terms or bases (3, 4, 5) of which 216 is composed answer to the third,
+fourth, fifth in the musical scale: (6) that the number 216 is the
+product of the cubes of 2 and 3, which are the two last terms in the
+Platonic Tetractys: (7) that the Pythagorean triangle is said by
+Plutarch (de Is. et Osir.), Proclus (super prima Eucl.), and Quintilian
+(de Musica) to be contained in this passage, so that the tradition of
+the school seems to point in the same direction: (8) that the
+Pythagorean triangle is called also the figure of marriage (Greek).
+
+But though agreeing with Dr. Donaldson thus far, I see no reason for
+supposing, as he does, that the first or perfect number is the world,
+the human or imperfect number the state; nor has he given any proof
+that the second harmony is a cube. Nor do I think that (Greek) can mean
+‘two incommensurables,’ which he arbitrarily assumes to be 2 and 3, but
+rather, as the preceding clause implies, (Greek), i.e. two square
+numbers based upon irrational diameters of a figure the side of which
+is 5 = 50 x 2.
+
+The greatest objection to the translation is the sense given to the
+words (Greek), ‘a base of three with a third added to it, multiplied by
+5.’ In this somewhat forced manner Plato introduces once more the
+numbers of the Pythagorean triangle. But the coincidences in the
+numbers which follow are in favour of the explanation. The first
+harmony of 400, as has been already remarked, probably represents the
+rulers; the second and oblong harmony of 7600, the people.
+
+And here we take leave of the difficulty. The discovery of the riddle
+would be useless, and would throw no light on ancient mathematics. The
+point of interest is that Plato should have used such a symbol, and
+that so much of the Pythagorean spirit should have prevailed in him.
+His general meaning is that divine creation is perfect, and is
+represented or presided over by a perfect or cyclical number; human
+generation is imperfect, and represented or presided over by an
+imperfect number or series of numbers. The number 5040, which is the
+number of the citizens in the Laws, is expressly based by him on
+utilitarian grounds, namely, the convenience of the number for
+division; it is also made up of the first seven digits multiplied by
+one another. The contrast of the perfect and imperfect number may have
+been easily suggested by the corrections of the cycle, which were made
+first by Meton and secondly by Callippus; (the latter is said to have
+been a pupil of Plato). Of the degree of importance or of exactness to
+be attributed to the problem, the number of the tyrant in Book IX (729
+= 365 x 2), and the slight correction of the error in the number
+5040/12 (Laws), may furnish a criterion. There is nothing surprising in
+the circumstance that those who were seeking for order in nature and
+had found order in number, should have imagined one to give law to the
+other. Plato believes in a power of number far beyond what he could see
+realized in the world around him, and he knows the great influence
+which ‘the little matter of 1, 2, 3’ exercises upon education. He may
+even be thought to have a prophetic anticipation of the discoveries of
+Quetelet and others, that numbers depend upon numbers; e.g.—in
+population, the numbers of births and the respective numbers of
+children born of either sex, on the respective ages of parents, i.e. on
+other numbers.
+
+BOOK IX. Last of all comes the tyrannical man, about whom we have to
+enquire, Whence is he, and how does he live—in happiness or in misery?
+There is, however, a previous question of the nature and number of the
+appetites, which I should like to consider first. Some of them are
+unlawful, and yet admit of being chastened and weakened in various
+degrees by the power of reason and law. ‘What appetites do you mean?’ I
+mean those which are awake when the reasoning powers are asleep, which
+get up and walk about naked without any self-respect or shame; and
+there is no conceivable folly or crime, however cruel or unnatural, of
+which, in imagination, they may not be guilty. ‘True,’ he said; ‘very
+true.’ But when a man’s pulse beats temperately; and he has supped on a
+feast of reason and come to a knowledge of himself before going to
+rest, and has satisfied his desires just enough to prevent their
+perturbing his reason, which remains clear and luminous, and when he is
+free from quarrel and heat,—the visions which he has on his bed are
+least irregular and abnormal. Even in good men there is such an
+irregular wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.
+
+To return:—You remember what was said of the democrat; that he was the
+son of a miserly father, who encouraged the saving desires and
+repressed the ornamental and expensive ones; presently the youth got
+into fine company, and began to entertain a dislike to his father’s
+narrow ways; and being a better man than the corrupters of his youth,
+he came to a mean, and led a life, not of lawless or slavish passion,
+but of regular and successive indulgence. Now imagine that the youth
+has become a father, and has a son who is exposed to the same
+temptations, and has companions who lead him into every sort of
+iniquity, and parents and friends who try to keep him right. The
+counsellors of evil find that their only chance of retaining him is to
+implant in his soul a monster drone, or love; while other desires buzz
+around him and mystify him with sweet sounds and scents, this monster
+love takes possession of him, and puts an end to every true or modest
+thought or wish. Love, like drunkenness and madness, is a tyranny; and
+the tyrannical man, whether made by nature or habit, is just a
+drinking, lusting, furious sort of animal.
+
+And how does such an one live? ‘Nay, that you must tell me.’ Well then,
+I fancy that he will live amid revelries and harlotries, and love will
+be the lord and master of the house. Many desires require much money,
+and so he spends all that he has and borrows more; and when he has
+nothing the young ravens are still in the nest in which they were
+hatched, crying for food. Love urges them on; and they must be
+gratified by force or fraud, or if not, they become painful and
+troublesome; and as the new pleasures succeed the old ones, so will the
+son take possession of the goods of his parents; if they show signs of
+refusing, he will defraud and deceive them; and if they openly resist,
+what then? ‘I can only say, that I should not much like to be in their
+place.’ But, O heavens, Adeimantus, to think that for some new-fangled
+and unnecessary love he will give up his old father and mother, best
+and dearest of friends, or enslave them to the fancies of the hour!
+Truly a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and mother! When
+there is no more to be got out of them, he turns burglar or pickpocket,
+or robs a temple. Love overmasters the thoughts of his youth, and he
+becomes in sober reality the monster that he was sometimes in sleep. He
+waxes strong in all violence and lawlessness; and is ready for any deed
+of daring that will supply the wants of his rabble-rout. In a
+well-ordered State there are only a few such, and these in time of war
+go out and become the mercenaries of a tyrant. But in time of peace
+they stay at home and do mischief; they are the thieves, footpads,
+cut-purses, man-stealers of the community; or if they are able to
+speak, they turn false-witnesses and informers. ‘No small catalogue of
+crimes truly, even if the perpetrators are few.’ Yes, I said; but small
+and great are relative terms, and no crimes which are committed by them
+approach those of the tyrant, whom this class, growing strong and
+numerous, create out of themselves. If the people yield, well and good,
+but, if they resist, then, as before he beat his father and mother, so
+now he beats his fatherland and motherland, and places his mercenaries
+over them. Such men in their early days live with flatterers, and they
+themselves flatter others, in order to gain their ends; but they soon
+discard their followers when they have no longer any need of them; they
+are always either masters or servants,—the joys of friendship are
+unknown to them. And they are utterly treacherous and unjust, if the
+nature of justice be at all understood by us. They realize our dream;
+and he who is the most of a tyrant by nature, and leads the life of a
+tyrant for the longest time, will be the worst of them, and being the
+worst of them, will also be the most miserable.
+
+Like man, like State,—the tyrannical man will answer to tyranny, which
+is the extreme opposite of the royal State; for one is the best and the
+other the worst. But which is the happier? Great and terrible as the
+tyrant may appear enthroned amid his satellites, let us not be afraid
+to go in and ask; and the answer is, that the monarchical is the
+happiest, and the tyrannical the most miserable of States. And may we
+not ask the same question about the men themselves, requesting some one
+to look into them who is able to penetrate the inner nature of man, and
+will not be panic-struck by the vain pomp of tyranny? I will suppose
+that he is one who has lived with him, and has seen him in family life,
+or perhaps in the hour of trouble and danger.
+
+Assuming that we ourselves are the impartial judge for whom we seek,
+let us begin by comparing the individual and State, and ask first of
+all, whether the State is likely to be free or enslaved—Will there not
+be a little freedom and a great deal of slavery? And the freedom is of
+the bad, and the slavery of the good; and this applies to the man as
+well as to the State; for his soul is full of meanness and slavery, and
+the better part is enslaved to the worse. He cannot do what he would,
+and his mind is full of confusion; he is the very reverse of a freeman.
+The State will be poor and full of misery and sorrow; and the man’s
+soul will also be poor and full of sorrows, and he will be the most
+miserable of men. No, not the most miserable, for there is yet a more
+miserable. ‘Who is that?’ The tyrannical man who has the misfortune
+also to become a public tyrant. ‘There I suspect that you are right.’
+Say rather, ‘I am sure;’ conjecture is out of place in an enquiry of
+this nature. He is like a wealthy owner of slaves, only he has more of
+them than any private individual. You will say, ‘The owners of slaves
+are not generally in any fear of them.’ But why? Because the whole city
+is in a league which protects the individual. Suppose however that one
+of these owners and his household is carried off by a god into a
+wilderness, where there are no freemen to help him—will he not be in an
+agony of terror?—will he not be compelled to flatter his slaves and to
+promise them many things sore against his will? And suppose the same
+god who carried him off were to surround him with neighbours who
+declare that no man ought to have slaves, and that the owners of them
+should be punished with death. ‘Still worse and worse! He will be in
+the midst of his enemies.’ And is not our tyrant such a captive soul,
+who is tormented by a swarm of passions which he cannot indulge; living
+indoors always like a woman, and jealous of those who can go out and
+see the world?
+
+Having so many evils, will not the most miserable of men be still more
+miserable in a public station? Master of others when he is not master
+of himself; like a sick man who is compelled to be an athlete; the
+meanest of slaves and the most abject of flatterers; wanting all
+things, and never able to satisfy his desires; always in fear and
+distraction, like the State of which he is the representative. His
+jealous, hateful, faithless temper grows worse with command; he is more
+and more faithless, envious, unrighteous,—the most wretched of men, a
+misery to himself and to others. And so let us have a final trial and
+proclamation; need we hire a herald, or shall I proclaim the result?
+‘Made the proclamation yourself.’ The son of Ariston (the best) is of
+opinion that the best and justest of men is also the happiest, and that
+this is he who is the most royal master of himself; and that the unjust
+man is he who is the greatest tyrant of himself and of his State. And I
+add further—‘seen or unseen by gods or men.’
+
+This is our first proof. The second is derived from the three kinds of
+pleasure, which answer to the three elements of the soul—reason,
+passion, desire; under which last is comprehended avarice as well as
+sensual appetite, while passion includes ambition, party-feeling, love
+of reputation. Reason, again, is solely directed to the attainment of
+truth, and careless of money and reputation. In accordance with the
+difference of men’s natures, one of these three principles is in the
+ascendant, and they have their several pleasures corresponding to them.
+Interrogate now the three natures, and each one will be found praising
+his own pleasures and depreciating those of others. The money-maker
+will contrast the vanity of knowledge with the solid advantages of
+wealth. The ambitious man will despise knowledge which brings no
+honour; whereas the philosopher will regard only the fruition of truth,
+and will call other pleasures necessary rather than good. Now, how
+shall we decide between them? Is there any better criterion than
+experience and knowledge? And which of the three has the truest
+knowledge and the widest experience? The experience of youth makes the
+philosopher acquainted with the two kinds of desire, but the avaricious
+and the ambitious man never taste the pleasures of truth and wisdom.
+Honour he has equally with them; they are ‘judged of him,’ but he is
+‘not judged of them,’ for they never attain to the knowledge of true
+being. And his instrument is reason, whereas their standard is only
+wealth and honour; and if by reason we are to judge, his good will be
+the truest. And so we arrive at the result that the pleasure of the
+rational part of the soul, and a life passed in such pleasure is the
+pleasantest. He who has a right to judge judges thus. Next comes the
+life of ambition, and, in the third place, that of money-making.
+
+Twice has the just man overthrown the unjust—once more, as in an
+Olympian contest, first offering up a prayer to the saviour Zeus, let
+him try a fall. A wise man whispers to me that the pleasures of the
+wise are true and pure; all others are a shadow only. Let us examine
+this: Is not pleasure opposed to pain, and is there not a mean state
+which is neither? When a man is sick, nothing is more pleasant to him
+than health. But this he never found out while he was well. In pain he
+desires only to cease from pain; on the other hand, when he is in an
+ecstasy of pleasure, rest is painful to him. Thus rest or cessation is
+both pleasure and pain. But can that which is neither become both?
+Again, pleasure and pain are motions, and the absence of them is rest;
+but if so, how can the absence of either of them be the other? Thus we
+are led to infer that the contradiction is an appearance only, and
+witchery of the senses. And these are not the only pleasures, for there
+are others which have no preceding pains. Pure pleasure then is not the
+absence of pain, nor pure pain the absence of pleasure; although most
+of the pleasures which reach the mind through the body are reliefs of
+pain, and have not only their reactions when they depart, but their
+anticipations before they come. They can be best described in a simile.
+There is in nature an upper, lower, and middle region, and he who
+passes from the lower to the middle imagines that he is going up and is
+already in the upper world; and if he were taken back again would
+think, and truly think, that he was descending. All this arises out of
+his ignorance of the true upper, middle, and lower regions. And a like
+confusion happens with pleasure and pain, and with many other things.
+The man who compares grey with black, calls grey white; and the man who
+compares absence of pain with pain, calls the absence of pain pleasure.
+Again, hunger and thirst are inanitions of the body, ignorance and
+folly of the soul; and food is the satisfaction of the one, knowledge
+of the other. Now which is the purer satisfaction—that of eating and
+drinking, or that of knowledge? Consider the matter thus: The
+satisfaction of that which has more existence is truer than of that
+which has less. The invariable and immortal has a more real existence
+than the variable and mortal, and has a corresponding measure of
+knowledge and truth. The soul, again, has more existence and truth and
+knowledge than the body, and is therefore more really satisfied and has
+a more natural pleasure. Those who feast only on earthly food, are
+always going at random up to the middle and down again; but they never
+pass into the true upper world, or have a taste of true pleasure. They
+are like fatted beasts, full of gluttony and sensuality, and ready to
+kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they are not
+filled with true being, and their vessel is leaky (Gorgias). Their
+pleasures are mere shadows of pleasure, mixed with pain, coloured and
+intensified by contrast, and therefore intensely desired; and men go
+fighting about them, as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about
+the shadow of Helen at Troy, because they know not the truth.
+
+The same may be said of the passionate element:—the desires of the
+ambitious soul, as well as of the covetous, have an inferior
+satisfaction. Only when under the guidance of reason do either of the
+other principles do their own business or attain the pleasure which is
+natural to them. When not attaining, they compel the other parts of the
+soul to pursue a shadow of pleasure which is not theirs. And the more
+distant they are from philosophy and reason, the more distant they will
+be from law and order, and the more illusive will be their pleasures.
+The desires of love and tyranny are the farthest from law, and those of
+the king are nearest to it. There is one genuine pleasure, and two
+spurious ones: the tyrant goes beyond even the latter; he has run away
+altogether from law and reason. Nor can the measure of his inferiority
+be told, except in a figure. The tyrant is the third removed from the
+oligarch, and has therefore, not a shadow of his pleasure, but the
+shadow of a shadow only. The oligarch, again, is thrice removed from
+the king, and thus we get the formula 3 x 3, which is the number of a
+surface, representing the shadow which is the tyrant’s pleasure, and if
+you like to cube this ‘number of the beast,’ you will find that the
+measure of the difference amounts to 729; the king is 729 times more
+happy than the tyrant. And this extraordinary number is NEARLY equal to
+the number of days and nights in a year (365 x 2 = 730); and is
+therefore concerned with human life. This is the interval between a
+good and bad man in happiness only: what must be the difference between
+them in comeliness of life and virtue!
+
+Perhaps you may remember some one saying at the beginning of our
+discussion that the unjust man was profited if he had the reputation of
+justice. Now that we know the nature of justice and injustice, let us
+make an image of the soul, which will personify his words. First of
+all, fashion a multitudinous beast, having a ring of heads of all
+manner of animals, tame and wild, and able to produce and change them
+at pleasure. Suppose now another form of a lion, and another of a man;
+the second smaller than the first, the third than the second; join them
+together and cover them with a human skin, in which they are completely
+concealed. When this has been done, let us tell the supporter of
+injustice that he is feeding up the beasts and starving the man. The
+maintainer of justice, on the other hand, is trying to strengthen the
+man; he is nourishing the gentle principle within him, and making an
+alliance with the lion heart, in order that he may be able to keep down
+the many-headed hydra, and bring all into unity with each other and
+with themselves. Thus in every point of view, whether in relation to
+pleasure, honour, or advantage, the just man is right, and the unjust
+wrong.
+
+But now, let us reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally in
+error. Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or
+rather to the God in man; the ignoble, that which subjects the man to
+the beast? And if so, who would receive gold on condition that he was
+to degrade the noblest part of himself under the worst?—who would sell
+his son or daughter into the hands of brutal and evil men, for any
+amount of money? And will he sell his own fairer and diviner part
+without any compunction to the most godless and foul? Would he not be
+worse than Eriphyle, who sold her husband’s life for a necklace? And
+intemperance is the letting loose of the multiform monster, and pride
+and sullenness are the growth and increase of the lion and serpent
+element, while luxury and effeminacy are caused by a too great
+relaxation of spirit. Flattery and meanness again arise when the
+spirited element is subjected to avarice, and the lion is habituated to
+become a monkey. The real disgrace of handicraft arts is, that those
+who are engaged in them have to flatter, instead of mastering their
+desires; therefore we say that they should be placed under the control
+of the better principle in another because they have none in
+themselves; not, as Thrasymachus imagined, to the injury of the
+subjects, but for their good. And our intention in educating the young,
+is to give them self-control; the law desires to nurse up in them a
+higher principle, and when they have acquired this, they may go their
+ways.
+
+‘What, then, shall a man profit, if he gain the whole world’ and become
+more and more wicked? Or what shall he profit by escaping discovery, if
+the concealment of evil prevents the cure? If he had been punished, the
+brute within him would have been silenced, and the gentler element
+liberated; and he would have united temperance, justice, and wisdom in
+his soul—a union better far than any combination of bodily gifts. The
+man of understanding will honour knowledge above all; in the next place
+he will keep under his body, not only for the sake of health and
+strength, but in order to attain the most perfect harmony of body and
+soul. In the acquisition of riches, too, he will aim at order and
+harmony; he will not desire to heap up wealth without measure, but he
+will fear that the increase of wealth will disturb the constitution of
+his own soul. For the same reason he will only accept such honours as
+will make him a better man; any others he will decline. ‘In that case,’
+said he, ‘he will never be a politician.’ Yes, but he will, in his own
+city; though probably not in his native country, unless by some divine
+accident. ‘You mean that he will be a citizen of the ideal city, which
+has no place upon earth.’ But in heaven, I replied, there is a pattern
+of such a city, and he who wishes may order his life after that image.
+Whether such a state is or ever will be matters not; he will act
+according to that pattern and no other...
+
+The most noticeable points in the 9th Book of the Republic are:—(1) the
+account of pleasure; (2) the number of the interval which divides the
+king from the tyrant; (3) the pattern which is in heaven.
+
+1. Plato’s account of pleasure is remarkable for moderation, and in
+this respect contrasts with the later Platonists and the views which
+are attributed to them by Aristotle. He is not, like the Cynics,
+opposed to all pleasure, but rather desires that the several parts of
+the soul shall have their natural satisfaction; he even agrees with the
+Epicureans in describing pleasure as something more than the absence of
+pain. This is proved by the circumstance that there are pleasures which
+have no antecedent pains (as he also remarks in the Philebus), such as
+the pleasures of smell, and also the pleasures of hope and
+anticipation. In the previous book he had made the distinction between
+necessary and unnecessary pleasure, which is repeated by Aristotle, and
+he now observes that there are a further class of ‘wild beast’
+pleasures, corresponding to Aristotle’s (Greek). He dwells upon the
+relative and unreal character of sensual pleasures and the illusion
+which arises out of the contrast of pleasure and pain, pointing out the
+superiority of the pleasures of reason, which are at rest, over the
+fleeting pleasures of sense and emotion. The pre-eminence of royal
+pleasure is shown by the fact that reason is able to form a judgment of
+the lower pleasures, while the two lower parts of the soul are
+incapable of judging the pleasures of reason. Thus, in his treatment of
+pleasure, as in many other subjects, the philosophy of Plato is ‘sawn
+up into quantities’ by Aristotle; the analysis which was originally
+made by him became in the next generation the foundation of further
+technical distinctions. Both in Plato and Aristotle we note the
+illusion under which the ancients fell of regarding the transience of
+pleasure as a proof of its unreality, and of confounding the permanence
+of the intellectual pleasures with the unchangeableness of the
+knowledge from which they are derived. Neither do we like to admit that
+the pleasures of knowledge, though more elevating, are not more lasting
+than other pleasures, and are almost equally dependent on the accidents
+of our bodily state (Introduction to Philebus).
+
+2. The number of the interval which separates the king from the tyrant,
+and royal from tyrannical pleasures, is 729, the cube of 9. Which Plato
+characteristically designates as a number concerned with human life,
+because NEARLY equivalent to the number of days and nights in the year.
+He is desirous of proclaiming that the interval between them is
+immeasurable, and invents a formula to give expression to his idea.
+Those who spoke of justice as a cube, of virtue as an art of measuring
+(Prot.), saw no inappropriateness in conceiving the soul under the
+figure of a line, or the pleasure of the tyrant as separated from the
+pleasure of the king by the numerical interval of 729. And in modern
+times we sometimes use metaphorically what Plato employed as a
+philosophical formula. ‘It is not easy to estimate the loss of the
+tyrant, except perhaps in this way,’ says Plato. So we might say, that
+although the life of a good man is not to be compared to that of a bad
+man, yet you may measure the difference between them by valuing one
+minute of the one at an hour of the other (‘One day in thy courts is
+better than a thousand’), or you might say that ‘there is an infinite
+difference.’ But this is not so much as saying, in homely phrase, ‘They
+are a thousand miles asunder.’ And accordingly Plato finds the natural
+vehicle of his thoughts in a progression of numbers; this arithmetical
+formula he draws out with the utmost seriousness, and both here and in
+the number of generation seems to find an additional proof of the truth
+of his speculation in forming the number into a geometrical figure;
+just as persons in our own day are apt to fancy that a statement is
+verified when it has been only thrown into an abstract form. In
+speaking of the number 729 as proper to human life, he probably
+intended to intimate that one year of the tyrannical = 12 hours of the
+royal life.
+
+The simple observation that the comparison of two similar solids is
+effected by the comparison of the cubes of their sides, is the
+mathematical groundwork of this fanciful expression. There is some
+difficulty in explaining the steps by which the number 729 is obtained;
+the oligarch is removed in the third degree from the royal and
+aristocratical, and the tyrant in the third degree from the
+oligarchical; but we have to arrange the terms as the sides of a square
+and to count the oligarch twice over, thus reckoning them not as = 5
+but as = 9. The square of 9 is passed lightly over as only a step
+towards the cube.
+
+3. Towards the close of the Republic, Plato seems to be more and more
+convinced of the ideal character of his own speculations. At the end of
+the 9th Book the pattern which is in heaven takes the place of the city
+of philosophers on earth. The vision which has received form and
+substance at his hands, is now discovered to be at a distance. And yet
+this distant kingdom is also the rule of man’s life. (‘Say not lo!
+here, or lo! there, for the kingdom of God is within you.’) Thus a note
+is struck which prepares for the revelation of a future life in the
+following Book. But the future life is present still; the ideal of
+politics is to be realized in the individual.
+
+BOOK X. Many things pleased me in the order of our State, but there was
+nothing which I liked better than the regulation about poetry. The
+division of the soul throws a new light on our exclusion of imitation.
+I do not mind telling you in confidence that all poetry is an outrage
+on the understanding, unless the hearers have that balm of knowledge
+which heals error. I have loved Homer ever since I was a boy, and even
+now he appears to me to be the great master of tragic poetry. But much
+as I love the man, I love truth more, and therefore I must speak out:
+and first of all, will you explain what is imitation, for really I do
+not understand? ‘How likely then that I should understand!’ That might
+very well be, for the duller often sees better than the keener eye.
+‘True, but in your presence I can hardly venture to say what I think.’
+Then suppose that we begin in our old fashion, with the doctrine of
+universals. Let us assume the existence of beds and tables. There is
+one idea of a bed, or of a table, which the maker of each had in his
+mind when making them; he did not make the ideas of beds and tables,
+but he made beds and tables according to the ideas. And is there not a
+maker of the works of all workmen, who makes not only vessels but
+plants and animals, himself, the earth and heaven, and things in heaven
+and under the earth? He makes the Gods also. ‘He must be a wizard
+indeed!’ But do you not see that there is a sense in which you could do
+the same? You have only to take a mirror, and catch the reflection of
+the sun, and the earth, or anything else—there now you have made them.
+‘Yes, but only in appearance.’ Exactly so; and the painter is such a
+creator as you are with the mirror, and he is even more unreal than the
+carpenter; although neither the carpenter nor any other artist can be
+supposed to make the absolute bed. ‘Not if philosophers may be
+believed.’ Nor need we wonder that his bed has but an imperfect
+relation to the truth. Reflect:—Here are three beds; one in nature,
+which is made by God; another, which is made by the carpenter; and the
+third, by the painter. God only made one, nor could he have made more
+than one; for if there had been two, there would always have been a
+third—more absolute and abstract than either, under which they would
+have been included. We may therefore conceive God to be the natural
+maker of the bed, and in a lower sense the carpenter is also the maker;
+but the painter is rather the imitator of what the other two make; he
+has to do with a creation which is thrice removed from reality. And the
+tragic poet is an imitator, and, like every other imitator, is thrice
+removed from the king and from the truth. The painter imitates not the
+original bed, but the bed made by the carpenter. And this, without
+being really different, appears to be different, and has many points of
+view, of which only one is caught by the painter, who represents
+everything because he represents a piece of everything, and that piece
+an image. And he can paint any other artist, although he knows nothing
+of their arts; and this with sufficient skill to deceive children or
+simple people. Suppose now that somebody came to us and told us, how he
+had met a man who knew all that everybody knows, and better than
+anybody:—should we not infer him to be a simpleton who, having no
+discernment of truth and falsehood, had met with a wizard or enchanter,
+whom he fancied to be all-wise? And when we hear persons saying that
+Homer and the tragedians know all the arts and all the virtues, must we
+not infer that they are under a similar delusion? they do not see that
+the poets are imitators, and that their creations are only imitations.
+‘Very true.’ But if a person could create as well as imitate, he would
+rather leave some permanent work and not an imitation only; he would
+rather be the receiver than the giver of praise? ‘Yes, for then he
+would have more honour and advantage.’
+
+Let us now interrogate Homer and the poets. Friend Homer, say I to him,
+I am not going to ask you about medicine, or any art to which your
+poems incidentally refer, but about their main subjects—war, military
+tactics, politics. If you are only twice and not thrice removed from
+the truth—not an imitator or an image-maker, please to inform us what
+good you have ever done to mankind? Is there any city which professes
+to have received laws from you, as Sicily and Italy have from
+Charondas, Sparta from Lycurgus, Athens from Solon? Or was any war ever
+carried on by your counsels? or is any invention attributed to you, as
+there is to Thales and Anacharsis? Or is there any Homeric way of life,
+such as the Pythagorean was, in which you instructed men, and which is
+called after you? ‘No, indeed; and Creophylus (Flesh-child) was even
+more unfortunate in his breeding than he was in his name, if, as
+tradition says, Homer in his lifetime was allowed by him and his other
+friends to starve.’ Yes, but could this ever have happened if Homer had
+really been the educator of Hellas? Would he not have had many devoted
+followers? If Protagoras and Prodicus can persuade their contemporaries
+that no one can manage house or State without them, is it likely that
+Homer and Hesiod would have been allowed to go about as beggars—I mean
+if they had really been able to do the world any good?—would not men
+have compelled them to stay where they were, or have followed them
+about in order to get education? But they did not; and therefore we may
+infer that Homer and all the poets are only imitators, who do but
+imitate the appearances of things. For as a painter by a knowledge of
+figure and colour can paint a cobbler without any practice in cobbling,
+so the poet can delineate any art in the colours of language, and give
+harmony and rhythm to the cobbler and also to the general; and you know
+how mere narration, when deprived of the ornaments of metre, is like a
+face which has lost the beauty of youth and never had any other. Once
+more, the imitator has no knowledge of reality, but only of appearance.
+The painter paints, and the artificer makes a bridle and reins, but
+neither understands the use of them—the knowledge of this is confined
+to the horseman; and so of other things. Thus we have three arts: one
+of use, another of invention, a third of imitation; and the user
+furnishes the rule to the two others. The flute-player will know the
+good and bad flute, and the maker will put faith in him; but the
+imitator will neither know nor have faith—neither science nor true
+opinion can be ascribed to him. Imitation, then, is devoid of
+knowledge, being only a kind of play or sport, and the tragic and epic
+poets are imitators in the highest degree.
+
+And now let us enquire, what is the faculty in man which answers to
+imitation. Allow me to explain my meaning: Objects are differently seen
+when in the water and when out of the water, when near and when at a
+distance; and the painter or juggler makes use of this variation to
+impose upon us. And the art of measuring and weighing and calculating
+comes in to save our bewildered minds from the power of appearance;
+for, as we were saying, two contrary opinions of the same about the
+same and at the same time, cannot both of them be true. But which of
+them is true is determined by the art of calculation; and this is
+allied to the better faculty in the soul, as the arts of imitation are
+to the worse. And the same holds of the ear as well as of the eye, of
+poetry as well as painting. The imitation is of actions voluntary or
+involuntary, in which there is an expectation of a good or bad result,
+and present experience of pleasure and pain. But is a man in harmony
+with himself when he is the subject of these conflicting influences? Is
+there not rather a contradiction in him? Let me further ask, whether he
+is more likely to control sorrow when he is alone or when he is in
+company. ‘In the latter case.’ Feeling would lead him to indulge his
+sorrow, but reason and law control him and enjoin patience; since he
+cannot know whether his affliction is good or evil, and no human thing
+is of any great consequence, while sorrow is certainly a hindrance to
+good counsel. For when we stumble, we should not, like children, make
+an uproar; we should take the measures which reason prescribes, not
+raising a lament, but finding a cure. And the better part of us is
+ready to follow reason, while the irrational principle is full of
+sorrow and distraction at the recollection of our troubles.
+Unfortunately, however, this latter furnishes the chief materials of
+the imitative arts. Whereas reason is ever in repose and cannot easily
+be displayed, especially to a mixed multitude who have no experience of
+her. Thus the poet is like the painter in two ways: first he paints an
+inferior degree of truth, and secondly, he is concerned with an
+inferior part of the soul. He indulges the feelings, while he enfeebles
+the reason; and we refuse to allow him to have authority over the mind
+of man; for he has no measure of greater and less, and is a maker of
+images and very far gone from truth.
+
+But we have not yet mentioned the heaviest count in the indictment—the
+power which poetry has of injuriously exciting the feelings. When we
+hear some passage in which a hero laments his sufferings at tedious
+length, you know that we sympathize with him and praise the poet; and
+yet in our own sorrows such an exhibition of feeling is regarded as
+effeminate and unmanly (Ion). Now, ought a man to feel pleasure in
+seeing another do what he hates and abominates in himself? Is he not
+giving way to a sentiment which in his own case he would control?—he is
+off his guard because the sorrow is another’s; and he thinks that he
+may indulge his feelings without disgrace, and will be the gainer by
+the pleasure. But the inevitable consequence is that he who begins by
+weeping at the sorrows of others, will end by weeping at his own. The
+same is true of comedy,—you may often laugh at buffoonery which you
+would be ashamed to utter, and the love of coarse merriment on the
+stage will at last turn you into a buffoon at home. Poetry feeds and
+waters the passions and desires; she lets them rule instead of ruling
+them. And therefore, when we hear the encomiasts of Homer affirming
+that he is the educator of Hellas, and that all life should be
+regulated by his precepts, we may allow the excellence of their
+intentions, and agree with them in thinking Homer a great poet and
+tragedian. But we shall continue to prohibit all poetry which goes
+beyond hymns to the Gods and praises of famous men. Not pleasure and
+pain, but law and reason shall rule in our State.
+
+These are our grounds for expelling poetry; but lest she should charge
+us with discourtesy, let us also make an apology to her. We will remind
+her that there is an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, of
+which there are many traces in the writings of the poets, such as the
+saying of ‘the she-dog, yelping at her mistress,’ and ‘the philosophers
+who are ready to circumvent Zeus,’ and ‘the philosophers who are
+paupers.’ Nevertheless we bear her no ill-will, and will gladly allow
+her to return upon condition that she makes a defence of herself in
+verse; and her supporters who are not poets may speak in prose. We
+confess her charms; but if she cannot show that she is useful as well
+as delightful, like rational lovers, we must renounce our love, though
+endeared to us by early associations. Having come to years of
+discretion, we know that poetry is not truth, and that a man should be
+careful how he introduces her to that state or constitution which he
+himself is; for there is a mighty issue at stake—no less than the good
+or evil of a human soul. And it is not worth while to forsake justice
+and virtue for the attractions of poetry, any more than for the sake of
+honour or wealth. ‘I agree with you.’
+
+And yet the rewards of virtue are greater far than I have described.
+‘And can we conceive things greater still?’ Not, perhaps, in this brief
+span of life: but should an immortal being care about anything short of
+eternity? ‘I do not understand what you mean?’ Do you not know that the
+soul is immortal? ‘Surely you are not prepared to prove that?’ Indeed I
+am. ‘Then let me hear this argument, of which you make so light.’
+
+You would admit that everything has an element of good and of evil. In
+all things there is an inherent corruption; and if this cannot destroy
+them, nothing else will. The soul too has her own corrupting
+principles, which are injustice, intemperance, cowardice, and the like.
+But none of these destroy the soul in the same sense that disease
+destroys the body. The soul may be full of all iniquities, but is not,
+by reason of them, brought any nearer to death. Nothing which was not
+destroyed from within ever perished by external affection of evil. The
+body, which is one thing, cannot be destroyed by food, which is
+another, unless the badness of the food is communicated to the body.
+Neither can the soul, which is one thing, be corrupted by the body,
+which is another, unless she herself is infected. And as no bodily evil
+can infect the soul, neither can any bodily evil, whether disease or
+violence, or any other destroy the soul, unless it can be shown to
+render her unholy and unjust. But no one will ever prove that the souls
+of men become more unjust when they die. If a person has the audacity
+to say the contrary, the answer is—Then why do criminals require the
+hand of the executioner, and not die of themselves? ‘Truly,’ he said,
+‘injustice would not be very terrible if it brought a cessation of
+evil; but I rather believe that the injustice which murders others may
+tend to quicken and stimulate the life of the unjust.’ You are quite
+right. If sin which is her own natural and inherent evil cannot destroy
+the soul, hardly will anything else destroy her. But the soul which
+cannot be destroyed either by internal or external evil must be
+immortal and everlasting. And if this be true, souls will always exist
+in the same number. They cannot diminish, because they cannot be
+destroyed; nor yet increase, for the increase of the immortal must come
+from something mortal, and so all would end in immortality. Neither is
+the soul variable and diverse; for that which is immortal must be of
+the fairest and simplest composition. If we would conceive her truly,
+and so behold justice and injustice in their own nature, she must be
+viewed by the light of reason pure as at birth, or as she is reflected
+in philosophy when holding converse with the divine and immortal and
+eternal. In her present condition we see her only like the sea-god
+Glaucus, bruised and maimed in the sea which is the world, and covered
+with shells and stones which are incrusted upon her from the
+entertainments of earth.
+
+Thus far, as the argument required, we have said nothing of the rewards
+and honours which the poets attribute to justice; we have contented
+ourselves with showing that justice in herself is best for the soul in
+herself, even if a man should put on a Gyges’ ring and have the helmet
+of Hades too. And now you shall repay me what you borrowed; and I will
+enumerate the rewards of justice in life and after death. I granted,
+for the sake of argument, as you will remember, that evil might perhaps
+escape the knowledge of Gods and men, although this was really
+impossible. And since I have shown that justice has reality, you must
+grant me also that she has the palm of appearance. In the first place,
+the just man is known to the Gods, and he is therefore the friend of
+the Gods, and he will receive at their hands every good, always
+excepting such evil as is the necessary consequence of former sins. All
+things end in good to him, either in life or after death, even what
+appears to be evil; for the Gods have a care of him who desires to be
+in their likeness. And what shall we say of men? Is not honesty the
+best policy? The clever rogue makes a great start at first, but breaks
+down before he reaches the goal, and slinks away in dishonour; whereas
+the true runner perseveres to the end, and receives the prize. And you
+must allow me to repeat all the blessings which you attributed to the
+fortunate unjust—they bear rule in the city, they marry and give in
+marriage to whom they will; and the evils which you attributed to the
+unfortunate just, do really fall in the end on the unjust, although, as
+you implied, their sufferings are better veiled in silence.
+
+But all the blessings of this present life are as nothing when compared
+with those which await good men after death. ‘I should like to hear
+about them.’ Come, then, and I will tell you the story of Er, the son
+of Armenius, a valiant man. He was supposed to have died in battle, but
+ten days afterwards his body was found untouched by corruption and sent
+home for burial. On the twelfth day he was placed on the funeral pyre
+and there he came to life again, and told what he had seen in the world
+below. He said that his soul went with a great company to a place, in
+which there were two chasms near together in the earth beneath, and two
+corresponding chasms in the heaven above. And there were judges sitting
+in the intermediate space, bidding the just ascend by the heavenly way
+on the right hand, having the seal of their judgment set upon them
+before, while the unjust, having the seal behind, were bidden to
+descend by the way on the left hand. Him they told to look and listen,
+as he was to be their messenger to men from the world below. And he
+beheld and saw the souls departing after judgment at either chasm; some
+who came from earth, were worn and travel-stained; others, who came
+from heaven, were clean and bright. They seemed glad to meet and rest
+awhile in the meadow; here they discoursed with one another of what
+they had seen in the other world. Those who came from earth wept at the
+remembrance of their sorrows, but the spirits from above spoke of
+glorious sights and heavenly bliss. He said that for every evil deed
+they were punished tenfold—now the journey was of a thousand years’
+duration, because the life of man was reckoned as a hundred years—and
+the rewards of virtue were in the same proportion. He added something
+hardly worth repeating about infants dying almost as soon as they were
+born. Of parricides and other murderers he had tortures still more
+terrible to narrate. He was present when one of the spirits asked—Where
+is Ardiaeus the Great? (This Ardiaeus was a cruel tyrant, who had
+murdered his father, and his elder brother, a thousand years before.)
+Another spirit answered, ‘He comes not hither, and will never come. And
+I myself,’ he added, ‘actually saw this terrible sight. At the entrance
+of the chasm, as we were about to reascend, Ardiaeus appeared, and some
+other sinners—most of whom had been tyrants, but not all—and just as
+they fancied that they were returning to life, the chasm gave a roar,
+and then wild, fiery-looking men who knew the meaning of the sound,
+seized him and several others, and bound them hand and foot and threw
+them down, and dragged them along at the side of the road, lacerating
+them and carding them like wool, and explaining to the passers-by, that
+they were going to be cast into hell.’ The greatest terror of the
+pilgrims ascending was lest they should hear the voice, and when there
+was silence one by one they passed up with joy. To these sufferings
+there were corresponding delights.
+
+On the eighth day the souls of the pilgrims resumed their journey, and
+in four days came to a spot whence they looked down upon a line of
+light, in colour like a rainbow, only brighter and clearer. One day
+more brought them to the place, and they saw that this was the column
+of light which binds together the whole universe. The ends of the
+column were fastened to heaven, and from them hung the distaff of
+Necessity, on which all the heavenly bodies turned—the hook and spindle
+were of adamant, and the whorl of a mixed substance. The whorl was in
+form like a number of boxes fitting into one another with their edges
+turned upwards, making together a single whorl which was pierced by the
+spindle. The outermost had the rim broadest, and the inner whorls were
+smaller and smaller, and had their rims narrower. The largest (the
+fixed stars) was spangled—the seventh (the sun) was brightest—the
+eighth (the moon) shone by the light of the seventh—the second and
+fifth (Saturn and Mercury) were most like one another and yellower than
+the eighth—the third (Jupiter) had the whitest light—the fourth (Mars)
+was red—the sixth (Venus) was in whiteness second. The whole had one
+motion, but while this was revolving in one direction the seven inner
+circles were moving in the opposite, with various degrees of swiftness
+and slowness. The spindle turned on the knees of Necessity, and a Siren
+stood hymning upon each circle, while Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos,
+the daughters of Necessity, sat on thrones at equal intervals, singing
+of past, present, and future, responsive to the music of the Sirens;
+Clotho from time to time guiding the outer circle with a touch of her
+right hand; Atropos with her left hand touching and guiding the inner
+circles; Lachesis in turn putting forth her hand from time to time to
+guide both of them. On their arrival the pilgrims went to Lachesis, and
+there was an interpreter who arranged them, and taking from her knees
+lots, and samples of lives, got up into a pulpit and said: ‘Mortal
+souls, hear the words of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. A new
+period of mortal life has begun, and you may choose what divinity you
+please; the responsibility of choosing is with you—God is blameless.’
+After speaking thus, he cast the lots among them and each one took up
+the lot which fell near him. He then placed on the ground before them
+the samples of lives, many more than the souls present; and there were
+all sorts of lives, of men and of animals. There were tyrannies ending
+in misery and exile, and lives of men and women famous for their
+different qualities; and also mixed lives, made up of wealth and
+poverty, sickness and health. Here, Glaucon, is the great risk of human
+life, and therefore the whole of education should be directed to the
+acquisition of such a knowledge as will teach a man to refuse the evil
+and choose the good. He should know all the combinations which occur in
+life—of beauty with poverty or with wealth,—of knowledge with external
+goods,—and at last choose with reference to the nature of the soul,
+regarding that only as the better life which makes men better, and
+leaving the rest. And a man must take with him an iron sense of truth
+and right into the world below, that there too he may remain undazzled
+by wealth or the allurements of evil, and be determined to avoid the
+extremes and choose the mean. For this, as the messenger reported the
+interpreter to have said, is the true happiness of man; and any one, as
+he proclaimed, may, if he choose with understanding, have a good lot,
+even though he come last. ‘Let not the first be careless in his choice,
+nor the last despair.’ He spoke; and when he had spoken, he who had
+drawn the first lot chose a tyranny: he did not see that he was fated
+to devour his own children—and when he discovered his mistake, he wept
+and beat his breast, blaming chance and the Gods and anybody rather
+than himself. He was one of those who had come from heaven, and in his
+previous life had been a citizen of a well-ordered State, but he had
+only habit and no philosophy. Like many another, he made a bad choice,
+because he had no experience of life; whereas those who came from earth
+and had seen trouble were not in such a hurry to choose. But if a man
+had followed philosophy while upon earth, and had been moderately
+fortunate in his lot, he might not only be happy here, but his
+pilgrimage both from and to this world would be smooth and heavenly.
+Nothing was more curious than the spectacle of the choice, at once sad
+and laughable and wonderful; most of the souls only seeking to avoid
+their own condition in a previous life. He saw the soul of Orpheus
+changing into a swan because he would not be born of a woman; there was
+Thamyras becoming a nightingale; musical birds, like the swan, choosing
+to be men; the twentieth soul, which was that of Ajax, preferring the
+life of a lion to that of a man, in remembrance of the injustice which
+was done to him in the judgment of the arms; and Agamemnon, from a like
+enmity to human nature, passing into an eagle. About the middle was the
+soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete, and next to her
+Epeus taking the nature of a workwoman; among the last was Thersites,
+who was changing himself into a monkey. Thither, the last of all, came
+Odysseus, and sought the lot of a private man, which lay neglected and
+despised, and when he found it he went away rejoicing, and said that if
+he had been first instead of last, his choice would have been the same.
+Men, too, were seen passing into animals, and wild and tame animals
+changing into one another.
+
+When all the souls had chosen they went to Lachesis, who sent with each
+of them their genius or attendant to fulfil their lot. He first of all
+brought them under the hand of Clotho, and drew them within the
+revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand; from her they were
+carried to Atropos, who made the threads irreversible; whence, without
+turning round, they passed beneath the throne of Necessity; and when
+they had all passed, they moved on in scorching heat to the plain of
+Forgetfulness and rested at evening by the river Unmindful, whose water
+could not be retained in any vessel; of this they had all to drink a
+certain quantity—some of them drank more than was required, and he who
+drank forgot all things. Er himself was prevented from drinking. When
+they had gone to rest, about the middle of the night there were
+thunderstorms and earthquakes, and suddenly they were all driven divers
+ways, shooting like stars to their birth. Concerning his return to the
+body, he only knew that awaking suddenly in the morning he found
+himself lying on the pyre.
+
+Thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved, and will be our salvation, if
+we believe that the soul is immortal, and hold fast to the heavenly way
+of Justice and Knowledge. So shall we pass undefiled over the river of
+Forgetfulness, and be dear to ourselves and to the Gods, and have a
+crown of reward and happiness both in this world and also in the
+millennial pilgrimage of the other.
+
+The Tenth Book of the Republic of Plato falls into two divisions:
+first, resuming an old thread which has been interrupted, Socrates
+assails the poets, who, now that the nature of the soul has been
+analyzed, are seen to be very far gone from the truth; and secondly,
+having shown the reality of the happiness of the just, he demands that
+appearance shall be restored to him, and then proceeds to prove the
+immortality of the soul. The argument, as in the Phaedo and Gorgias, is
+supplemented by the vision of a future life.
+
+Why Plato, who was himself a poet, and whose dialogues are poems and
+dramas, should have been hostile to the poets as a class, and
+especially to the dramatic poets; why he should not have seen that
+truth may be embodied in verse as well as in prose, and that there are
+some indefinable lights and shadows of human life which can only be
+expressed in poetry—some elements of imagination which always entwine
+with reason; why he should have supposed epic verse to be inseparably
+associated with the impurities of the old Hellenic mythology; why he
+should try Homer and Hesiod by the unfair and prosaic test of
+utility,—are questions which have always been debated amongst students
+of Plato. Though unable to give a complete answer to them, we may
+show—first, that his views arose naturally out of the circumstances of
+his age; and secondly, we may elicit the truth as well as the error
+which is contained in them.
+
+He is the enemy of the poets because poetry was declining in his own
+lifetime, and a theatrocracy, as he says in the Laws, had taken the
+place of an intellectual aristocracy. Euripides exhibited the last
+phase of the tragic drama, and in him Plato saw the friend and
+apologist of tyrants, and the Sophist of tragedy. The old comedy was
+almost extinct; the new had not yet arisen. Dramatic and lyric poetry,
+like every other branch of Greek literature, was falling under the
+power of rhetoric. There was no ‘second or third’ to Aeschylus and
+Sophocles in the generation which followed them. Aristophanes, in one
+of his later comedies (Frogs), speaks of ‘thousands of tragedy-making
+prattlers,’ whose attempts at poetry he compares to the chirping of
+swallows; ‘their garrulity went far beyond Euripides,’—‘they appeared
+once upon the stage, and there was an end of them.’ To a man of genius
+who had a real appreciation of the godlike Aeschylus and the noble and
+gentle Sophocles, though disagreeing with some parts of their
+‘theology’ (Rep.), these ‘minor poets’ must have been contemptible and
+intolerable. There is no feeling stronger in the dialogues of Plato
+than a sense of the decline and decay both in literature and in
+politics which marked his own age. Nor can he have been expected to
+look with favour on the licence of Aristophanes, now at the end of his
+career, who had begun by satirizing Socrates in the Clouds, and in a
+similar spirit forty years afterwards had satirized the founders of
+ideal commonwealths in his Eccleziazusae, or Female Parliament (Laws).
+
+There were other reasons for the antagonism of Plato to poetry. The
+profession of an actor was regarded by him as a degradation of human
+nature, for ‘one man in his life’ cannot ‘play many parts;’ the
+characters which the actor performs seem to destroy his own character,
+and to leave nothing which can be truly called himself. Neither can any
+man live his life and act it. The actor is the slave of his art, not
+the master of it. Taking this view Plato is more decided in his
+expulsion of the dramatic than of the epic poets, though he must have
+known that the Greek tragedians afforded noble lessons and examples of
+virtue and patriotism, to which nothing in Homer can be compared. But
+great dramatic or even great rhetorical power is hardly consistent with
+firmness or strength of mind, and dramatic talent is often incidentally
+associated with a weak or dissolute character.
+
+In the Tenth Book Plato introduces a new series of objections. First,
+he says that the poet or painter is an imitator, and in the third
+degree removed from the truth. His creations are not tested by rule and
+measure; they are only appearances. In modern times we should say that
+art is not merely imitation, but rather the expression of the ideal in
+forms of sense. Even adopting the humble image of Plato, from which his
+argument derives a colour, we should maintain that the artist may
+ennoble the bed which he paints by the folds of the drapery, or by the
+feeling of home which he introduces; and there have been modern
+painters who have imparted such an ideal interest to a blacksmith’s or
+a carpenter’s shop. The eye or mind which feels as well as sees can
+give dignity and pathos to a ruined mill, or a straw-built shed
+(Rembrandt), to the hull of a vessel ‘going to its last home’ (Turner).
+Still more would this apply to the greatest works of art, which seem to
+be the visible embodiment of the divine. Had Plato been asked whether
+the Zeus or Athene of Pheidias was the imitation of an imitation only,
+would he not have been compelled to admit that something more was to be
+found in them than in the form of any mortal; and that the rule of
+proportion to which they conformed was ‘higher far than any geometry or
+arithmetic could express?’ (Statesman.)
+
+Again, Plato objects to the imitative arts that they express the
+emotional rather than the rational part of human nature. He does not
+admit Aristotle’s theory, that tragedy or other serious imitations are
+a purgation of the passions by pity and fear; to him they appear only
+to afford the opportunity of indulging them. Yet we must acknowledge
+that we may sometimes cure disordered emotions by giving expression to
+them; and that they often gain strength when pent up within our own
+breast. It is not every indulgence of the feelings which is to be
+condemned. For there may be a gratification of the higher as well as of
+the lower—thoughts which are too deep or too sad to be expressed by
+ourselves, may find an utterance in the words of poets. Every one would
+acknowledge that there have been times when they were consoled and
+elevated by beautiful music or by the sublimity of architecture or by
+the peacefulness of nature. Plato has himself admitted, in the earlier
+part of the Republic, that the arts might have the effect of
+harmonizing as well as of enervating the mind; but in the Tenth Book he
+regards them through a Stoic or Puritan medium. He asks only ‘What good
+have they done?’ and is not satisfied with the reply, that ‘They have
+given innocent pleasure to mankind.’
+
+He tells us that he rejoices in the banishment of the poets, since he
+has found by the analysis of the soul that they are concerned with the
+inferior faculties. He means to say that the higher faculties have to
+do with universals, the lower with particulars of sense. The poets are
+on a level with their own age, but not on a level with Socrates and
+Plato; and he was well aware that Homer and Hesiod could not be made a
+rule of life by any process of legitimate interpretation; his ironical
+use of them is in fact a denial of their authority; he saw, too, that
+the poets were not critics—as he says in the Apology, ‘Any one was a
+better interpreter of their writings than they were themselves. He
+himself ceased to be a poet when he became a disciple of Socrates;
+though, as he tells us of Solon, ‘he might have been one of the
+greatest of them, if he had not been deterred by other pursuits’ (Tim.)
+Thus from many points of view there is an antagonism between Plato and
+the poets, which was foreshadowed to him in the old quarrel between
+philosophy and poetry. The poets, as he says in the Protagoras, were
+the Sophists of their day; and his dislike of the one class is
+reflected on the other. He regards them both as the enemies of
+reasoning and abstraction, though in the case of Euripides more with
+reference to his immoral sentiments about tyrants and the like. For
+Plato is the prophet who ‘came into the world to convince men’—first of
+the fallibility of sense and opinion, and secondly of the reality of
+abstract ideas. Whatever strangeness there may be in modern times in
+opposing philosophy to poetry, which to us seem to have so many
+elements in common, the strangeness will disappear if we conceive of
+poetry as allied to sense, and of philosophy as equivalent to thought
+and abstraction. Unfortunately the very word ‘idea,’ which to Plato is
+expressive of the most real of all things, is associated in our minds
+with an element of subjectiveness and unreality. We may note also how
+he differs from Aristotle who declares poetry to be truer than history,
+for the opposite reason, because it is concerned with universals, not
+like history, with particulars (Poet).
+
+The things which are seen are opposed in Scripture to the things which
+are unseen—they are equally opposed in Plato to universals and ideas.
+To him all particulars appear to be floating about in a world of sense;
+they have a taint of error or even of evil. There is no difficulty in
+seeing that this is an illusion; for there is no more error or
+variation in an individual man, horse, bed, etc., than in the class
+man, horse, bed, etc.; nor is the truth which is displayed in
+individual instances less certain than that which is conveyed through
+the medium of ideas. But Plato, who is deeply impressed with the real
+importance of universals as instruments of thought, attributes to them
+an essential truth which is imaginary and unreal; for universals may be
+often false and particulars true. Had he attained to any clear
+conception of the individual, which is the synthesis of the universal
+and the particular; or had he been able to distinguish between opinion
+and sensation, which the ambiguity of the words (Greek) and the like,
+tended to confuse, he would not have denied truth to the particulars of
+sense.
+
+But the poets are also the representatives of falsehood and feigning in
+all departments of life and knowledge, like the sophists and
+rhetoricians of the Gorgias and Phaedrus; they are the false priests,
+false prophets, lying spirits, enchanters of the world. There is
+another count put into the indictment against them by Plato, that they
+are the friends of the tyrant, and bask in the sunshine of his
+patronage. Despotism in all ages has had an apparatus of false ideas
+and false teachers at its service—in the history of Modern Europe as
+well as of Greece and Rome. For no government of men depends solely
+upon force; without some corruption of literature and morals—some
+appeal to the imagination of the masses—some pretence to the favour of
+heaven—some element of good giving power to evil, tyranny, even for a
+short time, cannot be maintained. The Greek tyrants were not insensible
+to the importance of awakening in their cause a Pseudo-Hellenic
+feeling; they were proud of successes at the Olympic games; they were
+not devoid of the love of literature and art. Plato is thinking in the
+first instance of Greek poets who had graced the courts of Dionysius or
+Archelaus: and the old spirit of freedom is roused within him at their
+prostitution of the Tragic Muse in the praises of tyranny. But his
+prophetic eye extends beyond them to the false teachers of other ages
+who are the creatures of the government under which they live. He
+compares the corruption of his contemporaries with the idea of a
+perfect society, and gathers up into one mass of evil the evils and
+errors of mankind; to him they are personified in the rhetoricians,
+sophists, poets, rulers who deceive and govern the world.
+
+A further objection which Plato makes to poetry and the imitative arts
+is that they excite the emotions. Here the modern reader will be
+disposed to introduce a distinction which appears to have escaped him.
+For the emotions are neither bad nor good in themselves, and are not
+most likely to be controlled by the attempt to eradicate them, but by
+the moderate indulgence of them. And the vocation of art is to present
+thought in the form of feeling, to enlist the feelings on the side of
+reason, to inspire even for a moment courage or resignation; perhaps to
+suggest a sense of infinity and eternity in a way which mere language
+is incapable of attaining. True, the same power which in the purer age
+of art embodies gods and heroes only, may be made to express the
+voluptuous image of a Corinthian courtezan. But this only shows that
+art, like other outward things, may be turned to good and also to evil,
+and is not more closely connected with the higher than with the lower
+part of the soul. All imitative art is subject to certain limitations,
+and therefore necessarily partakes of the nature of a compromise.
+Something of ideal truth is sacrificed for the sake of the
+representation, and something in the exactness of the representation is
+sacrificed to the ideal. Still, works of art have a permanent element;
+they idealize and detain the passing thought, and are the intermediates
+between sense and ideas.
+
+In the present stage of the human mind, poetry and other forms of
+fiction may certainly be regarded as a good. But we can also imagine
+the existence of an age in which a severer conception of truth has
+either banished or transformed them. At any rate we must admit that
+they hold a different place at different periods of the world’s
+history. In the infancy of mankind, poetry, with the exception of
+proverbs, is the whole of literature, and the only instrument of
+intellectual culture; in modern times she is the shadow or echo of her
+former self, and appears to have a precarious existence. Milton in his
+day doubted whether an epic poem was any longer possible. At the same
+time we must remember, that what Plato would have called the charms of
+poetry have been partly transferred to prose; he himself (Statesman)
+admits rhetoric to be the handmaiden of Politics, and proposes to find
+in the strain of law (Laws) a substitute for the old poets. Among
+ourselves the creative power seems often to be growing weaker, and
+scientific fact to be more engrossing and overpowering to the mind than
+formerly. The illusion of the feelings commonly called love, has
+hitherto been the inspiring influence of modern poetry and romance, and
+has exercised a humanizing if not a strengthening influence on the
+world. But may not the stimulus which love has given to fancy be some
+day exhausted? The modern English novel which is the most popular of
+all forms of reading is not more than a century or two old: will the
+tale of love a hundred years hence, after so many thousand variations
+of the same theme, be still received with unabated interest?
+
+Art cannot claim to be on a level with philosophy or religion, and may
+often corrupt them. It is possible to conceive a mental state in which
+all artistic representations are regarded as a false and imperfect
+expression, either of the religious ideal or of the philosophical
+ideal. The fairest forms may be revolting in certain moods of mind, as
+is proved by the fact that the Mahometans, and many sects of
+Christians, have renounced the use of pictures and images. The
+beginning of a great religion, whether Christian or Gentile, has not
+been ‘wood or stone,’ but a spirit moving in the hearts of men. The
+disciples have met in a large upper room or in ‘holes and caves of the
+earth’; in the second or third generation, they have had mosques,
+temples, churches, monasteries. And the revival or reform of religions,
+like the first revelation of them, has come from within and has
+generally disregarded external ceremonies and accompaniments.
+
+But poetry and art may also be the expression of the highest truth and
+the purest sentiment. Plato himself seems to waver between two opposite
+views—when, as in the third Book, he insists that youth should be
+brought up amid wholesome imagery; and again in Book X, when he
+banishes the poets from his Republic. Admitting that the arts, which
+some of us almost deify, have fallen short of their higher aim, we must
+admit on the other hand that to banish imagination wholly would be
+suicidal as well as impossible. For nature too is a form of art; and a
+breath of the fresh air or a single glance at the varying landscape
+would in an instant revive and reillumine the extinguished spark of
+poetry in the human breast. In the lower stages of civilization
+imagination more than reason distinguishes man from the animals; and to
+banish art would be to banish thought, to banish language, to banish
+the expression of all truth. No religion is wholly devoid of external
+forms; even the Mahometan who renounces the use of pictures and images
+has a temple in which he worships the Most High, as solemn and
+beautiful as any Greek or Christian building. Feeling too and thought
+are not really opposed; for he who thinks must feel before he can
+execute. And the highest thoughts, when they become familiarized to us,
+are always tending to pass into the form of feeling.
+
+Plato does not seriously intend to expel poets from life and society.
+But he feels strongly the unreality of their writings; he is protesting
+against the degeneracy of poetry in his own day as we might protest
+against the want of serious purpose in modern fiction, against the
+unseemliness or extravagance of some of our poets or novelists, against
+the time-serving of preachers or public writers, against the
+regardlessness of truth which to the eye of the philosopher seems to
+characterize the greater part of the world. For we too have reason to
+complain that our poets and novelists ‘paint inferior truth’ and ‘are
+concerned with the inferior part of the soul’; that the readers of them
+become what they read and are injuriously affected by them. And we look
+in vain for that healthy atmosphere of which Plato speaks,—‘the beauty
+which meets the sense like a breeze and imperceptibly draws the soul,
+even in childhood, into harmony with the beauty of reason.’
+
+For there might be a poetry which would be the hymn of divine
+perfection, the harmony of goodness and truth among men: a strain which
+should renew the youth of the world, and bring back the ages in which
+the poet was man’s only teacher and best friend,—which would find
+materials in the living present as well as in the romance of the past,
+and might subdue to the fairest forms of speech and verse the
+intractable materials of modern civilisation,—which might elicit the
+simple principles, or, as Plato would have called them, the essential
+forms, of truth and justice out of the variety of opinion and the
+complexity of modern society,—which would preserve all the good of each
+generation and leave the bad unsung,—which should be based not on vain
+longings or faint imaginings, but on a clear insight into the nature of
+man. Then the tale of love might begin again in poetry or prose, two in
+one, united in the pursuit of knowledge, or the service of God and man;
+and feelings of love might still be the incentive to great thoughts and
+heroic deeds as in the days of Dante or Petrarch; and many types of
+manly and womanly beauty might appear among us, rising above the
+ordinary level of humanity, and many lives which were like poems
+(Laws), be not only written, but lived by us. A few such strains have
+been heard among men in the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, whom
+Plato quotes, not, as Homer is quoted by him, in irony, but with deep
+and serious approval,—in the poetry of Milton and Wordsworth, and in
+passages of other English poets,—first and above all in the Hebrew
+prophets and psalmists. Shakespeare has taught us how great men should
+speak and act; he has drawn characters of a wonderful purity and depth;
+he has ennobled the human mind, but, like Homer (Rep.), he ‘has left no
+way of life.’ The next greatest poet of modern times, Goethe, is
+concerned with ‘a lower degree of truth’; he paints the world as a
+stage on which ‘all the men and women are merely players’; he
+cultivates life as an art, but he furnishes no ideals of truth and
+action. The poet may rebel against any attempt to set limits to his
+fancy; and he may argue truly that moralizing in verse is not poetry.
+Possibly, like Mephistopheles in Faust, he may retaliate on his
+adversaries. But the philosopher will still be justified in asking,
+‘How may the heavenly gift of poesy be devoted to the good of mankind?’
+
+Returning to Plato, we may observe that a similar mixture of truth and
+error appears in other parts of the argument. He is aware of the
+absurdity of mankind framing their whole lives according to Homer; just
+as in the Phaedrus he intimates the absurdity of interpreting mythology
+upon rational principles; both these were the modern tendencies of his
+own age, which he deservedly ridicules. On the other hand, his argument
+that Homer, if he had been able to teach mankind anything worth
+knowing, would not have been allowed by them to go about begging as a
+rhapsodist, is both false and contrary to the spirit of Plato (Rep.).
+It may be compared with those other paradoxes of the Gorgias, that ‘No
+statesman was ever unjustly put to death by the city of which he was
+the head’; and that ‘No Sophist was ever defrauded by his pupils’
+(Gorg.)...
+
+The argument for immortality seems to rest on the absolute dualism of
+soul and body. Admitting the existence of the soul, we know of no force
+which is able to put an end to her. Vice is her own proper evil; and if
+she cannot be destroyed by that, she cannot be destroyed by any other.
+Yet Plato has acknowledged that the soul may be so overgrown by the
+incrustations of earth as to lose her original form; and in the Timaeus
+he recognizes more strongly than in the Republic the influence which
+the body has over the mind, denying even the voluntariness of human
+actions, on the ground that they proceed from physical states (Tim.).
+In the Republic, as elsewhere, he wavers between the original soul
+which has to be restored, and the character which is developed by
+training and education...
+
+The vision of another world is ascribed to Er, the son of Armenius, who
+is said by Clement of Alexandria to have been Zoroaster. The tale has
+certainly an oriental character, and may be compared with the
+pilgrimages of the soul in the Zend Avesta (Haug, Avesta). But no trace
+of acquaintance with Zoroaster is found elsewhere in Plato’s writings,
+and there is no reason for giving him the name of Er the Pamphylian.
+The philosophy of Heracleitus cannot be shown to be borrowed from
+Zoroaster, and still less the myths of Plato.
+
+The local arrangement of the vision is less distinct than that of the
+Phaedrus and Phaedo. Astronomy is mingled with symbolism and mythology;
+the great sphere of heaven is represented under the symbol of a
+cylinder or box, containing the seven orbits of the planets and the
+fixed stars; this is suspended from an axis or spindle which turns on
+the knees of Necessity; the revolutions of the seven orbits contained
+in the cylinder are guided by the fates, and their harmonious motion
+produces the music of the spheres. Through the innermost or eighth of
+these, which is the moon, is passed the spindle; but it is doubtful
+whether this is the continuation of the column of light, from which the
+pilgrims contemplate the heavens; the words of Plato imply that they
+are connected, but not the same. The column itself is clearly not of
+adamant. The spindle (which is of adamant) is fastened to the ends of
+the chains which extend to the middle of the column of light—this
+column is said to hold together the heaven; but whether it hangs from
+the spindle, or is at right angles to it, is not explained. The
+cylinder containing the orbits of the stars is almost as much a symbol
+as the figure of Necessity turning the spindle;—for the outermost rim
+is the sphere of the fixed stars, and nothing is said about the
+intervals of space which divide the paths of the stars in the heavens.
+The description is both a picture and an orrery, and therefore is
+necessarily inconsistent with itself. The column of light is not the
+Milky Way—which is neither straight, nor like a rainbow—but the
+imaginary axis of the earth. This is compared to the rainbow in respect
+not of form but of colour, and not to the undergirders of a trireme,
+but to the straight rope running from prow to stern in which the
+undergirders meet.
+
+The orrery or picture of the heavens given in the Republic differs in
+its mode of representation from the circles of the same and of the
+other in the Timaeus. In both the fixed stars are distinguished from
+the planets, and they move in orbits without them, although in an
+opposite direction: in the Republic as in the Timaeus they are all
+moving round the axis of the world. But we are not certain that in the
+former they are moving round the earth. No distinct mention is made in
+the Republic of the circles of the same and other; although both in the
+Timaeus and in the Republic the motion of the fixed stars is supposed
+to coincide with the motion of the whole. The relative thickness of the
+rims is perhaps designed to express the relative distances of the
+planets. Plato probably intended to represent the earth, from which Er
+and his companions are viewing the heavens, as stationary in place; but
+whether or not herself revolving, unless this is implied in the
+revolution of the axis, is uncertain (Timaeus). The spectator may be
+supposed to look at the heavenly bodies, either from above or below.
+The earth is a sort of earth and heaven in one, like the heaven of the
+Phaedrus, on the back of which the spectator goes out to take a peep at
+the stars and is borne round in the revolution. There is no distinction
+between the equator and the ecliptic. But Plato is no doubt led to
+imagine that the planets have an opposite motion to that of the fixed
+stars, in order to account for their appearances in the heavens. In the
+description of the meadow, and the retribution of the good and evil
+after death, there are traces of Homer.
+
+The description of the axis as a spindle, and of the heavenly bodies as
+forming a whole, partly arises out of the attempt to connect the
+motions of the heavenly bodies with the mythological image of the web,
+or weaving of the Fates. The giving of the lots, the weaving of them,
+and the making of them irreversible, which are ascribed to the three
+Fates—Lachesis, Clotho, Atropos, are obviously derived from their
+names. The element of chance in human life is indicated by the order of
+the lots. But chance, however adverse, may be overcome by the wisdom of
+man, if he knows how to choose aright; there is a worse enemy to man
+than chance; this enemy is himself. He who was moderately fortunate in
+the number of the lot—even the very last comer—might have a good life
+if he chose with wisdom. And as Plato does not like to make an
+assertion which is unproven, he more than confirms this statement a few
+sentences afterwards by the example of Odysseus, who chose last. But
+the virtue which is founded on habit is not sufficient to enable a man
+to choose; he must add to virtue knowledge, if he is to act rightly
+when placed in new circumstances. The routine of good actions and good
+habits is an inferior sort of goodness; and, as Coleridge says, ‘Common
+sense is intolerable which is not based on metaphysics,’ so Plato would
+have said, ‘Habit is worthless which is not based upon philosophy.’
+
+The freedom of the will to refuse the evil and to choose the good is
+distinctly asserted. ‘Virtue is free, and as a man honours or
+dishonours her he will have more or less of her.’ The life of man is
+‘rounded’ by necessity; there are circumstances prior to birth which
+affect him (Pol.). But within the walls of necessity there is an open
+space in which he is his own master, and can study for himself the
+effects which the variously compounded gifts of nature or fortune have
+upon the soul, and act accordingly. All men cannot have the first
+choice in everything. But the lot of all men is good enough, if they
+choose wisely and will live diligently.
+
+The verisimilitude which is given to the pilgrimage of a thousand
+years, by the intimation that Ardiaeus had lived a thousand years
+before; the coincidence of Er coming to life on the twelfth day after
+he was supposed to have been dead with the seven days which the
+pilgrims passed in the meadow, and the four days during which they
+journeyed to the column of light; the precision with which the soul is
+mentioned who chose the twentieth lot; the passing remarks that there
+was no definite character among the souls, and that the souls which had
+chosen ill blamed any one rather than themselves; or that some of the
+souls drank more than was necessary of the waters of Forgetfulness,
+while Er himself was hindered from drinking; the desire of Odysseus to
+rest at last, unlike the conception of him in Dante and Tennyson; the
+feigned ignorance of how Er returned to the body, when the other souls
+went shooting like stars to their birth,—add greatly to the probability
+of the narrative. They are such touches of nature as the art of Defoe
+might have introduced when he wished to win credibility for marvels and
+apparitions.
+
+
+There still remain to be considered some points which have been
+intentionally reserved to the end: (1) the Janus-like character of the
+Republic, which presents two faces—one an Hellenic state, the other a
+kingdom of philosophers. Connected with the latter of the two aspects
+are (2) the paradoxes of the Republic, as they have been termed by
+Morgenstern: (a) the community of property; (b) of families; (c) the
+rule of philosophers; (d) the analogy of the individual and the State,
+which, like some other analogies in the Republic, is carried too far.
+We may then proceed to consider (3) the subject of education as
+conceived by Plato, bringing together in a general view the education
+of youth and the education of after-life; (4) we may note further some
+essential differences between ancient and modern politics which are
+suggested by the Republic; (5) we may compare the Politicus and the
+Laws; (6) we may observe the influence exercised by Plato on his
+imitators; and (7) take occasion to consider the nature and value of
+political, and (8) of religious ideals.
+
+1. Plato expressly says that he is intending to found an Hellenic State
+(Book V). Many of his regulations are characteristically Spartan; such
+as the prohibition of gold and silver, the common meals of the men, the
+military training of the youth, the gymnastic exercises of the women.
+The life of Sparta was the life of a camp (Laws), enforced even more
+rigidly in time of peace than in war; the citizens of Sparta, like
+Plato’s, were forbidden to trade—they were to be soldiers and not
+shopkeepers. Nowhere else in Greece was the individual so completely
+subjected to the State; the time when he was to marry, the education of
+his children, the clothes which he was to wear, the food which he was
+to eat, were all prescribed by law. Some of the best enactments in the
+Republic, such as the reverence to be paid to parents and elders, and
+some of the worst, such as the exposure of deformed children, are
+borrowed from the practice of Sparta. The encouragement of friendships
+between men and youths, or of men with one another, as affording
+incentives to bravery, is also Spartan; in Sparta too a nearer approach
+was made than in any other Greek State to equality of the sexes, and to
+community of property; and while there was probably less of
+licentiousness in the sense of immorality, the tie of marriage was
+regarded more lightly than in the rest of Greece. The ‘suprema lex’ was
+the preservation of the family, and the interest of the State. The
+coarse strength of a military government was not favourable to purity
+and refinement; and the excessive strictness of some regulations seems
+to have produced a reaction. Of all Hellenes the Spartans were most
+accessible to bribery; several of the greatest of them might be
+described in the words of Plato as having a ‘fierce secret longing
+after gold and silver.’ Though not in the strict sense communists, the
+principle of communism was maintained among them in their division of
+lands, in their common meals, in their slaves, and in the free use of
+one another’s goods. Marriage was a public institution: and the women
+were educated by the State, and sang and danced in public with the men.
+
+Many traditions were preserved at Sparta of the severity with which the
+magistrates had maintained the primitive rule of music and poetry; as
+in the Republic of Plato, the new-fangled poet was to be expelled.
+Hymns to the Gods, which are the only kind of music admitted into the
+ideal State, were the only kind which was permitted at Sparta. The
+Spartans, though an unpoetical race, were nevertheless lovers of
+poetry; they had been stirred by the Elegiac strains of Tyrtaeus, they
+had crowded around Hippias to hear his recitals of Homer; but in this
+they resembled the citizens of the timocratic rather than of the ideal
+State. The council of elder men also corresponds to the Spartan
+gerousia; and the freedom with which they are permitted to judge about
+matters of detail agrees with what we are told of that institution.
+Once more, the military rule of not spoiling the dead or offering arms
+at the temples; the moderation in the pursuit of enemies; the
+importance attached to the physical well-being of the citizens; the use
+of warfare for the sake of defence rather than of aggression—are
+features probably suggested by the spirit and practice of Sparta.
+
+To the Spartan type the ideal State reverts in the first decline; and
+the character of the individual timocrat is borrowed from the Spartan
+citizen. The love of Lacedaemon not only affected Plato and Xenophon,
+but was shared by many undistinguished Athenians; there they seemed to
+find a principle which was wanting in their own democracy. The (Greek)
+of the Spartans attracted them, that is to say, not the goodness of
+their laws, but the spirit of order and loyalty which prevailed.
+Fascinated by the idea, citizens of Athens would imitate the
+Lacedaemonians in their dress and manners; they were known to the
+contemporaries of Plato as ‘the persons who had their ears bruised,’
+like the Roundheads of the Commonwealth. The love of another church or
+country when seen at a distance only, the longing for an imaginary
+simplicity in civilized times, the fond desire of a past which never
+has been, or of a future which never will be,—these are aspirations of
+the human mind which are often felt among ourselves. Such feelings meet
+with a response in the Republic of Plato.
+
+But there are other features of the Platonic Republic, as, for example,
+the literary and philosophical education, and the grace and beauty of
+life, which are the reverse of Spartan. Plato wishes to give his
+citizens a taste of Athenian freedom as well as of Lacedaemonian
+discipline. His individual genius is purely Athenian, although in
+theory he is a lover of Sparta; and he is something more than either—he
+has also a true Hellenic feeling. He is desirous of humanizing the wars
+of Hellenes against one another; he acknowledges that the Delphian God
+is the grand hereditary interpreter of all Hellas. The spirit of
+harmony and the Dorian mode are to prevail, and the whole State is to
+have an external beauty which is the reflex of the harmony within. But
+he has not yet found out the truth which he afterwards enunciated in
+the Laws—that he was a better legislator who made men to be of one
+mind, than he who trained them for war. The citizens, as in other
+Hellenic States, democratic as well as aristocratic, are really an
+upper class; for, although no mention is made of slaves, the lower
+classes are allowed to fade away into the distance, and are represented
+in the individual by the passions. Plato has no idea either of a social
+State in which all classes are harmonized, or of a federation of Hellas
+or the world in which different nations or States have a place. His
+city is equipped for war rather than for peace, and this would seem to
+be justified by the ordinary condition of Hellenic States. The myth of
+the earth-born men is an embodiment of the orthodox tradition of
+Hellas, and the allusion to the four ages of the world is also
+sanctioned by the authority of Hesiod and the poets. Thus we see that
+the Republic is partly founded on the ideal of the old Greek polis,
+partly on the actual circumstances of Hellas in that age. Plato, like
+the old painters, retains the traditional form, and like them he has
+also a vision of a city in the clouds.
+
+There is yet another thread which is interwoven in the texture of the
+work; for the Republic is not only a Dorian State, but a Pythagorean
+league. The ‘way of life’ which was connected with the name of
+Pythagoras, like the Catholic monastic orders, showed the power which
+the mind of an individual might exercise over his contemporaries, and
+may have naturally suggested to Plato the possibility of reviving such
+‘mediaeval institutions.’ The Pythagoreans, like Plato, enforced a rule
+of life and a moral and intellectual training. The influence ascribed
+to music, which to us seems exaggerated, is also a Pythagorean feature;
+it is not to be regarded as representing the real influence of music in
+the Greek world. More nearly than any other government of Hellas, the
+Pythagorean league of three hundred was an aristocracy of virtue. For
+once in the history of mankind the philosophy of order or (Greek),
+expressing and consequently enlisting on its side the combined
+endeavours of the better part of the people, obtained the management of
+public affairs and held possession of it for a considerable time (until
+about B.C. 500). Probably only in States prepared by Dorian
+institutions would such a league have been possible. The rulers, like
+Plato’s (Greek), were required to submit to a severe training in order
+to prepare the way for the education of the other members of the
+community. Long after the dissolution of the Order, eminent
+Pythagoreans, such as Archytas of Tarentum, retained their political
+influence over the cities of Magna Graecia. There was much here that
+was suggestive to the kindred spirit of Plato, who had doubtless
+meditated deeply on the ‘way of life of Pythagoras’ (Rep.) and his
+followers. Slight traces of Pythagoreanism are to be found in the
+mystical number of the State, in the number which expresses the
+interval between the king and the tyrant, in the doctrine of
+transmigration, in the music of the spheres, as well as in the great
+though secondary importance ascribed to mathematics in education.
+
+But as in his philosophy, so also in the form of his State, he goes far
+beyond the old Pythagoreans. He attempts a task really impossible,
+which is to unite the past of Greek history with the future of
+philosophy, analogous to that other impossibility, which has often been
+the dream of Christendom, the attempt to unite the past history of
+Europe with the kingdom of Christ. Nothing actually existing in the
+world at all resembles Plato’s ideal State; nor does he himself imagine
+that such a State is possible. This he repeats again and again; e.g. in
+the Republic, or in the Laws where, casting a glance back on the
+Republic, he admits that the perfect state of communism and philosophy
+was impossible in his own age, though still to be retained as a
+pattern. The same doubt is implied in the earnestness with which he
+argues in the Republic that ideals are none the worse because they
+cannot be realized in fact, and in the chorus of laughter, which like a
+breaking wave will, as he anticipates, greet the mention of his
+proposals; though like other writers of fiction, he uses all his art to
+give reality to his inventions. When asked how the ideal polity can
+come into being, he answers ironically, ‘When one son of a king becomes
+a philosopher’; he designates the fiction of the earth-born men as ‘a
+noble lie’; and when the structure is finally complete, he fairly tells
+you that his Republic is a vision only, which in some sense may have
+reality, but not in the vulgar one of a reign of philosophers upon
+earth. It has been said that Plato flies as well as walks, but this
+falls short of the truth; for he flies and walks at the same time, and
+is in the air and on firm ground in successive instants.
+
+Niebuhr has asked a trifling question, which may be briefly noticed in
+this place—Was Plato a good citizen? If by this is meant, Was he loyal
+to Athenian institutions?—he can hardly be said to be the friend of
+democracy: but neither is he the friend of any other existing form of
+government; all of them he regarded as ‘states of faction’ (Laws); none
+attained to his ideal of a voluntary rule over voluntary subjects,
+which seems indeed more nearly to describe democracy than any other;
+and the worst of them is tyranny. The truth is, that the question has
+hardly any meaning when applied to a great philosopher whose writings
+are not meant for a particular age and country, but for all time and
+all mankind. The decline of Athenian politics was probably the motive
+which led Plato to frame an ideal State, and the Republic may be
+regarded as reflecting the departing glory of Hellas. As well might we
+complain of St. Augustine, whose great work ‘The City of God’
+originated in a similar motive, for not being loyal to the Roman
+Empire. Even a nearer parallel might be afforded by the first
+Christians, who cannot fairly be charged with being bad citizens
+because, though ‘subject to the higher powers,’ they were looking
+forward to a city which is in heaven.
+
+2. The idea of the perfect State is full of paradox when judged of
+according to the ordinary notions of mankind. The paradoxes of one age
+have been said to become the commonplaces of the next; but the
+paradoxes of Plato are at least as paradoxical to us as they were to
+his contemporaries. The modern world has either sneered at them as
+absurd, or denounced them as unnatural and immoral; men have been
+pleased to find in Aristotle’s criticisms of them the anticipation of
+their own good sense. The wealthy and cultivated classes have disliked
+and also dreaded them; they have pointed with satisfaction to the
+failure of efforts to realize them in practice. Yet since they are the
+thoughts of one of the greatest of human intelligences, and of one who
+had done most to elevate morality and religion, they seem to deserve a
+better treatment at our hands. We may have to address the public, as
+Plato does poetry, and assure them that we mean no harm to existing
+institutions. There are serious errors which have a side of truth and
+which therefore may fairly demand a careful consideration: there are
+truths mixed with error of which we may indeed say, ‘The half is better
+than the whole.’ Yet ‘the half’ may be an important contribution to the
+study of human nature.
+
+(a) The first paradox is the community of goods, which is mentioned
+slightly at the end of the third Book, and seemingly, as Aristotle
+observes, is confined to the guardians; at least no mention is made of
+the other classes. But the omission is not of any real significance,
+and probably arises out of the plan of the work, which prevents the
+writer from entering into details.
+
+Aristotle censures the community of property much in the spirit of
+modern political economy, as tending to repress industry, and as doing
+away with the spirit of benevolence. Modern writers almost refuse to
+consider the subject, which is supposed to have been long ago settled
+by the common opinion of mankind. But it must be remembered that the
+sacredness of property is a notion far more fixed in modern than in
+ancient times. The world has grown older, and is therefore more
+conservative. Primitive society offered many examples of land held in
+common, either by a tribe or by a township, and such may probably have
+been the original form of landed tenure. Ancient legislators had
+invented various modes of dividing and preserving the divisions of land
+among the citizens; according to Aristotle there were nations who held
+the land in common and divided the produce, and there were others who
+divided the land and stored the produce in common. The evils of debt
+and the inequality of property were far greater in ancient than in
+modern times, and the accidents to which property was subject from war,
+or revolution, or taxation, or other legislative interference, were
+also greater. All these circumstances gave property a less fixed and
+sacred character. The early Christians are believed to have held their
+property in common, and the principle is sanctioned by the words of
+Christ himself, and has been maintained as a counsel of perfection in
+almost all ages of the Church. Nor have there been wanting instances of
+modern enthusiasts who have made a religion of communism; in every age
+of religious excitement notions like Wycliffe’s ‘inheritance of grace’
+have tended to prevail. A like spirit, but fiercer and more violent,
+has appeared in politics. ‘The preparation of the Gospel of peace’ soon
+becomes the red flag of Republicanism.
+
+We can hardly judge what effect Plato’s views would have upon his own
+contemporaries; they would perhaps have seemed to them only an
+exaggeration of the Spartan commonwealth. Even modern writers would
+acknowledge that the right of private property is based on expediency,
+and may be interfered with in a variety of ways for the public good.
+Any other mode of vesting property which was found to be more
+advantageous, would in time acquire the same basis of right; ‘the most
+useful,’ in Plato’s words, ‘would be the most sacred.’ The lawyers and
+ecclesiastics of former ages would have spoken of property as a sacred
+institution. But they only meant by such language to oppose the
+greatest amount of resistance to any invasion of the rights of
+individuals and of the Church.
+
+When we consider the question, without any fear of immediate
+application to practice, in the spirit of Plato’s Republic, are we
+quite sure that the received notions of property are the best? Is the
+distribution of wealth which is customary in civilized countries the
+most favourable that can be conceived for the education and development
+of the mass of mankind? Can ‘the spectator of all time and all
+existence’ be quite convinced that one or two thousand years hence,
+great changes will not have taken place in the rights of property, or
+even that the very notion of property, beyond what is necessary for
+personal maintenance, may not have disappeared? This was a distinction
+familiar to Aristotle, though likely to be laughed at among ourselves.
+Such a change would not be greater than some other changes through
+which the world has passed in the transition from ancient to modern
+society, for example, the emancipation of the serfs in Russia, or the
+abolition of slavery in America and the West Indies; and not so great
+as the difference which separates the Eastern village community from
+the Western world. To accomplish such a revolution in the course of a
+few centuries, would imply a rate of progress not more rapid than has
+actually taken place during the last fifty or sixty years. The kingdom
+of Japan underwent more change in five or six years than Europe in five
+or six hundred. Many opinions and beliefs which have been cherished
+among ourselves quite as strongly as the sacredness of property have
+passed away; and the most untenable propositions respecting the right
+of bequests or entail have been maintained with as much fervour as the
+most moderate. Some one will be heard to ask whether a state of society
+can be final in which the interests of thousands are perilled on the
+life or character of a single person. And many will indulge the hope
+that our present condition may, after all, be only transitional, and
+may conduct to a higher, in which property, besides ministering to the
+enjoyment of the few, may also furnish the means of the highest culture
+to all, and will be a greater benefit to the public generally, and also
+more under the control of public authority. There may come a time when
+the saying, ‘Have I not a right to do what I will with my own?’ will
+appear to be a barbarous relic of individualism;—when the possession of
+a part may be a greater blessing to each and all than the possession of
+the whole is now to any one.
+
+Such reflections appear visionary to the eye of the practical
+statesman, but they are within the range of possibility to the
+philosopher. He can imagine that in some distant age or clime, and
+through the influence of some individual, the notion of common property
+may or might have sunk as deep into the heart of a race, and have
+become as fixed to them, as private property is to ourselves. He knows
+that this latter institution is not more than four or five thousand
+years old: may not the end revert to the beginning? In our own age even
+Utopias affect the spirit of legislation, and an abstract idea may
+exercise a great influence on practical politics.
+
+The objections that would be generally urged against Plato’s community
+of property, are the old ones of Aristotle, that motives for exertion
+would be taken away, and that disputes would arise when each was
+dependent upon all. Every man would produce as little and consume as
+much as he liked. The experience of civilized nations has hitherto been
+adverse to Socialism. The effort is too great for human nature; men try
+to live in common, but the personal feeling is always breaking in. On
+the other hand it may be doubted whether our present notions of
+property are not conventional, for they differ in different countries
+and in different states of society. We boast of an individualism which
+is not freedom, but rather an artificial result of the industrial state
+of modern Europe. The individual is nominally free, but he is also
+powerless in a world bound hand and foot in the chains of economic
+necessity. Even if we cannot expect the mass of mankind to become
+disinterested, at any rate we observe in them a power of organization
+which fifty years ago would never have been suspected. The same forces
+which have revolutionized the political system of Europe, may effect a
+similar change in the social and industrial relations of mankind. And
+if we suppose the influence of some good as well as neutral motives
+working in the community, there will be no absurdity in expecting that
+the mass of mankind having power, and becoming enlightened about the
+higher possibilities of human life, when they learn how much more is
+attainable for all than is at present the possession of a favoured few,
+may pursue the common interest with an intelligence and persistency
+which mankind have hitherto never seen.
+
+Now that the world has once been set in motion, and is no longer held
+fast under the tyranny of custom and ignorance; now that criticism has
+pierced the veil of tradition and the past no longer overpowers the
+present,—the progress of civilization may be expected to be far greater
+and swifter than heretofore. Even at our present rate of speed the
+point at which we may arrive in two or three generations is beyond the
+power of imagination to foresee. There are forces in the world which
+work, not in an arithmetical, but in a geometrical ratio of increase.
+Education, to use the expression of Plato, moves like a wheel with an
+ever-multiplying rapidity. Nor can we say how great may be its
+influence, when it becomes universal,—when it has been inherited by
+many generations,—when it is freed from the trammels of superstition
+and rightly adapted to the wants and capacities of different classes of
+men and women. Neither do we know how much more the co-operation of
+minds or of hands may be capable of accomplishing, whether in labour or
+in study. The resources of the natural sciences are not half-developed
+as yet; the soil of the earth, instead of growing more barren, may
+become many times more fertile than hitherto; the uses of machinery far
+greater, and also more minute than at present. New secrets of
+physiology may be revealed, deeply affecting human nature in its
+innermost recesses. The standard of health may be raised and the lives
+of men prolonged by sanitary and medical knowledge. There may be peace,
+there may be leisure, there may be innocent refreshments of many kinds.
+The ever-increasing power of locomotion may join the extremes of earth.
+There may be mysterious workings of the human mind, such as occur only
+at great crises of history. The East and the West may meet together,
+and all nations may contribute their thoughts and their experience to
+the common stock of humanity. Many other elements enter into a
+speculation of this kind. But it is better to make an end of them. For
+such reflections appear to the majority far-fetched, and to men of
+science, commonplace.
+
+(b) Neither to the mind of Plato nor of Aristotle did the doctrine of
+community of property present at all the same difficulty, or appear to
+be the same violation of the common Hellenic sentiment, as the
+community of wives and children. This paradox he prefaces by another
+proposal, that the occupations of men and women shall be the same, and
+that to this end they shall have a common training and education. Male
+and female animals have the same pursuits—why not also the two sexes of
+man?
+
+But have we not here fallen into a contradiction? for we were saying
+that different natures should have different pursuits. How then can men
+and women have the same? And is not the proposal inconsistent with our
+notion of the division of labour?—These objections are no sooner raised
+than answered; for, according to Plato, there is no organic difference
+between men and women, but only the accidental one that men beget and
+women bear children. Following the analogy of the other animals, he
+contends that all natural gifts are scattered about indifferently among
+both sexes, though there may be a superiority of degree on the part of
+the men. The objection on the score of decency to their taking part in
+the same gymnastic exercises, is met by Plato’s assertion that the
+existing feeling is a matter of habit.
+
+That Plato should have emancipated himself from the ideas of his own
+country and from the example of the East, shows a wonderful
+independence of mind. He is conscious that women are half the human
+race, in some respects the more important half (Laws); and for the sake
+both of men and women he desires to raise the woman to a higher level
+of existence. He brings, not sentiment, but philosophy to bear upon a
+question which both in ancient and modern times has been chiefly
+regarded in the light of custom or feeling. The Greeks had noble
+conceptions of womanhood in the goddesses Athene and Artemis, and in
+the heroines Antigone and Andromache. But these ideals had no
+counterpart in actual life. The Athenian woman was in no way the equal
+of her husband; she was not the entertainer of his guests or the
+mistress of his house, but only his housekeeper and the mother of his
+children. She took no part in military or political matters; nor is
+there any instance in the later ages of Greece of a woman becoming
+famous in literature. ‘Hers is the greatest glory who has the least
+renown among men,’ is the historian’s conception of feminine
+excellence. A very different ideal of womanhood is held up by Plato to
+the world; she is to be the companion of the man, and to share with him
+in the toils of war and in the cares of government. She is to be
+similarly trained both in bodily and mental exercises. She is to lose
+as far as possible the incidents of maternity and the characteristics
+of the female sex.
+
+The modern antagonist of the equality of the sexes would argue that the
+differences between men and women are not confined to the single point
+urged by Plato; that sensibility, gentleness, grace, are the qualities
+of women, while energy, strength, higher intelligence, are to be looked
+for in men. And the criticism is just: the differences affect the whole
+nature, and are not, as Plato supposes, confined to a single point. But
+neither can we say how far these differences are due to education and
+the opinions of mankind, or physically inherited from the habits and
+opinions of former generations. Women have been always taught, not
+exactly that they are slaves, but that they are in an inferior
+position, which is also supposed to have compensating advantages; and
+to this position they have conformed. It is also true that the physical
+form may easily change in the course of generations through the mode of
+life; and the weakness or delicacy, which was once a matter of opinion,
+may become a physical fact. The characteristics of sex vary greatly in
+different countries and ranks of society, and at different ages in the
+same individuals. Plato may have been right in denying that there was
+any ultimate difference in the sexes of man other than that which
+exists in animals, because all other differences may be conceived to
+disappear in other states of society, or under different circumstances
+of life and training.
+
+The first wave having been passed, we proceed to the second—community
+of wives and children. ‘Is it possible? Is it desirable?’ For as
+Glaucon intimates, and as we far more strongly insist, ‘Great doubts
+may be entertained about both these points.’ Any free discussion of the
+question is impossible, and mankind are perhaps right in not allowing
+the ultimate bases of social life to be examined. Few of us can safely
+enquire into the things which nature hides, any more than we can
+dissect our own bodies. Still, the manner in which Plato arrived at his
+conclusions should be considered. For here, as Mr. Grote has remarked,
+is a wonderful thing, that one of the wisest and best of men should
+have entertained ideas of morality which are wholly at variance with
+our own. And if we would do Plato justice, we must examine carefully
+the character of his proposals. First, we may observe that the
+relations of the sexes supposed by him are the reverse of licentious:
+he seems rather to aim at an impossible strictness. Secondly, he
+conceives the family to be the natural enemy of the state; and he
+entertains the serious hope that an universal brotherhood may take the
+place of private interests—an aspiration which, although not justified
+by experience, has possessed many noble minds. On the other hand, there
+is no sentiment or imagination in the connections which men and women
+are supposed by him to form; human beings return to the level of the
+animals, neither exalting to heaven, nor yet abusing the natural
+instincts. All that world of poetry and fancy which the passion of love
+has called forth in modern literature and romance would have been
+banished by Plato. The arrangements of marriage in the Republic are
+directed to one object—the improvement of the race. In successive
+generations a great development both of bodily and mental qualities
+might be possible. The analogy of animals tends to show that mankind
+can within certain limits receive a change of nature. And as in animals
+we should commonly choose the best for breeding, and destroy the
+others, so there must be a selection made of the human beings whose
+lives are worthy to be preserved.
+
+We start back horrified from this Platonic ideal, in the belief, first,
+that the higher feelings of humanity are far too strong to be crushed
+out; secondly, that if the plan could be carried into execution we
+should be poorly recompensed by improvements in the breed for the loss
+of the best things in life. The greatest regard for the weakest and
+meanest of human beings—the infant, the criminal, the insane, the
+idiot, truly seems to us one of the noblest results of Christianity. We
+have learned, though as yet imperfectly, that the individual man has an
+endless value in the sight of God, and that we honour Him when we
+honour the darkened and disfigured image of Him (Laws). This is the
+lesson which Christ taught in a parable when He said, ‘Their angels do
+always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven.’ Such lessons
+are only partially realized in any age; they were foreign to the age of
+Plato, as they have very different degrees of strength in different
+countries or ages of the Christian world. To the Greek the family was a
+religious and customary institution binding the members together by a
+tie inferior in strength to that of friendship, and having a less
+solemn and sacred sound than that of country. The relationship which
+existed on the lower level of custom, Plato imagined that he was
+raising to the higher level of nature and reason; while from the modern
+and Christian point of view we regard him as sanctioning murder and
+destroying the first principles of morality.
+
+The great error in these and similar speculations is that the
+difference between man and the animals is forgotten in them. The human
+being is regarded with the eye of a dog- or bird-fancier, or at best of
+a slave-owner; the higher or human qualities are left out. The breeder
+of animals aims chiefly at size or speed or strength; in a few cases at
+courage or temper; most often the fitness of the animal for food is the
+great desideratum. But mankind are not bred to be eaten, nor yet for
+their superiority in fighting or in running or in drawing carts.
+Neither does the improvement of the human race consist merely in the
+increase of the bones and flesh, but in the growth and enlightenment of
+the mind. Hence there must be ‘a marriage of true minds’ as well as of
+bodies, of imagination and reason as well as of lusts and instincts.
+Men and women without feeling or imagination are justly called brutes;
+yet Plato takes away these qualities and puts nothing in their place,
+not even the desire of a noble offspring, since parents are not to know
+their own children. The most important transaction of social life, he
+who is the idealist philosopher converts into the most brutal. For the
+pair are to have no relation to one another, except at the hymeneal
+festival; their children are not theirs, but the state’s; nor is any
+tie of affection to unite them. Yet here the analogy of the animals
+might have saved Plato from a gigantic error, if he had ‘not lost sight
+of his own illustration.’ For the ‘nobler sort of birds and beasts’
+nourish and protect their offspring and are faithful to one another.
+
+An eminent physiologist thinks it worth while ‘to try and place life on
+a physical basis.’ But should not life rest on the moral rather than
+upon the physical? The higher comes first, then the lower, first the
+human and rational, afterwards the animal. Yet they are not absolutely
+divided; and in times of sickness or moments of self-indulgence they
+seem to be only different aspects of a common human nature which
+includes them both. Neither is the moral the limit of the physical, but
+the expansion and enlargement of it,—the highest form which the
+physical is capable of receiving. As Plato would say, the body does not
+take care of the body, and still less of the mind, but the mind takes
+care of both. In all human action not that which is common to man and
+the animals is the characteristic element, but that which distinguishes
+him from them. Even if we admit the physical basis, and resolve all
+virtue into health of body ‘la facon que notre sang circule,’ still on
+merely physical grounds we must come back to ideas. Mind and reason and
+duty and conscience, under these or other names, are always
+reappearing. There cannot be health of body without health of mind; nor
+health of mind without the sense of duty and the love of truth (Charm).
+
+That the greatest of ancient philosophers should in his regulations
+about marriage have fallen into the error of separating body and mind,
+does indeed appear surprising. Yet the wonder is not so much that Plato
+should have entertained ideas of morality which to our own age are
+revolting, but that he should have contradicted himself to an extent
+which is hardly credible, falling in an instant from the heaven of
+idealism into the crudest animalism. Rejoicing in the newly found gift
+of reflection, he appears to have thought out a subject about which he
+had better have followed the enlightened feeling of his own age. The
+general sentiment of Hellas was opposed to his monstrous fancy. The old
+poets, and in later time the tragedians, showed no want of respect for
+the family, on which much of their religion was based. But the example
+of Sparta, and perhaps in some degree the tendency to defy public
+opinion, seems to have misled him. He will make one family out of all
+the families of the state. He will select the finest specimens of men
+and women and breed from these only.
+
+Yet because the illusion is always returning (for the animal part of
+human nature will from time to time assert itself in the disguise of
+philosophy as well as of poetry), and also because any departure from
+established morality, even where this is not intended, is apt to be
+unsettling, it may be worth while to draw out a little more at length
+the objections to the Platonic marriage. In the first place, history
+shows that wherever polygamy has been largely allowed the race has
+deteriorated. One man to one woman is the law of God and nature. Nearly
+all the civilized peoples of the world at some period before the age of
+written records, have become monogamists; and the step when once taken
+has never been retraced. The exceptions occurring among Brahmins or
+Mahometans or the ancient Persians, are of that sort which may be said
+to prove the rule. The connexions formed between superior and inferior
+races hardly ever produce a noble offspring, because they are
+licentious; and because the children in such cases usually despise the
+mother and are neglected by the father who is ashamed of them.
+Barbarous nations when they are introduced by Europeans to vice die
+out; polygamist peoples either import and adopt children from other
+countries, or dwindle in numbers, or both. Dynasties and aristocracies
+which have disregarded the laws of nature have decreased in numbers and
+degenerated in stature; ‘mariages de convenance’ leave their enfeebling
+stamp on the offspring of them (King Lear). The marriage of near
+relations, or the marrying in and in of the same family tends
+constantly to weakness or idiocy in the children, sometimes assuming
+the form as they grow older of passionate licentiousness. The common
+prostitute rarely has any offspring. By such unmistakable evidence is
+the authority of morality asserted in the relations of the sexes: and
+so many more elements enter into this ‘mystery’ than are dreamed of by
+Plato and some other philosophers.
+
+Recent enquirers have indeed arrived at the conclusion that among
+primitive tribes there existed a community of wives as of property, and
+that the captive taken by the spear was the only wife or slave whom any
+man was permitted to call his own. The partial existence of such
+customs among some of the lower races of man, and the survival of
+peculiar ceremonies in the marriages of some civilized nations, are
+thought to furnish a proof of similar institutions having been once
+universal. There can be no question that the study of anthropology has
+considerably changed our views respecting the first appearance of man
+upon the earth. We know more about the aborigines of the world than
+formerly, but our increasing knowledge shows above all things how
+little we know. With all the helps which written monuments afford, we
+do but faintly realize the condition of man two thousand or three
+thousand years ago. Of what his condition was when removed to a
+distance 200,000 or 300,000 years, when the majority of mankind were
+lower and nearer the animals than any tribe now existing upon the
+earth, we cannot even entertain conjecture. Plato (Laws) and Aristotle
+(Metaph.) may have been more right than we imagine in supposing that
+some forms of civilisation were discovered and lost several times over.
+If we cannot argue that all barbarism is a degraded civilization,
+neither can we set any limits to the depth of degradation to which the
+human race may sink through war, disease, or isolation. And if we are
+to draw inferences about the origin of marriage from the practice of
+barbarous nations, we should also consider the remoter analogy of the
+animals. Many birds and animals, especially the carnivorous, have only
+one mate, and the love and care of offspring which seems to be natural
+is inconsistent with the primitive theory of marriage. If we go back to
+an imaginary state in which men were almost animals and the companions
+of them, we have as much right to argue from what is animal to what is
+human as from the barbarous to the civilized man. The record of animal
+life on the globe is fragmentary,—the connecting links are wanting and
+cannot be supplied; the record of social life is still more fragmentary
+and precarious. Even if we admit that our first ancestors had no such
+institution as marriage, still the stages by which men passed from
+outer barbarism to the comparative civilization of China, Assyria, and
+Greece, or even of the ancient Germans, are wholly unknown to us.
+
+Such speculations are apt to be unsettling, because they seem to show
+that an institution which was thought to be a revelation from heaven,
+is only the growth of history and experience. We ask what is the origin
+of marriage, and we are told that like the right of property, after
+many wars and contests, it has gradually arisen out of the selfishness
+of barbarians. We stand face to face with human nature in its primitive
+nakedness. We are compelled to accept, not the highest, but the lowest
+account of the origin of human society. But on the other hand we may
+truly say that every step in human progress has been in the same
+direction, and that in the course of ages the idea of marriage and of
+the family has been more and more defined and consecrated. The
+civilized East is immeasurably in advance of any savage tribes; the
+Greeks and Romans have improved upon the East; the Christian nations
+have been stricter in their views of the marriage relation than any of
+the ancients. In this as in so many other things, instead of looking
+back with regret to the past, we should look forward with hope to the
+future. We must consecrate that which we believe to be the most holy,
+and that ‘which is the most holy will be the most useful.’ There is
+more reason for maintaining the sacredness of the marriage tie, when we
+see the benefit of it, than when we only felt a vague religious horror
+about the violation of it. But in all times of transition, when
+established beliefs are being undermined, there is a danger that in the
+passage from the old to the new we may insensibly let go the moral
+principle, finding an excuse for listening to the voice of passion in
+the uncertainty of knowledge, or the fluctuations of opinion. And there
+are many persons in our own day who, enlightened by the study of
+anthropology, and fascinated by what is new and strange, some using the
+language of fear, others of hope, are inclined to believe that a time
+will come when through the self-assertion of women, or the rebellious
+spirit of children, by the analysis of human relations, or by the force
+of outward circumstances, the ties of family life may be broken or
+greatly relaxed. They point to societies in America and elsewhere which
+tend to show that the destruction of the family need not necessarily
+involve the overthrow of all morality. Wherever we may think of such
+speculations, we can hardly deny that they have been more rife in this
+generation than in any other; and whither they are tending, who can
+predict?
+
+To the doubts and queries raised by these ‘social reformers’ respecting
+the relation of the sexes and the moral nature of man, there is a
+sufficient answer, if any is needed. The difference about them and us
+is really one of fact. They are speaking of man as they wish or fancy
+him to be, but we are speaking of him as he is. They isolate the animal
+part of his nature; we regard him as a creature having many sides, or
+aspects, moving between good and evil, striving to rise above himself
+and to become ‘a little lower than the angels.’ We also, to use a
+Platonic formula, are not ignorant of the dissatisfactions and
+incompatibilities of family life, of the meannesses of trade, of the
+flatteries of one class of society by another, of the impediments which
+the family throws in the way of lofty aims and aspirations. But we are
+conscious that there are evils and dangers in the background greater
+still, which are not appreciated, because they are either concealed or
+suppressed. What a condition of man would that be, in which human
+passions were controlled by no authority, divine or human, in which
+there was no shame or decency, no higher affection overcoming or
+sanctifying the natural instincts, but simply a rule of health! Is it
+for this that we are asked to throw away the civilization which is the
+growth of ages?
+
+For strength and health are not the only qualities to be desired; there
+are the more important considerations of mind and character and soul.
+We know how human nature may be degraded; we do not know how by
+artificial means any improvement in the breed can be effected. The
+problem is a complex one, for if we go back only four steps (and these
+at least enter into the composition of a child), there are commonly
+thirty progenitors to be taken into account. Many curious facts, rarely
+admitting of proof, are told us respecting the inheritance of disease
+or character from a remote ancestor. We can trace the physical
+resemblances of parents and children in the same family—
+
+‘Sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat’;
+
+but scarcely less often the differences which distinguish children both
+from their parents and from one another. We are told of similar mental
+peculiarities running in families, and again of a tendency, as in the
+animals, to revert to a common or original stock. But we have a
+difficulty in distinguishing what is a true inheritance of genius or
+other qualities, and what is mere imitation or the result of similar
+circumstances. Great men and great women have rarely had great fathers
+and mothers. Nothing that we know of in the circumstances of their
+birth or lineage will explain their appearance. Of the English poets of
+the last and two preceding centuries scarcely a descendant
+remains,—none have ever been distinguished. So deeply has nature hidden
+her secret, and so ridiculous is the fancy which has been entertained
+by some that we might in time by suitable marriage arrangements or, as
+Plato would have said, ‘by an ingenious system of lots,’ produce a
+Shakespeare or a Milton. Even supposing that we could breed men having
+the tenacity of bulldogs, or, like the Spartans, ‘lacking the wit to
+run away in battle,’ would the world be any the better? Many of the
+noblest specimens of the human race have been among the weakest
+physically. Tyrtaeus or Aesop, or our own Newton, would have been
+exposed at Sparta; and some of the fairest and strongest men and women
+have been among the wickedest and worst. Not by the Platonic device of
+uniting the strong and fair with the strong and fair, regardless of
+sentiment and morality, nor yet by his other device of combining
+dissimilar natures (Statesman), have mankind gradually passed from the
+brutality and licentiousness of primitive marriage to marriage
+Christian and civilized.
+
+Few persons would deny that we bring into the world an inheritance of
+mental and physical qualities derived first from our parents, or
+through them from some remoter ancestor, secondly from our race,
+thirdly from the general condition of mankind into which we are born.
+Nothing is commoner than the remark, that ‘So and so is like his father
+or his uncle’; and an aged person may not unfrequently note a
+resemblance in a youth to a long-forgotten ancestor, observing that
+‘Nature sometimes skips a generation.’ It may be true also, that if we
+knew more about our ancestors, these similarities would be even more
+striking to us. Admitting the facts which are thus described in a
+popular way, we may however remark that there is no method of
+difference by which they can be defined or estimated, and that they
+constitute only a small part of each individual. The doctrine of
+heredity may seem to take out of our hands the conduct of our own
+lives, but it is the idea, not the fact, which is really terrible to
+us. For what we have received from our ancestors is only a fraction of
+what we are, or may become. The knowledge that drunkenness or insanity
+has been prevalent in a family may be the best safeguard against their
+recurrence in a future generation. The parent will be most awake to the
+vices or diseases in his child of which he is most sensible within
+himself. The whole of life may be directed to their prevention or cure.
+The traces of consumption may become fainter, or be wholly effaced: the
+inherent tendency to vice or crime may be eradicated. And so heredity,
+from being a curse, may become a blessing. We acknowledge that in the
+matter of our birth, as in our nature generally, there are previous
+circumstances which affect us. But upon this platform of circumstances
+or within this wall of necessity, we have still the power of creating a
+life for ourselves by the informing energy of the human will.
+
+There is another aspect of the marriage question to which Plato is a
+stranger. All the children born in his state are foundlings. It never
+occurred to him that the greater part of them, according to universal
+experience, would have perished. For children can only be brought up in
+families. There is a subtle sympathy between the mother and the child
+which cannot be supplied by other mothers, or by ‘strong nurses one or
+more’ (Laws). If Plato’s ‘pen’ was as fatal as the Creches of Paris, or
+the foundling hospital of Dublin, more than nine-tenths of his children
+would have perished. There would have been no need to expose or put out
+of the way the weaklier children, for they would have died of
+themselves. So emphatically does nature protest against the destruction
+of the family.
+
+What Plato had heard or seen of Sparta was applied by him in a mistaken
+way to his ideal commonwealth. He probably observed that both the
+Spartan men and women were superior in form and strength to the other
+Greeks; and this superiority he was disposed to attribute to the laws
+and customs relating to marriage. He did not consider that the desire
+of a noble offspring was a passion among the Spartans, or that their
+physical superiority was to be attributed chiefly, not to their
+marriage customs, but to their temperance and training. He did not
+reflect that Sparta was great, not in consequence of the relaxation of
+morality, but in spite of it, by virtue of a political principle
+stronger far than existed in any other Grecian state. Least of all did
+he observe that Sparta did not really produce the finest specimens of
+the Greek race. The genius, the political inspiration of Athens, the
+love of liberty—all that has made Greece famous with posterity, were
+wanting among the Spartans. They had no Themistocles, or Pericles, or
+Aeschylus, or Sophocles, or Socrates, or Plato. The individual was not
+allowed to appear above the state; the laws were fixed, and he had no
+business to alter or reform them. Yet whence has the progress of cities
+and nations arisen, if not from remarkable individuals, coming into the
+world we know not how, and from causes over which we have no control?
+Something too much may have been said in modern times of the value of
+individuality. But we can hardly condemn too strongly a system which,
+instead of fostering the scattered seeds or sparks of genius and
+character, tends to smother and extinguish them.
+
+Still, while condemning Plato, we must acknowledge that neither
+Christianity, nor any other form of religion and society, has hitherto
+been able to cope with this most difficult of social problems, and that
+the side from which Plato regarded it is that from which we turn away.
+Population is the most untameable force in the political and social
+world. Do we not find, especially in large cities, that the greatest
+hindrance to the amelioration of the poor is their improvidence in
+marriage?—a small fault truly, if not involving endless consequences.
+There are whole countries too, such as India, or, nearer home, Ireland,
+in which a right solution of the marriage question seems to lie at the
+foundation of the happiness of the community. There are too many people
+on a given space, or they marry too early and bring into the world a
+sickly and half-developed offspring; or owing to the very conditions of
+their existence, they become emaciated and hand on a similar life to
+their descendants. But who can oppose the voice of prudence to the
+‘mightiest passions of mankind’ (Laws), especially when they have been
+licensed by custom and religion? In addition to the influences of
+education, we seem to require some new principles of right and wrong in
+these matters, some force of opinion, which may indeed be already heard
+whispering in private, but has never affected the moral sentiments of
+mankind in general. We unavoidably lose sight of the principle of
+utility, just in that action of our lives in which we have the most
+need of it. The influences which we can bring to bear upon this
+question are chiefly indirect. In a generation or two, education,
+emigration, improvements in agriculture and manufactures, may have
+provided the solution. The state physician hardly likes to probe the
+wound: it is beyond his art; a matter which he cannot safely let alone,
+but which he dare not touch:
+
+‘We do but skin and film the ulcerous place.’
+
+When again in private life we see a whole family one by one dropping
+into the grave under the Ate of some inherited malady, and the parents
+perhaps surviving them, do our minds ever go back silently to that day
+twenty-five or thirty years before on which under the fairest auspices,
+amid the rejoicings of friends and acquaintances, a bride and
+bridegroom joined hands with one another? In making such a reflection
+we are not opposing physical considerations to moral, but moral to
+physical; we are seeking to make the voice of reason heard, which
+drives us back from the extravagance of sentimentalism on common sense.
+The late Dr. Combe is said by his biographer to have resisted the
+temptation to marriage, because he knew that he was subject to
+hereditary consumption. One who deserved to be called a man of genius,
+a friend of my youth, was in the habit of wearing a black ribbon on his
+wrist, in order to remind him that, being liable to outbreaks of
+insanity, he must not give way to the natural impulses of affection: he
+died unmarried in a lunatic asylum. These two little facts suggest the
+reflection that a very few persons have done from a sense of duty what
+the rest of mankind ought to have done under like circumstances, if
+they had allowed themselves to think of all the misery which they were
+about to bring into the world. If we could prevent such marriages
+without any violation of feeling or propriety, we clearly ought; and
+the prohibition in the course of time would be protected by a ‘horror
+naturalis’ similar to that which, in all civilized ages and countries,
+has prevented the marriage of near relations by blood. Mankind would
+have been the happier, if some things which are now allowed had from
+the beginning been denied to them; if the sanction of religion could
+have prohibited practices inimical to health; if sanitary principles
+could in early ages have been invested with a superstitious awe. But,
+living as we do far on in the world’s history, we are no longer able to
+stamp at once with the impress of religion a new prohibition. A free
+agent cannot have his fancies regulated by law; and the execution of
+the law would be rendered impossible, owing to the uncertainty of the
+cases in which marriage was to be forbidden. Who can weigh virtue, or
+even fortune against health, or moral and mental qualities against
+bodily? Who can measure probabilities against certainties? There has
+been some good as well as evil in the discipline of suffering; and
+there are diseases, such as consumption, which have exercised a
+refining and softening influence on the character. Youth is too
+inexperienced to balance such nice considerations; parents do not often
+think of them, or think of them too late. They are at a distance and
+may probably be averted; change of place, a new state of life, the
+interests of a home may be the cure of them. So persons vainly reason
+when their minds are already made up and their fortunes irrevocably
+linked together. Nor is there any ground for supposing that marriages
+are to any great extent influenced by reflections of this sort, which
+seem unable to make any head against the irresistible impulse of
+individual attachment.
+
+Lastly, no one can have observed the first rising flood of the passions
+in youth, the difficulty of regulating them, and the effects on the
+whole mind and nature which follow from them, the stimulus which is
+given to them by the imagination, without feeling that there is
+something unsatisfactory in our method of treating them. That the most
+important influence on human life should be wholly left to chance or
+shrouded in mystery, and instead of being disciplined or understood,
+should be required to conform only to an external standard of
+propriety—cannot be regarded by the philosopher as a safe or
+satisfactory condition of human things. And still those who have the
+charge of youth may find a way by watchfulness, by affection, by the
+manliness and innocence of their own lives, by occasional hints, by
+general admonitions which every one can apply for himself, to mitigate
+this terrible evil which eats out the heart of individuals and corrupts
+the moral sentiments of nations. In no duty towards others is there
+more need of reticence and self-restraint. So great is the danger lest
+he who would be the counsellor of another should reveal the secret
+prematurely, lest he should get another too much into his power; or fix
+the passing impression of evil by demanding the confession of it.
+
+Nor is Plato wrong in asserting that family attachments may interfere
+with higher aims. If there have been some who ‘to party gave up what
+was meant for mankind,’ there have certainly been others who to family
+gave up what was meant for mankind or for their country. The cares of
+children, the necessity of procuring money for their support, the
+flatteries of the rich by the poor, the exclusiveness of caste, the
+pride of birth or wealth, the tendency of family life to divert men
+from the pursuit of the ideal or the heroic, are as lowering in our own
+age as in that of Plato. And if we prefer to look at the gentle
+influences of home, the development of the affections, the amenities of
+society, the devotion of one member of a family for the good of the
+others, which form one side of the picture, we must not quarrel with
+him, or perhaps ought rather to be grateful to him, for having
+presented to us the reverse. Without attempting to defend Plato on
+grounds of morality, we may allow that there is an aspect of the world
+which has not unnaturally led him into error.
+
+We hardly appreciate the power which the idea of the State, like all
+other abstract ideas, exercised over the mind of Plato. To us the State
+seems to be built up out of the family, or sometimes to be the
+framework in which family and social life is contained. But to Plato in
+his present mood of mind the family is only a disturbing influence
+which, instead of filling up, tends to disarrange the higher unity of
+the State. No organization is needed except a political, which,
+regarded from another point of view, is a military one. The State is
+all-sufficing for the wants of man, and, like the idea of the Church in
+later ages, absorbs all other desires and affections. In time of war
+the thousand citizens are to stand like a rampart impregnable against
+the world or the Persian host; in time of peace the preparation for war
+and their duties to the State, which are also their duties to one
+another, take up their whole life and time. The only other interest
+which is allowed to them besides that of war, is the interest of
+philosophy. When they are too old to be soldiers they are to retire
+from active life and to have a second novitiate of study and
+contemplation. There is an element of monasticism even in Plato’s
+communism. If he could have done without children, he might have
+converted his Republic into a religious order. Neither in the Laws,
+when the daylight of common sense breaks in upon him, does he retract
+his error. In the state of which he would be the founder, there is no
+marrying or giving in marriage: but because of the infirmity of
+mankind, he condescends to allow the law of nature to prevail.
+
+(c) But Plato has an equal, or, in his own estimation, even greater
+paradox in reserve, which is summed up in the famous text, ‘Until kings
+are philosophers or philosophers are kings, cities will never cease
+from ill.’ And by philosophers he explains himself to mean those who
+are capable of apprehending ideas, especially the idea of good. To the
+attainment of this higher knowledge the second education is directed.
+Through a process of training which has already made them good citizens
+they are now to be made good legislators. We find with some surprise
+(not unlike the feeling which Aristotle in a well-known passage
+describes the hearers of Plato’s lectures as experiencing, when they
+went to a discourse on the idea of good, expecting to be instructed in
+moral truths, and received instead of them arithmetical and
+mathematical formulae) that Plato does not propose for his future
+legislators any study of finance or law or military tactics, but only
+of abstract mathematics, as a preparation for the still more abstract
+conception of good. We ask, with Aristotle, What is the use of a man
+knowing the idea of good, if he does not know what is good for this
+individual, this state, this condition of society? We cannot understand
+how Plato’s legislators or guardians are to be fitted for their work of
+statesmen by the study of the five mathematical sciences. We vainly
+search in Plato’s own writings for any explanation of this seeming
+absurdity.
+
+The discovery of a great metaphysical conception seems to ravish the
+mind with a prophetic consciousness which takes away the power of
+estimating its value. No metaphysical enquirer has ever fairly
+criticised his own speculations; in his own judgment they have been
+above criticism; nor has he understood that what to him seemed to be
+absolute truth may reappear in the next generation as a form of logic
+or an instrument of thought. And posterity have also sometimes equally
+misapprehended the real value of his speculations. They appear to them
+to have contributed nothing to the stock of human knowledge. The IDEA
+of good is apt to be regarded by the modern thinker as an unmeaning
+abstraction; but he forgets that this abstraction is waiting ready for
+use, and will hereafter be filled up by the divisions of knowledge.
+When mankind do not as yet know that the world is subject to law, the
+introduction of the mere conception of law or design or final cause,
+and the far-off anticipation of the harmony of knowledge, are great
+steps onward. Even the crude generalization of the unity of all things
+leads men to view the world with different eyes, and may easily affect
+their conception of human life and of politics, and also their own
+conduct and character (Tim). We can imagine how a great mind like that
+of Pericles might derive elevation from his intercourse with Anaxagoras
+(Phaedr.). To be struggling towards a higher but unattainable
+conception is a more favourable intellectual condition than to rest
+satisfied in a narrow portion of ascertained fact. And the earlier,
+which have sometimes been the greater ideas of science, are often lost
+sight of at a later period. How rarely can we say of any modern
+enquirer in the magnificent language of Plato, that ‘He is the
+spectator of all time and of all existence!’
+
+Nor is there anything unnatural in the hasty application of these vast
+metaphysical conceptions to practical and political life. In the first
+enthusiasm of ideas men are apt to see them everywhere, and to apply
+them in the most remote sphere. They do not understand that the
+experience of ages is required to enable them to fill up ‘the
+intermediate axioms.’ Plato himself seems to have imagined that the
+truths of psychology, like those of astronomy and harmonics, would be
+arrived at by a process of deduction, and that the method which he has
+pursued in the Fourth Book, of inferring them from experience and the
+use of language, was imperfect and only provisional. But when, after
+having arrived at the idea of good, which is the end of the science of
+dialectic, he is asked, What is the nature, and what are the divisions
+of the science? He refuses to answer, as if intending by the refusal to
+intimate that the state of knowledge which then existed was not such as
+would allow the philosopher to enter into his final rest. The previous
+sciences must first be studied, and will, we may add, continue to be
+studied tell the end of time, although in a sense different from any
+which Plato could have conceived. But we may observe, that while he is
+aware of the vacancy of his own ideal, he is full of enthusiasm in the
+contemplation of it. Looking into the orb of light, he sees nothing,
+but he is warmed and elevated. The Hebrew prophet believed that faith
+in God would enable him to govern the world; the Greek philosopher
+imagined that contemplation of the good would make a legislator. There
+is as much to be filled up in the one case as in the other, and the one
+mode of conception is to the Israelite what the other is to the Greek.
+Both find a repose in a divine perfection, which, whether in a more
+personal or impersonal form, exists without them and independently of
+them, as well as within them.
+
+There is no mention of the idea of good in the Timaeus, nor of the
+divine Creator of the world in the Republic; and we are naturally led
+to ask in what relation they stand to one another. Is God above or
+below the idea of good? Or is the Idea of Good another mode of
+conceiving God? The latter appears to be the truer answer. To the Greek
+philosopher the perfection and unity of God was a far higher conception
+than his personality, which he hardly found a word to express, and
+which to him would have seemed to be borrowed from mythology. To the
+Christian, on the other hand, or to the modern thinker in general, it
+is difficult, if not impossible, to attach reality to what he terms
+mere abstraction; while to Plato this very abstraction is the truest
+and most real of all things. Hence, from a difference in forms of
+thought, Plato appears to be resting on a creation of his own mind
+only. But if we may be allowed to paraphrase the idea of good by the
+words ‘intelligent principle of law and order in the universe,
+embracing equally man and nature,’ we begin to find a meeting-point
+between him and ourselves.
+
+The question whether the ruler or statesman should be a philosopher is
+one that has not lost interest in modern times. In most countries of
+Europe and Asia there has been some one in the course of ages who has
+truly united the power of command with the power of thought and
+reflection, as there have been also many false combinations of these
+qualities. Some kind of speculative power is necessary both in
+practical and political life; like the rhetorician in the Phaedrus, men
+require to have a conception of the varieties of human character, and
+to be raised on great occasions above the commonplaces of ordinary
+life. Yet the idea of the philosopher-statesman has never been popular
+with the mass of mankind; partly because he cannot take the world into
+his confidence or make them understand the motives from which he acts;
+and also because they are jealous of a power which they do not
+understand. The revolution which human nature desires to effect step by
+step in many ages is likely to be precipitated by him in a single year
+or life. They are afraid that in the pursuit of his greater aims he may
+disregard the common feelings of humanity, he is too apt to be looking
+into the distant future or back into the remote past, and unable to see
+actions or events which, to use an expression of Plato’s ‘are tumbling
+out at his feet.’ Besides, as Plato would say, there are other
+corruptions of these philosophical statesmen. Either ‘the native hue of
+resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,’ and at the
+moment when action above all things is required he is undecided, or
+general principles are enunciated by him in order to cover some change
+of policy; or his ignorance of the world has made him more easily fall
+a prey to the arts of others; or in some cases he has been converted
+into a courtier, who enjoys the luxury of holding liberal opinions, but
+was never known to perform a liberal action. No wonder that mankind
+have been in the habit of calling statesmen of this class pedants,
+sophisters, doctrinaires, visionaries. For, as we may be allowed to
+say, a little parodying the words of Plato, ‘they have seen bad
+imitations of the philosopher-statesman.’ But a man in whom the power
+of thought and action are perfectly balanced, equal to the present,
+reaching forward to the future, ‘such a one,’ ruling in a
+constitutional state, ‘they have never seen.’
+
+But as the philosopher is apt to fail in the routine of political life,
+so the ordinary statesman is also apt to fail in extraordinary crises.
+When the face of the world is beginning to alter, and thunder is heard
+in the distance, he is still guided by his old maxims, and is the slave
+of his inveterate party prejudices; he cannot perceive the signs of the
+times; instead of looking forward he looks back; he learns nothing and
+forgets nothing; with ‘wise saws and modern instances’ he would stem
+the rising tide of revolution. He lives more and more within the circle
+of his own party, as the world without him becomes stronger. This seems
+to be the reason why the old order of things makes so poor a figure
+when confronted with the new, why churches can never reform, why most
+political changes are made blindly and convulsively. The great crises
+in the history of nations have often been met by an ecclesiastical
+positiveness, and a more obstinate reassertion of principles which have
+lost their hold upon a nation. The fixed ideas of a reactionary
+statesman may be compared to madness; they grow upon him, and he
+becomes possessed by them; no judgement of others is ever admitted by
+him to be weighed in the balance against his own.
+
+(d) Plato, labouring under what, to modern readers, appears to have
+been a confusion of ideas, assimilates the state to the individual, and
+fails to distinguish Ethics from Politics. He thinks that to be most of
+a state which is most like one man, and in which the citizens have the
+greatest uniformity of character. He does not see that the analogy is
+partly fallacious, and that the will or character of a state or nation
+is really the balance or rather the surplus of individual wills, which
+are limited by the condition of having to act in common. The movement
+of a body of men can never have the pliancy or facility of a single
+man; the freedom of the individual, which is always limited, becomes
+still more straitened when transferred to a nation. The powers of
+action and feeling are necessarily weaker and more balanced when they
+are diffused through a community; whence arises the often discussed
+question, ‘Can a nation, like an individual, have a conscience?’ We
+hesitate to say that the characters of nations are nothing more than
+the sum of the characters of the individuals who compose them; because
+there may be tendencies in individuals which react upon one another. A
+whole nation may be wiser than any one man in it; or may be animated by
+some common opinion or feeling which could not equally have affected
+the mind of a single person, or may have been inspired by a leader of
+genius to perform acts more than human. Plato does not appear to have
+analysed the complications which arise out of the collective action of
+mankind. Neither is he capable of seeing that analogies, though
+specious as arguments, may often have no foundation in fact, or of
+distinguishing between what is intelligible or vividly present to the
+mind, and what is true. In this respect he is far below Aristotle, who
+is comparatively seldom imposed upon by false analogies. He cannot
+disentangle the arts from the virtues—at least he is always arguing
+from one to the other. His notion of music is transferred from harmony
+of sounds to harmony of life: in this he is assisted by the ambiguities
+of language as well as by the prevalence of Pythagorean notions. And
+having once assimilated the state to the individual, he imagines that
+he will find the succession of states paralleled in the lives of
+individuals.
+
+Still, through this fallacious medium, a real enlargement of ideas is
+attained. When the virtues as yet presented no distinct conception to
+the mind, a great advance was made by the comparison of them with the
+arts; for virtue is partly art, and has an outward form as well as an
+inward principle. The harmony of music affords a lively image of the
+harmonies of the world and of human life, and may be regarded as a
+splendid illustration which was naturally mistaken for a real analogy.
+In the same way the identification of ethics with politics has a
+tendency to give definiteness to ethics, and also to elevate and
+ennoble men’s notions of the aims of government and of the duties of
+citizens; for ethics from one point of view may be conceived as an
+idealized law and politics; and politics, as ethics reduced to the
+conditions of human society. There have been evils which have arisen
+out of the attempt to identify them, and this has led to the separation
+or antagonism of them, which has been introduced by modern political
+writers. But we may likewise feel that something has been lost in their
+separation, and that the ancient philosophers who estimated the moral
+and intellectual wellbeing of mankind first, and the wealth of nations
+and individuals second, may have a salutary influence on the
+speculations of modern times. Many political maxims originate in a
+reaction against an opposite error; and when the errors against which
+they were directed have passed away, they in turn become errors.
+
+3. Plato’s views of education are in several respects remarkable; like
+the rest of the Republic they are partly Greek and partly ideal,
+beginning with the ordinary curriculum of the Greek youth, and
+extending to after-life. Plato is the first writer who distinctly says
+that education is to comprehend the whole of life, and to be a
+preparation for another in which education begins again. This is the
+continuous thread which runs through the Republic, and which more than
+any other of his ideas admits of an application to modern life.
+
+He has long given up the notion that virtue cannot be taught; and he is
+disposed to modify the thesis of the Protagoras, that the virtues are
+one and not many. He is not unwilling to admit the sensible world into
+his scheme of truth. Nor does he assert in the Republic the
+involuntariness of vice, which is maintained by him in the Timaeus,
+Sophist, and Laws (Protag., Apol., Gorg.). Nor do the so-called
+Platonic ideas recovered from a former state of existence affect his
+theory of mental improvement. Still we observe in him the remains of
+the old Socratic doctrine, that true knowledge must be elicited from
+within, and is to be sought for in ideas, not in particulars of sense.
+Education, as he says, will implant a principle of intelligence which
+is better than ten thousand eyes. The paradox that the virtues are one,
+and the kindred notion that all virtue is knowledge, are not entirely
+renounced; the first is seen in the supremacy given to justice over the
+rest; the second in the tendency to absorb the moral virtues in the
+intellectual, and to centre all goodness in the contemplation of the
+idea of good. The world of sense is still depreciated and identified
+with opinion, though admitted to be a shadow of the true. In the
+Republic he is evidently impressed with the conviction that vice arises
+chiefly from ignorance and may be cured by education; the multitude are
+hardly to be deemed responsible for what they do. A faint allusion to
+the doctrine of reminiscence occurs in the Tenth Book; but Plato’s
+views of education have no more real connection with a previous state
+of existence than our own; he only proposes to elicit from the mind
+that which is there already. Education is represented by him, not as
+the filling of a vessel, but as the turning the eye of the soul towards
+the light.
+
+He treats first of music or literature, which he divides into true and
+false, and then goes on to gymnastics; of infancy in the Republic he
+takes no notice, though in the Laws he gives sage counsels about the
+nursing of children and the management of the mothers, and would have
+an education which is even prior to birth. But in the Republic he
+begins with the age at which the child is capable of receiving ideas,
+and boldly asserts, in language which sounds paradoxical to modern
+ears, that he must be taught the false before he can learn the true.
+The modern and ancient philosophical world are not agreed about truth
+and falsehood; the one identifies truth almost exclusively with fact,
+the other with ideas. This is the difference between ourselves and
+Plato, which is, however, partly a difference of words. For we too
+should admit that a child must receive many lessons which he
+imperfectly understands; he must be taught some things in a figure
+only, some too which he can hardly be expected to believe when he grows
+older; but we should limit the use of fiction by the necessity of the
+case. Plato would draw the line differently; according to him the aim
+of early education is not truth as a matter of fact, but truth as a
+matter of principle; the child is to be taught first simple religious
+truths, and then simple moral truths, and insensibly to learn the
+lesson of good manners and good taste. He would make an entire
+reformation of the old mythology; like Xenophanes and Heracleitus he is
+sensible of the deep chasm which separates his own age from Homer and
+Hesiod, whom he quotes and invests with an imaginary authority, but
+only for his own purposes. The lusts and treacheries of the gods are to
+be banished; the terrors of the world below are to be dispelled; the
+misbehaviour of the Homeric heroes is not to be a model for youth. But
+there is another strain heard in Homer which may teach our youth
+endurance; and something may be learnt in medicine from the simple
+practice of the Homeric age. The principles on which religion is to be
+based are two only: first, that God is true; secondly, that he is good.
+Modern and Christian writers have often fallen short of these; they can
+hardly be said to have gone beyond them.
+
+The young are to be brought up in happy surroundings, out of the way of
+sights or sounds which may hurt the character or vitiate the taste.
+They are to live in an atmosphere of health; the breeze is always to be
+wafting to them the impressions of truth and goodness. Could such an
+education be realized, or if our modern religious education could be
+bound up with truth and virtue and good manners and good taste, that
+would be the best hope of human improvement. Plato, like ourselves, is
+looking forward to changes in the moral and religious world, and is
+preparing for them. He recognizes the danger of unsettling young men’s
+minds by sudden changes of laws and principles, by destroying the
+sacredness of one set of ideas when there is nothing else to take their
+place. He is afraid too of the influence of the drama, on the ground
+that it encourages false sentiment, and therefore he would not have his
+children taken to the theatre; he thinks that the effect on the
+spectators is bad, and on the actors still worse. His idea of education
+is that of harmonious growth, in which are insensibly learnt the
+lessons of temperance and endurance, and the body and mind develope in
+equal proportions. The first principle which runs through all art and
+nature is simplicity; this also is to be the rule of human life.
+
+The second stage of education is gymnastic, which answers to the period
+of muscular growth and development. The simplicity which is enforced in
+music is extended to gymnastic; Plato is aware that the training of the
+body may be inconsistent with the training of the mind, and that bodily
+exercise may be easily overdone. Excessive training of the body is apt
+to give men a headache or to render them sleepy at a lecture on
+philosophy, and this they attribute not to the true cause, but to the
+nature of the subject. Two points are noticeable in Plato’s treatment
+of gymnastic:—First, that the time of training is entirely separated
+from the time of literary education. He seems to have thought that two
+things of an opposite and different nature could not be learnt at the
+same time. Here we can hardly agree with him; and, if we may judge by
+experience, the effect of spending three years between the ages of
+fourteen and seventeen in mere bodily exercise would be far from
+improving to the intellect. Secondly, he affirms that music and
+gymnastic are not, as common opinion is apt to imagine, intended, the
+one for the cultivation of the mind and the other of the body, but that
+they are both equally designed for the improvement of the mind. The
+body, in his view, is the servant of the mind; the subjection of the
+lower to the higher is for the advantage of both. And doubtless the
+mind may exercise a very great and paramount influence over the body,
+if exerted not at particular moments and by fits and starts, but
+continuously, in making preparation for the whole of life. Other Greek
+writers saw the mischievous tendency of Spartan discipline (Arist. Pol;
+Thuc.). But only Plato recognized the fundamental error on which the
+practice was based.
+
+The subject of gymnastic leads Plato to the sister subject of medicine,
+which he further illustrates by the parallel of law. The modern
+disbelief in medicine has led in this, as in some other departments of
+knowledge, to a demand for greater simplicity; physicians are becoming
+aware that they often make diseases ‘greater and more complicated’ by
+their treatment of them (Rep.). In two thousand years their art has
+made but slender progress; what they have gained in the analysis of the
+parts is in a great degree lost by their feebler conception of the
+human frame as a whole. They have attended more to the cure of diseases
+than to the conditions of health; and the improvements in medicine have
+been more than counterbalanced by the disuse of regular training. Until
+lately they have hardly thought of air and water, the importance of
+which was well understood by the ancients; as Aristotle remarks, ‘Air
+and water, being the elements which we most use, have the greatest
+effect upon health’ (Polit.). For ages physicians have been under the
+dominion of prejudices which have only recently given way; and now
+there are as many opinions in medicine as in theology, and an equal
+degree of scepticism and some want of toleration about both. Plato has
+several good notions about medicine; according to him, ‘the eye cannot
+be cured without the rest of the body, nor the body without the mind’
+(Charm.). No man of sense, he says in the Timaeus, would take physic;
+and we heartily sympathize with him in the Laws when he declares that
+‘the limbs of the rustic worn with toil will derive more benefit from
+warm baths than from the prescriptions of a not over wise doctor.’ But
+we can hardly praise him when, in obedience to the authority of Homer,
+he depreciates diet, or approve of the inhuman spirit in which he would
+get rid of invalid and useless lives by leaving them to die. He does
+not seem to have considered that the ‘bridle of Theages’ might be
+accompanied by qualities which were of far more value to the State than
+the health or strength of the citizens; or that the duty of taking care
+of the helpless might be an important element of education in a State.
+The physician himself (this is a delicate and subtle observation)
+should not be a man in robust health; he should have, in modern
+phraseology, a nervous temperament; he should have experience of
+disease in his own person, in order that his powers of observation may
+be quickened in the case of others.
+
+The perplexity of medicine is paralleled by the perplexity of law; in
+which, again, Plato would have men follow the golden rule of
+simplicity. Greater matters are to be determined by the legislator or
+by the oracle of Delphi, lesser matters are to be left to the temporary
+regulation of the citizens themselves. Plato is aware that laissez
+faire is an important element of government. The diseases of a State
+are like the heads of a hydra; they multiply when they are cut off. The
+true remedy for them is not extirpation but prevention. And the way to
+prevent them is to take care of education, and education will take care
+of all the rest. So in modern times men have often felt that the only
+political measure worth having—the only one which would produce any
+certain or lasting effect, was a measure of national education. And in
+our own more than in any previous age the necessity has been recognized
+of restoring the ever-increasing confusion of law to simplicity and
+common sense.
+
+When the training in music and gymnastic is completed, there follows
+the first stage of active and public life. But soon education is to
+begin again from a new point of view. In the interval between the
+Fourth and Seventh Books we have discussed the nature of knowledge, and
+have thence been led to form a higher conception of what was required
+of us. For true knowledge, according to Plato, is of abstractions, and
+has to do, not with particulars or individuals, but with universals
+only; not with the beauties of poetry, but with the ideas of
+philosophy. And the great aim of education is the cultivation of the
+habit of abstraction. This is to be acquired through the study of the
+mathematical sciences. They alone are capable of giving ideas of
+relation, and of arousing the dormant energies of thought.
+
+Mathematics in the age of Plato comprehended a very small part of that
+which is now included in them; but they bore a much larger proportion
+to the sum of human knowledge. They were the only organon of thought
+which the human mind at that time possessed, and the only measure by
+which the chaos of particulars could be reduced to rule and order. The
+faculty which they trained was naturally at war with the poetical or
+imaginative; and hence to Plato, who is everywhere seeking for
+abstractions and trying to get rid of the illusions of sense, nearly
+the whole of education is contained in them. They seemed to have an
+inexhaustible application, partly because their true limits were not
+yet understood. These Plato himself is beginning to investigate; though
+not aware that number and figure are mere abstractions of sense, he
+recognizes that the forms used by geometry are borrowed from the
+sensible world. He seeks to find the ultimate ground of mathematical
+ideas in the idea of good, though he does not satisfactorily explain
+the connexion between them; and in his conception of the relation of
+ideas to numbers, he falls very far short of the definiteness
+attributed to him by Aristotle (Met.). But if he fails to recognize the
+true limits of mathematics, he also reaches a point beyond them; in his
+view, ideas of number become secondary to a higher conception of
+knowledge. The dialectician is as much above the mathematician as the
+mathematician is above the ordinary man. The one, the self-proving, the
+good which is the higher sphere of dialectic, is the perfect truth to
+which all things ascend, and in which they finally repose.
+
+This self-proving unity or idea of good is a mere vision of which no
+distinct explanation can be given, relative only to a particular stage
+in Greek philosophy. It is an abstraction under which no individuals
+are comprehended, a whole which has no parts (Arist., Nic. Eth.). The
+vacancy of such a form was perceived by Aristotle, but not by Plato.
+Nor did he recognize that in the dialectical process are included two
+or more methods of investigation which are at variance with each other.
+He did not see that whether he took the longer or the shorter road, no
+advance could be made in this way. And yet such visions often have an
+immense effect; for although the method of science cannot anticipate
+science, the idea of science, not as it is, but as it will be in the
+future, is a great and inspiring principle. In the pursuit of knowledge
+we are always pressing forward to something beyond us; and as a false
+conception of knowledge, for example the scholastic philosophy, may
+lead men astray during many ages, so the true ideal, though vacant, may
+draw all their thoughts in a right direction. It makes a great
+difference whether the general expectation of knowledge, as this
+indefinite feeling may be termed, is based upon a sound judgment. For
+mankind may often entertain a true conception of what knowledge ought
+to be when they have but a slender experience of facts. The correlation
+of the sciences, the consciousness of the unity of nature, the idea of
+classification, the sense of proportion, the unwillingness to stop
+short of certainty or to confound probability with truth, are important
+principles of the higher education. Although Plato could tell us
+nothing, and perhaps knew that he could tell us nothing, of the
+absolute truth, he has exercised an influence on the human mind which
+even at the present day is not exhausted; and political and social
+questions may yet arise in which the thoughts of Plato may be read anew
+and receive a fresh meaning.
+
+The Idea of good is so called only in the Republic, but there are
+traces of it in other dialogues of Plato. It is a cause as well as an
+idea, and from this point of view may be compared with the creator of
+the Timaeus, who out of his goodness created all things. It corresponds
+to a certain extent with the modern conception of a law of nature, or
+of a final cause, or of both in one, and in this regard may be
+connected with the measure and symmetry of the Philebus. It is
+represented in the Symposium under the aspect of beauty, and is
+supposed to be attained there by stages of initiation, as here by
+regular gradations of knowledge. Viewed subjectively, it is the process
+or science of dialectic. This is the science which, according to the
+Phaedrus, is the true basis of rhetoric, which alone is able to
+distinguish the natures and classes of men and things; which divides a
+whole into the natural parts, and reunites the scattered parts into a
+natural or organized whole; which defines the abstract essences or
+universal ideas of all things, and connects them; which pierces the
+veil of hypotheses and reaches the final cause or first principle of
+all; which regards the sciences in relation to the idea of good. This
+ideal science is the highest process of thought, and may be described
+as the soul conversing with herself or holding communion with eternal
+truth and beauty, and in another form is the everlasting question and
+answer—the ceaseless interrogative of Socrates. The dialogues of Plato
+are themselves examples of the nature and method of dialectic. Viewed
+objectively, the idea of good is a power or cause which makes the world
+without us correspond with the world within. Yet this world without us
+is still a world of ideas. With Plato the investigation of nature is
+another department of knowledge, and in this he seeks to attain only
+probable conclusions (Timaeus).
+
+If we ask whether this science of dialectic which Plato only half
+explains to us is more akin to logic or to metaphysics, the answer is
+that in his mind the two sciences are not as yet distinguished, any
+more than the subjective and objective aspects of the world and of man,
+which German philosophy has revealed to us. Nor has he determined
+whether his science of dialectic is at rest or in motion, concerned
+with the contemplation of absolute being, or with a process of
+development and evolution. Modern metaphysics may be described as the
+science of abstractions, or as the science of the evolution of thought;
+modern logic, when passing beyond the bounds of mere Aristotelian
+forms, may be defined as the science of method. The germ of both of
+them is contained in the Platonic dialectic; all metaphysicians have
+something in common with the ideas of Plato; all logicians have derived
+something from the method of Plato. The nearest approach in modern
+philosophy to the universal science of Plato, is to be found in the
+Hegelian ‘succession of moments in the unity of the idea.’ Plato and
+Hegel alike seem to have conceived the world as the correlation of
+abstractions; and not impossibly they would have understood one another
+better than any of their commentators understand them (Swift’s Voyage
+to Laputa. ‘Having a desire to see those ancients who were most
+renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I
+proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their
+commentators; but these were so numerous that some hundreds were forced
+to attend in the court and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and
+could distinguish these two heroes, at first sight, not only from the
+crowd, but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of
+the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the
+most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made
+use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his
+voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect
+strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of
+them before. And I had a whisper from a ghost, who shall be nameless,
+“That these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from
+their principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame
+and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of
+these authors to posterity.†I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to
+Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they
+deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the
+spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the
+account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and
+he asked them “whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as
+themselves?â€â€™). There is, however, a difference between them: for
+whereas Hegel is thinking of all the minds of men as one mind, which
+developes the stages of the idea in different countries or at different
+times in the same country, with Plato these gradations are regarded
+only as an order of thought or ideas; the history of the human mind had
+not yet dawned upon him.
+
+Many criticisms may be made on Plato’s theory of education. While in
+some respects he unavoidably falls short of modern thinkers, in others
+he is in advance of them. He is opposed to the modes of education which
+prevailed in his own time; but he can hardly be said to have discovered
+new ones. He does not see that education is relative to the characters
+of individuals; he only desires to impress the same form of the state
+on the minds of all. He has no sufficient idea of the effect of
+literature on the formation of the mind, and greatly exaggerates that
+of mathematics. His aim is above all things to train the reasoning
+faculties; to implant in the mind the spirit and power of abstraction;
+to explain and define general notions, and, if possible, to connect
+them. No wonder that in the vacancy of actual knowledge his followers,
+and at times even he himself, should have fallen away from the doctrine
+of ideas, and have returned to that branch of knowledge in which alone
+the relation of the one and many can be truly seen—the science of
+number. In his views both of teaching and training he might be styled,
+in modern language, a doctrinaire; after the Spartan fashion he would
+have his citizens cast in one mould; he does not seem to consider that
+some degree of freedom, ‘a little wholesome neglect,’ is necessary to
+strengthen and develope the character and to give play to the
+individual nature. His citizens would not have acquired that knowledge
+which in the vision of Er is supposed to be gained by the pilgrims from
+their experience of evil.
+
+On the other hand, Plato is far in advance of modern philosophers and
+theologians when he teaches that education is to be continued through
+life and will begin again in another. He would never allow education of
+some kind to cease; although he was aware that the proverbial saying of
+Solon, ‘I grow old learning many things,’ cannot be applied literally.
+Himself ravished with the contemplation of the idea of good, and
+delighting in solid geometry (Rep.), he has no difficulty in imagining
+that a lifetime might be passed happily in such pursuits. We who know
+how many more men of business there are in the world than real students
+or thinkers, are not equally sanguine. The education which he proposes
+for his citizens is really the ideal life of the philosopher or man of
+genius, interrupted, but only for a time, by practical duties,—a life
+not for the many, but for the few.
+
+Yet the thought of Plato may not be wholly incapable of application to
+our own times. Even if regarded as an ideal which can never be
+realized, it may have a great effect in elevating the characters of
+mankind, and raising them above the routine of their ordinary
+occupation or profession. It is the best form under which we can
+conceive the whole of life. Nevertheless the idea of Plato is not
+easily put into practice. For the education of after life is
+necessarily the education which each one gives himself. Men and women
+cannot be brought together in schools or colleges at forty or fifty
+years of age; and if they could the result would be disappointing. The
+destination of most men is what Plato would call ‘the Den’ for the
+whole of life, and with that they are content. Neither have they
+teachers or advisers with whom they can take counsel in riper years.
+There is no ‘schoolmaster abroad’ who will tell them of their faults,
+or inspire them with the higher sense of duty, or with the ambition of
+a true success in life; no Socrates who will convict them of ignorance;
+no Christ, or follower of Christ, who will reprove them of sin. Hence
+they have a difficulty in receiving the first element of improvement,
+which is self-knowledge. The hopes of youth no longer stir them; they
+rather wish to rest than to pursue high objects. A few only who have
+come across great men and women, or eminent teachers of religion and
+morality, have received a second life from them, and have lighted a
+candle from the fire of their genius.
+
+The want of energy is one of the main reasons why so few persons
+continue to improve in later years. They have not the will, and do not
+know the way. They ‘never try an experiment,’ or look up a point of
+interest for themselves; they make no sacrifices for the sake of
+knowledge; their minds, like their bodies, at a certain age become
+fixed. Genius has been defined as ‘the power of taking pains’; but
+hardly any one keeps up his interest in knowledge throughout a whole
+life. The troubles of a family, the business of making money, the
+demands of a profession destroy the elasticity of the mind. The waxen
+tablet of the memory which was once capable of receiving ‘true thoughts
+and clear impressions’ becomes hard and crowded; there is not room for
+the accumulations of a long life (Theaet.). The student, as years
+advance, rather makes an exchange of knowledge than adds to his stores.
+There is no pressing necessity to learn; the stock of Classics or
+History or Natural Science which was enough for a man at twenty-five is
+enough for him at fifty. Neither is it easy to give a definite answer
+to any one who asks how he is to improve. For self-education consists
+in a thousand things, commonplace in themselves,—in adding to what we
+are by nature something of what we are not; in learning to see
+ourselves as others see us; in judging, not by opinion, but by the
+evidence of facts; in seeking out the society of superior minds; in a
+study of lives and writings of great men; in observation of the world
+and character; in receiving kindly the natural influence of different
+times of life; in any act or thought which is raised above the practice
+or opinions of mankind; in the pursuit of some new or original enquiry;
+in any effort of mind which calls forth some latent power.
+
+If any one is desirous of carrying out in detail the Platonic education
+of after-life, some such counsels as the following may be offered to
+him:—That he shall choose the branch of knowledge to which his own mind
+most distinctly inclines, and in which he takes the greatest delight,
+either one which seems to connect with his own daily employment, or,
+perhaps, furnishes the greatest contrast to it. He may study from the
+speculative side the profession or business in which he is practically
+engaged. He may make Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Plato, Bacon the
+friends and companions of his life. He may find opportunities of
+hearing the living voice of a great teacher. He may select for enquiry
+some point of history or some unexplained phenomenon of nature. An hour
+a day passed in such scientific or literary pursuits will furnish as
+many facts as the memory can retain, and will give him ‘a pleasure not
+to be repented of’ (Timaeus). Only let him beware of being the slave of
+crotchets, or of running after a Will o’ the Wisp in his ignorance, or
+in his vanity of attributing to himself the gifts of a poet or assuming
+the air of a philosopher. He should know the limits of his own powers.
+Better to build up the mind by slow additions, to creep on quietly from
+one thing to another, to gain insensibly new powers and new interests
+in knowledge, than to form vast schemes which are never destined to be
+realized. But perhaps, as Plato would say, ‘This is part of another
+subject’ (Tim.); though we may also defend our digression by his
+example (Theaet.).
+
+4. We remark with surprise that the progress of nations or the natural
+growth of institutions which fill modern treatises on political
+philosophy seem hardly ever to have attracted the attention of Plato
+and Aristotle. The ancients were familiar with the mutability of human
+affairs; they could moralize over the ruins of cities and the fall of
+empires (Plato, Statesman, and Sulpicius’ Letter to Cicero); by them
+fate and chance were deemed to be real powers, almost persons, and to
+have had a great share in political events. The wiser of them like
+Thucydides believed that ‘what had been would be again,’ and that a
+tolerable idea of the future could be gathered from the past. Also they
+had dreams of a Golden Age which existed once upon a time and might
+still exist in some unknown land, or might return again in the remote
+future. But the regular growth of a state enlightened by experience,
+progressing in knowledge, improving in the arts, of which the citizens
+were educated by the fulfilment of political duties, appears never to
+have come within the range of their hopes and aspirations. Such a state
+had never been seen, and therefore could not be conceived by them.
+Their experience (Aristot. Metaph.; Plato, Laws) led them to conclude
+that there had been cycles of civilization in which the arts had been
+discovered and lost many times over, and cities had been overthrown and
+rebuilt again and again, and deluges and volcanoes and other natural
+convulsions had altered the face of the earth. Tradition told them of
+many destructions of mankind and of the preservation of a remnant. The
+world began again after a deluge and was reconstructed out of the
+fragments of itself. Also they were acquainted with empires of unknown
+antiquity, like the Egyptian or Assyrian; but they had never seen them
+grow, and could not imagine, any more than we can, the state of man
+which preceded them. They were puzzled and awestricken by the Egyptian
+monuments, of which the forms, as Plato says, not in a figure, but
+literally, were ten thousand years old (Laws), and they contrasted the
+antiquity of Egypt with their own short memories.
+
+The early legends of Hellas have no real connection with the later
+history: they are at a distance, and the intermediate region is
+concealed from view; there is no road or path which leads from one to
+the other. At the beginning of Greek history, in the vestibule of the
+temple, is seen standing first of all the figure of the legislator,
+himself the interpreter and servant of the God. The fundamental laws
+which he gives are not supposed to change with time and circumstances.
+The salvation of the state is held rather to depend on the inviolable
+maintenance of them. They were sanctioned by the authority of heaven,
+and it was deemed impiety to alter them. The desire to maintain them
+unaltered seems to be the origin of what at first sight is very
+surprising to us—the intolerant zeal of Plato against innovators in
+religion or politics (Laws); although with a happy inconsistency he is
+also willing that the laws of other countries should be studied and
+improvements in legislation privately communicated to the Nocturnal
+Council (Laws). The additions which were made to them in later ages in
+order to meet the increasing complexity of affairs were still ascribed
+by a fiction to the original legislator; and the words of such
+enactments at Athens were disputed over as if they had been the words
+of Solon himself. Plato hopes to preserve in a later generation the
+mind of the legislator; he would have his citizens remain within the
+lines which he has laid down for them. He would not harass them with
+minute regulations, he would have allowed some changes in the laws: but
+not changes which would affect the fundamental institutions of the
+state, such for example as would convert an aristocracy into a
+timocracy, or a timocracy into a popular form of government.
+
+Passing from speculations to facts, we observe that progress has been
+the exception rather than the law of human history. And therefore we
+are not surprised to find that the idea of progress is of modern rather
+than of ancient date; and, like the idea of a philosophy of history, is
+not more than a century or two old. It seems to have arisen out of the
+impression left on the human mind by the growth of the Roman Empire and
+of the Christian Church, and to be due to the political and social
+improvements which they introduced into the world; and still more in
+our own century to the idealism of the first French Revolution and the
+triumph of American Independence; and in a yet greater degree to the
+vast material prosperity and growth of population in England and her
+colonies and in America. It is also to be ascribed in a measure to the
+greater study of the philosophy of history. The optimist temperament of
+some great writers has assisted the creation of it, while the opposite
+character has led a few to regard the future of the world as dark. The
+‘spectator of all time and of all existence’ sees more of ‘the
+increasing purpose which through the ages ran’ than formerly: but to
+the inhabitant of a small state of Hellas the vision was necessarily
+limited like the valley in which he dwelt. There was no remote past on
+which his eye could rest, nor any future from which the veil was partly
+lifted up by the analogy of history. The narrowness of view, which to
+ourselves appears so singular, was to him natural, if not unavoidable.
+
+5. For the relation of the Republic to the Statesman and the Laws, and
+the two other works of Plato which directly treat of politics, see the
+Introductions to the two latter; a few general points of comparison may
+be touched upon in this place.
+
+And first of the Laws.
+
+(1) The Republic, though probably written at intervals, yet speaking
+generally and judging by the indications of thought and style, may be
+reasonably ascribed to the middle period of Plato’s life: the Laws are
+certainly the work of his declining years, and some portions of them at
+any rate seem to have been written in extreme old age.
+
+(2) The Republic is full of hope and aspiration: the Laws bear the
+stamp of failure and disappointment. The one is a finished work which
+received the last touches of the author: the other is imperfectly
+executed, and apparently unfinished. The one has the grace and beauty
+of youth: the other has lost the poetical form, but has more of the
+severity and knowledge of life which is characteristic of old age.
+
+(3) The most conspicuous defect of the Laws is the failure of dramatic
+power, whereas the Republic is full of striking contrasts of ideas and
+oppositions of character.
+
+(4) The Laws may be said to have more the nature of a sermon, the
+Republic of a poem; the one is more religious, the other more
+intellectual.
+
+(5) Many theories of Plato, such as the doctrine of ideas, the
+government of the world by philosophers, are not found in the Laws; the
+immortality of the soul is first mentioned in xii; the person of
+Socrates has altogether disappeared. The community of women and
+children is renounced; the institution of common or public meals for
+women (Laws) is for the first time introduced (Ar. Pol.).
+
+(6) There remains in the Laws the old enmity to the poets, who are
+ironically saluted in high-flown terms, and, at the same time, are
+peremptorily ordered out of the city, if they are not willing to submit
+their poems to the censorship of the magistrates (Rep.).
+
+(7) Though the work is in most respects inferior, there are a few
+passages in the Laws, such as the honour due to the soul, the evils of
+licentious or unnatural love, the whole of Book x. (religion), the
+dishonesty of retail trade, and bequests, which come more home to us,
+and contain more of what may be termed the modern element in Plato than
+almost anything in the Republic.
+
+The relation of the two works to one another is very well given:
+
+(1) by Aristotle in the Politics from the side of the Laws:—
+
+‘The same, or nearly the same, objections apply to Plato’s later work,
+the Laws, and therefore we had better examine briefly the constitution
+which is therein described. In the Republic, Socrates has definitely
+settled in all a few questions only; such as the community of women and
+children, the community of property, and the constitution of the state.
+The population is divided into two classes—one of husbandmen, and the
+other of warriors; from this latter is taken a third class of
+counsellors and rulers of the state. But Socrates has not determined
+whether the husbandmen and artists are to have a share in the
+government, and whether they too are to carry arms and share in
+military service or not. He certainly thinks that the women ought to
+share in the education of the guardians, and to fight by their side.
+The remainder of the work is filled up with digressions foreign to the
+main subject, and with discussions about the education of the
+guardians. In the Laws there is hardly anything but laws; not much is
+said about the constitution. This, which he had intended to make more
+of the ordinary type, he gradually brings round to the other or ideal
+form. For with the exception of the community of women and property, he
+supposes everything to be the same in both states; there is to be the
+same education; the citizens of both are to live free from servile
+occupations, and there are to be common meals in both. The only
+difference is that in the Laws the common meals are extended to women,
+and the warriors number about 5000, but in the Republic only 1000.’
+
+(2) by Plato in the Laws (Book v.), from the side of the Republic:—
+
+‘The first and highest form of the state and of the government and of
+the law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying
+that “Friends have all things in common.†Whether there is now, or ever
+will be, this communion of women and children and of property, in which
+the private and individual is altogether banished from life, and things
+which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have
+become common, and all men express praise and blame, and feel joy and
+sorrow, on the same occasions, and the laws unite the city to the
+utmost,—whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting
+upon any other principle, will ever constitute a state more exalted in
+virtue, or truer or better than this. Such a state, whether inhabited
+by Gods or sons of Gods, will make them blessed who dwell therein; and
+therefore to this we are to look for the pattern of the state, and to
+cling to this, and, as far as possible, to seek for one which is like
+this. The state which we have now in hand, when created, will be
+nearest to immortality and unity in the next degree; and after that, by
+the grace of God, we will complete the third one. And we will begin by
+speaking of the nature and origin of the second.’
+
+The comparatively short work called the Statesman or Politicus in its
+style and manner is more akin to the Laws, while in its idealism it
+rather resembles the Republic. As far as we can judge by various
+indications of language and thought, it must be later than the one and
+of course earlier than the other. In both the Republic and Statesman a
+close connection is maintained between Politics and Dialectic. In the
+Statesman, enquiries into the principles of Method are interspersed
+with discussions about Politics. The comparative advantages of the rule
+of law and of a person are considered, and the decision given in favour
+of a person (Arist. Pol.). But much may be said on the other side, nor
+is the opposition necessary; for a person may rule by law, and law may
+be so applied as to be the living voice of the legislator. As in the
+Republic, there is a myth, describing, however, not a future, but a
+former existence of mankind. The question is asked, ‘Whether the state
+of innocence which is described in the myth, or a state like our own
+which possesses art and science and distinguishes good from evil, is
+the preferable condition of man.’ To this question of the comparative
+happiness of civilized and primitive life, which was so often discussed
+in the last century and in our own, no answer is given. The Statesman,
+though less perfect in style than the Republic and of far less range,
+may justly be regarded as one of the greatest of Plato’s dialogues.
+
+6. Others as well as Plato have chosen an ideal Republic to be the
+vehicle of thoughts which they could not definitely express, or which
+went beyond their own age. The classical writing which approaches most
+nearly to the Republic of Plato is the ‘De Republica’ of Cicero; but
+neither in this nor in any other of his dialogues does he rival the art
+of Plato. The manners are clumsy and inferior; the hand of the
+rhetorician is apparent at every turn. Yet noble sentiments are
+constantly recurring: the true note of Roman patriotism—‘We Romans are
+a great people’—resounds through the whole work. Like Socrates, Cicero
+turns away from the phenomena of the heavens to civil and political
+life. He would rather not discuss the ‘two Suns’ of which all Rome was
+talking, when he can converse about ‘the two nations in one’ which had
+divided Rome ever since the days of the Gracchi. Like Socrates again,
+speaking in the person of Scipio, he is afraid lest he should assume
+too much the character of a teacher, rather than of an equal who is
+discussing among friends the two sides of a question. He would confine
+the terms King or State to the rule of reason and justice, and he will
+not concede that title either to a democracy or to a monarchy. But
+under the rule of reason and justice he is willing to include the
+natural superior ruling over the natural inferior, which he compares to
+the soul ruling over the body. He prefers a mixture of forms of
+government to any single one. The two portraits of the just and the
+unjust, which occur in the second book of the Republic, are transferred
+to the state—Philus, one of the interlocutors, maintaining against his
+will the necessity of injustice as a principle of government, while the
+other, Laelius, supports the opposite thesis. His views of language and
+number are derived from Plato; like him he denounces the drama. He also
+declares that if his life were to be twice as long he would have no
+time to read the lyric poets. The picture of democracy is translated by
+him word for word, though he had hardly shown himself able to ‘carry
+the jest’ of Plato. He converts into a stately sentence the humorous
+fancy about the animals, who ‘are so imbued with the spirit of
+democracy that they make the passers-by get out of their way.’ His
+description of the tyrant is imitated from Plato, but is far inferior.
+The second book is historical, and claims for the Roman constitution
+(which is to him the ideal) a foundation of fact such as Plato probably
+intended to have given to the Republic in the Critias. His most
+remarkable imitation of Plato is the adaptation of the vision of Er,
+which is converted by Cicero into the ‘Somnium Scipionis’; he has
+‘romanized’ the myth of the Republic, adding an argument for the
+immortality of the soul taken from the Phaedrus, and some other touches
+derived from the Phaedo and the Timaeus. Though a beautiful tale and
+containing splendid passages, the ‘Somnium Scipionis; is very inferior
+to the vision of Er; it is only a dream, and hardly allows the reader
+to suppose that the writer believes in his own creation. Whether his
+dialogues were framed on the model of the lost dialogues of Aristotle,
+as he himself tells us, or of Plato, to which they bear many
+superficial resemblances, he is still the Roman orator; he is not
+conversing, but making speeches, and is never able to mould the
+intractable Latin to the grace and ease of the Greek Platonic dialogue.
+But if he is defective in form, much more is he inferior to the Greek
+in matter; he nowhere in his philosophical writings leaves upon our
+minds the impression of an original thinker.
+
+Plato’s Republic has been said to be a church and not a state; and such
+an ideal of a city in the heavens has always hovered over the Christian
+world, and is embodied in St. Augustine’s ‘De Civitate Dei,’ which is
+suggested by the decay and fall of the Roman Empire, much in the same
+manner in which we may imagine the Republic of Plato to have been
+influenced by the decline of Greek politics in the writer’s own age.
+The difference is that in the time of Plato the degeneracy, though
+certain, was gradual and insensible: whereas the taking of Rome by the
+Goths stirred like an earthquake the age of St. Augustine. Men were
+inclined to believe that the overthrow of the city was to be ascribed
+to the anger felt by the old Roman deities at the neglect of their
+worship. St. Augustine maintains the opposite thesis; he argues that
+the destruction of the Roman Empire is due, not to the rise of
+Christianity, but to the vices of Paganism. He wanders over Roman
+history, and over Greek philosophy and mythology, and finds everywhere
+crime, impiety and falsehood. He compares the worst parts of the
+Gentile religions with the best elements of the faith of Christ. He
+shows nothing of the spirit which led others of the early Christian
+Fathers to recognize in the writings of the Greek philosophers the
+power of the divine truth. He traces the parallel of the kingdom of
+God, that is, the history of the Jews, contained in their scriptures,
+and of the kingdoms of the world, which are found in gentile writers,
+and pursues them both into an ideal future. It need hardly be remarked
+that his use both of Greek and of Roman historians and of the sacred
+writings of the Jews is wholly uncritical. The heathen mythology, the
+Sybilline oracles, the myths of Plato, the dreams of Neo-Platonists are
+equally regarded by him as matter of fact. He must be acknowledged to
+be a strictly polemical or controversial writer who makes the best of
+everything on one side and the worst of everything on the other. He has
+no sympathy with the old Roman life as Plato has with Greek life, nor
+has he any idea of the ecclesiastical kingdom which was to arise out of
+the ruins of the Roman empire. He is not blind to the defects of the
+Christian Church, and looks forward to a time when Christian and Pagan
+shall be alike brought before the judgment-seat, and the true City of
+God shall appear...The work of St. Augustine is a curious repertory of
+antiquarian learning and quotations, deeply penetrated with Christian
+ethics, but showing little power of reasoning, and a slender knowledge
+of the Greek literature and language. He was a great genius, and a
+noble character, yet hardly capable of feeling or understanding
+anything external to his own theology. Of all the ancient philosophers
+he is most attracted by Plato, though he is very slightly acquainted
+with his writings. He is inclined to believe that the idea of creation
+in the Timaeus is derived from the narrative in Genesis; and he is
+strangely taken with the coincidence (?) of Plato’s saying that ‘the
+philosopher is the lover of God,’ and the words of the Book of Exodus
+in which God reveals himself to Moses (Exod.) He dwells at length on
+miracles performed in his own day, of which the evidence is regarded by
+him as irresistible. He speaks in a very interesting manner of the
+beauty and utility of nature and of the human frame, which he conceives
+to afford a foretaste of the heavenly state and of the resurrection of
+the body. The book is not really what to most persons the title of it
+would imply, and belongs to an age which has passed away. But it
+contains many fine passages and thoughts which are for all time.
+
+The short treatise de Monarchia of Dante is by far the most remarkable
+of mediaeval ideals, and bears the impress of the great genius in whom
+Italy and the Middle Ages are so vividly reflected. It is the vision of
+an Universal Empire, which is supposed to be the natural and necessary
+government of the world, having a divine authority distinct from the
+Papacy, yet coextensive with it. It is not ‘the ghost of the dead Roman
+Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof,’ but the legitimate heir
+and successor of it, justified by the ancient virtues of the Romans and
+the beneficence of their rule. Their right to be the governors of the
+world is also confirmed by the testimony of miracles, and acknowledged
+by St. Paul when he appealed to Caesar, and even more emphatically by
+Christ Himself, Who could not have made atonement for the sins of men
+if He had not been condemned by a divinely authorized tribunal. The
+necessity for the establishment of an Universal Empire is proved partly
+by a priori arguments such as the unity of God and the unity of the
+family or nation; partly by perversions of Scripture and history, by
+false analogies of nature, by misapplied quotations from the classics,
+and by odd scraps and commonplaces of logic, showing a familiar but by
+no means exact knowledge of Aristotle (of Plato there is none). But a
+more convincing argument still is the miserable state of the world,
+which he touchingly describes. He sees no hope of happiness or peace
+for mankind until all nations of the earth are comprehended in a single
+empire. The whole treatise shows how deeply the idea of the Roman
+Empire was fixed in the minds of his contemporaries. Not much argument
+was needed to maintain the truth of a theory which to his own
+contemporaries seemed so natural and congenial. He speaks, or rather
+preaches, from the point of view, not of the ecclesiastic, but of the
+layman, although, as a good Catholic, he is willing to acknowledge that
+in certain respects the Empire must submit to the Church. The beginning
+and end of all his noble reflections and of his arguments, good and
+bad, is the aspiration ‘that in this little plot of earth belonging to
+mortal man life may pass in freedom and peace.’ So inextricably is his
+vision of the future bound up with the beliefs and circumstances of his
+own age.
+
+The ‘Utopia’ of Sir Thomas More is a surprising monument of his genius,
+and shows a reach of thought far beyond his contemporaries. The book
+was written by him at the age of about 34 or 35, and is full of the
+generous sentiments of youth. He brings the light of Plato to bear upon
+the miserable state of his own country. Living not long after the Wars
+of the Roses, and in the dregs of the Catholic Church in England, he is
+indignant at the corruption of the clergy, at the luxury of the
+nobility and gentry, at the sufferings of the poor, at the calamities
+caused by war. To the eye of More the whole world was in dissolution
+and decay; and side by side with the misery and oppression which he has
+described in the First Book of the Utopia, he places in the Second Book
+the ideal state which by the help of Plato he had constructed. The
+times were full of stir and intellectual interest. The distant murmur
+of the Reformation was beginning to be heard. To minds like More’s,
+Greek literature was a revelation: there had arisen an art of
+interpretation, and the New Testament was beginning to be understood as
+it had never been before, and has not often been since, in its natural
+sense. The life there depicted appeared to him wholly unlike that of
+Christian commonwealths, in which ‘he saw nothing but a certain
+conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name
+and title of the Commonwealth.’ He thought that Christ, like Plato,
+‘instituted all things common,’ for which reason, he tells us, the
+citizens of Utopia were the more willing to receive his doctrines
+(‘Howbeit, I think this was no small help and furtherance in the
+matter, that they heard us say that Christ instituted among his, all
+things common, and that the same community doth yet remain in the
+rightest Christian communities’ (Utopia).). The community of property
+is a fixed idea with him, though he is aware of the arguments which may
+be urged on the other side (‘These things (I say), when I consider with
+myself, I hold well with Plato, and do nothing marvel that he would
+make no laws for them that refused those laws, whereby all men should
+have and enjoy equal portions of riches and commodities. For the wise
+men did easily foresee this to be the one and only way to the wealth of
+a community, if equality of all things should be brought in and
+established’ (Utopia).). We wonder how in the reign of Henry VIII,
+though veiled in another language and published in a foreign country,
+such speculations could have been endured.
+
+He is gifted with far greater dramatic invention than any one who
+succeeded him, with the exception of Swift. In the art of feigning he
+is a worthy disciple of Plato. Like him, starting from a small portion
+of fact, he founds his tale with admirable skill on a few lines in the
+Latin narrative of the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci. He is very precise
+about dates and facts, and has the power of making us believe that the
+narrator of the tale must have been an eyewitness. We are fairly
+puzzled by his manner of mixing up real and imaginary persons; his boy
+John Clement and Peter Giles, citizen of Antwerp, with whom he disputes
+about the precise words which are supposed to have been used by the
+(imaginary) Portuguese traveller, Raphael Hythloday. ‘I have the more
+cause,’ says Hythloday, ‘to fear that my words shall not be believed,
+for that I know how difficultly and hardly I myself would have believed
+another man telling the same, if I had not myself seen it with mine own
+eyes.’ Or again: ‘If you had been with me in Utopia, and had presently
+seen their fashions and laws as I did which lived there five years and
+more, and would never have come thence, but only to make the new land
+known here,’ etc. More greatly regrets that he forgot to ask Hythloday
+in what part of the world Utopia is situated; he ‘would have spent no
+small sum of money rather than it should have escaped him,’ and he begs
+Peter Giles to see Hythloday or write to him and obtain an answer to
+the question. After this we are not surprised to hear that a Professor
+of Divinity (perhaps ‘a late famous vicar of Croydon in Surrey,’ as the
+translator thinks) is desirous of being sent thither as a missionary by
+the High Bishop, ‘yea, and that he may himself be made Bishop of
+Utopia, nothing doubting that he must obtain this Bishopric with suit;
+and he counteth that a godly suit which proceedeth not of the desire of
+honour or lucre, but only of a godly zeal.’ The design may have failed
+through the disappearance of Hythloday, concerning whom we have ‘very
+uncertain news’ after his departure. There is no doubt, however, that
+he had told More and Giles the exact situation of the island, but
+unfortunately at the same moment More’s attention, as he is reminded in
+a letter from Giles, was drawn off by a servant, and one of the company
+from a cold caught on shipboard coughed so loud as to prevent Giles
+from hearing. And ‘the secret has perished’ with him; to this day the
+place of Utopia remains unknown.
+
+The words of Phaedrus, ‘O Socrates, you can easily invent Egyptians or
+anything,’ are recalled to our mind as we read this lifelike fiction.
+Yet the greater merit of the work is not the admirable art, but the
+originality of thought. More is as free as Plato from the prejudices of
+his age, and far more tolerant. The Utopians do not allow him who
+believes not in the immortality of the soul to share in the
+administration of the state (Laws), ‘howbeit they put him to no
+punishment, because they be persuaded that it is in no man’s power to
+believe what he list’; and ‘no man is to be blamed for reasoning in
+support of his own religion (‘One of our company in my presence was
+sharply punished. He, as soon as he was baptised, began, against our
+wills, with more earnest affection than wisdom, to reason of Christ’s
+religion, and began to wax so hot in his matter, that he did not only
+prefer our religion before all other, but also did despise and condemn
+all other, calling them profane, and the followers of them wicked and
+devilish, and the children of everlasting damnation. When he had thus
+long reasoned the matter, they laid hold on him, accused him, and
+condemned him into exile, not as a despiser of religion, but as a
+seditious person and a raiser up of dissension among the people’).’ In
+the public services ‘no prayers be used, but such as every man may
+boldly pronounce without giving offence to any sect.’ He says
+significantly, ‘There be that give worship to a man that was once of
+excellent virtue or of famous glory, not only as God, but also the
+chiefest and highest God. But the most and the wisest part, rejecting
+all these, believe that there is a certain godly power unknown, far
+above the capacity and reach of man’s wit, dispersed throughout all the
+world, not in bigness, but in virtue and power. Him they call the
+Father of all. To Him alone they attribute the beginnings, the
+increasings, the proceedings, the changes, and the ends of all things.
+Neither give they any divine honours to any other than him.’ So far was
+More from sharing the popular beliefs of his time. Yet at the end he
+reminds us that he does not in all respects agree with the customs and
+opinions of the Utopians which he describes. And we should let him have
+the benefit of this saving clause, and not rudely withdraw the veil
+behind which he has been pleased to conceal himself.
+
+Nor is he less in advance of popular opinion in his political and moral
+speculations. He would like to bring military glory into contempt; he
+would set all sorts of idle people to profitable occupation, including
+in the same class, priests, women, noblemen, gentlemen, and ‘sturdy and
+valiant beggars,’ that the labour of all may be reduced to six hours a
+day. His dislike of capital punishment, and plans for the reformation
+of offenders; his detestation of priests and lawyers (Compare his
+satirical observation: ‘They (the Utopians) have priests of exceeding
+holiness, and therefore very few.); his remark that ‘although every one
+may hear of ravenous dogs and wolves and cruel man-eaters, it is not
+easy to find states that are well and wisely governed,’ are curiously
+at variance with the notions of his age and indeed with his own life.
+There are many points in which he shows a modern feeling and a
+prophetic insight like Plato. He is a sanitary reformer; he maintains
+that civilized states have a right to the soil of waste countries; he
+is inclined to the opinion which places happiness in virtuous
+pleasures, but herein, as he thinks, not disagreeing from those other
+philosophers who define virtue to be a life according to nature. He
+extends the idea of happiness so as to include the happiness of others;
+and he argues ingeniously, ‘All men agree that we ought to make others
+happy; but if others, how much more ourselves!’ And still he thinks
+that there may be a more excellent way, but to this no man’s reason can
+attain unless heaven should inspire him with a higher truth. His
+ceremonies before marriage; his humane proposal that war should be
+carried on by assassinating the leaders of the enemy, may be compared
+to some of the paradoxes of Plato. He has a charming fancy, like the
+affinities of Greeks and barbarians in the Timaeus, that the Utopians
+learnt the language of the Greeks with the more readiness because they
+were originally of the same race with them. He is penetrated with the
+spirit of Plato, and quotes or adapts many thoughts both from the
+Republic and from the Timaeus. He prefers public duties to private, and
+is somewhat impatient of the importunity of relations. His citizens
+have no silver or gold of their own, but are ready enough to pay them
+to their mercenaries. There is nothing of which he is more contemptuous
+than the love of money. Gold is used for fetters of criminals, and
+diamonds and pearls for children’s necklaces (When the ambassadors came
+arrayed in gold and peacocks’ feathers ‘to the eyes of all the Utopians
+except very few, which had been in other countries for some reasonable
+cause, all that gorgeousness of apparel seemed shameful and
+reproachful. In so much that they most reverently saluted the vilest
+and most abject of them for lords—passing over the ambassadors
+themselves without any honour, judging them by their wearing of golden
+chains to be bondmen. You should have seen children also, that had cast
+away their pearls and precious stones, when they saw the like sticking
+upon the ambassadors’ caps, dig and push their mothers under the sides,
+saying thus to them—“Look, though he were a little child still.†But
+the mother; yea and that also in good earnest: “Peace, son,†saith she,
+“I think he be some of the ambassadors’ fools.â€â€™)
+
+Like Plato he is full of satirical reflections on governments and
+princes; on the state of the world and of knowledge. The hero of his
+discourse (Hythloday) is very unwilling to become a minister of state,
+considering that he would lose his independence and his advice would
+never be heeded (Compare an exquisite passage, of which the conclusion
+is as follows: ‘And verily it is naturally given...suppressed and
+ended.’) He ridicules the new logic of his time; the Utopians could
+never be made to understand the doctrine of Second Intentions (‘For
+they have not devised one of all those rules of restrictions,
+amplifications, and suppositions, very wittily invented in the small
+Logicals, which here our children in every place do learn. Furthermore,
+they were never yet able to find out the second intentions; insomuch
+that none of them all could ever see man himself in common, as they
+call him, though he be (as you know) bigger than was ever any giant,
+yea, and pointed to of us even with our finger.’) He is very severe on
+the sports of the gentry; the Utopians count ‘hunting the lowest, the
+vilest, and the most abject part of butchery.’ He quotes the words of
+the Republic in which the philosopher is described ‘standing out of the
+way under a wall until the driving storm of sleet and rain be
+overpast,’ which admit of a singular application to More’s own fate;
+although, writing twenty years before (about the year 1514), he can
+hardly be supposed to have foreseen this. There is no touch of satire
+which strikes deeper than his quiet remark that the greater part of the
+precepts of Christ are more at variance with the lives of ordinary
+Christians than the discourse of Utopia (‘And yet the most part of them
+is more dissident from the manners of the world now a days, than my
+communication was. But preachers, sly and wily men, following your
+counsel (as I suppose) because they saw men evil-willing to frame their
+manners to Christ’s rule, they have wrested and wried his doctrine,
+and, like a rule of lead, have applied it to men’s manners, that by
+some means at the least way, they might agree together.’)
+
+The ‘New Atlantis’ is only a fragment, and far inferior in merit to the
+‘Utopia.’ The work is full of ingenuity, but wanting in creative fancy,
+and by no means impresses the reader with a sense of credibility. In
+some places Lord Bacon is characteristically different from Sir Thomas
+More, as, for example, in the external state which he attributes to the
+governor of Solomon’s House, whose dress he minutely describes, while
+to Sir Thomas More such trappings appear simple ridiculous. Yet, after
+this programme of dress, Bacon adds the beautiful trait, ‘that he had a
+look as though he pitied men.’ Several things are borrowed by him from
+the Timaeus; but he has injured the unity of style by adding thoughts
+and passages which are taken from the Hebrew Scriptures.
+
+The ‘City of the Sun’ written by Campanella (1568-1639), a Dominican
+friar, several years after the ‘New Atlantis’ of Bacon, has many
+resemblances to the Republic of Plato. The citizens have wives and
+children in common; their marriages are of the same temporary sort, and
+are arranged by the magistrates from time to time. They do not,
+however, adopt his system of lots, but bring together the best natures,
+male and female, ‘according to philosophical rules.’ The infants until
+two years of age are brought up by their mothers in public temples; and
+since individuals for the most part educate their children badly, at
+the beginning of their third year they are committed to the care of the
+State, and are taught at first, not out of books, but from paintings of
+all kinds, which are emblazoned on the walls of the city. The city has
+six interior circuits of walls, and an outer wall which is the seventh.
+On this outer wall are painted the figures of legislators and
+philosophers, and on each of the interior walls the symbols or forms of
+some one of the sciences are delineated. The women are, for the most
+part, trained, like the men, in warlike and other exercises; but they
+have two special occupations of their own. After a battle, they and the
+boys soothe and relieve the wounded warriors; also they encourage them
+with embraces and pleasant words. Some elements of the Christian or
+Catholic religion are preserved among them. The life of the Apostles is
+greatly admired by this people because they had all things in common;
+and the short prayer which Jesus Christ taught men is used in their
+worship. It is a duty of the chief magistrates to pardon sins, and
+therefore the whole people make secret confession of them to the
+magistrates, and they to their chief, who is a sort of Rector
+Metaphysicus; and by this means he is well informed of all that is
+going on in the minds of men. After confession, absolution is granted
+to the citizens collectively, but no one is mentioned by name. There
+also exists among them a practice of perpetual prayer, performed by a
+succession of priests, who change every hour. Their religion is a
+worship of God in Trinity, that is of Wisdom, Love and Power, but
+without any distinction of persons. They behold in the sun the
+reflection of His glory; mere graven images they reject, refusing to
+fall under the ‘tyranny’ of idolatry.
+
+Many details are given about their customs of eating and drinking,
+about their mode of dressing, their employments, their wars. Campanella
+looks forward to a new mode of education, which is to be a study of
+nature, and not of Aristotle. He would not have his citizens waste
+their time in the consideration of what he calls ‘the dead signs of
+things.’ He remarks that he who knows one science only, does not really
+know that one any more than the rest, and insists strongly on the
+necessity of a variety of knowledge. More scholars are turned out in
+the City of the Sun in one year than by contemporary methods in ten or
+fifteen. He evidently believes, like Bacon, that henceforward natural
+science will play a great part in education, a hope which seems hardly
+to have been realized, either in our own or in any former age; at any
+rate the fulfilment of it has been long deferred.
+
+There is a good deal of ingenuity and even originality in this work,
+and a most enlightened spirit pervades it. But it has little or no
+charm of style, and falls very far short of the ‘New Atlantis’ of
+Bacon, and still more of the ‘Utopia’ of Sir Thomas More. It is full of
+inconsistencies, and though borrowed from Plato, shows but a
+superficial acquaintance with his writings. It is a work such as one
+might expect to have been written by a philosopher and man of genius
+who was also a friar, and who had spent twenty-seven years of his life
+in a prison of the Inquisition. The most interesting feature of the
+book, common to Plato and Sir Thomas More, is the deep feeling which is
+shown by the writer, of the misery and ignorance prevailing among the
+lower classes in his own time. Campanella takes note of Aristotle’s
+answer to Plato’s community of property, that in a society where all
+things are common, no individual would have any motive to work (Arist.
+Pol.): he replies, that his citizens being happy and contented in
+themselves (they are required to work only four hours a day), will have
+greater regard for their fellows than exists among men at present. He
+thinks, like Plato, that if he abolishes private feelings and
+interests, a great public feeling will take their place.
+
+Other writings on ideal states, such as the ‘Oceana’ of Harrington, in
+which the Lord Archon, meaning Cromwell, is described, not as he was,
+but as he ought to have been; or the ‘Argenis’ of Barclay, which is an
+historical allegory of his own time, are too unlike Plato to be worth
+mentioning. More interesting than either of these, and far more
+Platonic in style and thought, is Sir John Eliot’s ‘Monarchy of Man,’
+in which the prisoner of the Tower, no longer able ‘to be a politician
+in the land of his birth,’ turns away from politics to view ‘that other
+city which is within him,’ and finds on the very threshold of the grave
+that the secret of human happiness is the mastery of self. The change
+of government in the time of the English Commonwealth set men thinking
+about first principles, and gave rise to many works of this class...The
+great original genius of Swift owes nothing to Plato; nor is there any
+trace in the conversation or in the works of Dr. Johnson of any
+acquaintance with his writings. He probably would have refuted Plato
+without reading him, in the same fashion in which he supposed himself
+to have refuted Bishop Berkeley’s theory of the non-existence of
+matter. If we except the so-called English Platonists, or rather
+Neo-Platonists, who never understood their master, and the writings of
+Coleridge, who was to some extent a kindred spirit, Plato has left no
+permanent impression on English literature.
+
+7. Human life and conduct are affected by ideals in the same way that
+they are affected by the examples of eminent men. Neither the one nor
+the other are immediately applicable to practice, but there is a virtue
+flowing from them which tends to raise individuals above the common
+routine of society or trade, and to elevate States above the mere
+interests of commerce or the necessities of self-defence. Like the
+ideals of art they are partly framed by the omission of particulars;
+they require to be viewed at a certain distance, and are apt to fade
+away if we attempt to approach them. They gain an imaginary
+distinctness when embodied in a State or in a system of philosophy, but
+they still remain the visions of ‘a world unrealized.’ More striking
+and obvious to the ordinary mind are the examples of great men, who
+have served their own generation and are remembered in another. Even in
+our own family circle there may have been some one, a woman, or even a
+child, in whose face has shone forth a goodness more than human. The
+ideal then approaches nearer to us, and we fondly cling to it. The
+ideal of the past, whether of our own past lives or of former states of
+society, has a singular fascination for the minds of many. Too late we
+learn that such ideals cannot be recalled, though the recollection of
+them may have a humanizing influence on other times. But the
+abstractions of philosophy are to most persons cold and vacant; they
+give light without warmth; they are like the full moon in the heavens
+when there are no stars appearing. Men cannot live by thought alone;
+the world of sense is always breaking in upon them. They are for the
+most part confined to a corner of earth, and see but a little way
+beyond their own home or place of abode; they ‘do not lift up their
+eyes to the hills’; they are not awake when the dawn appears. But in
+Plato we have reached a height from which a man may look into the
+distance and behold the future of the world and of philosophy. The
+ideal of the State and of the life of the philosopher; the ideal of an
+education continuing through life and extending equally to both sexes;
+the ideal of the unity and correlation of knowledge; the faith in good
+and immortality—are the vacant forms of light on which Plato is seeking
+to fix the eye of mankind.
+
+8. Two other ideals, which never appeared above the horizon in Greek
+Philosophy, float before the minds of men in our own day: one seen more
+clearly than formerly, as though each year and each generation brought
+us nearer to some great change; the other almost in the same degree
+retiring from view behind the laws of nature, as if oppressed by them,
+but still remaining a silent hope of we know not what hidden in the
+heart of man. The first ideal is the future of the human race in this
+world; the second the future of the individual in another. The first is
+the more perfect realization of our own present life; the second, the
+abnegation of it: the one, limited by experience, the other,
+transcending it. Both of them have been and are powerful motives of
+action; there are a few in whom they have taken the place of all
+earthly interests. The hope of a future for the human race at first
+sight seems to be the more disinterested, the hope of individual
+existence the more egotistical, of the two motives. But when men have
+learned to resolve their hope of a future either for themselves or for
+the world into the will of God—‘not my will but Thine,’ the difference
+between them falls away; and they may be allowed to make either of them
+the basis of their lives, according to their own individual character
+or temperament. There is as much faith in the willingness to work for
+an unseen future in this world as in another. Neither is it
+inconceivable that some rare nature may feel his duty to another
+generation, or to another century, almost as strongly as to his own, or
+that living always in the presence of God, he may realize another world
+as vividly as he does this.
+
+The greatest of all ideals may, or rather must be conceived by us under
+similitudes derived from human qualities; although sometimes, like the
+Jewish prophets, we may dash away these figures of speech and describe
+the nature of God only in negatives. These again by degrees acquire a
+positive meaning. It would be well, if when meditating on the higher
+truths either of philosophy or religion, we sometimes substituted one
+form of expression for another, lest through the necessities of
+language we should become the slaves of mere words.
+
+There is a third ideal, not the same, but akin to these, which has a
+place in the home and heart of every believer in the religion of
+Christ, and in which men seem to find a nearer and more familiar truth,
+the Divine man, the Son of Man, the Saviour of mankind, Who is the
+first-born and head of the whole family in heaven and earth, in Whom
+the Divine and human, that which is without and that which is within
+the range of our earthly faculties, are indissolubly united. Neither is
+this divine form of goodness wholly separable from the ideal of the
+Christian Church, which is said in the New Testament to be ‘His body,’
+or at variance with those other images of good which Plato sets before
+us. We see Him in a figure only, and of figures of speech we select but
+a few, and those the simplest, to be the expression of Him. We behold
+Him in a picture, but He is not there. We gather up the fragments of
+His discourses, but neither do they represent Him as He truly was. His
+dwelling is neither in heaven nor earth, but in the heart of man. This
+is that image which Plato saw dimly in the distance, which, when
+existing among men, he called, in the language of Homer, ‘the likeness
+of God,’ the likeness of a nature which in all ages men have felt to be
+greater and better than themselves, and which in endless forms, whether
+derived from Scripture or nature, from the witness of history or from
+the human heart, regarded as a person or not as a person, with or
+without parts or passions, existing in space or not in space, is and
+will always continue to be to mankind the Idea of Good.
+
+
+
+
+ THE REPUBLIC.
+
+
+
+
+ PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE.
+
+
+Socrates, who is the narrator.
+
+Glaucon.
+
+Adeimantus.
+
+Polemarchus.
+
+Cephalus.
+
+Thrasymachus.
+
+Cleitophon.
+
+And others who are mute auditors.
+
+The scene is laid in the house of Cephalus at the Piraeus; and the
+whole dialogue is narrated by Socrates the day after it actually took
+place to Timaeus, Hermocrates, Critias, and a nameless person, who are
+introduced in the Timaeus.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK I.
+
+
+I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston,
+that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess (Bendis, the Thracian
+Artemis.); and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would
+celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the
+procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally,
+if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the
+spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant
+Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a
+distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to
+run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak
+behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait.
+
+I turned round, and asked him where his master was.
+
+There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait.
+
+Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus
+appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus the son
+of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession.
+
+Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and your
+companion are already on your way to the city.
+
+You are not far wrong, I said.
+
+But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are?
+
+Of course.
+
+And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to
+remain where you are.
+
+May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you to
+let us go?
+
+But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said.
+
+Certainly not, replied Glaucon.
+
+Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.
+
+Adeimantus added: Has no one told you of the torch-race on horseback in
+honour of the goddess which will take place in the evening?
+
+With horses! I replied: That is a novelty. Will horsemen carry torches
+and pass them one to another during the race?
+
+Yes, said Polemarchus, and not only so, but a festival will be
+celebrated at night, which you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon
+after supper and see this festival; there will be a gathering of young
+men, and we will have a good talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse.
+
+Glaucon said: I suppose, since you insist, that we must.
+
+Very good, I replied.
+
+Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house; and there we found
+his brothers Lysias and Euthydemus, and with them Thrasymachus the
+Chalcedonian, Charmantides the Paeanian, and Cleitophon the son of
+Aristonymus. There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I
+had not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was
+seated on a cushioned chair, and had a garland on his head, for he had
+been sacrificing in the court; and there were some other chairs in the
+room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He
+saluted me eagerly, and then he said:—
+
+You don’t come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought: If I were
+still able to go and see you I would not ask you to come to me. But at
+my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you should come
+oftener to the Piraeus. For let me tell you, that the more the
+pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and
+charm of conversation. Do not then deny my request, but make our house
+your resort and keep company with these young men; we are old friends,
+and you will be quite at home with us.
+
+I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus,
+than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have
+gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to
+enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.
+And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have
+arrived at that time which the poets call the ‘threshold of old age’—Is
+life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?
+
+I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my
+age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says;
+and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is—I cannot
+eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away:
+there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer
+life. Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by
+relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age
+is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that
+which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too
+being old, and every other old man, would have felt as they do. But
+this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known.
+How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the
+question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles,—are you still the man
+you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of
+which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious
+master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem
+as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly
+old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax
+their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of
+one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these
+regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed
+to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and
+tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the
+pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and
+age are equally a burden.
+
+I listened in admiration, and wanting to draw him out, that he might go
+on—Yes, Cephalus, I said: but I rather suspect that people in general
+are not convinced by you when you speak thus; they think that old age
+sits lightly upon you, not because of your happy disposition, but
+because you are rich, and wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
+
+You are right, he replied; they are not convinced: and there is
+something in what they say; not, however, so much as they imagine. I
+might answer them as Themistocles answered the Seriphian who was
+abusing him and saying that he was famous, not for his own merits but
+because he was an Athenian: ‘If you had been a native of my country or
+I of yours, neither of us would have been famous.’ And to those who are
+not rich and are impatient of old age, the same reply may be made; for
+to the good poor man old age cannot be a light burden, nor can a bad
+rich man ever have peace with himself.
+
+May I ask, Cephalus, whether your fortune was for the most part
+inherited or acquired by you?
+
+Acquired! Socrates; do you want to know how much I acquired? In the art
+of making money I have been midway between my father and grandfather:
+for my grandfather, whose name I bear, doubled and trebled the value of
+his patrimony, that which he inherited being much what I possess now;
+but my father Lysanias reduced the property below what it is at
+present: and I shall be satisfied if I leave to these my sons not less
+but a little more than I received.
+
+That was why I asked you the question, I replied, because I see that
+you are indifferent about money, which is a characteristic rather of
+those who have inherited their fortunes than of those who have acquired
+them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation
+of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems,
+or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for
+the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And
+hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but
+the praises of wealth.
+
+That is true, he said.
+
+Yes, that is very true, but may I ask another question?—What do you
+consider to be the greatest blessing which you have reaped from your
+wealth?
+
+One, he said, of which I could not expect easily to convince others.
+For let me tell you, Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be
+near death, fears and cares enter into his mind which he never had
+before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is exacted
+there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he
+is tormented with the thought that they may be true: either from the
+weakness of age, or because he is now drawing nearer to that other
+place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions and alarms
+crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what
+wrongs he has done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his
+transgressions is great he will many a time like a child start up in
+his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings. But to him
+who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is
+the kind nurse of his age:
+
+‘Hope,’ he says, ‘cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and
+holiness, and is the nurse of his age and the companion of his
+journey;—hope which is mightiest to sway the restless soul of man.’
+
+How admirable are his words! And the great blessing of riches, I do not
+say to every man, but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to
+deceive or to defraud others, either intentionally or unintentionally;
+and when he departs to the world below he is not in any apprehension
+about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men. Now to
+this peace of mind the possession of wealth greatly contributes; and
+therefore I say, that, setting one thing against another, of the many
+advantages which wealth has to give, to a man of sense this is in my
+opinion the greatest.
+
+Well said, Cephalus, I replied; but as concerning justice, what is
+it?—to speak the truth and to pay your debts—no more than this? And
+even to this are there not exceptions? Suppose that a friend when in
+his right mind has deposited arms with me and he asks for them when he
+is not in his right mind, ought I to give them back to him? No one
+would say that I ought or that I should be right in doing so, any more
+than they would say that I ought always to speak the truth to one who
+is in his condition.
+
+You are quite right, he replied.
+
+But then, I said, speaking the truth and paying your debts is not a
+correct definition of justice.
+
+Quite correct, Socrates, if Simonides is to be believed, said
+Polemarchus interposing.
+
+I fear, said Cephalus, that I must go now, for I have to look after the
+sacrifices, and I hand over the argument to Polemarchus and the
+company.
+
+Is not Polemarchus your heir? I said.
+
+To be sure, he answered, and went away laughing to the sacrifices.
+
+Tell me then, O thou heir of the argument, what did Simonides say, and
+according to you truly say, about justice?
+
+He said that the repayment of a debt is just, and in saying so he
+appears to me to be right.
+
+I should be sorry to doubt the word of such a wise and inspired man,
+but his meaning, though probably clear to you, is the reverse of clear
+to me. For he certainly does not mean, as we were just now saying, that
+I ought to return a deposit of arms or of anything else to one who asks
+for it when he is not in his right senses; and yet a deposit cannot be
+denied to be a debt.
+
+True.
+
+Then when the person who asks me is not in his right mind I am by no
+means to make the return?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+When Simonides said that the repayment of a debt was justice, he did
+not mean to include that case?
+
+Certainly not; for he thinks that a friend ought always to do good to a
+friend and never evil.
+
+You mean that the return of a deposit of gold which is to the injury of
+the receiver, if the two parties are friends, is not the repayment of a
+debt,—that is what you would imagine him to say?
+
+Yes.
+
+And are enemies also to receive what we owe to them?
+
+To be sure, he said, they are to receive what we owe them, and an
+enemy, as I take it, owes to an enemy that which is due or proper to
+him—that is to say, evil.
+
+Simonides, then, after the manner of poets, would seem to have spoken
+darkly of the nature of justice; for he really meant to say that
+justice is the giving to each man what is proper to him, and this he
+termed a debt.
+
+That must have been his meaning, he said.
+
+By heaven! I replied; and if we asked him what due or proper thing is
+given by medicine, and to whom, what answer do you think that he would
+make to us?
+
+He would surely reply that medicine gives drugs and meat and drink to
+human bodies.
+
+And what due or proper thing is given by cookery, and to what?
+
+Seasoning to food.
+
+And what is that which justice gives, and to whom?
+
+If, Socrates, we are to be guided at all by the analogy of the
+preceding instances, then justice is the art which gives good to
+friends and evil to enemies.
+
+That is his meaning then?
+
+I think so.
+
+And who is best able to do good to his friends and evil to his enemies
+in time of sickness?
+
+The physician.
+
+Or when they are on a voyage, amid the perils of the sea?
+
+The pilot.
+
+And in what sort of actions or with a view to what result is the just
+man most able to do harm to his enemy and good to his friend?
+
+In going to war against the one and in making alliances with the other.
+
+But when a man is well, my dear Polemarchus, there is no need of a
+physician?
+
+No.
+
+And he who is not on a voyage has no need of a pilot?
+
+No.
+
+Then in time of peace justice will be of no use?
+
+I am very far from thinking so.
+
+You think that justice may be of use in peace as well as in war?
+
+Yes.
+
+Like husbandry for the acquisition of corn?
+
+Yes.
+
+Or like shoemaking for the acquisition of shoes,—that is what you mean?
+
+Yes.
+
+And what similar use or power of acquisition has justice in time of
+peace?
+
+In contracts, Socrates, justice is of use.
+
+And by contracts you mean partnerships?
+
+Exactly.
+
+But is the just man or the skilful player a more useful and better
+partner at a game of draughts?
+
+The skilful player.
+
+And in the laying of bricks and stones is the just man a more useful or
+better partner than the builder?
+
+Quite the reverse.
+
+Then in what sort of partnership is the just man a better partner than
+the harp-player, as in playing the harp the harp-player is certainly a
+better partner than the just man?
+
+In a money partnership.
+
+Yes, Polemarchus, but surely not in the use of money; for you do not
+want a just man to be your counsellor in the purchase or sale of a
+horse; a man who is knowing about horses would be better for that,
+would he not?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And when you want to buy a ship, the shipwright or the pilot would be
+better?
+
+True.
+
+Then what is that joint use of silver or gold in which the just man is
+to be preferred?
+
+When you want a deposit to be kept safely.
+
+You mean when money is not wanted, but allowed to lie?
+
+Precisely.
+
+That is to say, justice is useful when money is useless?
+
+That is the inference.
+
+And when you want to keep a pruning-hook safe, then justice is useful
+to the individual and to the state; but when you want to use it, then
+the art of the vine-dresser?
+
+Clearly.
+
+And when you want to keep a shield or a lyre, and not to use them, you
+would say that justice is useful; but when you want to use them, then
+the art of the soldier or of the musician?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And so of all other things;—justice is useful when they are useless,
+and useless when they are useful?
+
+That is the inference.
+
+Then justice is not good for much. But let us consider this further
+point: Is not he who can best strike a blow in a boxing match or in any
+kind of fighting best able to ward off a blow?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And he who is most skilful in preventing or escaping from a disease is
+best able to create one?
+
+True.
+
+And he is the best guard of a camp who is best able to steal a march
+upon the enemy?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then he who is a good keeper of anything is also a good thief?
+
+That, I suppose, is to be inferred.
+
+Then if the just man is good at keeping money, he is good at stealing
+it.
+
+That is implied in the argument.
+
+Then after all the just man has turned out to be a thief. And this is a
+lesson which I suspect you must have learnt out of Homer; for he,
+speaking of Autolycus, the maternal grandfather of Odysseus, who is a
+favourite of his, affirms that
+
+‘He was excellent above all men in theft and perjury.’
+
+And so, you and Homer and Simonides are agreed that justice is an art
+of theft; to be practised however ‘for the good of friends and for the
+harm of enemies,’—that was what you were saying?
+
+No, certainly not that, though I do not now know what I did say; but I
+still stand by the latter words.
+
+Well, there is another question: By friends and enemies do we mean
+those who are so really, or only in seeming?
+
+Surely, he said, a man may be expected to love those whom he thinks
+good, and to hate those whom he thinks evil.
+
+Yes, but do not persons often err about good and evil: many who are not
+good seem to be so, and conversely?
+
+That is true.
+
+Then to them the good will be enemies and the evil will be their
+friends? True.
+
+And in that case they will be right in doing good to the evil and evil
+to the good?
+
+Clearly.
+
+But the good are just and would not do an injustice?
+
+True.
+
+Then according to your argument it is just to injure those who do no
+wrong?
+
+Nay, Socrates; the doctrine is immoral.
+
+Then I suppose that we ought to do good to the just and harm to the
+unjust?
+
+I like that better.
+
+But see the consequence:—Many a man who is ignorant of human nature has
+friends who are bad friends, and in that case he ought to do harm to
+them; and he has good enemies whom he ought to benefit; but, if so, we
+shall be saying the very opposite of that which we affirmed to be the
+meaning of Simonides.
+
+Very true, he said: and I think that we had better correct an error
+into which we seem to have fallen in the use of the words ‘friend’ and
+‘enemy.’
+
+What was the error, Polemarchus? I asked.
+
+We assumed that he is a friend who seems to be or who is thought good.
+
+And how is the error to be corrected?
+
+We should rather say that he is a friend who is, as well as seems,
+good; and that he who seems only, and is not good, only seems to be and
+is not a friend; and of an enemy the same may be said.
+
+You would argue that the good are our friends and the bad our enemies?
+
+Yes.
+
+And instead of saying simply as we did at first, that it is just to do
+good to our friends and harm to our enemies, we should further say: It
+is just to do good to our friends when they are good and harm to our
+enemies when they are evil?
+
+Yes, that appears to me to be the truth.
+
+But ought the just to injure any one at all?
+
+Undoubtedly he ought to injure those who are both wicked and his
+enemies.
+
+When horses are injured, are they improved or deteriorated?
+
+The latter.
+
+Deteriorated, that is to say, in the good qualities of horses, not of
+dogs?
+
+Yes, of horses.
+
+And dogs are deteriorated in the good qualities of dogs, and not of
+horses?
+
+Of course.
+
+And will not men who are injured be deteriorated in that which is the
+proper virtue of man?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And that human virtue is justice?
+
+To be sure.
+
+Then men who are injured are of necessity made unjust?
+
+That is the result.
+
+But can the musician by his art make men unmusical?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Or the horseman by his art make them bad horsemen?
+
+Impossible.
+
+And can the just by justice make men unjust, or speaking generally, can
+the good by virtue make them bad?
+
+Assuredly not.
+
+Any more than heat can produce cold?
+
+It cannot.
+
+Or drought moisture?
+
+Clearly not.
+
+Nor can the good harm any one?
+
+Impossible.
+
+And the just is the good?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then to injure a friend or any one else is not the act of a just man,
+but of the opposite, who is the unjust?
+
+I think that what you say is quite true, Socrates.
+
+Then if a man says that justice consists in the repayment of debts, and
+that good is the debt which a just man owes to his friends, and evil
+the debt which he owes to his enemies,—to say this is not wise; for it
+is not true, if, as has been clearly shown, the injuring of another can
+be in no case just.
+
+I agree with you, said Polemarchus.
+
+Then you and I are prepared to take up arms against any one who
+attributes such a saying to Simonides or Bias or Pittacus, or any other
+wise man or seer?
+
+I am quite ready to do battle at your side, he said.
+
+Shall I tell you whose I believe the saying to be?
+
+Whose?
+
+I believe that Periander or Perdiccas or Xerxes or Ismenias the Theban,
+or some other rich and mighty man, who had a great opinion of his own
+power, was the first to say that justice is ‘doing good to your friends
+and harm to your enemies.’
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+Yes, I said; but if this definition of justice also breaks down, what
+other can be offered?
+
+Several times in the course of the discussion Thrasymachus had made an
+attempt to get the argument into his own hands, and had been put down
+by the rest of the company, who wanted to hear the end. But when
+Polemarchus and I had done speaking and there was a pause, he could no
+longer hold his peace; and, gathering himself up, he came at us like a
+wild beast, seeking to devour us. We were quite panic-stricken at the
+sight of him.
+
+He roared out to the whole company: What folly, Socrates, has taken
+possession of you all? And why, sillybillies, do you knock under to one
+another? I say that if you want really to know what justice is, you
+should not only ask but answer, and you should not seek honour to
+yourself from the refutation of an opponent, but have your own answer;
+for there is many a one who can ask and cannot answer. And now I will
+not have you say that justice is duty or advantage or profit or gain or
+interest, for this sort of nonsense will not do for me; I must have
+clearness and accuracy.
+
+I was panic-stricken at his words, and could not look at him without
+trembling. Indeed I believe that if I had not fixed my eye upon him, I
+should have been struck dumb: but when I saw his fury rising, I looked
+at him first, and was therefore able to reply to him.
+
+Thrasymachus, I said, with a quiver, don’t be hard upon us. Polemarchus
+and I may have been guilty of a little mistake in the argument, but I
+can assure you that the error was not intentional. If we were seeking
+for a piece of gold, you would not imagine that we were ‘knocking under
+to one another,’ and so losing our chance of finding it. And why, when
+we are seeking for justice, a thing more precious than many pieces of
+gold, do you say that we are weakly yielding to one another and not
+doing our utmost to get at the truth? Nay, my good friend, we are most
+willing and anxious to do so, but the fact is that we cannot. And if
+so, you people who know all things should pity us and not be angry with
+us.
+
+How characteristic of Socrates! he replied, with a bitter laugh;—that’s
+your ironical style! Did I not foresee—have I not already told you,
+that whatever he was asked he would refuse to answer, and try irony or
+any other shuffle, in order that he might avoid answering?
+
+You are a philosopher, Thrasymachus, I replied, and well know that if
+you ask a person what numbers make up twelve, taking care to prohibit
+him whom you ask from answering twice six, or three times four, or six
+times two, or four times three, ‘for this sort of nonsense will not do
+for me,’—then obviously, if that is your way of putting the question,
+no one can answer you. But suppose that he were to retort,
+‘Thrasymachus, what do you mean? If one of these numbers which you
+interdict be the true answer to the question, am I falsely to say some
+other number which is not the right one?—is that your meaning?’—How
+would you answer him?
+
+Just as if the two cases were at all alike! he said.
+
+Why should they not be? I replied; and even if they are not, but only
+appear to be so to the person who is asked, ought he not to say what he
+thinks, whether you and I forbid him or not?
+
+I presume then that you are going to make one of the interdicted
+answers?
+
+I dare say that I may, notwithstanding the danger, if upon reflection I
+approve of any of them.
+
+But what if I give you an answer about justice other and better, he
+said, than any of these? What do you deserve to have done to you?
+
+Done to me!—as becomes the ignorant, I must learn from the wise—that is
+what I deserve to have done to me.
+
+What, and no payment! a pleasant notion!
+
+I will pay when I have the money, I replied.
+
+But you have, Socrates, said Glaucon: and you, Thrasymachus, need be
+under no anxiety about money, for we will all make a contribution for
+Socrates.
+
+Yes, he replied, and then Socrates will do as he always does—refuse to
+answer himself, but take and pull to pieces the answer of some one
+else.
+
+Why, my good friend, I said, how can any one answer who knows, and says
+that he knows, just nothing; and who, even if he has some faint notions
+of his own, is told by a man of authority not to utter them? The
+natural thing is, that the speaker should be some one like yourself who
+professes to know and can tell what he knows. Will you then kindly
+answer, for the edification of the company and of myself?
+
+Glaucon and the rest of the company joined in my request, and
+Thrasymachus, as any one might see, was in reality eager to speak; for
+he thought that he had an excellent answer, and would distinguish
+himself. But at first he affected to insist on my answering; at length
+he consented to begin. Behold, he said, the wisdom of Socrates; he
+refuses to teach himself, and goes about learning of others, to whom he
+never even says Thank you.
+
+That I learn of others, I replied, is quite true; but that I am
+ungrateful I wholly deny. Money I have none, and therefore I pay in
+praise, which is all I have; and how ready I am to praise any one who
+appears to me to speak well you will very soon find out when you
+answer; for I expect that you will answer well.
+
+Listen, then, he said; I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the
+interest of the stronger. And now why do you not praise me? But of
+course you won’t.
+
+Let me first understand you, I replied. Justice, as you say, is the
+interest of the stronger. What, Thrasymachus, is the meaning of this?
+You cannot mean to say that because Polydamas, the pancratiast, is
+stronger than we are, and finds the eating of beef conducive to his
+bodily strength, that to eat beef is therefore equally for our good who
+are weaker than he is, and right and just for us?
+
+That’s abominable of you, Socrates; you take the words in the sense
+which is most damaging to the argument.
+
+Not at all, my good sir, I said; I am trying to understand them; and I
+wish that you would be a little clearer.
+
+Well, he said, have you never heard that forms of government differ;
+there are tyrannies, and there are democracies, and there are
+aristocracies?
+
+Yes, I know.
+
+And the government is the ruling power in each state?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And the different forms of government make laws democratical,
+aristocratical, tyrannical, with a view to their several interests; and
+these laws, which are made by them for their own interests, are the
+justice which they deliver to their subjects, and him who transgresses
+them they punish as a breaker of the law, and unjust. And that is what
+I mean when I say that in all states there is the same principle of
+justice, which is the interest of the government; and as the government
+must be supposed to have power, the only reasonable conclusion is, that
+everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of
+the stronger.
+
+Now I understand you, I said; and whether you are right or not I will
+try to discover. But let me remark, that in defining justice you have
+yourself used the word ‘interest’ which you forbade me to use. It is
+true, however, that in your definition the words ‘of the stronger’ are
+added.
+
+A small addition, you must allow, he said.
+
+Great or small, never mind about that: we must first enquire whether
+what you are saying is the truth. Now we are both agreed that justice
+is interest of some sort, but you go on to say ‘of the stronger’; about
+this addition I am not so sure, and must therefore consider further.
+
+Proceed.
+
+I will; and first tell me, Do you admit that it is just for subjects to
+obey their rulers?
+
+I do.
+
+But are the rulers of states absolutely infallible, or are they
+sometimes liable to err?
+
+To be sure, he replied, they are liable to err.
+
+Then in making their laws they may sometimes make them rightly, and
+sometimes not?
+
+True.
+
+When they make them rightly, they make them agreeably to their
+interest; when they are mistaken, contrary to their interest; you admit
+that?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the laws which they make must be obeyed by their subjects,—and that
+is what you call justice?
+
+Doubtless.
+
+Then justice, according to your argument, is not only obedience to the
+interest of the stronger but the reverse?
+
+What is that you are saying? he asked.
+
+I am only repeating what you are saying, I believe. But let us
+consider: Have we not admitted that the rulers may be mistaken about
+their own interest in what they command, and also that to obey them is
+justice? Has not that been admitted?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then you must also have acknowledged justice not to be for the interest
+of the stronger, when the rulers unintentionally command things to be
+done which are to their own injury. For if, as you say, justice is the
+obedience which the subject renders to their commands, in that case, O
+wisest of men, is there any escape from the conclusion that the weaker
+are commanded to do, not what is for the interest, but what is for the
+injury of the stronger?
+
+Nothing can be clearer, Socrates, said Polemarchus.
+
+Yes, said Cleitophon, interposing, if you are allowed to be his
+witness.
+
+But there is no need of any witness, said Polemarchus, for Thrasymachus
+himself acknowledges that rulers may sometimes command what is not for
+their own interest, and that for subjects to obey them is justice.
+
+Yes, Polemarchus,—Thrasymachus said that for subjects to do what was
+commanded by their rulers is just.
+
+Yes, Cleitophon, but he also said that justice is the interest of the
+stronger, and, while admitting both these propositions, he further
+acknowledged that the stronger may command the weaker who are his
+subjects to do what is not for his own interest; whence follows that
+justice is the injury quite as much as the interest of the stronger.
+
+But, said Cleitophon, he meant by the interest of the stronger what the
+stronger thought to be his interest,—this was what the weaker had to
+do; and this was affirmed by him to be justice.
+
+Those were not his words, rejoined Polemarchus.
+
+Never mind, I replied, if he now says that they are, let us accept his
+statement. Tell me, Thrasymachus, I said, did you mean by justice what
+the stronger thought to be his interest, whether really so or not?
+
+Certainly not, he said. Do you suppose that I call him who is mistaken
+the stronger at the time when he is mistaken?
+
+Yes, I said, my impression was that you did so, when you admitted that
+the ruler was not infallible but might be sometimes mistaken.
+
+You argue like an informer, Socrates. Do you mean, for example, that he
+who is mistaken about the sick is a physician in that he is mistaken?
+or that he who errs in arithmetic or grammar is an arithmetician or
+grammarian at the time when he is making the mistake, in respect of the
+mistake? True, we say that the physician or arithmetician or grammarian
+has made a mistake, but this is only a way of speaking; for the fact is
+that neither the grammarian nor any other person of skill ever makes a
+mistake in so far as he is what his name implies; they none of them err
+unless their skill fails them, and then they cease to be skilled
+artists. No artist or sage or ruler errs at the time when he is what
+his name implies; though he is commonly said to err, and I adopted the
+common mode of speaking. But to be perfectly accurate, since you are
+such a lover of accuracy, we should say that the ruler, in so far as he
+is a ruler, is unerring, and, being unerring, always commands that
+which is for his own interest; and the subject is required to execute
+his commands; and therefore, as I said at first and now repeat, justice
+is the interest of the stronger.
+
+Indeed, Thrasymachus, and do I really appear to you to argue like an
+informer?
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+And do you suppose that I ask these questions with any design of
+injuring you in the argument?
+
+Nay, he replied, ‘suppose’ is not the word—I know it; but you will be
+found out, and by sheer force of argument you will never prevail.
+
+I shall not make the attempt, my dear man; but to avoid any
+misunderstanding occurring between us in future, let me ask, in what
+sense do you speak of a ruler or stronger whose interest, as you were
+saying, he being the superior, it is just that the inferior should
+execute—is he a ruler in the popular or in the strict sense of the
+term?
+
+In the strictest of all senses, he said. And now cheat and play the
+informer if you can; I ask no quarter at your hands. But you never will
+be able, never.
+
+And do you imagine, I said, that I am such a madman as to try and
+cheat, Thrasymachus? I might as well shave a lion.
+
+Why, he said, you made the attempt a minute ago, and you failed.
+
+Enough, I said, of these civilities. It will be better that I should
+ask you a question: Is the physician, taken in that strict sense of
+which you are speaking, a healer of the sick or a maker of money? And
+remember that I am now speaking of the true physician.
+
+A healer of the sick, he replied.
+
+And the pilot—that is to say, the true pilot—is he a captain of sailors
+or a mere sailor?
+
+A captain of sailors.
+
+The circumstance that he sails in the ship is not to be taken into
+account; neither is he to be called a sailor; the name pilot by which
+he is distinguished has nothing to do with sailing, but is significant
+of his skill and of his authority over the sailors.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Now, I said, every art has an interest?
+
+Certainly.
+
+For which the art has to consider and provide?
+
+Yes, that is the aim of art.
+
+And the interest of any art is the perfection of it—this and nothing
+else?
+
+What do you mean?
+
+I mean what I may illustrate negatively by the example of the body.
+Suppose you were to ask me whether the body is self-sufficing or has
+wants, I should reply: Certainly the body has wants; for the body may
+be ill and require to be cured, and has therefore interests to which
+the art of medicine ministers; and this is the origin and intention of
+medicine, as you will acknowledge. Am I not right?
+
+Quite right, he replied.
+
+But is the art of medicine or any other art faulty or deficient in any
+quality in the same way that the eye may be deficient in sight or the
+ear fail of hearing, and therefore requires another art to provide for
+the interests of seeing and hearing—has art in itself, I say, any
+similar liability to fault or defect, and does every art require
+another supplementary art to provide for its interests, and that
+another and another without end? Or have the arts to look only after
+their own interests? Or have they no need either of themselves or of
+another?—having no faults or defects, they have no need to correct
+them, either by the exercise of their own art or of any other; they
+have only to consider the interest of their subject-matter. For every
+art remains pure and faultless while remaining true—that is to say,
+while perfect and unimpaired. Take the words in your precise sense, and
+tell me whether I am not right.
+
+Yes, clearly.
+
+Then medicine does not consider the interest of medicine, but the
+interest of the body?
+
+True, he said.
+
+Nor does the art of horsemanship consider the interests of the art of
+horsemanship, but the interests of the horse; neither do any other arts
+care for themselves, for they have no needs; they care only for that
+which is the subject of their art?
+
+True, he said.
+
+But surely, Thrasymachus, the arts are the superiors and rulers of
+their own subjects?
+
+To this he assented with a good deal of reluctance.
+
+Then, I said, no science or art considers or enjoins the interest of
+the stronger or superior, but only the interest of the subject and
+weaker?
+
+He made an attempt to contest this proposition also, but finally
+acquiesced.
+
+Then, I continued, no physician, in so far as he is a physician,
+considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his
+patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body
+as a subject, and is not a mere money-maker; that has been admitted?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the pilot likewise, in the strict sense of the term, is a ruler of
+sailors and not a mere sailor?
+
+That has been admitted.
+
+And such a pilot and ruler will provide and prescribe for the interest
+of the sailor who is under him, and not for his own or the ruler’s
+interest?
+
+He gave a reluctant ‘Yes.’
+
+Then, I said, Thrasymachus, there is no one in any rule who, in so far
+as he is a ruler, considers or enjoins what is for his own interest,
+but always what is for the interest of his subject or suitable to his
+art; to that he looks, and that alone he considers in everything which
+he says and does.
+
+When we had got to this point in the argument, and every one saw that
+the definition of justice had been completely upset, Thrasymachus,
+instead of replying to me, said: Tell me, Socrates, have you got a
+nurse?
+
+Why do you ask such a question, I said, when you ought rather to be
+answering?
+
+Because she leaves you to snivel, and never wipes your nose: she has
+not even taught you to know the shepherd from the sheep.
+
+What makes you say that? I replied.
+
+Because you fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens or tends the
+sheep or oxen with a view to their own good and not to the good of
+himself or his master; and you further imagine that the rulers of
+states, if they are true rulers, never think of their subjects as
+sheep, and that they are not studying their own advantage day and
+night. Oh, no; and so entirely astray are you in your ideas about the
+just and unjust as not even to know that justice and the just are in
+reality another’s good; that is to say, the interest of the ruler and
+stronger, and the loss of the subject and servant; and injustice the
+opposite; for the unjust is lord over the truly simple and just: he is
+the stronger, and his subjects do what is for his interest, and
+minister to his happiness, which is very far from being their own.
+Consider further, most foolish Socrates, that the just is always a
+loser in comparison with the unjust. First of all, in private
+contracts: wherever the unjust is the partner of the just you will find
+that, when the partnership is dissolved, the unjust man has always more
+and the just less. Secondly, in their dealings with the State: when
+there is an income-tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less
+on the same amount of income; and when there is anything to be received
+the one gains nothing and the other much. Observe also what happens
+when they take an office; there is the just man neglecting his affairs
+and perhaps suffering other losses, and getting nothing out of the
+public, because he is just; moreover he is hated by his friends and
+acquaintance for refusing to serve them in unlawful ways. But all this
+is reversed in the case of the unjust man. I am speaking, as before, of
+injustice on a large scale in which the advantage of the unjust is most
+apparent; and my meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that
+highest form of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men,
+and the sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most
+miserable—that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away
+the property of others, not little by little but wholesale;
+comprehending in one, things sacred as well as profane, private and
+public; for which acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating any
+one of them singly, he would be punished and incur great disgrace—they
+who do such wrong in particular cases are called robbers of temples,
+and man-stealers and burglars and swindlers and thieves. But when a man
+besides taking away the money of the citizens has made slaves of them,
+then, instead of these names of reproach, he is termed happy and
+blessed, not only by the citizens but by all who hear of his having
+achieved the consummation of injustice. For mankind censure injustice,
+fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because they shrink
+from committing it. And thus, as I have shown, Socrates, injustice,
+when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery
+than justice; and, as I said at first, justice is the interest of the
+stronger, whereas injustice is a man’s own profit and interest.
+
+Thrasymachus, when he had thus spoken, having, like a bath-man, deluged
+our ears with his words, had a mind to go away. But the company would
+not let him; they insisted that he should remain and defend his
+position; and I myself added my own humble request that he would not
+leave us. Thrasymachus, I said to him, excellent man, how suggestive
+are your remarks! And are you going to run away before you have fairly
+taught or learned whether they are true or not? Is the attempt to
+determine the way of man’s life so small a matter in your eyes—to
+determine how life may be passed by each one of us to the greatest
+advantage?
+
+And do I differ from you, he said, as to the importance of the enquiry?
+
+You appear rather, I replied, to have no care or thought about us,
+Thrasymachus—whether we live better or worse from not knowing what you
+say you know, is to you a matter of indifference. Prithee, friend, do
+not keep your knowledge to yourself; we are a large party; and any
+benefit which you confer upon us will be amply rewarded. For my own
+part I openly declare that I am not convinced, and that I do not
+believe injustice to be more gainful than justice, even if uncontrolled
+and allowed to have free play. For, granting that there may be an
+unjust man who is able to commit injustice either by fraud or force,
+still this does not convince me of the superior advantage of injustice,
+and there may be others who are in the same predicament with myself.
+Perhaps we may be wrong; if so, you in your wisdom should convince us
+that we are mistaken in preferring justice to injustice.
+
+And how am I to convince you, he said, if you are not already convinced
+by what I have just said; what more can I do for you? Would you have me
+put the proof bodily into your souls?
+
+Heaven forbid! I said; I would only ask you to be consistent; or, if
+you change, change openly and let there be no deception. For I must
+remark, Thrasymachus, if you will recall what was previously said, that
+although you began by defining the true physician in an exact sense,
+you did not observe a like exactness when speaking of the shepherd; you
+thought that the shepherd as a shepherd tends the sheep not with a view
+to their own good, but like a mere diner or banquetter with a view to
+the pleasures of the table; or, again, as a trader for sale in the
+market, and not as a shepherd. Yet surely the art of the shepherd is
+concerned only with the good of his subjects; he has only to provide
+the best for them, since the perfection of the art is already ensured
+whenever all the requirements of it are satisfied. And that was what I
+was saying just now about the ruler. I conceived that the art of the
+ruler, considered as ruler, whether in a state or in private life,
+could only regard the good of his flock or subjects; whereas you seem
+to think that the rulers in states, that is to say, the true rulers,
+like being in authority.
+
+Think! Nay, I am sure of it.
+
+Then why in the case of lesser offices do men never take them willingly
+without payment, unless under the idea that they govern for the
+advantage not of themselves but of others? Let me ask you a question:
+Are not the several arts different, by reason of their each having a
+separate function? And, my dear illustrious friend, do say what you
+think, that we may make a little progress.
+
+Yes, that is the difference, he replied.
+
+And each art gives us a particular good and not merely a general
+one—medicine, for example, gives us health; navigation, safety at sea,
+and so on?
+
+Yes, he said.
+
+And the art of payment has the special function of giving pay: but we
+do not confuse this with other arts, any more than the art of the pilot
+is to be confused with the art of medicine, because the health of the
+pilot may be improved by a sea voyage. You would not be inclined to
+say, would you, that navigation is the art of medicine, at least if we
+are to adopt your exact use of language?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Or because a man is in good health when he receives pay you would not
+say that the art of payment is medicine?
+
+I should not.
+
+Nor would you say that medicine is the art of receiving pay because a
+man takes fees when he is engaged in healing?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+And we have admitted, I said, that the good of each art is specially
+confined to the art?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then, if there be any good which all artists have in common, that is to
+be attributed to something of which they all have the common use?
+
+True, he replied.
+
+And when the artist is benefited by receiving pay the advantage is
+gained by an additional use of the art of pay, which is not the art
+professed by him?
+
+He gave a reluctant assent to this.
+
+Then the pay is not derived by the several artists from their
+respective arts. But the truth is, that while the art of medicine gives
+health, and the art of the builder builds a house, another art attends
+them which is the art of pay. The various arts may be doing their own
+business and benefiting that over which they preside, but would the
+artist receive any benefit from his art unless he were paid as well?
+
+I suppose not.
+
+But does he therefore confer no benefit when he works for nothing?
+
+Certainly, he confers a benefit.
+
+Then now, Thrasymachus, there is no longer any doubt that neither arts
+nor governments provide for their own interests; but, as we were before
+saying, they rule and provide for the interests of their subjects who
+are the weaker and not the stronger—to their good they attend and not
+to the good of the superior. And this is the reason, my dear
+Thrasymachus, why, as I was just now saying, no one is willing to
+govern; because no one likes to take in hand the reformation of evils
+which are not his concern without remuneration. For, in the execution
+of his work, and in giving his orders to another, the true artist does
+not regard his own interest, but always that of his subjects; and
+therefore in order that rulers may be willing to rule, they must be
+paid in one of three modes of payment, money, or honour, or a penalty
+for refusing.
+
+What do you mean, Socrates? said Glaucon. The first two modes of
+payment are intelligible enough, but what the penalty is I do not
+understand, or how a penalty can be a payment.
+
+You mean that you do not understand the nature of this payment which to
+the best men is the great inducement to rule? Of course you know that
+ambition and avarice are held to be, as indeed they are, a disgrace?
+
+Very true.
+
+And for this reason, I said, money and honour have no attraction for
+them; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing
+and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves
+out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being
+ambitious they do not care about honour. Wherefore necessity must be
+laid upon them, and they must be induced to serve from the fear of
+punishment. And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness
+to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed
+dishonourable. Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who
+refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.
+And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take office,
+not because they would, but because they cannot help—not under the idea
+that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves, but as
+a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task of ruling
+to any one who is better than themselves, or indeed as good. For there
+is reason to think that if a city were composed entirely of good men,
+then to avoid office would be as much an object of contention as to
+obtain office is at present; then we should have plain proof that the
+true ruler is not meant by nature to regard his own interest, but that
+of his subjects; and every one who knew this would choose rather to
+receive a benefit from another than to have the trouble of conferring
+one. So far am I from agreeing with Thrasymachus that justice is the
+interest of the stronger. This latter question need not be further
+discussed at present; but when Thrasymachus says that the life of the
+unjust is more advantageous than that of the just, his new statement
+appears to me to be of a far more serious character. Which of us has
+spoken truly? And which sort of life, Glaucon, do you prefer?
+
+I for my part deem the life of the just to be the more advantageous, he
+answered.
+
+Did you hear all the advantages of the unjust which Thrasymachus was
+rehearsing?
+
+Yes, I heard him, he replied, but he has not convinced me.
+
+Then shall we try to find some way of convincing him, if we can, that
+he is saying what is not true?
+
+Most certainly, he replied.
+
+If, I said, he makes a set speech and we make another recounting all
+the advantages of being just, and he answers and we rejoin, there must
+be a numbering and measuring of the goods which are claimed on either
+side, and in the end we shall want judges to decide; but if we proceed
+in our enquiry as we lately did, by making admissions to one another,
+we shall unite the offices of judge and advocate in our own persons.
+
+Very good, he said.
+
+And which method do I understand you to prefer? I said.
+
+That which you propose.
+
+Well, then, Thrasymachus, I said, suppose you begin at the beginning
+and answer me. You say that perfect injustice is more gainful than
+perfect justice?
+
+Yes, that is what I say, and I have given you my reasons.
+
+And what is your view about them? Would you call one of them virtue and
+the other vice?
+
+Certainly.
+
+I suppose that you would call justice virtue and injustice vice?
+
+What a charming notion! So likely too, seeing that I affirm injustice
+to be profitable and justice not.
+
+What else then would you say?
+
+The opposite, he replied.
+
+And would you call justice vice?
+
+No, I would rather say sublime simplicity.
+
+Then would you call injustice malignity?
+
+No; I would rather say discretion.
+
+And do the unjust appear to you to be wise and good?
+
+Yes, he said; at any rate those of them who are able to be perfectly
+unjust, and who have the power of subduing states and nations; but
+perhaps you imagine me to be talking of cutpurses. Even this profession
+if undetected has advantages, though they are not to be compared with
+those of which I was just now speaking.
+
+I do not think that I misapprehend your meaning, Thrasymachus, I
+replied; but still I cannot hear without amazement that you class
+injustice with wisdom and virtue, and justice with the opposite.
+
+Certainly I do so class them.
+
+Now, I said, you are on more substantial and almost unanswerable
+ground; for if the injustice which you were maintaining to be
+profitable had been admitted by you as by others to be vice and
+deformity, an answer might have been given to you on received
+principles; but now I perceive that you will call injustice honourable
+and strong, and to the unjust you will attribute all the qualities
+which were attributed by us before to the just, seeing that you do not
+hesitate to rank injustice with wisdom and virtue.
+
+You have guessed most infallibly, he replied.
+
+Then I certainly ought not to shrink from going through with the
+argument so long as I have reason to think that you, Thrasymachus, are
+speaking your real mind; for I do believe that you are now in earnest
+and are not amusing yourself at our expense.
+
+I may be in earnest or not, but what is that to you?—to refute the
+argument is your business.
+
+Very true, I said; that is what I have to do: But will you be so good
+as answer yet one more question? Does the just man try to gain any
+advantage over the just?
+
+Far otherwise; if he did he would not be the simple amusing creature
+which he is.
+
+And would he try to go beyond just action?
+
+He would not.
+
+And how would he regard the attempt to gain an advantage over the
+unjust; would that be considered by him as just or unjust?
+
+He would think it just, and would try to gain the advantage; but he
+would not be able.
+
+Whether he would or would not be able, I said, is not to the point. My
+question is only whether the just man, while refusing to have more than
+another just man, would wish and claim to have more than the unjust?
+
+Yes, he would.
+
+And what of the unjust—does he claim to have more than the just man and
+to do more than is just?
+
+Of course, he said, for he claims to have more than all men.
+
+And the unjust man will strive and struggle to obtain more than the
+unjust man or action, in order that he may have more than all?
+
+True.
+
+We may put the matter thus, I said—the just does not desire more than
+his like but more than his unlike, whereas the unjust desires more than
+both his like and his unlike?
+
+Nothing, he said, can be better than that statement.
+
+And the unjust is good and wise, and the just is neither?
+
+Good again, he said.
+
+And is not the unjust like the wise and good and the just unlike them?
+
+Of course, he said, he who is of a certain nature, is like those who
+are of a certain nature; he who is not, not.
+
+Each of them, I said, is such as his like is?
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+Very good, Thrasymachus, I said; and now to take the case of the arts:
+you would admit that one man is a musician and another not a musician?
+
+Yes.
+
+And which is wise and which is foolish?
+
+Clearly the musician is wise, and he who is not a musician is foolish.
+
+And he is good in as far as he is wise, and bad in as far as he is
+foolish?
+
+Yes.
+
+And you would say the same sort of thing of the physician?
+
+Yes.
+
+And do you think, my excellent friend, that a musician when he adjusts
+the lyre would desire or claim to exceed or go beyond a musician in the
+tightening and loosening the strings?
+
+I do not think that he would.
+
+But he would claim to exceed the non-musician?
+
+Of course.
+
+And what would you say of the physician? In prescribing meats and
+drinks would he wish to go beyond another physician or beyond the
+practice of medicine?
+
+He would not.
+
+But he would wish to go beyond the non-physician?
+
+Yes.
+
+And about knowledge and ignorance in general; see whether you think
+that any man who has knowledge ever would wish to have the choice of
+saying or doing more than another man who has knowledge. Would he not
+rather say or do the same as his like in the same case?
+
+That, I suppose, can hardly be denied.
+
+And what of the ignorant? would he not desire to have more than either
+the knowing or the ignorant?
+
+I dare say.
+
+And the knowing is wise?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the wise is good?
+
+True.
+
+Then the wise and good will not desire to gain more than his like, but
+more than his unlike and opposite?
+
+I suppose so.
+
+Whereas the bad and ignorant will desire to gain more than both?
+
+Yes.
+
+But did we not say, Thrasymachus, that the unjust goes beyond both his
+like and unlike? Were not these your words?
+
+They were.
+
+And you also said that the just will not go beyond his like but his
+unlike?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then the just is like the wise and good, and the unjust like the evil
+and ignorant?
+
+That is the inference.
+
+And each of them is such as his like is?
+
+That was admitted.
+
+Then the just has turned out to be wise and good and the unjust evil
+and ignorant.
+
+Thrasymachus made all these admissions, not fluently, as I repeat them,
+but with extreme reluctance; it was a hot summer’s day, and the
+perspiration poured from him in torrents; and then I saw what I had
+never seen before, Thrasymachus blushing. As we were now agreed that
+justice was virtue and wisdom, and injustice vice and ignorance, I
+proceeded to another point:
+
+Well, I said, Thrasymachus, that matter is now settled; but were we not
+also saying that injustice had strength; do you remember?
+
+Yes, I remember, he said, but do not suppose that I approve of what you
+are saying or have no answer; if however I were to answer, you would be
+quite certain to accuse me of haranguing; therefore either permit me to
+have my say out, or if you would rather ask, do so, and I will answer
+‘Very good,’ as they say to story-telling old women, and will nod ‘Yes’
+and ‘No.’
+
+Certainly not, I said, if contrary to your real opinion.
+
+Yes, he said, I will, to please you, since you will not let me speak.
+What else would you have?
+
+Nothing in the world, I said; and if you are so disposed I will ask and
+you shall answer.
+
+Proceed.
+
+Then I will repeat the question which I asked before, in order that our
+examination of the relative nature of justice and injustice may be
+carried on regularly. A statement was made that injustice is stronger
+and more powerful than justice, but now justice, having been identified
+with wisdom and virtue, is easily shown to be stronger than injustice,
+if injustice is ignorance; this can no longer be questioned by any one.
+But I want to view the matter, Thrasymachus, in a different way: You
+would not deny that a state may be unjust and may be unjustly
+attempting to enslave other states, or may have already enslaved them,
+and may be holding many of them in subjection?
+
+True, he replied; and I will add that the best and most perfectly
+unjust state will be most likely to do so.
+
+I know, I said, that such was your position; but what I would further
+consider is, whether this power which is possessed by the superior
+state can exist or be exercised without justice or only with justice.
+
+If you are right in your view, and justice is wisdom, then only with
+justice; but if I am right, then without justice.
+
+I am delighted, Thrasymachus, to see you not only nodding assent and
+dissent, but making answers which are quite excellent.
+
+That is out of civility to you, he replied.
+
+You are very kind, I said; and would you have the goodness also to
+inform me, whether you think that a state, or an army, or a band of
+robbers and thieves, or any other gang of evil-doers could act at all
+if they injured one another?
+
+No indeed, he said, they could not.
+
+But if they abstained from injuring one another, then they might act
+together better?
+
+Yes.
+
+And this is because injustice creates divisions and hatreds and
+fighting, and justice imparts harmony and friendship; is not that true,
+Thrasymachus?
+
+I agree, he said, because I do not wish to quarrel with you.
+
+How good of you, I said; but I should like to know also whether
+injustice, having this tendency to arouse hatred, wherever existing,
+among slaves or among freemen, will not make them hate one another and
+set them at variance and render them incapable of common action?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And even if injustice be found in two only, will they not quarrel and
+fight, and become enemies to one another and to the just?
+
+They will.
+
+And suppose injustice abiding in a single person, would your wisdom say
+that she loses or that she retains her natural power?
+
+Let us assume that she retains her power.
+
+Yet is not the power which injustice exercises of such a nature that
+wherever she takes up her abode, whether in a city, in an army, in a
+family, or in any other body, that body is, to begin with, rendered
+incapable of united action by reason of sedition and distraction; and
+does it not become its own enemy and at variance with all that opposes
+it, and with the just? Is not this the case?
+
+Yes, certainly.
+
+And is not injustice equally fatal when existing in a single person; in
+the first place rendering him incapable of action because he is not at
+unity with himself, and in the second place making him an enemy to
+himself and the just? Is not that true, Thrasymachus?
+
+Yes.
+
+And O my friend, I said, surely the gods are just?
+
+Granted that they are.
+
+But if so, the unjust will be the enemy of the gods, and the just will
+be their friend?
+
+Feast away in triumph, and take your fill of the argument; I will not
+oppose you, lest I should displease the company.
+
+Well then, proceed with your answers, and let me have the remainder of
+my repast. For we have already shown that the just are clearly wiser
+and better and abler than the unjust, and that the unjust are incapable
+of common action; nay more, that to speak as we did of men who are evil
+acting at any time vigorously together, is not strictly true, for if
+they had been perfectly evil, they would have laid hands upon one
+another; but it is evident that there must have been some remnant of
+justice in them, which enabled them to combine; if there had not been
+they would have injured one another as well as their victims; they were
+but half-villains in their enterprises; for had they been whole
+villains, and utterly unjust, they would have been utterly incapable of
+action. That, as I believe, is the truth of the matter, and not what
+you said at first. But whether the just have a better and happier life
+than the unjust is a further question which we also proposed to
+consider. I think that they have, and for the reasons which I have
+given; but still I should like to examine further, for no light matter
+is at stake, nothing less than the rule of human life.
+
+Proceed.
+
+I will proceed by asking a question: Would you not say that a horse has
+some end?
+
+I should.
+
+And the end or use of a horse or of anything would be that which could
+not be accomplished, or not so well accomplished, by any other thing?
+
+I do not understand, he said.
+
+Let me explain: Can you see, except with the eye?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Or hear, except with the ear?
+
+No.
+
+These then may be truly said to be the ends of these organs?
+
+They may.
+
+But you can cut off a vine-branch with a dagger or with a chisel, and
+in many other ways?
+
+Of course.
+
+And yet not so well as with a pruning-hook made for the purpose?
+
+True.
+
+May we not say that this is the end of a pruning-hook?
+
+We may.
+
+Then now I think you will have no difficulty in understanding my
+meaning when I asked the question whether the end of anything would be
+that which could not be accomplished, or not so well accomplished, by
+any other thing?
+
+I understand your meaning, he said, and assent.
+
+And that to which an end is appointed has also an excellence? Need I
+ask again whether the eye has an end?
+
+It has.
+
+And has not the eye an excellence?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the ear has an end and an excellence also?
+
+True.
+
+And the same is true of all other things; they have each of them an end
+and a special excellence?
+
+That is so.
+
+Well, and can the eyes fulfil their end if they are wanting in their
+own proper excellence and have a defect instead?
+
+How can they, he said, if they are blind and cannot see?
+
+You mean to say, if they have lost their proper excellence, which is
+sight; but I have not arrived at that point yet. I would rather ask the
+question more generally, and only enquire whether the things which
+fulfil their ends fulfil them by their own proper excellence, and fail
+of fulfilling them by their own defect?
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+I might say the same of the ears; when deprived of their own proper
+excellence they cannot fulfil their end?
+
+True.
+
+And the same observation will apply to all other things?
+
+I agree.
+
+Well; and has not the soul an end which nothing else can fulfil? for
+example, to superintend and command and deliberate and the like. Are
+not these functions proper to the soul, and can they rightly be
+assigned to any other?
+
+To no other.
+
+And is not life to be reckoned among the ends of the soul?
+
+Assuredly, he said.
+
+And has not the soul an excellence also?
+
+Yes.
+
+And can she or can she not fulfil her own ends when deprived of that
+excellence?
+
+She cannot.
+
+Then an evil soul must necessarily be an evil ruler and superintendent,
+and the good soul a good ruler?
+
+Yes, necessarily.
+
+And we have admitted that justice is the excellence of the soul, and
+injustice the defect of the soul?
+
+That has been admitted.
+
+Then the just soul and the just man will live well, and the unjust man
+will live ill?
+
+That is what your argument proves.
+
+And he who lives well is blessed and happy, and he who lives ill the
+reverse of happy?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then the just is happy, and the unjust miserable?
+
+So be it.
+
+But happiness and not misery is profitable.
+
+Of course.
+
+Then, my blessed Thrasymachus, injustice can never be more profitable
+than justice.
+
+Let this, Socrates, he said, be your entertainment at the Bendidea.
+
+For which I am indebted to you, I said, now that you have grown gentle
+towards me and have left off scolding. Nevertheless, I have not been
+well entertained; but that was my own fault and not yours. As an
+epicure snatches a taste of every dish which is successively brought to
+table, he not having allowed himself time to enjoy the one before, so
+have I gone from one subject to another without having discovered what
+I sought at first, the nature of justice. I left that enquiry and
+turned away to consider whether justice is virtue and wisdom or evil
+and folly; and when there arose a further question about the
+comparative advantages of justice and injustice, I could not refrain
+from passing on to that. And the result of the whole discussion has
+been that I know nothing at all. For I know not what justice is, and
+therefore I am not likely to know whether it is or is not a virtue, nor
+can I say whether the just man is happy or unhappy.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK II.
+
+
+With these words I was thinking that I had made an end of the
+discussion; but the end, in truth, proved to be only a beginning. For
+Glaucon, who is always the most pugnacious of men, was dissatisfied at
+Thrasymachus’ retirement; he wanted to have the battle out. So he said
+to me: Socrates, do you wish really to persuade us, or only to seem to
+have persuaded us, that to be just is always better than to be unjust?
+
+I should wish really to persuade you, I replied, if I could.
+
+Then you certainly have not succeeded. Let me ask you now:—How would
+you arrange goods—are there not some which we welcome for their own
+sakes, and independently of their consequences, as, for example,
+harmless pleasures and enjoyments, which delight us at the time,
+although nothing follows from them?
+
+I agree in thinking that there is such a class, I replied.
+
+Is there not also a second class of goods, such as knowledge, sight,
+health, which are desirable not only in themselves, but also for their
+results?
+
+Certainly, I said.
+
+And would you not recognize a third class, such as gymnastic, and the
+care of the sick, and the physician’s art; also the various ways of
+money-making—these do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and
+no one would choose them for their own sakes, but only for the sake of
+some reward or result which flows from them?
+
+There is, I said, this third class also. But why do you ask?
+
+Because I want to know in which of the three classes you would place
+justice?
+
+In the highest class, I replied,—among those goods which he who would
+be happy desires both for their own sake and for the sake of their
+results.
+
+Then the many are of another mind; they think that justice is to be
+reckoned in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued
+for the sake of rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are
+disagreeable and rather to be avoided.
+
+I know, I said, that this is their manner of thinking, and that this
+was the thesis which Thrasymachus was maintaining just now, when he
+censured justice and praised injustice. But I am too stupid to be
+convinced by him.
+
+I wish, he said, that you would hear me as well as him, and then I
+shall see whether you and I agree. For Thrasymachus seems to me, like a
+snake, to have been charmed by your voice sooner than he ought to have
+been; but to my mind the nature of justice and injustice have not yet
+been made clear. Setting aside their rewards and results, I want to
+know what they are in themselves, and how they inwardly work in the
+soul. If you, please, then, I will revive the argument of Thrasymachus.
+And first I will speak of the nature and origin of justice according to
+the common view of them. Secondly, I will show that all men who
+practise justice do so against their will, of necessity, but not as a
+good. And thirdly, I will argue that there is reason in this view, for
+the life of the unjust is after all better far than the life of the
+just—if what they say is true, Socrates, since I myself am not of their
+opinion. But still I acknowledge that I am perplexed when I hear the
+voices of Thrasymachus and myriads of others dinning in my ears; and,
+on the other hand, I have never yet heard the superiority of justice to
+injustice maintained by any one in a satisfactory way. I want to hear
+justice praised in respect of itself; then I shall be satisfied, and
+you are the person from whom I think that I am most likely to hear
+this; and therefore I will praise the unjust life to the utmost of my
+power, and my manner of speaking will indicate the manner in which I
+desire to hear you too praising justice and censuring injustice. Will
+you say whether you approve of my proposal?
+
+Indeed I do; nor can I imagine any theme about which a man of sense
+would oftener wish to converse.
+
+I am delighted, he replied, to hear you say so, and shall begin by
+speaking, as I proposed, of the nature and origin of justice.
+
+They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice,
+evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have
+both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not
+being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they
+had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise
+laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed
+by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature
+of justice;—it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which
+is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is
+to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice,
+being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good,
+but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men
+to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever
+submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad
+if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and
+origin of justice.
+
+Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because
+they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine
+something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust
+power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will
+lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust
+man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest,
+which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the
+path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing
+may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is
+said to have been possessed by Gyges, the ancestor of Croesus the
+Lydian. According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service
+of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made
+an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock.
+Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other
+marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he
+stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him,
+more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took
+from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met
+together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly
+report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having
+the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to
+turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became
+invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as
+if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again
+touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made
+several trials of the ring, and always with the same result—when he
+turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he
+reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers
+who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the
+queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and
+took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and
+the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be
+imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in
+justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he
+could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses
+and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison
+whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the
+actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would
+both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be
+a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks
+that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for
+wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is
+unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more
+profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have
+been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any
+one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any
+wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the
+lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him
+to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a
+fear that they too might suffer injustice. Enough of this.
+
+Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and
+unjust, we must isolate them; there is no other way; and how is the
+isolation to be effected? I answer: Let the unjust man be entirely
+unjust, and the just man entirely just; nothing is to be taken away
+from either of them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the
+work of their respective lives. First, let the unjust be like other
+distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or physician,
+who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps within their limits, and
+who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover himself. So let the
+unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he
+means to be great in his injustice: (he who is found out is nobody:)
+for the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are
+not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume
+the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must
+allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the
+greatest reputation for justice. If he have taken a false step he must
+be able to recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect,
+if any of his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where
+force is required by his courage and strength, and command of money and
+friends. And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and
+simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good.
+There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured
+and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the
+sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore, let
+him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must
+be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former. Let him be
+the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have
+been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by
+the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to
+the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have
+reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of
+injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the
+two.
+
+Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up
+for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two
+statues.
+
+I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like there is
+no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either of
+them. This I will proceed to describe; but as you may think the
+description a little too coarse, I ask you to suppose, Socrates, that
+the words which follow are not mine.—Let me put them into the mouths of
+the eulogists of injustice: They will tell you that the just man who is
+thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound—will have his eyes burnt
+out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be
+impaled: Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not to
+be, just; the words of Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the unjust
+than of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality; he does not
+live with a view to appearances—he wants to be really unjust and not to
+seem only:—
+
+‘His mind has a soil deep and fertile, Out of which spring his prudent
+counsels.’
+
+In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule in the
+city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage to whom he will;
+also he can trade and deal where he likes, and always to his own
+advantage, because he has no misgivings about injustice; and at every
+contest, whether in public or private, he gets the better of his
+antagonists, and gains at their expense, and is rich, and out of his
+gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he
+can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and
+magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to
+honour in a far better style than the just, and therefore he is likely
+to be dearer than they are to the gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and
+men are said to unite in making the life of the unjust better than the
+life of the just.
+
+I was going to say something in answer to Glaucon, when Adeimantus, his
+brother, interposed: Socrates, he said, you do not suppose that there
+is nothing more to be urged?
+
+Why, what else is there? I answered.
+
+The strongest point of all has not been even mentioned, he replied.
+
+Well, then, according to the proverb, ‘Let brother help brother’—if he
+fails in any part do you assist him; although I must confess that
+Glaucon has already said quite enough to lay me in the dust, and take
+from me the power of helping justice.
+
+Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more: There is another
+side to Glaucon’s argument about the praise and censure of justice and
+injustice, which is equally required in order to bring out what I
+believe to be his meaning. Parents and tutors are always telling their
+sons and their wards that they are to be just; but why? not for the
+sake of justice, but for the sake of character and reputation; in the
+hope of obtaining for him who is reputed just some of those offices,
+marriages, and the like which Glaucon has enumerated among the
+advantages accruing to the unjust from the reputation of justice. More,
+however, is made of appearances by this class of persons than by the
+others; for they throw in the good opinion of the gods, and will tell
+you of a shower of benefits which the heavens, as they say, rain upon
+the pious; and this accords with the testimony of the noble Hesiod and
+Homer, the first of whom says, that the gods make the oaks of the just—
+
+ ‘To bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle;
+And the sheep are bowed down with the weight of their fleeces,’
+
+
+and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them. And
+Homer has a very similar strain; for he speaks of one whose fame is—
+
+‘As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god, Maintains justice;
+to whom the black earth brings forth Wheat and barley, whose trees are
+bowed with fruit, And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives
+him fish.’
+
+Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his son
+vouchsafe to the just; they take them down into the world below, where
+they have the saints lying on couches at a feast, everlastingly drunk,
+crowned with garlands; their idea seems to be that an immortality of
+drunkenness is the highest meed of virtue. Some extend their rewards
+yet further; the posterity, as they say, of the faithful and just shall
+survive to the third and fourth generation. This is the style in which
+they praise justice. But about the wicked there is another strain; they
+bury them in a slough in Hades, and make them carry water in a sieve;
+also while they are yet living they bring them to infamy, and inflict
+upon them the punishments which Glaucon described as the portion of the
+just who are reputed to be unjust; nothing else does their invention
+supply. Such is their manner of praising the one and censuring the
+other.
+
+Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking
+about justice and injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is
+found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind is always
+declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and
+toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of
+attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They say also
+that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and
+they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honour them both
+in public and private when they are rich or in any other way
+influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and
+poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the others. But
+most extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking about virtue and
+the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and misery to many
+good men, and good and happiness to the wicked. And mendicant prophets
+go to rich men’s doors and persuade them that they have a power
+committed to them by the gods of making an atonement for a man’s own or
+his ancestor’s sins by sacrifices or charms, with rejoicings and
+feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just or unjust, at a
+small cost; with magic arts and incantations binding heaven, as they
+say, to execute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom
+they appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with the words of Hesiod;—
+
+‘Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth and
+her dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil,’
+
+and a tedious and uphill road: then citing Homer as a witness that the
+gods may be influenced by men; for he also says:—
+
+‘The gods, too, may be turned from their purpose; and men pray to them
+and avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing entreaties, and by
+libations and the odour of fat, when they have sinned and
+transgressed.’
+
+And they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus, who
+were children of the Moon and the Muses—that is what they say—according
+to which they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals,
+but whole cities, that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by
+sacrifices and amusements which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at
+the service of the living and the dead; the latter sort they call
+mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains of hell, but if we neglect
+them no one knows what awaits us.
+
+He proceeded: And now when the young hear all this said about virtue
+and vice, and the way in which gods and men regard them, how are their
+minds likely to be affected, my dear Socrates,—those of them, I mean,
+who are quickwitted, and, like bees on the wing, light on every flower,
+and from all that they hear are prone to draw conclusions as to what
+manner of persons they should be and in what way they should walk if
+they would make the best of life? Probably the youth will say to
+himself in the words of Pindar—
+
+‘Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower
+which may be a fortress to me all my days?’
+
+For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought
+just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are
+unmistakeable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of
+justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers
+prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to
+appearance I must devote myself. I will describe around me a picture
+and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house;
+behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox, as Archilochus, greatest
+of sages, recommends. But I hear some one exclaiming that the
+concealment of wickedness is often difficult; to which I answer,
+Nothing great is easy. Nevertheless, the argument indicates this, if we
+would be happy, to be the path along which we should proceed. With a
+view to concealment we will establish secret brotherhoods and political
+clubs. And there are professors of rhetoric who teach the art of
+persuading courts and assemblies; and so, partly by persuasion and
+partly by force, I shall make unlawful gains and not be punished. Still
+I hear a voice saying that the gods cannot be deceived, neither can
+they be compelled. But what if there are no gods? or, suppose them to
+have no care of human things—why in either case should we mind about
+concealment? And even if there are gods, and they do care about us, yet
+we know of them only from tradition and the genealogies of the poets;
+and these are the very persons who say that they may be influenced and
+turned by ‘sacrifices and soothing entreaties and by offerings.’ Let us
+be consistent then, and believe both or neither. If the poets speak
+truly, why then we had better be unjust, and offer of the fruits of
+injustice; for if we are just, although we may escape the vengeance of
+heaven, we shall lose the gains of injustice; but, if we are unjust, we
+shall keep the gains, and by our sinning and praying, and praying and
+sinning, the gods will be propitiated, and we shall not be punished.
+‘But there is a world below in which either we or our posterity will
+suffer for our unjust deeds.’ Yes, my friend, will be the reflection,
+but there are mysteries and atoning deities, and these have great
+power. That is what mighty cities declare; and the children of the
+gods, who were their poets and prophets, bear a like testimony.
+
+On what principle, then, shall we any longer choose justice rather than
+the worst injustice? when, if we only unite the latter with a deceitful
+regard to appearances, we shall fare to our mind both with gods and
+men, in life and after death, as the most numerous and the highest
+authorities tell us. Knowing all this, Socrates, how can a man who has
+any superiority of mind or person or rank or wealth, be willing to
+honour justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when he hears
+justice praised? And even if there should be some one who is able to
+disprove the truth of my words, and who is satisfied that justice is
+best, still he is not angry with the unjust, but is very ready to
+forgive them, because he also knows that men are not just of their own
+free will; unless, peradventure, there be some one whom the divinity
+within him may have inspired with a hatred of injustice, or who has
+attained knowledge of the truth—but no other man. He only blames
+injustice who, owing to cowardice or age or some weakness, has not the
+power of being unjust. And this is proved by the fact that when he
+obtains the power, he immediately becomes unjust as far as he can be.
+
+The cause of all this, Socrates, was indicated by us at the beginning
+of the argument, when my brother and I told you how astonished we were
+to find that of all the professing panegyrists of justice—beginning
+with the ancient heroes of whom any memorial has been preserved to us,
+and ending with the men of our own time—no one has ever blamed
+injustice or praised justice except with a view to the glories,
+honours, and benefits which flow from them. No one has ever adequately
+described either in verse or prose the true essential nature of either
+of them abiding in the soul, and invisible to any human or divine eye;
+or shown that of all the things of a man’s soul which he has within
+him, justice is the greatest good, and injustice the greatest evil. Had
+this been the universal strain, had you sought to persuade us of this
+from our youth upwards, we should not have been on the watch to keep
+one another from doing wrong, but every one would have been his own
+watchman, because afraid, if he did wrong, of harbouring in himself the
+greatest of evils. I dare say that Thrasymachus and others would
+seriously hold the language which I have been merely repeating, and
+words even stronger than these about justice and injustice, grossly, as
+I conceive, perverting their true nature. But I speak in this vehement
+manner, as I must frankly confess to you, because I want to hear from
+you the opposite side; and I would ask you to show not only the
+superiority which justice has over injustice, but what effect they have
+on the possessor of them which makes the one to be a good and the other
+an evil to him. And please, as Glaucon requested of you, to exclude
+reputations; for unless you take away from each of them his true
+reputation and add on the false, we shall say that you do not praise
+justice, but the appearance of it; we shall think that you are only
+exhorting us to keep injustice dark, and that you really agree with
+Thrasymachus in thinking that justice is another’s good and the
+interest of the stronger, and that injustice is a man’s own profit and
+interest, though injurious to the weaker. Now as you have admitted that
+justice is one of that highest class of goods which are desired indeed
+for their results, but in a far greater degree for their own sakes—like
+sight or hearing or knowledge or health, or any other real and natural
+and not merely conventional good—I would ask you in your praise of
+justice to regard one point only: I mean the essential good and evil
+which justice and injustice work in the possessors of them. Let others
+praise justice and censure injustice, magnifying the rewards and
+honours of the one and abusing the other; that is a manner of arguing
+which, coming from them, I am ready to tolerate, but from you who have
+spent your whole life in the consideration of this question, unless I
+hear the contrary from your own lips, I expect something better. And
+therefore, I say, not only prove to us that justice is better than
+injustice, but show what they either of them do to the possessor of
+them, which makes the one to be a good and the other an evil, whether
+seen or unseen by gods and men.
+
+I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but on
+hearing these words I was quite delighted, and said: Sons of an
+illustrious father, that was not a bad beginning of the Elegiac verses
+which the admirer of Glaucon made in honour of you after you had
+distinguished yourselves at the battle of Megara:—
+
+‘Sons of Ariston,’ he sang, ‘divine offspring of an illustrious hero.’
+
+The epithet is very appropriate, for there is something truly divine in
+being able to argue as you have done for the superiority of injustice,
+and remaining unconvinced by your own arguments. And I do believe that
+you are not convinced—this I infer from your general character, for had
+I judged only from your speeches I should have mistrusted you. But now,
+the greater my confidence in you, the greater is my difficulty in
+knowing what to say. For I am in a strait between two; on the one hand
+I feel that I am unequal to the task; and my inability is brought home
+to me by the fact that you were not satisfied with the answer which I
+made to Thrasymachus, proving, as I thought, the superiority which
+justice has over injustice. And yet I cannot refuse to help, while
+breath and speech remain to me; I am afraid that there would be an
+impiety in being present when justice is evil spoken of and not lifting
+up a hand in her defence. And therefore I had best give such help as I
+can.
+
+Glaucon and the rest entreated me by all means not to let the question
+drop, but to proceed in the investigation. They wanted to arrive at the
+truth, first, about the nature of justice and injustice, and secondly,
+about their relative advantages. I told them, what I really thought,
+that the enquiry would be of a serious nature, and would require very
+good eyes. Seeing then, I said, that we are no great wits, I think that
+we had better adopt a method which I may illustrate thus; suppose that
+a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters
+from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be
+found in another place which was larger and in which the letters were
+larger—if they were the same and he could read the larger letters
+first, and then proceed to the lesser—this would have been thought a
+rare piece of good fortune.
+
+Very true, said Adeimantus; but how does the illustration apply to our
+enquiry?
+
+I will tell you, I replied; justice, which is the subject of our
+enquiry, is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of an
+individual, and sometimes as the virtue of a State.
+
+True, he replied.
+
+And is not a State larger than an individual?
+
+It is.
+
+Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to be larger and
+more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the
+nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear in the State, and
+secondly in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the lesser
+and comparing them.
+
+That, he said, is an excellent proposal.
+
+And if we imagine the State in process of creation, we shall see the
+justice and injustice of the State in process of creation also.
+
+I dare say.
+
+When the State is completed there may be a hope that the object of our
+search will be more easily discovered.
+
+Yes, far more easily.
+
+But ought we to attempt to construct one? I said; for to do so, as I am
+inclined to think, will be a very serious task. Reflect therefore.
+
+I have reflected, said Adeimantus, and am anxious that you should
+proceed.
+
+A State, I said, arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no
+one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. Can any other
+origin of a State be imagined?
+
+There can be no other.
+
+Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are needed to supply
+them, one takes a helper for one purpose and another for another; and
+when these partners and helpers are gathered together in one habitation
+the body of inhabitants is termed a State.
+
+True, he said.
+
+And they exchange with one another, and one gives, and another
+receives, under the idea that the exchange will be for their good.
+
+Very true.
+
+Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true
+creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.
+
+Of course, he replied.
+
+Now the first and greatest of necessities is food, which is the
+condition of life and existence.
+
+Certainly.
+
+The second is a dwelling, and the third clothing and the like.
+
+True.
+
+And now let us see how our city will be able to supply this great
+demand: We may suppose that one man is a husbandman, another a builder,
+some one else a weaver—shall we add to them a shoemaker, or perhaps
+some other purveyor to our bodily wants?
+
+Quite right.
+
+The barest notion of a State must include four or five men.
+
+Clearly.
+
+And how will they proceed? Will each bring the result of his labours
+into a common stock?—the individual husbandman, for example, producing
+for four, and labouring four times as long and as much as he need in
+the provision of food with which he supplies others as well as himself;
+or will he have nothing to do with others and not be at the trouble of
+producing for them, but provide for himself alone a fourth of the food
+in a fourth of the time, and in the remaining three fourths of his time
+be employed in making a house or a coat or a pair of shoes, having no
+partnership with others, but supplying himself all his own wants?
+
+Adeimantus thought that he should aim at producing food only and not at
+producing everything.
+
+Probably, I replied, that would be the better way; and when I hear you
+say this, I am myself reminded that we are not all alike; there are
+diversities of natures among us which are adapted to different
+occupations.
+
+Very true.
+
+And will you have a work better done when the workman has many
+occupations, or when he has only one?
+
+When he has only one.
+
+Further, there can be no doubt that a work is spoilt when not done at
+the right time?
+
+No doubt.
+
+For business is not disposed to wait until the doer of the business is
+at leisure; but the doer must follow up what he is doing, and make the
+business his first object.
+
+He must.
+
+And if so, we must infer that all things are produced more plentifully
+and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is
+natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things.
+
+Undoubtedly.
+
+Then more than four citizens will be required; for the husbandman will
+not make his own plough or mattock, or other implements of agriculture,
+if they are to be good for anything. Neither will the builder make his
+tools—and he too needs many; and in like manner the weaver and
+shoemaker.
+
+True.
+
+Then carpenters, and smiths, and many other artisans, will be sharers
+in our little State, which is already beginning to grow?
+
+True.
+
+Yet even if we add neatherds, shepherds, and other herdsmen, in order
+that our husbandmen may have oxen to plough with, and builders as well
+as husbandmen may have draught cattle, and curriers and weavers fleeces
+and hides,—still our State will not be very large.
+
+That is true; yet neither will it be a very small State which contains
+all these.
+
+Then, again, there is the situation of the city—to find a place where
+nothing need be imported is wellnigh impossible.
+
+Impossible.
+
+Then there must be another class of citizens who will bring the
+required supply from another city?
+
+There must.
+
+But if the trader goes empty-handed, having nothing which they require
+who would supply his need, he will come back empty-handed.
+
+That is certain.
+
+And therefore what they produce at home must be not only enough for
+themselves, but such both in quantity and quality as to accommodate
+those from whom their wants are supplied.
+
+Very true.
+
+Then more husbandmen and more artisans will be required?
+
+They will.
+
+Not to mention the importers and exporters, who are called merchants?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then we shall want merchants?
+
+We shall.
+
+And if merchandise is to be carried over the sea, skilful sailors will
+also be needed, and in considerable numbers?
+
+Yes, in considerable numbers.
+
+Then, again, within the city, how will they exchange their productions?
+To secure such an exchange was, as you will remember, one of our
+principal objects when we formed them into a society and constituted a
+State.
+
+Clearly they will buy and sell.
+
+Then they will need a market-place, and a money-token for purposes of
+exchange.
+
+Certainly.
+
+Suppose now that a husbandman, or an artisan, brings some production to
+market, and he comes at a time when there is no one to exchange with
+him,—is he to leave his calling and sit idle in the market-place?
+
+Not at all; he will find people there who, seeing the want, undertake
+the office of salesmen. In well-ordered states they are commonly those
+who are the weakest in bodily strength, and therefore of little use for
+any other purpose; their duty is to be in the market, and to give money
+in exchange for goods to those who desire to sell and to take money
+from those who desire to buy.
+
+This want, then, creates a class of retail-traders in our State. Is not
+‘retailer’ the term which is applied to those who sit in the
+market-place engaged in buying and selling, while those who wander from
+one city to another are called merchants?
+
+Yes, he said.
+
+And there is another class of servants, who are intellectually hardly
+on the level of companionship; still they have plenty of bodily
+strength for labour, which accordingly they sell, and are called, if I
+do not mistake, hirelings, hire being the name which is given to the
+price of their labour.
+
+True.
+
+Then hirelings will help to make up our population?
+
+Yes.
+
+And now, Adeimantus, is our State matured and perfected?
+
+I think so.
+
+Where, then, is justice, and where is injustice, and in what part of
+the State did they spring up?
+
+Probably in the dealings of these citizens with one another. I cannot
+imagine that they are more likely to be found any where else.
+
+I dare say that you are right in your suggestion, I said; we had better
+think the matter out, and not shrink from the enquiry.
+
+Let us then consider, first of all, what will be their way of life, now
+that we have thus established them. Will they not produce corn, and
+wine, and clothes, and shoes, and build houses for themselves? And when
+they are housed, they will work, in summer, commonly, stripped and
+barefoot, but in winter substantially clothed and shod. They will feed
+on barley-meal and flour of wheat, baking and kneading them, making
+noble cakes and loaves; these they will serve up on a mat of reeds or
+on clean leaves, themselves reclining the while upon beds strewn with
+yew or myrtle. And they and their children will feast, drinking of the
+wine which they have made, wearing garlands on their heads, and hymning
+the praises of the gods, in happy converse with one another. And they
+will take care that their families do not exceed their means; having an
+eye to poverty or war.
+
+But, said Glaucon, interposing, you have not given them a relish to
+their meal.
+
+True, I replied, I had forgotten; of course they must have a
+relish—salt, and olives, and cheese, and they will boil roots and herbs
+such as country people prepare; for a dessert we shall give them figs,
+and peas, and beans; and they will roast myrtle-berries and acorns at
+the fire, drinking in moderation. And with such a diet they may be
+expected to live in peace and health to a good old age, and bequeath a
+similar life to their children after them.
+
+Yes, Socrates, he said, and if you were providing for a city of pigs,
+how else would you feed the beasts?
+
+But what would you have, Glaucon? I replied.
+
+Why, he said, you should give them the ordinary conveniences of life.
+People who are to be comfortable are accustomed to lie on sofas, and
+dine off tables, and they should have sauces and sweets in the modern
+style.
+
+Yes, I said, now I understand: the question which you would have me
+consider is, not only how a State, but how a luxurious State is
+created; and possibly there is no harm in this, for in such a State we
+shall be more likely to see how justice and injustice originate. In my
+opinion the true and healthy constitution of the State is the one which
+I have described. But if you wish also to see a State at fever-heat, I
+have no objection. For I suspect that many will not be satisfied with
+the simpler way of life. They will be for adding sofas, and tables, and
+other furniture; also dainties, and perfumes, and incense, and
+courtesans, and cakes, all these not of one sort only, but in every
+variety; we must go beyond the necessaries of which I was at first
+speaking, such as houses, and clothes, and shoes: the arts of the
+painter and the embroiderer will have to be set in motion, and gold and
+ivory and all sorts of materials must be procured.
+
+True, he said.
+
+Then we must enlarge our borders; for the original healthy State is no
+longer sufficient. Now will the city have to fill and swell with a
+multitude of callings which are not required by any natural want; such
+as the whole tribe of hunters and actors, of whom one large class have
+to do with forms and colours; another will be the votaries of
+music—poets and their attendant train of rhapsodists, players, dancers,
+contractors; also makers of divers kinds of articles, including women’s
+dresses. And we shall want more servants. Will not tutors be also in
+request, and nurses wet and dry, tirewomen and barbers, as well as
+confectioners and cooks; and swineherds, too, who were not needed and
+therefore had no place in the former edition of our State, but are
+needed now? They must not be forgotten: and there will be animals of
+many other kinds, if people eat them.
+
+Certainly.
+
+And living in this way we shall have much greater need of physicians
+than before?
+
+Much greater.
+
+And the country which was enough to support the original inhabitants
+will be too small now, and not enough?
+
+Quite true.
+
+Then a slice of our neighbours’ land will be wanted by us for pasture
+and tillage, and they will want a slice of ours, if, like ourselves,
+they exceed the limit of necessity, and give themselves up to the
+unlimited accumulation of wealth?
+
+That, Socrates, will be inevitable.
+
+And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not?
+
+Most certainly, he replied.
+
+Then without determining as yet whether war does good or harm, thus
+much we may affirm, that now we have discovered war to be derived from
+causes which are also the causes of almost all the evils in States,
+private as well as public.
+
+Undoubtedly.
+
+And our State must once more enlarge; and this time the enlargement
+will be nothing short of a whole army, which will have to go out and
+fight with the invaders for all that we have, as well as for the things
+and persons whom we were describing above.
+
+Why? he said; are they not capable of defending themselves?
+
+No, I said; not if we were right in the principle which was
+acknowledged by all of us when we were framing the State: the
+principle, as you will remember, was that one man cannot practise many
+arts with success.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+But is not war an art?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And an art requiring as much attention as shoemaking?
+
+Quite true.
+
+And the shoemaker was not allowed by us to be a husbandman, or a
+weaver, or a builder—in order that we might have our shoes well made;
+but to him and to every other worker was assigned one work for which he
+was by nature fitted, and at that he was to continue working all his
+life long and at no other; he was not to let opportunities slip, and
+then he would become a good workman. Now nothing can be more important
+than that the work of a soldier should be well done. But is war an art
+so easily acquired that a man may be a warrior who is also a
+husbandman, or shoemaker, or other artisan; although no one in the
+world would be a good dice or draught player who merely took up the
+game as a recreation, and had not from his earliest years devoted
+himself to this and nothing else? No tools will make a man a skilled
+workman, or master of defence, nor be of any use to him who has not
+learned how to handle them, and has never bestowed any attention upon
+them. How then will he who takes up a shield or other implement of war
+become a good fighter all in a day, whether with heavy-armed or any
+other kind of troops?
+
+Yes, he said, the tools which would teach men their own use would be
+beyond price.
+
+And the higher the duties of the guardian, I said, the more time, and
+skill, and art, and application will be needed by him?
+
+No doubt, he replied.
+
+Will he not also require natural aptitude for his calling?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then it will be our duty to select, if we can, natures which are fitted
+for the task of guarding the city?
+
+It will.
+
+And the selection will be no easy matter, I said; but we must be brave
+and do our best.
+
+We must.
+
+Is not the noble youth very like a well-bred dog in respect of guarding
+and watching?
+
+What do you mean?
+
+I mean that both of them ought to be quick to see, and swift to
+overtake the enemy when they see him; and strong too if, when they have
+caught him, they have to fight with him.
+
+All these qualities, he replied, will certainly be required by them.
+
+Well, and your guardian must be brave if he is to fight well?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And is he likely to be brave who has no spirit, whether horse or dog or
+any other animal? Have you never observed how invincible and
+unconquerable is spirit and how the presence of it makes the soul of
+any creature to be absolutely fearless and indomitable?
+
+I have.
+
+Then now we have a clear notion of the bodily qualities which are
+required in the guardian.
+
+True.
+
+And also of the mental ones; his soul is to be full of spirit?
+
+Yes.
+
+But are not these spirited natures apt to be savage with one another,
+and with everybody else?
+
+A difficulty by no means easy to overcome, he replied.
+
+Whereas, I said, they ought to be dangerous to their enemies, and
+gentle to their friends; if not, they will destroy themselves without
+waiting for their enemies to destroy them.
+
+True, he said.
+
+What is to be done then? I said; how shall we find a gentle nature
+which has also a great spirit, for the one is the contradiction of the
+other?
+
+True.
+
+He will not be a good guardian who is wanting in either of these two
+qualities; and yet the combination of them appears to be impossible;
+and hence we must infer that to be a good guardian is impossible.
+
+I am afraid that what you say is true, he replied.
+
+Here feeling perplexed I began to think over what had preceded.—My
+friend, I said, no wonder that we are in a perplexity; for we have lost
+sight of the image which we had before us.
+
+What do you mean? he said.
+
+I mean to say that there do exist natures gifted with those opposite
+qualities.
+
+And where do you find them?
+
+Many animals, I replied, furnish examples of them; our friend the dog
+is a very good one: you know that well-bred dogs are perfectly gentle
+to their familiars and acquaintances, and the reverse to strangers.
+
+Yes, I know.
+
+Then there is nothing impossible or out of the order of nature in our
+finding a guardian who has a similar combination of qualities?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Would not he who is fitted to be a guardian, besides the spirited
+nature, need to have the qualities of a philosopher?
+
+I do not apprehend your meaning.
+
+The trait of which I am speaking, I replied, may be also seen in the
+dog, and is remarkable in the animal.
+
+What trait?
+
+Why, a dog, whenever he sees a stranger, is angry; when an
+acquaintance, he welcomes him, although the one has never done him any
+harm, nor the other any good. Did this never strike you as curious?
+
+The matter never struck me before; but I quite recognise the truth of
+your remark.
+
+And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming;—your dog is a
+true philosopher.
+
+Why?
+
+Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only
+by the criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not an animal be
+a lover of learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the
+test of knowledge and ignorance?
+
+Most assuredly.
+
+And is not the love of learning the love of wisdom, which is
+philosophy?
+
+They are the same, he replied.
+
+And may we not say confidently of man also, that he who is likely to be
+gentle to his friends and acquaintances, must by nature be a lover of
+wisdom and knowledge?
+
+That we may safely affirm.
+
+Then he who is to be a really good and noble guardian of the State will
+require to unite in himself philosophy and spirit and swiftness and
+strength?
+
+Undoubtedly.
+
+Then we have found the desired natures; and now that we have found
+them, how are they to be reared and educated? Is not this an enquiry
+which may be expected to throw light on the greater enquiry which is
+our final end—How do justice and injustice grow up in States? for we do
+not want either to omit what is to the point or to draw out the
+argument to an inconvenient length.
+
+Adeimantus thought that the enquiry would be of great service to us.
+
+Then, I said, my dear friend, the task must not be given up, even if
+somewhat long.
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in story-telling, and our
+story shall be the education of our heroes.
+
+By all means.
+
+And what shall be their education? Can we find a better than the
+traditional sort?—and this has two divisions, gymnastic for the body,
+and music for the soul.
+
+True.
+
+Shall we begin education with music, and go on to gymnastic afterwards?
+
+By all means.
+
+And when you speak of music, do you include literature or not?
+
+I do.
+
+And literature may be either true or false?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the young should be trained in both kinds, and we begin with the
+false?
+
+I do not understand your meaning, he said.
+
+You know, I said, that we begin by telling children stories which,
+though not wholly destitute of truth, are in the main fictitious; and
+these stories are told them when they are not of an age to learn
+gymnastics.
+
+Very true.
+
+That was my meaning when I said that we must teach music before
+gymnastics.
+
+Quite right, he said.
+
+You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any
+work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is
+the time at which the character is being formed and the desired
+impression is more readily taken.
+
+Quite true.
+
+And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales
+which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds
+ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish
+them to have when they are grown up?
+
+We cannot.
+
+Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers
+of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is
+good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell
+their children the authorised ones only. Let them fashion the mind with
+such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands;
+but most of those which are now in use must be discarded.
+
+Of what tales are you speaking? he said.
+
+You may find a model of the lesser in the greater, I said; for they are
+necessarily of the same type, and there is the same spirit in both of
+them.
+
+Very likely, he replied; but I do not as yet know what you would term
+the greater.
+
+Those, I said, which are narrated by Homer and Hesiod, and the rest of
+the poets, who have ever been the great story-tellers of mankind.
+
+But which stories do you mean, he said; and what fault do you find with
+them?
+
+A fault which is most serious, I said; the fault of telling a lie, and,
+what is more, a bad lie.
+
+But when is this fault committed?
+
+Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the nature of gods and
+heroes,—as when a painter paints a portrait not having the shadow of a
+likeness to the original.
+
+Yes, he said, that sort of thing is certainly very blameable; but what
+are the stories which you mean?
+
+First of all, I said, there was that greatest of all lies in high
+places, which the poet told about Uranus, and which was a bad lie
+too,—I mean what Hesiod says that Uranus did, and how Cronus retaliated
+on him. The doings of Cronus, and the sufferings which in turn his son
+inflicted upon him, even if they were true, ought certainly not to be
+lightly told to young and thoughtless persons; if possible, they had
+better be buried in silence. But if there is an absolute necessity for
+their mention, a chosen few might hear them in a mystery, and they
+should sacrifice not a common (Eleusinian) pig, but some huge and
+unprocurable victim; and then the number of the hearers will be very
+few indeed.
+
+Why, yes, said he, those stories are extremely objectionable.
+
+Yes, Adeimantus, they are stories not to be repeated in our State; the
+young man should not be told that in committing the worst of crimes he
+is far from doing anything outrageous; and that even if he chastises
+his father when he does wrong, in whatever manner, he will only be
+following the example of the first and greatest among the gods.
+
+I entirely agree with you, he said; in my opinion those stories are
+quite unfit to be repeated.
+
+Neither, if we mean our future guardians to regard the habit of
+quarrelling among themselves as of all things the basest, should any
+word be said to them of the wars in heaven, and of the plots and
+fightings of the gods against one another, for they are not true. No,
+we shall never mention the battles of the giants, or let them be
+embroidered on garments; and we shall be silent about the innumerable
+other quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and relatives. If
+they would only believe us we would tell them that quarrelling is
+unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any quarrel
+between citizens; this is what old men and old women should begin by
+telling children; and when they grow up, the poets also should be told
+to compose for them in a similar spirit. But the narrative of
+Hephaestus binding Here his mother, or how on another occasion Zeus
+sent him flying for taking her part when she was being beaten, and all
+the battles of the gods in Homer—these tales must not be admitted into
+our State, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or
+not. For a young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is
+literal; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely
+to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important
+that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous
+thoughts.
+
+There you are right, he replied; but if any one asks where are such
+models to be found and of what tales are you speaking—how shall we
+answer him?
+
+I said to him, You and I, Adeimantus, at this moment are not poets, but
+founders of a State: now the founders of a State ought to know the
+general forms in which poets should cast their tales, and the limits
+which must be observed by them, but to make the tales is not their
+business.
+
+Very true, he said; but what are these forms of theology which you
+mean?
+
+Something of this kind, I replied:—God is always to be represented as
+he truly is, whatever be the sort of poetry, epic, lyric or tragic, in
+which the representation is given.
+
+Right.
+
+And is he not truly good? and must he not be represented as such?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And no good thing is hurtful?
+
+No, indeed.
+
+And that which is not hurtful hurts not?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+And that which hurts not does no evil?
+
+No.
+
+And can that which does no evil be a cause of evil?
+
+Impossible.
+
+And the good is advantageous?
+
+Yes.
+
+And therefore the cause of well-being?
+
+Yes.
+
+It follows therefore that the good is not the cause of all things, but
+of the good only?
+
+Assuredly.
+
+Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many
+assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most
+things that occur to men. For few are the goods of human life, and many
+are the evils, and the good is to be attributed to God alone; of the
+evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him.
+
+That appears to me to be most true, he said.
+
+Then we must not listen to Homer or to any other poet who is guilty of
+the folly of saying that two casks
+
+‘Lie at the threshold of Zeus, full of lots, one of good, the other of
+evil lots,’
+
+and that he to whom Zeus gives a mixture of the two
+
+‘Sometimes meets with evil fortune, at other times with good;’
+
+but that he to whom is given the cup of unmingled ill,
+
+‘Him wild hunger drives o’er the beauteous earth.’
+
+And again—
+
+‘Zeus, who is the dispenser of good and evil to us.’
+
+And if any one asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties, which
+was really the work of Pandarus, was brought about by Athene and Zeus,
+or that the strife and contention of the gods was instigated by Themis
+and Zeus, he shall not have our approval; neither will we allow our
+young men to hear the words of Aeschylus, that
+
+‘God plants guilt among men when he desires utterly to destroy a
+house.’
+
+And if a poet writes of the sufferings of Niobe—the subject of the
+tragedy in which these iambic verses occur—or of the house of Pelops,
+or of the Trojan war or on any similar theme, either we must not permit
+him to say that these are the works of God, or if they are of God, he
+must devise some explanation of them such as we are seeking; he must
+say that God did what was just and right, and they were the better for
+being punished; but that those who are punished are miserable, and that
+God is the author of their misery—the poet is not to be permitted to
+say; though he may say that the wicked are miserable because they
+require to be punished, and are benefited by receiving punishment from
+God; but that God being good is the author of evil to any one is to be
+strenuously denied, and not to be said or sung or heard in verse or
+prose by any one whether old or young in any well-ordered commonwealth.
+Such a fiction is suicidal, ruinous, impious.
+
+I agree with you, he replied, and am ready to give my assent to the
+law.
+
+Let this then be one of our rules and principles concerning the gods,
+to which our poets and reciters will be expected to conform,—that God
+is not the author of all things, but of good only.
+
+That will do, he said.
+
+And what do you think of a second principle? Shall I ask you whether
+God is a magician, and of a nature to appear insidiously now in one
+shape, and now in another—sometimes himself changing and passing into
+many forms, sometimes deceiving us with the semblance of such
+transformations; or is he one and the same immutably fixed in his own
+proper image?
+
+I cannot answer you, he said, without more thought.
+
+Well, I said; but if we suppose a change in anything, that change must
+be effected either by the thing itself, or by some other thing?
+
+Most certainly.
+
+And things which are at their best are also least liable to be altered
+or discomposed; for example, when healthiest and strongest, the human
+frame is least liable to be affected by meats and drinks, and the plant
+which is in the fullest vigour also suffers least from winds or the
+heat of the sun or any similar causes.
+
+Of course.
+
+And will not the bravest and wisest soul be least confused or deranged
+by any external influence?
+
+True.
+
+And the same principle, as I should suppose, applies to all composite
+things—furniture, houses, garments: when good and well made, they are
+least altered by time and circumstances.
+
+Very true.
+
+Then everything which is good, whether made by art or nature, or both,
+is least liable to suffer change from without?
+
+True.
+
+But surely God and the things of God are in every way perfect?
+
+Of course they are.
+
+Then he can hardly be compelled by external influence to take many
+shapes?
+
+He cannot.
+
+But may he not change and transform himself?
+
+Clearly, he said, that must be the case if he is changed at all.
+
+And will he then change himself for the better and fairer, or for the
+worse and more unsightly?
+
+If he change at all he can only change for the worse, for we cannot
+suppose him to be deficient either in virtue or beauty.
+
+Very true, Adeimantus; but then, would any one, whether God or man,
+desire to make himself worse?
+
+Impossible.
+
+Then it is impossible that God should ever be willing to change; being,
+as is supposed, the fairest and best that is conceivable, every God
+remains absolutely and for ever in his own form.
+
+That necessarily follows, he said, in my judgment.
+
+Then, I said, my dear friend, let none of the poets tell us that
+
+‘The gods, taking the disguise of strangers from other lands, walk up
+and down cities in all sorts of forms;’
+
+and let no one slander Proteus and Thetis, neither let any one, either
+in tragedy or in any other kind of poetry, introduce Here disguised in
+the likeness of a priestess asking an alms
+
+‘For the life-giving daughters of Inachus the river of Argos;’
+
+—let us have no more lies of that sort. Neither must we have mothers
+under the influence of the poets scaring their children with a bad
+version of these myths—telling how certain gods, as they say, ‘Go about
+by night in the likeness of so many strangers and in divers forms;’ but
+let them take heed lest they make cowards of their children, and at the
+same time speak blasphemy against the gods.
+
+Heaven forbid, he said.
+
+But although the gods are themselves unchangeable, still by witchcraft
+and deception they may make us think that they appear in various forms?
+
+Perhaps, he replied.
+
+Well, but can you imagine that God will be willing to lie, whether in
+word or deed, or to put forth a phantom of himself?
+
+I cannot say, he replied.
+
+Do you not know, I said, that the true lie, if such an expression may
+be allowed, is hated of gods and men?
+
+What do you mean? he said.
+
+I mean that no one is willingly deceived in that which is the truest
+and highest part of himself, or about the truest and highest matters;
+there, above all, he is most afraid of a lie having possession of him.
+
+Still, he said, I do not comprehend you.
+
+The reason is, I replied, that you attribute some profound meaning to
+my words; but I am only saying that deception, or being deceived or
+uninformed about the highest realities in the highest part of
+themselves, which is the soul, and in that part of them to have and to
+hold the lie, is what mankind least like;—that, I say, is what they
+utterly detest.
+
+There is nothing more hateful to them.
+
+And, as I was just now remarking, this ignorance in the soul of him who
+is deceived may be called the true lie; for the lie in words is only a
+kind of imitation and shadowy image of a previous affection of the
+soul, not pure unadulterated falsehood. Am I not right?
+
+Perfectly right.
+
+The true lie is hated not only by the gods, but also by men?
+
+Yes.
+
+Whereas the lie in words is in certain cases useful and not hateful; in
+dealing with enemies—that would be an instance; or again, when those
+whom we call our friends in a fit of madness or illusion are going to
+do some harm, then it is useful and is a sort of medicine or
+preventive; also in the tales of mythology, of which we were just now
+speaking—because we do not know the truth about ancient times, we make
+falsehood as much like truth as we can, and so turn it to account.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+But can any of these reasons apply to God? Can we suppose that he is
+ignorant of antiquity, and therefore has recourse to invention?
+
+That would be ridiculous, he said.
+
+Then the lying poet has no place in our idea of God?
+
+I should say not.
+
+Or perhaps he may tell a lie because he is afraid of enemies?
+
+That is inconceivable.
+
+But he may have friends who are senseless or mad?
+
+But no mad or senseless person can be a friend of God.
+
+Then no motive can be imagined why God should lie?
+
+None whatever.
+
+Then the superhuman and divine is absolutely incapable of falsehood?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then is God perfectly simple and true both in word and deed; he changes
+not; he deceives not, either by sign or word, by dream or waking
+vision.
+
+Your thoughts, he said, are the reflection of my own.
+
+You agree with me then, I said, that this is the second type or form in
+which we should write and speak about divine things. The gods are not
+magicians who transform themselves, neither do they deceive mankind in
+any way.
+
+I grant that.
+
+Then, although we are admirers of Homer, we do not admire the lying
+dream which Zeus sends to Agamemnon; neither will we praise the verses
+of Aeschylus in which Thetis says that Apollo at her nuptials
+
+‘Was celebrating in song her fair progeny whose days were to be long,
+and to know no sickness. And when he had spoken of my lot as in all
+things blessed of heaven he raised a note of triumph and cheered my
+soul. And I thought that the word of Phoebus, being divine and full of
+prophecy, would not fail. And now he himself who uttered the strain, he
+who was present at the banquet, and who said this—he it is who has
+slain my son.’
+
+These are the kind of sentiments about the gods which will arouse our
+anger; and he who utters them shall be refused a chorus; neither shall
+we allow teachers to make use of them in the instruction of the young,
+meaning, as we do, that our guardians, as far as men can be, should be
+true worshippers of the gods and like them.
+
+I entirely agree, he said, in these principles, and promise to make
+them my laws.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK III.
+
+
+Such then, I said, are our principles of theology—some tales are to be
+told, and others are not to be told to our disciples from their youth
+upwards, if we mean them to honour the gods and their parents, and to
+value friendship with one another.
+
+Yes; and I think that our principles are right, he said.
+
+But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons
+besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away the fear of
+death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?
+
+Certainly not, he said.
+
+And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle
+rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real
+and terrible?
+
+Impossible.
+
+Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales
+as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile but
+rather to commend the world below, intimating to them that their
+descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors.
+
+That will be our duty, he said.
+
+Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages,
+beginning with the verses,
+
+‘I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man
+than rule over all the dead who have come to nought.’
+
+We must also expunge the verse, which tells us how Pluto feared,
+
+‘Lest the mansions grim and squalid which the gods abhor should be seen
+both of mortals and immortals.’
+
+And again:—
+
+‘O heavens! verily in the house of Hades there is soul and ghostly form
+but no mind at all!’
+
+Again of Tiresias:—
+
+‘(To him even after death did Persephone grant mind,) that he alone
+should be wise; but the other souls are flitting shades.’
+
+Again:—
+
+‘The soul flying from the limbs had gone to Hades, lamenting her fate,
+leaving manhood and youth.’
+
+Again:—
+
+‘And the soul, with shrilling cry, passed like smoke beneath the
+earth.’
+
+And,—
+
+‘As bats in hollow of mystic cavern, whenever any of them has dropped
+out of the string and falls from the rock, fly shrilling and cling to
+one another, so did they with shrilling cry hold together as they
+moved.’
+
+And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike
+out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or
+unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical
+charm of them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who
+are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.
+
+Undoubtedly.
+
+Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and appalling names which
+describe the world below—Cocytus and Styx, ghosts under the earth, and
+sapless shades, and any similar words of which the very mention causes
+a shudder to pass through the inmost soul of him who hears them. I do
+not say that these horrible stories may not have a use of some kind;
+but there is a danger that the nerves of our guardians may be rendered
+too excitable and effeminate by them.
+
+There is a real danger, he said.
+
+Then we must have no more of them.
+
+True.
+
+Another and a nobler strain must be composed and sung by us.
+
+Clearly.
+
+And shall we proceed to get rid of the weepings and wailings of famous
+men?
+
+They will go with the rest.
+
+But shall we be right in getting rid of them? Reflect: our principle is
+that the good man will not consider death terrible to any other good
+man who is his comrade.
+
+Yes; that is our principle.
+
+And therefore he will not sorrow for his departed friend as though he
+had suffered anything terrible?
+
+He will not.
+
+Such an one, as we further maintain, is sufficient for himself and his
+own happiness, and therefore is least in need of other men.
+
+True, he said.
+
+And for this reason the loss of a son or brother, or the deprivation of
+fortune, is to him of all men least terrible.
+
+Assuredly.
+
+And therefore he will be least likely to lament, and will bear with the
+greatest equanimity any misfortune of this sort which may befall him.
+
+Yes, he will feel such a misfortune far less than another.
+
+Then we shall be right in getting rid of the lamentations of famous
+men, and making them over to women (and not even to women who are good
+for anything), or to men of a baser sort, that those who are being
+educated by us to be the defenders of their country may scorn to do the
+like.
+
+That will be very right.
+
+Then we will once more entreat Homer and the other poets not to depict
+Achilles, who is the son of a goddess, first lying on his side, then on
+his back, and then on his face; then starting up and sailing in a
+frenzy along the shores of the barren sea; now taking the sooty ashes
+in both his hands and pouring them over his head, or weeping and
+wailing in the various modes which Homer has delineated. Nor should he
+describe Priam the kinsman of the gods as praying and beseeching,
+
+‘Rolling in the dirt, calling each man loudly by his name.’
+
+Still more earnestly will we beg of him at all events not to introduce
+the gods lamenting and saying,
+
+‘Alas! my misery! Alas! that I bore the bravest to my sorrow.’
+
+But if he must introduce the gods, at any rate let him not dare so
+completely to misrepresent the greatest of the gods, as to make him
+say—
+
+‘O heavens! with my eyes verily I behold a dear friend of mine chased
+round and round the city, and my heart is sorrowful.’
+
+Or again:—
+
+Woe is me that I am fated to have Sarpedon, dearest of men to me,
+subdued at the hands of Patroclus the son of Menoetius.’
+
+For if, my sweet Adeimantus, our youth seriously listen to such
+unworthy representations of the gods, instead of laughing at them as
+they ought, hardly will any of them deem that he himself, being but a
+man, can be dishonoured by similar actions; neither will he rebuke any
+inclination which may arise in his mind to say and do the like. And
+instead of having any shame or self-control, he will be always whining
+and lamenting on slight occasions.
+
+Yes, he said, that is most true.
+
+Yes, I replied; but that surely is what ought not to be, as the
+argument has just proved to us; and by that proof we must abide until
+it is disproved by a better.
+
+It ought not to be.
+
+Neither ought our guardians to be given to laughter. For a fit of
+laughter which has been indulged to excess almost always produces a
+violent reaction.
+
+So I believe.
+
+Then persons of worth, even if only mortal men, must not be represented
+as overcome by laughter, and still less must such a representation of
+the gods be allowed.
+
+Still less of the gods, as you say, he replied.
+
+Then we shall not suffer such an expression to be used about the gods
+as that of Homer when he describes how
+
+‘Inextinguishable laughter arose among the blessed gods, when they saw
+Hephaestus bustling about the mansion.’
+
+On your views, we must not admit them.
+
+On my views, if you like to father them on me; that we must not admit
+them is certain.
+
+Again, truth should be highly valued; if, as we were saying, a lie is
+useless to the gods, and useful only as a medicine to men, then the use
+of such medicines should be restricted to physicians; private
+individuals have no business with them.
+
+Clearly not, he said.
+
+Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of
+the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either
+with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the
+public good. But nobody else should meddle with anything of the kind;
+and although the rulers have this privilege, for a private man to lie
+to them in return is to be deemed a more heinous fault than for the
+patient or the pupil of a gymnasium not to speak the truth about his
+own bodily illnesses to the physician or to the trainer, or for a
+sailor not to tell the captain what is happening about the ship and the
+rest of the crew, and how things are going with himself or his fellow
+sailors.
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+If, then, the ruler catches anybody beside himself lying in the State,
+
+‘Any of the craftsmen, whether he be priest or physician or carpenter,’
+
+he will punish him for introducing a practice which is equally
+subversive and destructive of ship or State.
+
+Most certainly, he said, if our idea of the State is ever carried out.
+
+In the next place our youth must be temperate?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Are not the chief elements of temperance, speaking generally, obedience
+to commanders and self-control in sensual pleasures?
+
+True.
+
+Then we shall approve such language as that of Diomede in Homer,
+
+‘Friend, sit still and obey my word,’
+
+and the verses which follow,
+
+‘The Greeks marched breathing prowess, ...in silent awe of their
+leaders,’
+
+and other sentiments of the same kind.
+
+We shall.
+
+What of this line,
+
+‘O heavy with wine, who hast the eyes of a dog and the heart of a
+stag,’
+
+and of the words which follow? Would you say that these, or any similar
+impertinences which private individuals are supposed to address to
+their rulers, whether in verse or prose, are well or ill spoken?
+
+They are ill spoken.
+
+They may very possibly afford some amusement, but they do not conduce
+to temperance. And therefore they are likely to do harm to our young
+men—you would agree with me there?
+
+Yes.
+
+And then, again, to make the wisest of men say that nothing in his
+opinion is more glorious than
+
+‘When the tables are full of bread and meat, and the cup-bearer carries
+round wine which he draws from the bowl and pours into the cups,’
+
+is it fit or conducive to temperance for a young man to hear such
+words? Or the verse
+
+‘The saddest of fates is to die and meet destiny from hunger?’
+
+What would you say again to the tale of Zeus, who, while other gods and
+men were asleep and he the only person awake, lay devising plans, but
+forgot them all in a moment through his lust, and was so completely
+overcome at the sight of Here that he would not even go into the hut,
+but wanted to lie with her on the ground, declaring that he had never
+been in such a state of rapture before, even when they first met one
+another
+
+‘Without the knowledge of their parents;’
+
+or that other tale of how Hephaestus, because of similar goings on,
+cast a chain around Ares and Aphrodite?
+
+Indeed, he said, I am strongly of opinion that they ought not to hear
+that sort of thing.
+
+But any deeds of endurance which are done or told by famous men, these
+they ought to see and hear; as, for example, what is said in the
+verses,
+
+‘He smote his breast, and thus reproached his heart, Endure, my heart;
+far worse hast thou endured!’
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+In the next place, we must not let them be receivers of gifts or lovers
+of money.
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Neither must we sing to them of
+
+‘Gifts persuading gods, and persuading reverend kings.’
+
+Neither is Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, to be approved or deemed to
+have given his pupil good counsel when he told him that he should take
+the gifts of the Greeks and assist them; but that without a gift he
+should not lay aside his anger. Neither will we believe or acknowledge
+Achilles himself to have been such a lover of money that he took
+Agamemnon’s gifts, or that when he had received payment he restored the
+dead body of Hector, but that without payment he was unwilling to do
+so.
+
+Undoubtedly, he said, these are not sentiments which can be approved.
+
+Loving Homer as I do, I hardly like to say that in attributing these
+feelings to Achilles, or in believing that they are truly attributed to
+him, he is guilty of downright impiety. As little can I believe the
+narrative of his insolence to Apollo, where he says,
+
+‘Thou hast wronged me, O far-darter, most abominable of deities. Verily
+I would be even with thee, if I had only the power;’
+
+or his insubordination to the river-god, on whose divinity he is ready
+to lay hands; or his offering to the dead Patroclus of his own hair,
+which had been previously dedicated to the other river-god Spercheius,
+and that he actually performed this vow; or that he dragged Hector
+round the tomb of Patroclus, and slaughtered the captives at the pyre;
+of all this I cannot believe that he was guilty, any more than I can
+allow our citizens to believe that he, the wise Cheiron’s pupil, the
+son of a goddess and of Peleus who was the gentlest of men and third in
+descent from Zeus, was so disordered in his wits as to be at one time
+the slave of two seemingly inconsistent passions, meanness, not
+untainted by avarice, combined with overweening contempt of gods and
+men.
+
+You are quite right, he replied.
+
+And let us equally refuse to believe, or allow to be repeated, the tale
+of Theseus son of Poseidon, or of Peirithous son of Zeus, going forth
+as they did to perpetrate a horrid rape; or of any other hero or son of
+a god daring to do such impious and dreadful things as they falsely
+ascribe to them in our day: and let us further compel the poets to
+declare either that these acts were not done by them, or that they were
+not the sons of gods;—both in the same breath they shall not be
+permitted to affirm. We will not have them trying to persuade our youth
+that the gods are the authors of evil, and that heroes are no better
+than men—sentiments which, as we were saying, are neither pious nor
+true, for we have already proved that evil cannot come from the gods.
+
+Assuredly not.
+
+And further they are likely to have a bad effect on those who hear
+them; for everybody will begin to excuse his own vices when he is
+convinced that similar wickednesses are always being perpetrated by—
+
+‘The kindred of the gods, the relatives of Zeus, whose ancestral altar,
+the altar of Zeus, is aloft in air on the peak of Ida,’
+
+and who have
+
+‘the blood of deities yet flowing in their veins.’
+
+And therefore let us put an end to such tales, lest they engender
+laxity of morals among the young.
+
+By all means, he replied.
+
+But now that we are determining what classes of subjects are or are not
+to be spoken of, let us see whether any have been omitted by us. The
+manner in which gods and demigods and heroes and the world below should
+be treated has been already laid down.
+
+Very true.
+
+And what shall we say about men? That is clearly the remaining portion
+of our subject.
+
+Clearly so.
+
+But we are not in a condition to answer this question at present, my
+friend.
+
+Why not?
+
+Because, if I am not mistaken, we shall have to say that about men
+poets and story-tellers are guilty of making the gravest misstatements
+when they tell us that wicked men are often happy, and the good
+miserable; and that injustice is profitable when undetected, but that
+justice is a man’s own loss and another’s gain—these things we shall
+forbid them to utter, and command them to sing and say the opposite.
+
+To be sure we shall, he replied.
+
+But if you admit that I am right in this, then I shall maintain that
+you have implied the principle for which we have been all along
+contending.
+
+I grant the truth of your inference.
+
+That such things are or are not to be said about men is a question
+which we cannot determine until we have discovered what justice is, and
+how naturally advantageous to the possessor, whether he seem to be just
+or not.
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+Enough of the subjects of poetry: let us now speak of the style; and
+when this has been considered, both matter and manner will have been
+completely treated.
+
+I do not understand what you mean, said Adeimantus.
+
+Then I must make you understand; and perhaps I may be more intelligible
+if I put the matter in this way. You are aware, I suppose, that all
+mythology and poetry is a narration of events, either past, present, or
+to come?
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+And narration may be either simple narration, or imitation, or a union
+of the two?
+
+That again, he said, I do not quite understand.
+
+I fear that I must be a ridiculous teacher when I have so much
+difficulty in making myself apprehended. Like a bad speaker, therefore,
+I will not take the whole of the subject, but will break a piece off in
+illustration of my meaning. You know the first lines of the Iliad, in
+which the poet says that Chryses prayed Agamemnon to release his
+daughter, and that Agamemnon flew into a passion with him; whereupon
+Chryses, failing of his object, invoked the anger of the God against
+the Achaeans. Now as far as these lines,
+
+‘And he prayed all the Greeks, but especially the two sons of Atreus,
+the chiefs of the people,’
+
+the poet is speaking in his own person; he never leads us to suppose
+that he is any one else. But in what follows he takes the person of
+Chryses, and then he does all that he can to make us believe that the
+speaker is not Homer, but the aged priest himself. And in this double
+form he has cast the entire narrative of the events which occurred at
+Troy and in Ithaca and throughout the Odyssey.
+
+Yes.
+
+And a narrative it remains both in the speeches which the poet recites
+from time to time and in the intermediate passages?
+
+Quite true.
+
+But when the poet speaks in the person of another, may we not say that
+he assimilates his style to that of the person who, as he informs you,
+is going to speak?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And this assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice
+or gesture, is the imitation of the person whose character he assumes?
+
+Of course.
+
+Then in this case the narrative of the poet may be said to proceed by
+way of imitation?
+
+Very true.
+
+Or, if the poet everywhere appears and never conceals himself, then
+again the imitation is dropped, and his poetry becomes simple
+narration. However, in order that I may make my meaning quite clear,
+and that you may no more say, ‘I don’t understand,’ I will show how the
+change might be effected. If Homer had said, ‘The priest came, having
+his daughter’s ransom in his hands, supplicating the Achaeans, and
+above all the kings;’ and then if, instead of speaking in the person of
+Chryses, he had continued in his own person, the words would have been,
+not imitation, but simple narration. The passage would have run as
+follows (I am no poet, and therefore I drop the metre), ‘The priest
+came and prayed the gods on behalf of the Greeks that they might
+capture Troy and return safely home, but begged that they would give
+him back his daughter, and take the ransom which he brought, and
+respect the God. Thus he spoke, and the other Greeks revered the priest
+and assented. But Agamemnon was wroth, and bade him depart and not come
+again, lest the staff and chaplets of the God should be of no avail to
+him—the daughter of Chryses should not be released, he said—she should
+grow old with him in Argos. And then he told him to go away and not to
+provoke him, if he intended to get home unscathed. And the old man went
+away in fear and silence, and, when he had left the camp, he called
+upon Apollo by his many names, reminding him of everything which he had
+done pleasing to him, whether in building his temples, or in offering
+sacrifice, and praying that his good deeds might be returned to him,
+and that the Achaeans might expiate his tears by the arrows of the
+god,’—and so on. In this way the whole becomes simple narrative.
+
+I understand, he said.
+
+Or you may suppose the opposite case—that the intermediate passages are
+omitted, and the dialogue only left.
+
+That also, he said, I understand; you mean, for example, as in tragedy.
+
+You have conceived my meaning perfectly; and if I mistake not, what you
+failed to apprehend before is now made clear to you, that poetry and
+mythology are, in some cases, wholly imitative—instances of this are
+supplied by tragedy and comedy; there is likewise the opposite style,
+in which the poet is the only speaker—of this the dithyramb affords the
+best example; and the combination of both is found in epic, and in
+several other styles of poetry. Do I take you with me?
+
+Yes, he said; I see now what you meant.
+
+I will ask you to remember also what I began by saying, that we had
+done with the subject and might proceed to the style.
+
+Yes, I remember.
+
+In saying this, I intended to imply that we must come to an
+understanding about the mimetic art,—whether the poets, in narrating
+their stories, are to be allowed by us to imitate, and if so, whether
+in whole or in part, and if the latter, in what parts; or should all
+imitation be prohibited?
+
+You mean, I suspect, to ask whether tragedy and comedy shall be
+admitted into our State?
+
+Yes, I said; but there may be more than this in question: I really do
+not know as yet, but whither the argument may blow, thither we go.
+
+And go we will, he said.
+
+Then, Adeimantus, let me ask you whether our guardians ought to be
+imitators; or rather, has not this question been decided by the rule
+already laid down that one man can only do one thing well, and not
+many; and that if he attempt many, he will altogether fail of gaining
+much reputation in any?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And this is equally true of imitation; no one man can imitate many
+things as well as he would imitate a single one?
+
+He cannot.
+
+Then the same person will hardly be able to play a serious part in
+life, and at the same time to be an imitator and imitate many other
+parts as well; for even when two species of imitation are nearly
+allied, the same persons cannot succeed in both, as, for example, the
+writers of tragedy and comedy—did you not just now call them
+imitations?
+
+Yes, I did; and you are right in thinking that the same persons cannot
+succeed in both.
+
+Any more than they can be rhapsodists and actors at once?
+
+True.
+
+Neither are comic and tragic actors the same; yet all these things are
+but imitations.
+
+They are so.
+
+And human nature, Adeimantus, appears to have been coined into yet
+smaller pieces, and to be as incapable of imitating many things well,
+as of performing well the actions of which the imitations are copies.
+
+Quite true, he replied.
+
+If then we adhere to our original notion and bear in mind that our
+guardians, setting aside every other business, are to dedicate
+themselves wholly to the maintenance of freedom in the State, making
+this their craft, and engaging in no work which does not bear on this
+end, they ought not to practise or imitate anything else; if they
+imitate at all, they should imitate from youth upward only those
+characters which are suitable to their profession—the courageous,
+temperate, holy, free, and the like; but they should not depict or be
+skilful at imitating any kind of illiberality or baseness, lest from
+imitation they should come to be what they imitate. Did you never
+observe how imitations, beginning in early youth and continuing far
+into life, at length grow into habits and become a second nature,
+affecting body, voice, and mind?
+
+Yes, certainly, he said.
+
+Then, I said, we will not allow those for whom we profess a care and of
+whom we say that they ought to be good men, to imitate a woman, whether
+young or old, quarrelling with her husband, or striving and vaunting
+against the gods in conceit of her happiness, or when she is in
+affliction, or sorrow, or weeping; and certainly not one who is in
+sickness, love, or labour.
+
+Very right, he said.
+
+Neither must they represent slaves, male or female, performing the
+offices of slaves?
+
+They must not.
+
+And surely not bad men, whether cowards or any others, who do the
+reverse of what we have just been prescribing, who scold or mock or
+revile one another in drink or out of drink, or who in any other manner
+sin against themselves and their neighbours in word or deed, as the
+manner of such is. Neither should they be trained to imitate the action
+or speech of men or women who are mad or bad; for madness, like vice,
+is to be known but not to be practised or imitated.
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+Neither may they imitate smiths or other artificers, or oarsmen, or
+boatswains, or the like?
+
+How can they, he said, when they are not allowed to apply their minds
+to the callings of any of these?
+
+Nor may they imitate the neighing of horses, the bellowing of bulls,
+the murmur of rivers and roll of the ocean, thunder, and all that sort
+of thing?
+
+Nay, he said, if madness be forbidden, neither may they copy the
+behaviour of madmen.
+
+You mean, I said, if I understand you aright, that there is one sort of
+narrative style which may be employed by a truly good man when he has
+anything to say, and that another sort will be used by a man of an
+opposite character and education.
+
+And which are these two sorts? he asked.
+
+Suppose, I answered, that a just and good man in the course of a
+narration comes on some saying or action of another good man,—I should
+imagine that he will like to personate him, and will not be ashamed of
+this sort of imitation: he will be most ready to play the part of the
+good man when he is acting firmly and wisely; in a less degree when he
+is overtaken by illness or love or drink, or has met with any other
+disaster. But when he comes to a character which is unworthy of him, he
+will not make a study of that; he will disdain such a person, and will
+assume his likeness, if at all, for a moment only when he is performing
+some good action; at other times he will be ashamed to play a part
+which he has never practised, nor will he like to fashion and frame
+himself after the baser models; he feels the employment of such an art,
+unless in jest, to be beneath him, and his mind revolts at it.
+
+So I should expect, he replied.
+
+Then he will adopt a mode of narration such as we have illustrated out
+of Homer, that is to say, his style will be both imitative and
+narrative; but there will be very little of the former, and a great
+deal of the latter. Do you agree?
+
+Certainly, he said; that is the model which such a speaker must
+necessarily take.
+
+But there is another sort of character who will narrate anything, and,
+the worse he is, the more unscrupulous he will be; nothing will be too
+bad for him: and he will be ready to imitate anything, not as a joke,
+but in right good earnest, and before a large company. As I was just
+now saying, he will attempt to represent the roll of thunder, the noise
+of wind and hail, or the creaking of wheels, and pulleys, and the
+various sounds of flutes, pipes, trumpets, and all sorts of
+instruments: he will bark like a dog, bleat like a sheep, or crow like
+a cock; his entire art will consist in imitation of voice and gesture,
+and there will be very little narration.
+
+That, he said, will be his mode of speaking.
+
+These, then, are the two kinds of style?
+
+Yes.
+
+And you would agree with me in saying that one of them is simple and
+has but slight changes; and if the harmony and rhythm are also chosen
+for their simplicity, the result is that the speaker, if he speaks
+correctly, is always pretty much the same in style, and he will keep
+within the limits of a single harmony (for the changes are not great),
+and in like manner he will make use of nearly the same rhythm?
+
+That is quite true, he said.
+
+Whereas the other requires all sorts of harmonies and all sorts of
+rhythms, if the music and the style are to correspond, because the
+style has all sorts of changes.
+
+That is also perfectly true, he replied.
+
+And do not the two styles, or the mixture of the two, comprehend all
+poetry, and every form of expression in words? No one can say anything
+except in one or other of them or in both together.
+
+They include all, he said.
+
+And shall we receive into our State all the three styles, or one only
+of the two unmixed styles? or would you include the mixed?
+
+I should prefer only to admit the pure imitator of virtue.
+
+Yes, I said, Adeimantus, but the mixed style is also very charming: and
+indeed the pantomimic, which is the opposite of the one chosen by you,
+is the most popular style with children and their attendants, and with
+the world in general.
+
+I do not deny it.
+
+But I suppose you would argue that such a style is unsuitable to our
+State, in which human nature is not twofold or manifold, for one man
+plays one part only?
+
+Yes; quite unsuitable.
+
+And this is the reason why in our State, and in our State only, we
+shall find a shoemaker to be a shoemaker and not a pilot also, and a
+husbandman to be a husbandman and not a dicast also, and a soldier a
+soldier and not a trader also, and the same throughout?
+
+True, he said.
+
+And therefore when any one of these pantomimic gentlemen, who are so
+clever that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a
+proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we will fall down and
+worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must also
+inform him that in our State such as he are not permitted to exist; the
+law will not allow them. And so when we have anointed him with myrrh,
+and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to
+another city. For we mean to employ for our souls’ health the rougher
+and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate the style of the
+virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at
+first when we began the education of our soldiers.
+
+We certainly will, he said, if we have the power.
+
+Then now, my friend, I said, that part of music or literary education
+which relates to the story or myth may be considered to be finished;
+for the matter and manner have both been discussed.
+
+I think so too, he said.
+
+Next in order will follow melody and song.
+
+That is obvious.
+
+Every one can see already what we ought to say about them, if we are to
+be consistent with ourselves.
+
+I fear, said Glaucon, laughing, that the word ‘every one’ hardly
+includes me, for I cannot at the moment say what they should be; though
+I may guess.
+
+At any rate you can tell that a song or ode has three parts—the words,
+the melody, and the rhythm; that degree of knowledge I may presuppose?
+
+Yes, he said; so much as that you may.
+
+And as for the words, there will surely be no difference between words
+which are and which are not set to music; both will conform to the same
+laws, and these have been already determined by us?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the melody and rhythm will depend upon the words?
+
+Certainly.
+
+We were saying, when we spoke of the subject-matter, that we had no
+need of lamentation and strains of sorrow?
+
+True.
+
+And which are the harmonies expressive of sorrow? You are musical, and
+can tell me.
+
+The harmonies which you mean are the mixed or tenor Lydian, and the
+full-toned or bass Lydian, and such like.
+
+These then, I said, must be banished; even to women who have a
+character to maintain they are of no use, and much less to men.
+
+Certainly.
+
+In the next place, drunkenness and softness and indolence are utterly
+unbecoming the character of our guardians.
+
+Utterly unbecoming.
+
+And which are the soft or drinking harmonies?
+
+The Ionian, he replied, and the Lydian; they are termed ‘relaxed.’
+
+Well, and are these of any military use?
+
+Quite the reverse, he replied; and if so the Dorian and the Phrygian
+are the only ones which you have left.
+
+I answered: Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one
+warlike, to sound the note or accent which a brave man utters in the
+hour of danger and stern resolve, or when his cause is failing, and he
+is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and at
+every such crisis meets the blows of fortune with firm step and a
+determination to endure; and another to be used by him in times of
+peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of necessity,
+and he is seeking to persuade God by prayer, or man by instruction and
+admonition, or on the other hand, when he is expressing his willingness
+to yield to persuasion or entreaty or admonition, and which represents
+him when by prudent conduct he has attained his end, not carried away
+by his success, but acting moderately and wisely under the
+circumstances, and acquiescing in the event. These two harmonies I ask
+you to leave; the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the
+strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the strain
+of courage, and the strain of temperance; these, I say, leave.
+
+And these, he replied, are the Dorian and Phrygian harmonies of which I
+was just now speaking.
+
+Then, I said, if these and these only are to be used in our songs and
+melodies, we shall not want multiplicity of notes or a panharmonic
+scale?
+
+I suppose not.
+
+Then we shall not maintain the artificers of lyres with three corners
+and complex scales, or the makers of any other many-stringed
+curiously-harmonised instruments?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+But what do you say to flute-makers and flute-players? Would you admit
+them into our State when you reflect that in this composite use of
+harmony the flute is worse than all the stringed instruments put
+together; even the panharmonic music is only an imitation of the flute?
+
+Clearly not.
+
+There remain then only the lyre and the harp for use in the city, and
+the shepherds may have a pipe in the country.
+
+That is surely the conclusion to be drawn from the argument.
+
+The preferring of Apollo and his instruments to Marsyas and his
+instruments is not at all strange, I said.
+
+Not at all, he replied.
+
+And so, by the dog of Egypt, we have been unconsciously purging the
+State, which not long ago we termed luxurious.
+
+And we have done wisely, he replied.
+
+Then let us now finish the purgation, I said. Next in order to
+harmonies, rhythms will naturally follow, and they should be subject to
+the same rules, for we ought not to seek out complex systems of metre,
+or metres of every kind, but rather to discover what rhythms are the
+expressions of a courageous and harmonious life; and when we have found
+them, we shall adapt the foot and the melody to words having a like
+spirit, not the words to the foot and melody. To say what these rhythms
+are will be your duty—you must teach me them, as you have already
+taught me the harmonies.
+
+But, indeed, he replied, I cannot tell you. I only know that there are
+some three principles of rhythm out of which metrical systems are
+framed, just as in sounds there are four notes (i.e. the four notes of
+the tetrachord.) out of which all the harmonies are composed; that is
+an observation which I have made. But of what sort of lives they are
+severally the imitations I am unable to say.
+
+Then, I said, we must take Damon into our counsels; and he will tell us
+what rhythms are expressive of meanness, or insolence, or fury, or
+other unworthiness, and what are to be reserved for the expression of
+opposite feelings. And I think that I have an indistinct recollection
+of his mentioning a complex Cretic rhythm; also a dactylic or heroic,
+and he arranged them in some manner which I do not quite understand,
+making the rhythms equal in the rise and fall of the foot, long and
+short alternating; and, unless I am mistaken, he spoke of an iambic as
+well as of a trochaic rhythm, and assigned to them short and long
+quantities. Also in some cases he appeared to praise or censure the
+movement of the foot quite as much as the rhythm; or perhaps a
+combination of the two; for I am not certain what he meant. These
+matters, however, as I was saying, had better be referred to Damon
+himself, for the analysis of the subject would be difficult, you know?
+(Socrates expresses himself carelessly in accordance with his assumed
+ignorance of the details of the subject. In the first part of the
+sentence he appears to be speaking of paeonic rhythms which are in the
+ratio of 3/2; in the second part, of dactylic and anapaestic rhythms,
+which are in the ratio of 1/1; in the last clause, of iambic and
+trochaic rhythms, which are in the ratio of 1/2 or 2/1.)
+
+Rather so, I should say.
+
+But there is no difficulty in seeing that grace or the absence of grace
+is an effect of good or bad rhythm.
+
+None at all.
+
+And also that good and bad rhythm naturally assimilate to a good and
+bad style; and that harmony and discord in like manner follow style;
+for our principle is that rhythm and harmony are regulated by the
+words, and not the words by them.
+
+Just so, he said, they should follow the words.
+
+And will not the words and the character of the style depend on the
+temper of the soul?
+
+Yes.
+
+And everything else on the style?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on
+simplicity,—I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered
+mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only an
+euphemism for folly?
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they not make these
+graces and harmonies their perpetual aim?
+
+They must.
+
+And surely the art of the painter and every other creative and
+constructive art are full of them,—weaving, embroidery, architecture,
+and every kind of manufacture; also nature, animal and vegetable,—in
+all of them there is grace or the absence of grace. And ugliness and
+discord and inharmonious motion are nearly allied to ill words and ill
+nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters of goodness and
+virtue and bear their likeness.
+
+That is quite true, he said.
+
+But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only to
+be required by us to express the image of the good in their works, on
+pain, if they do anything else, of expulsion from our State? Or is the
+same control to be extended to other artists, and are they also to be
+prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and intemperance
+and meanness and indecency in sculpture and building and the other
+creative arts; and is he who cannot conform to this rule of ours to be
+prevented from practising his art in our State, lest the taste of our
+citizens be corrupted by him? We would not have our guardians grow up
+amid images of moral deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there
+browse and feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little
+by little, until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in
+their own soul. Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to
+discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful; then will our
+youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and
+receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair
+works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze
+from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years
+into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.
+
+There can be no nobler training than that, he replied.
+
+And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent
+instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way
+into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten,
+imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated
+graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he
+who has received this true education of the inner being will most
+shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a
+true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his
+soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and
+hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to
+know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognise and salute
+the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.
+
+Yes, he said, I quite agree with you in thinking that our youth should
+be trained in music and on the grounds which you mention.
+
+Just as in learning to read, I said, we were satisfied when we knew the
+letters of the alphabet, which are very few, in all their recurring
+sizes and combinations; not slighting them as unimportant whether they
+occupy a space large or small, but everywhere eager to make them out;
+and not thinking ourselves perfect in the art of reading until we
+recognise them wherever they are found:
+
+True—
+
+Or, as we recognise the reflection of letters in the water, or in a
+mirror, only when we know the letters themselves; the same art and
+study giving us the knowledge of both:
+
+Exactly—
+
+Even so, as I maintain, neither we nor our guardians, whom we have to
+educate, can ever become musical until we and they know the essential
+forms of temperance, courage, liberality, magnificence, and their
+kindred, as well as the contrary forms, in all their combinations, and
+can recognise them and their images wherever they are found, not
+slighting them either in small things or great, but believing them all
+to be within the sphere of one art and study.
+
+Most assuredly.
+
+And when a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two
+are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him who
+has an eye to see it?
+
+The fairest indeed.
+
+And the fairest is also the loveliest?
+
+That may be assumed.
+
+And the man who has the spirit of harmony will be most in love with the
+loveliest; but he will not love him who is of an inharmonious soul?
+
+That is true, he replied, if the deficiency be in his soul; but if
+there be any merely bodily defect in another he will be patient of it,
+and will love all the same.
+
+I perceive, I said, that you have or have had experiences of this sort,
+and I agree. But let me ask you another question: Has excess of
+pleasure any affinity to temperance?
+
+How can that be? he replied; pleasure deprives a man of the use of his
+faculties quite as much as pain.
+
+Or any affinity to virtue in general?
+
+None whatever.
+
+Any affinity to wantonness and intemperance?
+
+Yes, the greatest.
+
+And is there any greater or keener pleasure than that of sensual love?
+
+No, nor a madder.
+
+Whereas true love is a love of beauty and order—temperate and
+harmonious?
+
+Quite true, he said.
+
+Then no intemperance or madness should be allowed to approach true
+love?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Then mad or intemperate pleasure must never be allowed to come near the
+lover and his beloved; neither of them can have any part in it if their
+love is of the right sort?
+
+No, indeed, Socrates, it must never come near them.
+
+Then I suppose that in the city which we are founding you would make a
+law to the effect that a friend should use no other familiarity to his
+love than a father would use to his son, and then only for a noble
+purpose, and he must first have the other’s consent; and this rule is
+to limit him in all his intercourse, and he is never to be seen going
+further, or, if he exceeds, he is to be deemed guilty of coarseness and
+bad taste.
+
+I quite agree, he said.
+
+Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending; for what should be the
+end of music if not the love of beauty?
+
+I agree, he said.
+
+After music comes gymnastic, in which our youth are next to be trained.
+
+Certainly.
+
+Gymnastic as well as music should begin in early years; the training in
+it should be careful and should continue through life. Now my belief
+is,—and this is a matter upon which I should like to have your opinion
+in confirmation of my own, but my own belief is,—not that the good body
+by any bodily excellence improves the soul, but, on the contrary, that
+the good soul, by her own excellence, improves the body as far as this
+may be possible. What do you say?
+
+Yes, I agree.
+
+Then, to the mind when adequately trained, we shall be right in handing
+over the more particular care of the body; and in order to avoid
+prolixity we will now only give the general outlines of the subject.
+
+Very good.
+
+That they must abstain from intoxication has been already remarked by
+us; for of all persons a guardian should be the last to get drunk and
+not know where in the world he is.
+
+Yes, he said; that a guardian should require another guardian to take
+care of him is ridiculous indeed.
+
+But next, what shall we say of their food; for the men are in training
+for the great contest of all—are they not?
+
+Yes, he said.
+
+And will the habit of body of our ordinary athletes be suited to them?
+
+Why not?
+
+I am afraid, I said, that a habit of body such as they have is but a
+sleepy sort of thing, and rather perilous to health. Do you not observe
+that these athletes sleep away their lives, and are liable to most
+dangerous illnesses if they depart, in ever so slight a degree, from
+their customary regimen?
+
+Yes, I do.
+
+Then, I said, a finer sort of training will be required for our warrior
+athletes, who are to be like wakeful dogs, and to see and hear with the
+utmost keenness; amid the many changes of water and also of food, of
+summer heat and winter cold, which they will have to endure when on a
+campaign, they must not be liable to break down in health.
+
+That is my view.
+
+The really excellent gymnastic is twin sister of that simple music
+which we were just now describing.
+
+How so?
+
+Why, I conceive that there is a gymnastic which, like our music, is
+simple and good; and especially the military gymnastic.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+My meaning may be learned from Homer; he, you know, feeds his heroes at
+their feasts, when they are campaigning, on soldiers’ fare; they have
+no fish, although they are on the shores of the Hellespont, and they
+are not allowed boiled meats but only roast, which is the food most
+convenient for soldiers, requiring only that they should light a fire,
+and not involving the trouble of carrying about pots and pans.
+
+True.
+
+And I can hardly be mistaken in saying that sweet sauces are nowhere
+mentioned in Homer. In proscribing them, however, he is not singular;
+all professional athletes are well aware that a man who is to be in
+good condition should take nothing of the kind.
+
+Yes, he said; and knowing this, they are quite right in not taking
+them.
+
+Then you would not approve of Syracusan dinners, and the refinements of
+Sicilian cookery?
+
+I think not.
+
+Nor, if a man is to be in condition, would you allow him to have a
+Corinthian girl as his fair friend?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Neither would you approve of the delicacies, as they are thought, of
+Athenian confectionary?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+All such feeding and living may be rightly compared by us to melody and
+song composed in the panharmonic style, and in all the rhythms.
+
+Exactly.
+
+There complexity engendered licence, and here disease; whereas
+simplicity in music was the parent of temperance in the soul; and
+simplicity in gymnastic of health in the body.
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+But when intemperance and diseases multiply in a State, halls of
+justice and medicine are always being opened; and the arts of the
+doctor and the lawyer give themselves airs, finding how keen is the
+interest which not only the slaves but the freemen of a city take about
+them.
+
+Of course.
+
+And yet what greater proof can there be of a bad and disgraceful state
+of education than this, that not only artisans and the meaner sort of
+people need the skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but also
+those who would profess to have had a liberal education? Is it not
+disgraceful, and a great sign of want of good-breeding, that a man
+should have to go abroad for his law and physic because he has none of
+his own at home, and must therefore surrender himself into the hands of
+other men whom he makes lords and judges over him?
+
+Of all things, he said, the most disgraceful.
+
+Would you say ‘most,’ I replied, when you consider that there is a
+further stage of the evil in which a man is not only a life-long
+litigant, passing all his days in the courts, either as plaintiff or
+defendant, but is actually led by his bad taste to pride himself on his
+litigiousness; he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty; able to
+take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole,
+bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for
+what?—in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not
+knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without a napping
+judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing. Is not that still more
+disgraceful?
+
+Yes, he said, that is still more disgraceful.
+
+Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound has
+to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just because, by
+indolence and a habit of life such as we have been describing, men fill
+themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies were a marsh,
+compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names for
+diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace?
+
+Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and newfangled names
+to diseases.
+
+Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such diseases in
+the days of Asclepius; and this I infer from the circumstance that the
+hero Eurypylus, after he has been wounded in Homer, drinks a posset of
+Pramnian wine well besprinkled with barley-meal and grated cheese,
+which are certainly inflammatory, and yet the sons of Asclepius who
+were at the Trojan war do not blame the damsel who gives him the drink,
+or rebuke Patroclus, who is treating his case.
+
+Well, he said, that was surely an extraordinary drink to be given to a
+person in his condition.
+
+Not so extraordinary, I replied, if you bear in mind that in former
+days, as is commonly said, before the time of Herodicus, the guild of
+Asclepius did not practise our present system of medicine, which may be
+said to educate diseases. But Herodicus, being a trainer, and himself
+of a sickly constitution, by a combination of training and doctoring
+found out a way of torturing first and chiefly himself, and secondly
+the rest of the world.
+
+How was that? he said.
+
+By the invention of lingering death; for he had a mortal disease which
+he perpetually tended, and as recovery was out of the question, he
+passed his entire life as a valetudinarian; he could do nothing but
+attend upon himself, and he was in constant torment whenever he
+departed in anything from his usual regimen, and so dying hard, by the
+help of science he struggled on to old age.
+
+A rare reward of his skill!
+
+Yes, I said; a reward which a man might fairly expect who never
+understood that, if Asclepius did not instruct his descendants in
+valetudinarian arts, the omission arose, not from ignorance or
+inexperience of such a branch of medicine, but because he knew that in
+all well-ordered states every individual has an occupation to which he
+must attend, and has therefore no leisure to spend in continually being
+ill. This we remark in the case of the artisan, but, ludicrously
+enough, do not apply the same rule to people of the richer sort.
+
+How do you mean? he said.
+
+I mean this: When a carpenter is ill he asks the physician for a rough
+and ready cure; an emetic or a purge or a cautery or the knife,—these
+are his remedies. And if some one prescribes for him a course of
+dietetics, and tells him that he must swathe and swaddle his head, and
+all that sort of thing, he replies at once that he has no time to be
+ill, and that he sees no good in a life which is spent in nursing his
+disease to the neglect of his customary employment; and therefore
+bidding good-bye to this sort of physician, he resumes his ordinary
+habits, and either gets well and lives and does his business, or, if
+his constitution fails, he dies and has no more trouble.
+
+Yes, he said, and a man in his condition of life ought to use the art
+of medicine thus far only.
+
+Has he not, I said, an occupation; and what profit would there be in
+his life if he were deprived of his occupation?
+
+Quite true, he said.
+
+But with the rich man this is otherwise; of him we do not say that he
+has any specially appointed work which he must perform, if he would
+live.
+
+He is generally supposed to have nothing to do.
+
+Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as soon as a man
+has a livelihood he should practise virtue?
+
+Nay, he said, I think that he had better begin somewhat sooner.
+
+Let us not have a dispute with him about this, I said; but rather ask
+ourselves: Is the practice of virtue obligatory on the rich man, or can
+he live without it? And if obligatory on him, then let us raise a
+further question, whether this dieting of disorders, which is an
+impediment to the application of the mind in carpentering and the
+mechanical arts, does not equally stand in the way of the sentiment of
+Phocylides?
+
+Of that, he replied, there can be no doubt; such excessive care of the
+body, when carried beyond the rules of gymnastic, is most inimical to
+the practice of virtue.
+
+Yes, indeed, I replied, and equally incompatible with the management of
+a house, an army, or an office of state; and, what is most important of
+all, irreconcileable with any kind of study or thought or
+self-reflection—there is a constant suspicion that headache and
+giddiness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practising or
+making trial of virtue in the higher sense is absolutely stopped; for a
+man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant
+anxiety about the state of his body.
+
+Yes, likely enough.
+
+And therefore our politic Asclepius may be supposed to have exhibited
+the power of his art only to persons who, being generally of healthy
+constitution and habits of life, had a definite ailment; such as these
+he cured by purges and operations, and bade them live as usual, herein
+consulting the interests of the State; but bodies which disease had
+penetrated through and through he would not have attempted to cure by
+gradual processes of evacuation and infusion: he did not want to
+lengthen out good-for-nothing lives, or to have weak fathers begetting
+weaker sons;—if a man was not able to live in the ordinary way he had
+no business to cure him; for such a cure would have been of no use
+either to himself, or to the State.
+
+Then, he said, you regard Asclepius as a statesman.
+
+Clearly; and his character is further illustrated by his sons. Note
+that they were heroes in the days of old and practised the medicines of
+which I am speaking at the siege of Troy: You will remember how, when
+Pandarus wounded Menelaus, they
+
+‘Sucked the blood out of the wound, and sprinkled soothing remedies,’
+
+but they never prescribed what the patient was afterwards to eat or
+drink in the case of Menelaus, any more than in the case of Eurypylus;
+the remedies, as they conceived, were enough to heal any man who before
+he was wounded was healthy and regular in his habits; and even though
+he did happen to drink a posset of Pramnian wine, he might get well all
+the same. But they would have nothing to do with unhealthy and
+intemperate subjects, whose lives were of no use either to themselves
+or others; the art of medicine was not designed for their good, and
+though they were as rich as Midas, the sons of Asclepius would have
+declined to attend them.
+
+They were very acute persons, those sons of Asclepius.
+
+Naturally so, I replied. Nevertheless, the tragedians and Pindar
+disobeying our behests, although they acknowledge that Asclepius was
+the son of Apollo, say also that he was bribed into healing a rich man
+who was at the point of death, and for this reason he was struck by
+lightning. But we, in accordance with the principle already affirmed by
+us, will not believe them when they tell us both;—if he was the son of
+a god, we maintain that he was not avaricious; or, if he was
+avaricious, he was not the son of a god.
+
+All that, Socrates, is excellent; but I should like to put a question
+to you: Ought there not to be good physicians in a State, and are not
+the best those who have treated the greatest number of constitutions
+good and bad? and are not the best judges in like manner those who are
+acquainted with all sorts of moral natures?
+
+Yes, I said, I too would have good judges and good physicians. But do
+you know whom I think good?
+
+Will you tell me?
+
+I will, if I can. Let me however note that in the same question you
+join two things which are not the same.
+
+How so? he asked.
+
+Why, I said, you join physicians and judges. Now the most skilful
+physicians are those who, from their youth upwards, have combined with
+the knowledge of their art the greatest experience of disease; they had
+better not be robust in health, and should have had all manner of
+diseases in their own persons. For the body, as I conceive, is not the
+instrument with which they cure the body; in that case we could not
+allow them ever to be or to have been sickly; but they cure the body
+with the mind, and the mind which has become and is sick can cure
+nothing.
+
+That is very true, he said.
+
+But with the judge it is otherwise; since he governs mind by mind; he
+ought not therefore to have been trained among vicious minds, and to
+have associated with them from youth upwards, and to have gone through
+the whole calendar of crime, only in order that he may quickly infer
+the crimes of others as he might their bodily diseases from his own
+self-consciousness; the honourable mind which is to form a healthy
+judgment should have had no experience or contamination of evil habits
+when young. And this is the reason why in youth good men often appear
+to be simple, and are easily practised upon by the dishonest, because
+they have no examples of what evil is in their own souls.
+
+Yes, he said, they are far too apt to be deceived.
+
+Therefore, I said, the judge should not be young; he should have
+learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long
+observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his
+guide, not personal experience.
+
+Yes, he said, that is the ideal of a judge.
+
+Yes, I replied, and he will be a good man (which is my answer to your
+question); for he is good who has a good soul. But the cunning and
+suspicious nature of which we spoke,—he who has committed many crimes,
+and fancies himself to be a master in wickedness, when he is amongst
+his fellows, is wonderful in the precautions which he takes, because he
+judges of them by himself: but when he gets into the company of men of
+virtue, who have the experience of age, he appears to be a fool again,
+owing to his unseasonable suspicions; he cannot recognise an honest
+man, because he has no pattern of honesty in himself; at the same time,
+as the bad are more numerous than the good, and he meets with them
+oftener, he thinks himself, and is by others thought to be, rather wise
+than foolish.
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+Then the good and wise judge whom we are seeking is not this man, but
+the other; for vice cannot know virtue too, but a virtuous nature,
+educated by time, will acquire a knowledge both of virtue and vice: the
+virtuous, and not the vicious, man has wisdom—in my opinion.
+
+And in mine also.
+
+This is the sort of medicine, and this is the sort of law, which you
+will sanction in your state. They will minister to better natures,
+giving health both of soul and of body; but those who are diseased in
+their bodies they will leave to die, and the corrupt and incurable
+souls they will put an end to themselves.
+
+That is clearly the best thing both for the patients and for the State.
+
+And thus our youth, having been educated only in that simple music
+which, as we said, inspires temperance, will be reluctant to go to law.
+
+Clearly.
+
+And the musician, who, keeping to the same track, is content to
+practise the simple gymnastic, will have nothing to do with medicine
+unless in some extreme case.
+
+That I quite believe.
+
+The very exercises and tolls which he undergoes are intended to
+stimulate the spirited element of his nature, and not to increase his
+strength; he will not, like common athletes, use exercise and regimen
+to develope his muscles.
+
+Very right, he said.
+
+Neither are the two arts of music and gymnastic really designed, as is
+often supposed, the one for the training of the soul, the other for the
+training of the body.
+
+What then is the real object of them?
+
+I believe, I said, that the teachers of both have in view chiefly the
+improvement of the soul.
+
+How can that be? he asked.
+
+Did you never observe, I said, the effect on the mind itself of
+exclusive devotion to gymnastic, or the opposite effect of an exclusive
+devotion to music?
+
+In what way shown? he said.
+
+The one producing a temper of hardness and ferocity, the other of
+softness and effeminacy, I replied.
+
+Yes, he said, I am quite aware that the mere athlete becomes too much
+of a savage, and that the mere musician is melted and softened beyond
+what is good for him.
+
+Yet surely, I said, this ferocity only comes from spirit, which, if
+rightly educated, would give courage, but, if too much intensified, is
+liable to become hard and brutal.
+
+That I quite think.
+
+On the other hand the philosopher will have the quality of gentleness.
+And this also, when too much indulged, will turn to softness, but, if
+educated rightly, will be gentle and moderate.
+
+True.
+
+And in our opinion the guardians ought to have both these qualities?
+
+Assuredly.
+
+And both should be in harmony?
+
+Beyond question.
+
+And the harmonious soul is both temperate and courageous?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the inharmonious is cowardly and boorish?
+
+Very true.
+
+And, when a man allows music to play upon him and to pour into his soul
+through the funnel of his ears those sweet and soft and melancholy airs
+of which we were just now speaking, and his whole life is passed in
+warbling and the delights of song; in the first stage of the process
+the passion or spirit which is in him is tempered like iron, and made
+useful, instead of brittle and useless. But, if he carries on the
+softening and soothing process, in the next stage he begins to melt and
+waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the sinews of
+his soul; and he becomes a feeble warrior.
+
+Very true.
+
+If the element of spirit is naturally weak in him the change is
+speedily accomplished, but if he have a good deal, then the power of
+music weakening the spirit renders him excitable;—on the least
+provocation he flames up at once, and is speedily extinguished; instead
+of having spirit he grows irritable and passionate and is quite
+impracticable.
+
+Exactly.
+
+And so in gymnastics, if a man takes violent exercise and is a great
+feeder, and the reverse of a great student of music and philosophy, at
+first the high condition of his body fills him with pride and spirit,
+and he becomes twice the man that he was.
+
+Certainly.
+
+And what happens? if he do nothing else, and holds no converse with the
+Muses, does not even that intelligence which there may be in him,
+having no taste of any sort of learning or enquiry or thought or
+culture, grow feeble and dull and blind, his mind never waking up or
+receiving nourishment, and his senses not being purged of their mists?
+
+True, he said.
+
+And he ends by becoming a hater of philosophy, uncivilized, never using
+the weapon of persuasion,—he is like a wild beast, all violence and
+fierceness, and knows no other way of dealing; and he lives in all
+ignorance and evil conditions, and has no sense of propriety and grace.
+
+That is quite true, he said.
+
+And as there are two principles of human nature, one the spirited and
+the other the philosophical, some God, as I should say, has given
+mankind two arts answering to them (and only indirectly to the soul and
+body), in order that these two principles (like the strings of an
+instrument) may be relaxed or drawn tighter until they are duly
+harmonized.
+
+That appears to be the intention.
+
+And he who mingles music with gymnastic in the fairest proportions, and
+best attempers them to the soul, may be rightly called the true
+musician and harmonist in a far higher sense than the tuner of the
+strings.
+
+You are quite right, Socrates.
+
+And such a presiding genius will be always required in our State if the
+government is to last.
+
+Yes, he will be absolutely necessary.
+
+Such, then, are our principles of nurture and education: Where would be
+the use of going into further details about the dances of our citizens,
+or about their hunting and coursing, their gymnastic and equestrian
+contests? For these all follow the general principle, and having found
+that, we shall have no difficulty in discovering them.
+
+I dare say that there will be no difficulty.
+
+Very good, I said; then what is the next question? Must we not ask who
+are to be rulers and who subjects?
+
+Certainly.
+
+There can be no doubt that the elder must rule the younger.
+
+Clearly.
+
+And that the best of these must rule.
+
+That is also clear.
+
+Now, are not the best husbandmen those who are most devoted to
+husbandry?
+
+Yes.
+
+And as we are to have the best of guardians for our city, must they not
+be those who have most the character of guardians?
+
+Yes.
+
+And to this end they ought to be wise and efficient, and to have a
+special care of the State?
+
+True.
+
+And a man will be most likely to care about that which he loves?
+
+To be sure.
+
+And he will be most likely to love that which he regards as having the
+same interests with himself, and that of which the good or evil fortune
+is supposed by him at any time most to affect his own?
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+Then there must be a selection. Let us note among the guardians those
+who in their whole life show the greatest eagerness to do what is for
+the good of their country, and the greatest repugnance to do what is
+against her interests.
+
+Those are the right men.
+
+And they will have to be watched at every age, in order that we may see
+whether they preserve their resolution, and never, under the influence
+either of force or enchantment, forget or cast off their sense of duty
+to the State.
+
+How cast off? he said.
+
+I will explain to you, I replied. A resolution may go out of a man’s
+mind either with his will or against his will; with his will when he
+gets rid of a falsehood and learns better, against his will whenever he
+is deprived of a truth.
+
+I understand, he said, the willing loss of a resolution; the meaning of
+the unwilling I have yet to learn.
+
+Why, I said, do you not see that men are unwillingly deprived of good,
+and willingly of evil? Is not to have lost the truth an evil, and to
+possess the truth a good? and you would agree that to conceive things
+as they are is to possess the truth?
+
+Yes, he replied; I agree with you in thinking that mankind are deprived
+of truth against their will.
+
+And is not this involuntary deprivation caused either by theft, or
+force, or enchantment?
+
+Still, he replied, I do not understand you.
+
+I fear that I must have been talking darkly, like the tragedians. I
+only mean that some men are changed by persuasion and that others
+forget; argument steals away the hearts of one class, and time of the
+other; and this I call theft. Now you understand me?
+
+Yes.
+
+Those again who are forced, are those whom the violence of some pain or
+grief compels to change their opinion.
+
+I understand, he said, and you are quite right.
+
+And you would also acknowledge that the enchanted are those who change
+their minds either under the softer influence of pleasure, or the
+sterner influence of fear?
+
+Yes, he said; everything that deceives may be said to enchant.
+
+Therefore, as I was just now saying, we must enquire who are the best
+guardians of their own conviction that what they think the interest of
+the State is to be the rule of their lives. We must watch them from
+their youth upwards, and make them perform actions in which they are
+most likely to forget or to be deceived, and he who remembers and is
+not deceived is to be selected, and he who fails in the trial is to be
+rejected. That will be the way?
+
+Yes.
+
+And there should also be toils and pains and conflicts prescribed for
+them, in which they will be made to give further proof of the same
+qualities.
+
+Very right, he replied.
+
+And then, I said, we must try them with enchantments—that is the third
+sort of test—and see what will be their behaviour: like those who take
+colts amid noise and tumult to see if they are of a timid nature, so
+must we take our youth amid terrors of some kind, and again pass them
+into pleasures, and prove them more thoroughly than gold is proved in
+the furnace, that we may discover whether they are armed against all
+enchantments, and of a noble bearing always, good guardians of
+themselves and of the music which they have learned, and retaining
+under all circumstances a rhythmical and harmonious nature, such as
+will be most serviceable to the individual and to the State. And he who
+at every age, as boy and youth and in mature life, has come out of the
+trial victorious and pure, shall be appointed a ruler and guardian of
+the State; he shall be honoured in life and death, and shall receive
+sepulture and other memorials of honour, the greatest that we have to
+give. But him who fails, we must reject. I am inclined to think that
+this is the sort of way in which our rulers and guardians should be
+chosen and appointed. I speak generally, and not with any pretension to
+exactness.
+
+And, speaking generally, I agree with you, he said.
+
+And perhaps the word ‘guardian’ in the fullest sense ought to be
+applied to this higher class only who preserve us against foreign
+enemies and maintain peace among our citizens at home, that the one may
+not have the will, or the others the power, to harm us. The young men
+whom we before called guardians may be more properly designated
+auxiliaries and supporters of the principles of the rulers.
+
+I agree with you, he said.
+
+How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we
+lately spoke—just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that
+be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?
+
+What sort of lie? he said.
+
+Nothing new, I replied; only an old Phoenician tale (Laws) of what has
+often occurred before now in other places, (as the poets say, and have
+made the world believe,) though not in our time, and I do not know
+whether such an event could ever happen again, or could now even be
+made probable, if it did.
+
+How your words seem to hesitate on your lips!
+
+You will not wonder, I replied, at my hesitation when you have heard.
+
+Speak, he said, and fear not.
+
+Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look you in
+the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which I
+propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the
+soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be told that their
+youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received
+from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were
+being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves
+and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured; when they were
+completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their country
+being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for
+her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are
+to regard as children of the earth and their own brothers.
+
+You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the lie which you were
+going to tell.
+
+True, I replied, but there is more coming; I have only told you half.
+Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God
+has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and
+in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they
+have the greatest honour; others he has made of silver, to be
+auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has
+composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved
+in the children. But as all are of the same original stock, a golden
+parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden
+son. And God proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and above
+all else, that there is nothing which they should so anxiously guard,
+or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the purity of the
+race. They should observe what elements mingle in their offspring; for
+if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and
+iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the
+ruler must not be pitiful towards the child because he has to descend
+in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be
+sons of artisans who having an admixture of gold or silver in them are
+raised to honour, and become guardians or auxiliaries. For an oracle
+says that when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be
+destroyed. Such is the tale; is there any possibility of making our
+citizens believe in it?
+
+Not in the present generation, he replied; there is no way of
+accomplishing this; but their sons may be made to believe in the tale,
+and their sons’ sons, and posterity after them.
+
+I see the difficulty, I replied; yet the fostering of such a belief
+will make them care more for the city and for one another. Enough,
+however, of the fiction, which may now fly abroad upon the wings of
+rumour, while we arm our earth-born heroes, and lead them forth under
+the command of their rulers. Let them look round and select a spot
+whence they can best suppress insurrection, if any prove refractory
+within, and also defend themselves against enemies, who like wolves may
+come down on the fold from without; there let them encamp, and when
+they have encamped, let them sacrifice to the proper Gods and prepare
+their dwellings.
+
+Just so, he said.
+
+And their dwellings must be such as will shield them against the cold
+of winter and the heat of summer.
+
+I suppose that you mean houses, he replied.
+
+Yes, I said; but they must be the houses of soldiers, and not of
+shop-keepers.
+
+What is the difference? he said.
+
+That I will endeavour to explain, I replied. To keep watch-dogs, who,
+from want of discipline or hunger, or some evil habit or other, would
+turn upon the sheep and worry them, and behave not like dogs but
+wolves, would be a foul and monstrous thing in a shepherd?
+
+Truly monstrous, he said.
+
+And therefore every care must be taken that our auxiliaries, being
+stronger than our citizens, may not grow to be too much for them and
+become savage tyrants instead of friends and allies?
+
+Yes, great care should be taken.
+
+And would not a really good education furnish the best safeguard?
+
+But they are well-educated already, he replied.
+
+I cannot be so confident, my dear Glaucon, I said; I am much more
+certain that they ought to be, and that true education, whatever that
+may be, will have the greatest tendency to civilize and humanize them
+in their relations to one another, and to those who are under their
+protection.
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+And not only their education, but their habitations, and all that
+belongs to them, should be such as will neither impair their virtue as
+guardians, nor tempt them to prey upon the other citizens. Any man of
+sense must acknowledge that.
+
+He must.
+
+Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they are to
+realize our idea of them. In the first place, none of them should have
+any property of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary; neither
+should they have a private house or store closed against any one who
+has a mind to enter; their provisions should be only such as are
+required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage;
+they should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay,
+enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more; and they will go
+to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we
+will tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal is within
+them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is current
+among men, and ought not to pollute the divine by any such earthly
+admixture; for that commoner metal has been the source of many unholy
+deeds, but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens
+may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the same roof with
+them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this will be their
+salvation, and they will be the saviours of the State. But should they
+ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they will become
+housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians, enemies and tyrants
+instead of allies of the other citizens; hating and being hated,
+plotting and being plotted against, they will pass their whole life in
+much greater terror of internal than of external enemies, and the hour
+of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the State, will be at
+hand. For all which reasons may we not say that thus shall our State be
+ordered, and that these shall be the regulations appointed by us for
+guardians concerning their houses and all other matters?
+
+Yes, said Glaucon.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK IV.
+
+
+Here Adeimantus interposed a question: How would you answer, Socrates,
+said he, if a person were to say that you are making these people
+miserable, and that they are the cause of their own unhappiness; the
+city in fact belongs to them, but they are none the better for it;
+whereas other men acquire lands, and build large and handsome houses,
+and have everything handsome about them, offering sacrifices to the
+gods on their own account, and practising hospitality; moreover, as you
+were saying just now, they have gold and silver, and all that is usual
+among the favourites of fortune; but our poor citizens are no better
+than mercenaries who are quartered in the city and are always mounting
+guard?
+
+Yes, I said; and you may add that they are only fed, and not paid in
+addition to their food, like other men; and therefore they cannot, if
+they would, take a journey of pleasure; they have no money to spend on
+a mistress or any other luxurious fancy, which, as the world goes, is
+thought to be happiness; and many other accusations of the same nature
+might be added.
+
+But, said he, let us suppose all this to be included in the charge.
+
+You mean to ask, I said, what will be our answer?
+
+Yes.
+
+If we proceed along the old path, my belief, I said, is that we shall
+find the answer. And our answer will be that, even as they are, our
+guardians may very likely be the happiest of men; but that our aim in
+founding the State was not the disproportionate happiness of any one
+class, but the greatest happiness of the whole; we thought that in a
+State which is ordered with a view to the good of the whole we should
+be most likely to find justice, and in the ill-ordered State injustice:
+and, having found them, we might then decide which of the two is the
+happier. At present, I take it, we are fashioning the happy State, not
+piecemeal, or with a view of making a few happy citizens, but as a
+whole; and by-and-by we will proceed to view the opposite kind of
+State. Suppose that we were painting a statue, and some one came up to
+us and said, Why do you not put the most beautiful colours on the most
+beautiful parts of the body—the eyes ought to be purple, but you have
+made them black—to him we might fairly answer, Sir, you would not
+surely have us beautify the eyes to such a degree that they are no
+longer eyes; consider rather whether, by giving this and the other
+features their due proportion, we make the whole beautiful. And so I
+say to you, do not compel us to assign to the guardians a sort of
+happiness which will make them anything but guardians; for we too can
+clothe our husbandmen in royal apparel, and set crowns of gold on their
+heads, and bid them till the ground as much as they like, and no more.
+Our potters also might be allowed to repose on couches, and feast by
+the fireside, passing round the winecup, while their wheel is
+conveniently at hand, and working at pottery only as much as they like;
+in this way we might make every class happy—and then, as you imagine,
+the whole State would be happy. But do not put this idea into our
+heads; for, if we listen to you, the husbandman will be no longer a
+husbandman, the potter will cease to be a potter, and no one will have
+the character of any distinct class in the State. Now this is not of
+much consequence where the corruption of society, and pretension to be
+what you are not, is confined to cobblers; but when the guardians of
+the laws and of the government are only seeming and not real guardians,
+then see how they turn the State upside down; and on the other hand
+they alone have the power of giving order and happiness to the State.
+We mean our guardians to be true saviours and not the destroyers of the
+State, whereas our opponent is thinking of peasants at a festival, who
+are enjoying a life of revelry, not of citizens who are doing their
+duty to the State. But, if so, we mean different things, and he is
+speaking of something which is not a State. And therefore we must
+consider whether in appointing our guardians we would look to their
+greatest happiness individually, or whether this principle of happiness
+does not rather reside in the State as a whole. But if the latter be
+the truth, then the guardians and auxiliaries, and all others equally
+with them, must be compelled or induced to do their own work in the
+best way. And thus the whole State will grow up in a noble order, and
+the several classes will receive the proportion of happiness which
+nature assigns to them.
+
+I think that you are quite right.
+
+I wonder whether you will agree with another remark which occurs to me.
+
+What may that be?
+
+There seem to be two causes of the deterioration of the arts.
+
+What are they?
+
+Wealth, I said, and poverty.
+
+How do they act?
+
+The process is as follows: When a potter becomes rich, will he, think
+you, any longer take the same pains with his art?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+He will grow more and more indolent and careless?
+
+Very true.
+
+And the result will be that he becomes a worse potter?
+
+Yes; he greatly deteriorates.
+
+But, on the other hand, if he has no money, and cannot provide himself
+with tools or instruments, he will not work equally well himself, nor
+will he teach his sons or apprentices to work equally well.
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Then, under the influence either of poverty or of wealth, workmen and
+their work are equally liable to degenerate?
+
+That is evident.
+
+Here, then, is a discovery of new evils, I said, against which the
+guardians will have to watch, or they will creep into the city
+unobserved.
+
+What evils?
+
+Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and
+indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of
+discontent.
+
+That is very true, he replied; but still I should like to know,
+Socrates, how our city will be able to go to war, especially against an
+enemy who is rich and powerful, if deprived of the sinews of war.
+
+There would certainly be a difficulty, I replied, in going to war with
+one such enemy; but there is no difficulty where there are two of them.
+
+How so? he asked.
+
+In the first place, I said, if we have to fight, our side will be
+trained warriors fighting against an army of rich men.
+
+That is true, he said.
+
+And do you not suppose, Adeimantus, that a single boxer who was perfect
+in his art would easily be a match for two stout and well-to-do
+gentlemen who were not boxers?
+
+Hardly, if they came upon him at once.
+
+What, now, I said, if he were able to run away and then turn and strike
+at the one who first came up? And supposing he were to do this several
+times under the heat of a scorching sun, might he not, being an expert,
+overturn more than one stout personage?
+
+Certainly, he said, there would be nothing wonderful in that.
+
+And yet rich men probably have a greater superiority in the science and
+practise of boxing than they have in military qualities.
+
+Likely enough.
+
+Then we may assume that our athletes will be able to fight with two or
+three times their own number?
+
+I agree with you, for I think you right.
+
+And suppose that, before engaging, our citizens send an embassy to one
+of the two cities, telling them what is the truth: Silver and gold we
+neither have nor are permitted to have, but you may; do you therefore
+come and help us in war, and take the spoils of the other city: Who, on
+hearing these words, would choose to fight against lean wiry dogs,
+rather than, with the dogs on their side, against fat and tender sheep?
+
+That is not likely; and yet there might be a danger to the poor State
+if the wealth of many States were to be gathered into one.
+
+But how simple of you to use the term State at all of any but our own!
+
+Why so?
+
+You ought to speak of other States in the plural number; not one of
+them is a city, but many cities, as they say in the game. For indeed
+any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of
+the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another; and
+in either there are many smaller divisions, and you would be altogether
+beside the mark if you treated them all as a single State. But if you
+deal with them as many, and give the wealth or power or persons of the
+one to the others, you will always have a great many friends and not
+many enemies. And your State, while the wise order which has now been
+prescribed continues to prevail in her, will be the greatest of States,
+I do not mean to say in reputation or appearance, but in deed and
+truth, though she number not more than a thousand defenders. A single
+State which is her equal you will hardly find, either among Hellenes or
+barbarians, though many that appear to be as great and many times
+greater.
+
+That is most true, he said.
+
+And what, I said, will be the best limit for our rulers to fix when
+they are considering the size of the State and the amount of territory
+which they are to include, and beyond which they will not go?
+
+What limit would you propose?
+
+I would allow the State to increase so far as is consistent with unity;
+that, I think, is the proper limit.
+
+Very good, he said.
+
+Here then, I said, is another order which will have to be conveyed to
+our guardians: Let our city be accounted neither large nor small, but
+one and self-sufficing.
+
+And surely, said he, this is not a very severe order which we impose
+upon them.
+
+And the other, said I, of which we were speaking before is lighter
+still,—I mean the duty of degrading the offspring of the guardians when
+inferior, and of elevating into the rank of guardians the offspring of
+the lower classes, when naturally superior. The intention was, that, in
+the case of the citizens generally, each individual should be put to
+the use for which nature intended him, one to one work, and then every
+man would do his own business, and be one and not many; and so the
+whole city would be one and not many.
+
+Yes, he said; that is not so difficult.
+
+The regulations which we are prescribing, my good Adeimantus, are not,
+as might be supposed, a number of great principles, but trifles all, if
+care be taken, as the saying is, of the one great thing,—a thing,
+however, which I would rather call, not great, but sufficient for our
+purpose.
+
+What may that be? he asked.
+
+Education, I said, and nurture: If our citizens are well educated, and
+grow into sensible men, they will easily see their way through all
+these, as well as other matters which I omit; such, for example, as
+marriage, the possession of women and the procreation of children,
+which will all follow the general principle that friends have all
+things in common, as the proverb says.
+
+That will be the best way of settling them.
+
+Also, I said, the State, if once started well, moves with accumulating
+force like a wheel. For good nurture and education implant good
+constitutions, and these good constitutions taking root in a good
+education improve more and more, and this improvement affects the breed
+in man as in other animals.
+
+Very possibly, he said.
+
+Then to sum up: This is the point to which, above all, the attention of
+our rulers should be directed,—that music and gymnastic be preserved in
+their original form, and no innovation made. They must do their utmost
+to maintain them intact. And when any one says that mankind most regard
+
+‘The newest song which the singers have,’
+
+they will be afraid that he may be praising, not new songs, but a new
+kind of song; and this ought not to be praised, or conceived to be the
+meaning of the poet; for any musical innovation is full of danger to
+the whole State, and ought to be prohibited. So Damon tells me, and I
+can quite believe him;—he says that when modes of music change, the
+fundamental laws of the State always change with them.
+
+Yes, said Adeimantus; and you may add my suffrage to Damon’s and your
+own.
+
+Then, I said, our guardians must lay the foundations of their fortress
+in music?
+
+Yes, he said; the lawlessness of which you speak too easily steals in.
+
+Yes, I replied, in the form of amusement; and at first sight it appears
+harmless.
+
+Why, yes, he said, and there is no harm; were it not that little by
+little this spirit of licence, finding a home, imperceptibly penetrates
+into manners and customs; whence, issuing with greater force, it
+invades contracts between man and man, and from contracts goes on to
+laws and constitutions, in utter recklessness, ending at last,
+Socrates, by an overthrow of all rights, private as well as public.
+
+Is that true? I said.
+
+That is my belief, he replied.
+
+Then, as I was saying, our youth should be trained from the first in a
+stricter system, for if amusements become lawless, and the youths
+themselves become lawless, they can never grow up into well-conducted
+and virtuous citizens.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+And when they have made a good beginning in play, and by the help of
+music have gained the habit of good order, then this habit of order, in
+a manner how unlike the lawless play of the others! will accompany them
+in all their actions and be a principle of growth to them, and if there
+be any fallen places in the State will raise them up again.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Thus educated, they will invent for themselves any lesser rules which
+their predecessors have altogether neglected.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+I mean such things as these:—when the young are to be silent before
+their elders; how they are to show respect to them by standing and
+making them sit; what honour is due to parents; what garments or shoes
+are to be worn; the mode of dressing the hair; deportment and manners
+in general. You would agree with me?
+
+Yes.
+
+But there is, I think, small wisdom in legislating about such
+matters,—I doubt if it is ever done; nor are any precise written
+enactments about them likely to be lasting.
+
+Impossible.
+
+It would seem, Adeimantus, that the direction in which education starts
+a man, will determine his future life. Does not like always attract
+like?
+
+To be sure.
+
+Until some one rare and grand result is reached which may be good, and
+may be the reverse of good?
+
+That is not to be denied.
+
+And for this reason, I said, I shall not attempt to legislate further
+about them.
+
+Naturally enough, he replied.
+
+Well, and about the business of the agora, and the ordinary dealings
+between man and man, or again about agreements with artisans; about
+insult and injury, or the commencement of actions, and the appointment
+of juries, what would you say? there may also arise questions about any
+impositions and exactions of market and harbour dues which may be
+required, and in general about the regulations of markets, police,
+harbours, and the like. But, oh heavens! shall we condescend to
+legislate on any of these particulars?
+
+I think, he said, that there is no need to impose laws about them on
+good men; what regulations are necessary they will find out soon enough
+for themselves.
+
+Yes, I said, my friend, if God will only preserve to them the laws
+which we have given them.
+
+And without divine help, said Adeimantus, they will go on for ever
+making and mending their laws and their lives in the hope of attaining
+perfection.
+
+You would compare them, I said, to those invalids who, having no
+self-restraint, will not leave off their habits of intemperance?
+
+Exactly.
+
+Yes, I said; and what a delightful life they lead! they are always
+doctoring and increasing and complicating their disorders, and always
+fancying that they will be cured by any nostrum which anybody advises
+them to try.
+
+Such cases are very common, he said, with invalids of this sort.
+
+Yes, I replied; and the charming thing is that they deem him their
+worst enemy who tells them the truth, which is simply that, unless they
+give up eating and drinking and wenching and idling, neither drug nor
+cautery nor spell nor amulet nor any other remedy will avail.
+
+Charming! he replied. I see nothing charming in going into a passion
+with a man who tells you what is right.
+
+These gentlemen, I said, do not seem to be in your good graces.
+
+Assuredly not.
+
+Nor would you praise the behaviour of States which act like the men
+whom I was just now describing. For are there not ill-ordered States in
+which the citizens are forbidden under pain of death to alter the
+constitution; and yet he who most sweetly courts those who live under
+this regime and indulges them and fawns upon them and is skilful in
+anticipating and gratifying their humours is held to be a great and
+good statesman—do not these States resemble the persons whom I was
+describing?
+
+Yes, he said; the States are as bad as the men; and I am very far from
+praising them.
+
+But do you not admire, I said, the coolness and dexterity of these
+ready ministers of political corruption?
+
+Yes, he said, I do; but not of all of them, for there are some whom the
+applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are
+really statesmen, and these are not much to be admired.
+
+What do you mean? I said; you should have more feeling for them. When a
+man cannot measure, and a great many others who cannot measure declare
+that he is four cubits high, can he help believing what they say?
+
+Nay, he said, certainly not in that case.
+
+Well, then, do not be angry with them; for are they not as good as a
+play, trying their hand at paltry reforms such as I was describing;
+they are always fancying that by legislation they will make an end of
+frauds in contracts, and the other rascalities which I was mentioning,
+not knowing that they are in reality cutting off the heads of a hydra?
+
+Yes, he said; that is just what they are doing.
+
+I conceive, I said, that the true legislator will not trouble himself
+with this class of enactments whether concerning laws or the
+constitution either in an ill-ordered or in a well-ordered State; for
+in the former they are quite useless, and in the latter there will be
+no difficulty in devising them; and many of them will naturally flow
+out of our previous regulations.
+
+What, then, he said, is still remaining to us of the work of
+legislation?
+
+Nothing to us, I replied; but to Apollo, the God of Delphi, there
+remains the ordering of the greatest and noblest and chiefest things of
+all.
+
+Which are they? he said.
+
+The institution of temples and sacrifices, and the entire service of
+gods, demigods, and heroes; also the ordering of the repositories of
+the dead, and the rites which have to be observed by him who would
+propitiate the inhabitants of the world below. These are matters of
+which we are ignorant ourselves, and as founders of a city we should be
+unwise in trusting them to any interpreter but our ancestral deity. He
+is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel of the earth, and he is
+the interpreter of religion to all mankind.
+
+You are right, and we will do as you propose.
+
+But where, amid all this, is justice? son of Ariston, tell me where.
+Now that our city has been made habitable, light a candle and search,
+and get your brother and Polemarchus and the rest of our friends to
+help, and let us see where in it we can discover justice and where
+injustice, and in what they differ from one another, and which of them
+the man who would be happy should have for his portion, whether seen or
+unseen by gods and men.
+
+Nonsense, said Glaucon: did you not promise to search yourself, saying
+that for you not to help justice in her need would be an impiety?
+
+I do not deny that I said so, and as you remind me, I will be as good
+as my word; but you must join.
+
+We will, he replied.
+
+Well, then, I hope to make the discovery in this way: I mean to begin
+with the assumption that our State, if rightly ordered, is perfect.
+
+That is most certain.
+
+And being perfect, is therefore wise and valiant and temperate and
+just.
+
+That is likewise clear.
+
+And whichever of these qualities we find in the State, the one which is
+not found will be the residue?
+
+Very good.
+
+If there were four things, and we were searching for one of them,
+wherever it might be, the one sought for might be known to us from the
+first, and there would be no further trouble; or we might know the
+other three first, and then the fourth would clearly be the one left.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+And is not a similar method to be pursued about the virtues, which are
+also four in number?
+
+Clearly.
+
+First among the virtues found in the State, wisdom comes into view, and
+in this I detect a certain peculiarity.
+
+What is that?
+
+The State which we have been describing is said to be wise as being
+good in counsel?
+
+Very true.
+
+And good counsel is clearly a kind of knowledge, for not by ignorance,
+but by knowledge, do men counsel well?
+
+Clearly.
+
+And the kinds of knowledge in a State are many and diverse?
+
+Of course.
+
+There is the knowledge of the carpenter; but is that the sort of
+knowledge which gives a city the title of wise and good in counsel?
+
+Certainly not; that would only give a city the reputation of skill in
+carpentering.
+
+Then a city is not to be called wise because possessing a knowledge
+which counsels for the best about wooden implements?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Nor by reason of a knowledge which advises about brazen pots, I said,
+nor as possessing any other similar knowledge?
+
+Not by reason of any of them, he said.
+
+Nor yet by reason of a knowledge which cultivates the earth; that would
+give the city the name of agricultural?
+
+Yes.
+
+Well, I said, and is there any knowledge in our recently-founded State
+among any of the citizens which advises, not about any particular thing
+in the State, but about the whole, and considers how a State can best
+deal with itself and with other States?
+
+There certainly is.
+
+And what is this knowledge, and among whom is it found? I asked.
+
+It is the knowledge of the guardians, he replied, and is found among
+those whom we were just now describing as perfect guardians.
+
+And what is the name which the city derives from the possession of this
+sort of knowledge?
+
+The name of good in counsel and truly wise.
+
+And will there be in our city more of these true guardians or more
+smiths?
+
+The smiths, he replied, will be far more numerous.
+
+Will not the guardians be the smallest of all the classes who receive a
+name from the profession of some kind of knowledge?
+
+Much the smallest.
+
+And so by reason of the smallest part or class, and of the knowledge
+which resides in this presiding and ruling part of itself, the whole
+State, being thus constituted according to nature, will be wise; and
+this, which has the only knowledge worthy to be called wisdom, has been
+ordained by nature to be of all classes the least.
+
+Most true.
+
+Thus, then, I said, the nature and place in the State of one of the
+four virtues has somehow or other been discovered.
+
+And, in my humble opinion, very satisfactorily discovered, he replied.
+
+Again, I said, there is no difficulty in seeing the nature of courage,
+and in what part that quality resides which gives the name of
+courageous to the State.
+
+How do you mean?
+
+Why, I said, every one who calls any State courageous or cowardly, will
+be thinking of the part which fights and goes out to war on the State’s
+behalf.
+
+No one, he replied, would ever think of any other.
+
+The rest of the citizens may be courageous or may be cowardly, but
+their courage or cowardice will not, as I conceive, have the effect of
+making the city either the one or the other.
+
+Certainly not.
+
+The city will be courageous in virtue of a portion of herself which
+preserves under all circumstances that opinion about the nature of
+things to be feared and not to be feared in which our legislator
+educated them; and this is what you term courage.
+
+I should like to hear what you are saying once more, for I do not think
+that I perfectly understand you.
+
+I mean that courage is a kind of salvation.
+
+Salvation of what?
+
+Of the opinion respecting things to be feared, what they are and of
+what nature, which the law implants through education; and I mean by
+the words ‘under all circumstances’ to intimate that in pleasure or in
+pain, or under the influence of desire or fear, a man preserves, and
+does not lose this opinion. Shall I give you an illustration?
+
+If you please.
+
+You know, I said, that dyers, when they want to dye wool for making the
+true sea-purple, begin by selecting their white colour first; this they
+prepare and dress with much care and pains, in order that the white
+ground may take the purple hue in full perfection. The dyeing then
+proceeds; and whatever is dyed in this manner becomes a fast colour,
+and no washing either with lyes or without them can take away the
+bloom. But, when the ground has not been duly prepared, you will have
+noticed how poor is the look either of purple or of any other colour.
+
+Yes, he said; I know that they have a washed-out and ridiculous
+appearance.
+
+Then now, I said, you will understand what our object was in selecting
+our soldiers, and educating them in music and gymnastic; we were
+contriving influences which would prepare them to take the dye of the
+laws in perfection, and the colour of their opinion about dangers and
+of every other opinion was to be indelibly fixed by their nurture and
+training, not to be washed away by such potent lyes as
+pleasure—mightier agent far in washing the soul than any soda or lye;
+or by sorrow, fear, and desire, the mightiest of all other solvents.
+And this sort of universal saving power of true opinion in conformity
+with law about real and false dangers I call and maintain to be
+courage, unless you disagree.
+
+But I agree, he replied; for I suppose that you mean to exclude mere
+uninstructed courage, such as that of a wild beast or of a slave—this,
+in your opinion, is not the courage which the law ordains, and ought to
+have another name.
+
+Most certainly.
+
+Then I may infer courage to be such as you describe?
+
+Why, yes, said I, you may, and if you add the words ‘of a citizen,’ you
+will not be far wrong;—hereafter, if you like, we will carry the
+examination further, but at present we are seeking not for courage but
+justice; and for the purpose of our enquiry we have said enough.
+
+You are right, he replied.
+
+Two virtues remain to be discovered in the State—first, temperance, and
+then justice which is the end of our search.
+
+Very true.
+
+Now, can we find justice without troubling ourselves about temperance?
+
+I do not know how that can be accomplished, he said, nor do I desire
+that justice should be brought to light and temperance lost sight of;
+and therefore I wish that you would do me the favour of considering
+temperance first.
+
+Certainly, I replied, I should not be justified in refusing your
+request.
+
+Then consider, he said.
+
+Yes, I replied; I will; and as far as I can at present see, the virtue
+of temperance has more of the nature of harmony and symphony than the
+preceding.
+
+How so? he asked.
+
+Temperance, I replied, is the ordering or controlling of certain
+pleasures and desires; this is curiously enough implied in the saying
+of ‘a man being his own master;’ and other traces of the same notion
+may be found in language.
+
+No doubt, he said.
+
+There is something ridiculous in the expression ‘master of himself;’
+for the master is also the servant and the servant the master; and in
+all these modes of speaking the same person is denoted.
+
+Certainly.
+
+The meaning is, I believe, that in the human soul there is a better and
+also a worse principle; and when the better has the worse under
+control, then a man is said to be master of himself; and this is a term
+of praise: but when, owing to evil education or association, the better
+principle, which is also the smaller, is overwhelmed by the greater
+mass of the worse—in this case he is blamed and is called the slave of
+self and unprincipled.
+
+Yes, there is reason in that.
+
+And now, I said, look at our newly-created State, and there you will
+find one of these two conditions realized; for the State, as you will
+acknowledge, may be justly called master of itself, if the words
+‘temperance’ and ‘self-mastery’ truly express the rule of the better
+part over the worse.
+
+Yes, he said, I see that what you say is true.
+
+Let me further note that the manifold and complex pleasures and desires
+and pains are generally found in children and women and servants, and
+in the freemen so called who are of the lowest and more numerous class.
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+Whereas the simple and moderate desires which follow reason, and are
+under the guidance of mind and true opinion, are to be found only in a
+few, and those the best born and best educated.
+
+Very true.
+
+These two, as you may perceive, have a place in our State; and the
+meaner desires of the many are held down by the virtuous desires and
+wisdom of the few.
+
+That I perceive, he said.
+
+Then if there be any city which may be described as master of its own
+pleasures and desires, and master of itself, ours may claim such a
+designation?
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+It may also be called temperate, and for the same reasons?
+
+Yes.
+
+And if there be any State in which rulers and subjects will be agreed
+as to the question who are to rule, that again will be our State?
+
+Undoubtedly.
+
+And the citizens being thus agreed among themselves, in which class
+will temperance be found—in the rulers or in the subjects?
+
+In both, as I should imagine, he replied.
+
+Do you observe that we were not far wrong in our guess that temperance
+was a sort of harmony?
+
+Why so?
+
+Why, because temperance is unlike courage and wisdom, each of which
+resides in a part only, the one making the State wise and the other
+valiant; not so temperance, which extends to the whole, and runs
+through all the notes of the scale, and produces a harmony of the
+weaker and the stronger and the middle class, whether you suppose them
+to be stronger or weaker in wisdom or power or numbers or wealth, or
+anything else. Most truly then may we deem temperance to be the
+agreement of the naturally superior and inferior, as to the right to
+rule of either, both in states and individuals.
+
+I entirely agree with you.
+
+And so, I said, we may consider three out of the four virtues to have
+been discovered in our State. The last of those qualities which make a
+state virtuous must be justice, if we only knew what that was.
+
+The inference is obvious.
+
+The time then has arrived, Glaucon, when, like huntsmen, we should
+surround the cover, and look sharp that justice does not steal away,
+and pass out of sight and escape us; for beyond a doubt she is
+somewhere in this country: watch therefore and strive to catch a sight
+of her, and if you see her first, let me know.
+
+Would that I could! but you should regard me rather as a follower who
+has just eyes enough to see what you show him—that is about as much as
+I am good for.
+
+Offer up a prayer with me and follow.
+
+I will, but you must show me the way.
+
+Here is no path, I said, and the wood is dark and perplexing; still we
+must push on.
+
+Let us push on.
+
+Here I saw something: Halloo! I said, I begin to perceive a track, and
+I believe that the quarry will not escape.
+
+Good news, he said.
+
+Truly, I said, we are stupid fellows.
+
+Why so?
+
+Why, my good sir, at the beginning of our enquiry, ages ago, there was
+justice tumbling out at our feet, and we never saw her; nothing could
+be more ridiculous. Like people who go about looking for what they have
+in their hands—that was the way with us—we looked not at what we were
+seeking, but at what was far off in the distance; and therefore, I
+suppose, we missed her.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+I mean to say that in reality for a long time past we have been talking
+of justice, and have failed to recognise her.
+
+I grow impatient at the length of your exordium.
+
+Well then, tell me, I said, whether I am right or not: You remember the
+original principle which we were always laying down at the foundation
+of the State, that one man should practise one thing only, the thing to
+which his nature was best adapted;—now justice is this principle or a
+part of it.
+
+Yes, we often said that one man should do one thing only.
+
+Further, we affirmed that justice was doing one’s own business, and not
+being a busybody; we said so again and again, and many others have said
+the same to us.
+
+Yes, we said so.
+
+Then to do one’s own business in a certain way may be assumed to be
+justice. Can you tell me whence I derive this inference?
+
+I cannot, but I should like to be told.
+
+Because I think that this is the only virtue which remains in the State
+when the other virtues of temperance and courage and wisdom are
+abstracted; and, that this is the ultimate cause and condition of the
+existence of all of them, and while remaining in them is also their
+preservative; and we were saying that if the three were discovered by
+us, justice would be the fourth or remaining one.
+
+That follows of necessity.
+
+If we are asked to determine which of these four qualities by its
+presence contributes most to the excellence of the State, whether the
+agreement of rulers and subjects, or the preservation in the soldiers
+of the opinion which the law ordains about the true nature of dangers,
+or wisdom and watchfulness in the rulers, or whether this other which I
+am mentioning, and which is found in children and women, slave and
+freeman, artisan, ruler, subject,—the quality, I mean, of every one
+doing his own work, and not being a busybody, would claim the palm—the
+question is not so easily answered.
+
+Certainly, he replied, there would be a difficulty in saying which.
+
+Then the power of each individual in the State to do his own work
+appears to compete with the other political virtues, wisdom,
+temperance, courage.
+
+Yes, he said.
+
+And the virtue which enters into this competition is justice?
+
+Exactly.
+
+Let us look at the question from another point of view: Are not the
+rulers in a State those to whom you would entrust the office of
+determining suits at law?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And are suits decided on any other ground but that a man may neither
+take what is another’s, nor be deprived of what is his own?
+
+Yes; that is their principle.
+
+Which is a just principle?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then on this view also justice will be admitted to be the having and
+doing what is a man’s own, and belongs to him?
+
+Very true.
+
+Think, now, and say whether you agree with me or not. Suppose a
+carpenter to be doing the business of a cobbler, or a cobbler of a
+carpenter; and suppose them to exchange their implements or their
+duties, or the same person to be doing the work of both, or whatever be
+the change; do you think that any great harm would result to the State?
+
+Not much.
+
+But when the cobbler or any other man whom nature designed to be a
+trader, having his heart lifted up by wealth or strength or the number
+of his followers, or any like advantage, attempts to force his way into
+the class of warriors, or a warrior into that of legislators and
+guardians, for which he is unfitted, and either to take the implements
+or the duties of the other; or when one man is trader, legislator, and
+warrior all in one, then I think you will agree with me in saying that
+this interchange and this meddling of one with another is the ruin of
+the State.
+
+Most true.
+
+Seeing then, I said, that there are three distinct classes, any
+meddling of one with another, or the change of one into another, is the
+greatest harm to the State, and may be most justly termed evil-doing?
+
+Precisely.
+
+And the greatest degree of evil-doing to one’s own city would be termed
+by you injustice?
+
+Certainly.
+
+This then is injustice; and on the other hand when the trader, the
+auxiliary, and the guardian each do their own business, that is
+justice, and will make the city just.
+
+I agree with you.
+
+We will not, I said, be over-positive as yet; but if, on trial, this
+conception of justice be verified in the individual as well as in the
+State, there will be no longer any room for doubt; if it be not
+verified, we must have a fresh enquiry. First let us complete the old
+investigation, which we began, as you remember, under the impression
+that, if we could previously examine justice on the larger scale, there
+would be less difficulty in discerning her in the individual. That
+larger example appeared to be the State, and accordingly we constructed
+as good a one as we could, knowing well that in the good State justice
+would be found. Let the discovery which we made be now applied to the
+individual—if they agree, we shall be satisfied; or, if there be a
+difference in the individual, we will come back to the State and have
+another trial of the theory. The friction of the two when rubbed
+together may possibly strike a light in which justice will shine forth,
+and the vision which is then revealed we will fix in our souls.
+
+That will be in regular course; let us do as you say.
+
+I proceeded to ask: When two things, a greater and less, are called by
+the same name, are they like or unlike in so far as they are called the
+same?
+
+Like, he replied.
+
+The just man then, if we regard the idea of justice only, will be like
+the just State?
+
+He will.
+
+And a State was thought by us to be just when the three classes in the
+State severally did their own business; and also thought to be
+temperate and valiant and wise by reason of certain other affections
+and qualities of these same classes?
+
+True, he said.
+
+And so of the individual; we may assume that he has the same three
+principles in his own soul which are found in the State; and he may be
+rightly described in the same terms, because he is affected in the same
+manner?
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+Once more then, O my friend, we have alighted upon an easy
+question—whether the soul has these three principles or not?
+
+An easy question! Nay, rather, Socrates, the proverb holds that hard is
+the good.
+
+Very true, I said; and I do not think that the method which we are
+employing is at all adequate to the accurate solution of this question;
+the true method is another and a longer one. Still we may arrive at a
+solution not below the level of the previous enquiry.
+
+May we not be satisfied with that? he said;—under the circumstances, I
+am quite content.
+
+I too, I replied, shall be extremely well satisfied.
+
+Then faint not in pursuing the speculation, he said.
+
+Must we not acknowledge, I said, that in each of us there are the same
+principles and habits which there are in the State; and that from the
+individual they pass into the State?—how else can they come there? Take
+the quality of passion or spirit;—it would be ridiculous to imagine
+that this quality, when found in States, is not derived from the
+individuals who are supposed to possess it, e.g. the Thracians,
+Scythians, and in general the northern nations; and the same may be
+said of the love of knowledge, which is the special characteristic of
+our part of the world, or of the love of money, which may, with equal
+truth, be attributed to the Phoenicians and Egyptians.
+
+Exactly so, he said.
+
+There is no difficulty in understanding this.
+
+None whatever.
+
+But the question is not quite so easy when we proceed to ask whether
+these principles are three or one; whether, that is to say, we learn
+with one part of our nature, are angry with another, and with a third
+part desire the satisfaction of our natural appetites; or whether the
+whole soul comes into play in each sort of action—to determine that is
+the difficulty.
+
+Yes, he said; there lies the difficulty.
+
+Then let us now try and determine whether they are the same or
+different.
+
+How can we? he asked.
+
+I replied as follows: The same thing clearly cannot act or be acted
+upon in the same part or in relation to the same thing at the same
+time, in contrary ways; and therefore whenever this contradiction
+occurs in things apparently the same, we know that they are really not
+the same, but different.
+
+Good.
+
+For example, I said, can the same thing be at rest and in motion at the
+same time in the same part?
+
+Impossible.
+
+Still, I said, let us have a more precise statement of terms, lest we
+should hereafter fall out by the way. Imagine the case of a man who is
+standing and also moving his hands and his head, and suppose a person
+to say that one and the same person is in motion and at rest at the
+same moment—to such a mode of speech we should object, and should
+rather say that one part of him is in motion while another is at rest.
+
+Very true.
+
+And suppose the objector to refine still further, and to draw the nice
+distinction that not only parts of tops, but whole tops, when they spin
+round with their pegs fixed on the spot, are at rest and in motion at
+the same time (and he may say the same of anything which revolves in
+the same spot), his objection would not be admitted by us, because in
+such cases things are not at rest and in motion in the same parts of
+themselves; we should rather say that they have both an axis and a
+circumference, and that the axis stands still, for there is no
+deviation from the perpendicular; and that the circumference goes
+round. But if, while revolving, the axis inclines either to the right
+or left, forwards or backwards, then in no point of view can they be at
+rest.
+
+That is the correct mode of describing them, he replied.
+
+Then none of these objections will confuse us, or incline us to believe
+that the same thing at the same time, in the same part or in relation
+to the same thing, can act or be acted upon in contrary ways.
+
+Certainly not, according to my way of thinking.
+
+Yet, I said, that we may not be compelled to examine all such
+objections, and prove at length that they are untrue, let us assume
+their absurdity, and go forward on the understanding that hereafter, if
+this assumption turn out to be untrue, all the consequences which
+follow shall be withdrawn.
+
+Yes, he said, that will be the best way.
+
+Well, I said, would you not allow that assent and dissent, desire and
+aversion, attraction and repulsion, are all of them opposites, whether
+they are regarded as active or passive (for that makes no difference in
+the fact of their opposition)?
+
+Yes, he said, they are opposites.
+
+Well, I said, and hunger and thirst, and the desires in general, and
+again willing and wishing,—all these you would refer to the classes
+already mentioned. You would say—would you not?—that the soul of him
+who desires is seeking after the object of his desire; or that he is
+drawing to himself the thing which he wishes to possess: or again, when
+a person wants anything to be given him, his mind, longing for the
+realization of his desire, intimates his wish to have it by a nod of
+assent, as if he had been asked a question?
+
+Very true.
+
+And what would you say of unwillingness and dislike and the absence of
+desire; should not these be referred to the opposite class of repulsion
+and rejection?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Admitting this to be true of desire generally, let us suppose a
+particular class of desires, and out of these we will select hunger and
+thirst, as they are termed, which are the most obvious of them?
+
+Let us take that class, he said.
+
+The object of one is food, and of the other drink?
+
+Yes.
+
+And here comes the point: is not thirst the desire which the soul has
+of drink, and of drink only; not of drink qualified by anything else;
+for example, warm or cold, or much or little, or, in a word, drink of
+any particular sort: but if the thirst be accompanied by heat, then the
+desire is of cold drink; or, if accompanied by cold, then of warm
+drink; or, if the thirst be excessive, then the drink which is desired
+will be excessive; or, if not great, the quantity of drink will also be
+small: but thirst pure and simple will desire drink pure and simple,
+which is the natural satisfaction of thirst, as food is of hunger?
+
+Yes, he said; the simple desire is, as you say, in every case of the
+simple object, and the qualified desire of the qualified object.
+
+But here a confusion may arise; and I should wish to guard against an
+opponent starting up and saying that no man desires drink only, but
+good drink, or food only, but good food; for good is the universal
+object of desire, and thirst being a desire, will necessarily be thirst
+after good drink; and the same is true of every other desire.
+
+Yes, he replied, the opponent might have something to say.
+
+Nevertheless I should still maintain, that of relatives some have a
+quality attached to either term of the relation; others are simple and
+have their correlatives simple.
+
+I do not know what you mean.
+
+Well, you know of course that the greater is relative to the less?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And the much greater to the much less?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the sometime greater to the sometime less, and the greater that is
+to be to the less that is to be?
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+And so of more and less, and of other correlative terms, such as the
+double and the half, or again, the heavier and the lighter, the swifter
+and the slower; and of hot and cold, and of any other relatives;—is not
+this true of all of them?
+
+Yes.
+
+And does not the same principle hold in the sciences? The object of
+science is knowledge (assuming that to be the true definition), but the
+object of a particular science is a particular kind of knowledge; I
+mean, for example, that the science of house-building is a kind of
+knowledge which is defined and distinguished from other kinds and is
+therefore termed architecture.
+
+Certainly.
+
+Because it has a particular quality which no other has?
+
+Yes.
+
+And it has this particular quality because it has an object of a
+particular kind; and this is true of the other arts and sciences?
+
+Yes.
+
+Now, then, if I have made myself clear, you will understand my original
+meaning in what I said about relatives. My meaning was, that if one
+term of a relation is taken alone, the other is taken alone; if one
+term is qualified, the other is also qualified. I do not mean to say
+that relatives may not be disparate, or that the science of health is
+healthy, or of disease necessarily diseased, or that the sciences of
+good and evil are therefore good and evil; but only that, when the term
+science is no longer used absolutely, but has a qualified object which
+in this case is the nature of health and disease, it becomes defined,
+and is hence called not merely science, but the science of medicine.
+
+I quite understand, and I think as you do.
+
+Would you not say that thirst is one of these essentially relative
+terms, having clearly a relation—
+
+Yes, thirst is relative to drink.
+
+And a certain kind of thirst is relative to a certain kind of drink;
+but thirst taken alone is neither of much nor little, nor of good nor
+bad, nor of any particular kind of drink, but of drink only?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then the soul of the thirsty one, in so far as he is thirsty, desires
+only drink; for this he yearns and tries to obtain it?
+
+That is plain.
+
+And if you suppose something which pulls a thirsty soul away from
+drink, that must be different from the thirsty principle which draws
+him like a beast to drink; for, as we were saying, the same thing
+cannot at the same time with the same part of itself act in contrary
+ways about the same.
+
+Impossible.
+
+No more than you can say that the hands of the archer push and pull the
+bow at the same time, but what you say is that one hand pushes and the
+other pulls.
+
+Exactly so, he replied.
+
+And might a man be thirsty, and yet unwilling to drink?
+
+Yes, he said, it constantly happens.
+
+And in such a case what is one to say? Would you not say that there was
+something in the soul bidding a man to drink, and something else
+forbidding him, which is other and stronger than the principle which
+bids him?
+
+I should say so.
+
+And the forbidding principle is derived from reason, and that which
+bids and attracts proceeds from passion and disease?
+
+Clearly.
+
+Then we may fairly assume that they are two, and that they differ from
+one another; the one with which a man reasons, we may call the rational
+principle of the soul, the other, with which he loves and hungers and
+thirsts and feels the flutterings of any other desire, may be termed
+the irrational or appetitive, the ally of sundry pleasures and
+satisfactions?
+
+Yes, he said, we may fairly assume them to be different.
+
+Then let us finally determine that there are two principles existing in
+the soul. And what of passion, or spirit? Is it a third, or akin to one
+of the preceding?
+
+I should be inclined to say—akin to desire.
+
+Well, I said, there is a story which I remember to have heard, and in
+which I put faith. The story is, that Leontius, the son of Aglaion,
+coming up one day from the Piraeus, under the north wall on the
+outside, observed some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of
+execution. He felt a desire to see them, and also a dread and
+abhorrence of them; for a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but
+at length the desire got the better of him; and forcing them open, he
+ran up to the dead bodies, saying, Look, ye wretches, take your fill of
+the fair sight.
+
+I have heard the story myself, he said.
+
+The moral of the tale is, that anger at times goes to war with desire,
+as though they were two distinct things.
+
+Yes; that is the meaning, he said.
+
+And are there not many other cases in which we observe that when a
+man’s desires violently prevail over his reason, he reviles himself,
+and is angry at the violence within him, and that in this struggle,
+which is like the struggle of factions in a State, his spirit is on the
+side of his reason;—but for the passionate or spirited element to take
+part with the desires when reason decides that she should not be
+opposed, is a sort of thing which I believe that you never observed
+occurring in yourself, nor, as I should imagine, in any one else?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Suppose that a man thinks he has done a wrong to another, the nobler he
+is the less able is he to feel indignant at any suffering, such as
+hunger, or cold, or any other pain which the injured person may inflict
+upon him—these he deems to be just, and, as I say, his anger refuses to
+be excited by them.
+
+True, he said.
+
+But when he thinks that he is the sufferer of the wrong, then he boils
+and chafes, and is on the side of what he believes to be justice; and
+because he suffers hunger or cold or other pain he is only the more
+determined to persevere and conquer. His noble spirit will not be
+quelled until he either slays or is slain; or until he hears the voice
+of the shepherd, that is, reason, bidding his dog bark no more.
+
+The illustration is perfect, he replied; and in our State, as we were
+saying, the auxiliaries were to be dogs, and to hear the voice of the
+rulers, who are their shepherds.
+
+I perceive, I said, that you quite understand me; there is, however, a
+further point which I wish you to consider.
+
+What point?
+
+You remember that passion or spirit appeared at first sight to be a
+kind of desire, but now we should say quite the contrary; for in the
+conflict of the soul spirit is arrayed on the side of the rational
+principle.
+
+Most assuredly.
+
+But a further question arises: Is passion different from reason also,
+or only a kind of reason; in which latter case, instead of three
+principles in the soul, there will only be two, the rational and the
+concupiscent; or rather, as the State was composed of three classes,
+traders, auxiliaries, counsellors, so may there not be in the
+individual soul a third element which is passion or spirit, and when
+not corrupted by bad education is the natural auxiliary of reason?
+
+Yes, he said, there must be a third.
+
+Yes, I replied, if passion, which has already been shown to be
+different from desire, turn out also to be different from reason.
+
+But that is easily proved:—We may observe even in young children that
+they are full of spirit almost as soon as they are born, whereas some
+of them never seem to attain to the use of reason, and most of them
+late enough.
+
+Excellent, I said, and you may see passion equally in brute animals,
+which is a further proof of the truth of what you are saying. And we
+may once more appeal to the words of Homer, which have been already
+quoted by us,
+
+‘He smote his breast, and thus rebuked his soul,’
+
+for in this verse Homer has clearly supposed the power which reasons
+about the better and worse to be different from the unreasoning anger
+which is rebuked by it.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+And so, after much tossing, we have reached land, and are fairly agreed
+that the same principles which exist in the State exist also in the
+individual, and that they are three in number.
+
+Exactly.
+
+Must we not then infer that the individual is wise in the same way, and
+in virtue of the same quality which makes the State wise?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Also that the same quality which constitutes courage in the State
+constitutes courage in the individual, and that both the State and the
+individual bear the same relation to all the other virtues?
+
+Assuredly.
+
+And the individual will be acknowledged by us to be just in the same
+way in which the State is just?
+
+That follows, of course.
+
+We cannot but remember that the justice of the State consisted in each
+of the three classes doing the work of its own class?
+
+We are not very likely to have forgotten, he said.
+
+We must recollect that the individual in whom the several qualities of
+his nature do their own work will be just, and will do his own work?
+
+Yes, he said, we must remember that too.
+
+And ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and has the care
+of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or spirited principle to
+be the subject and ally?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And, as we were saying, the united influence of music and gymnastic
+will bring them into accord, nerving and sustaining the reason with
+noble words and lessons, and moderating and soothing and civilizing the
+wildness of passion by harmony and rhythm?
+
+Quite true, he said.
+
+And these two, thus nurtured and educated, and having learned truly to
+know their own functions, will rule over the concupiscent, which in
+each of us is the largest part of the soul and by nature most
+insatiable of gain; over this they will keep guard, lest, waxing great
+and strong with the fulness of bodily pleasures, as they are termed,
+the concupiscent soul, no longer confined to her own sphere, should
+attempt to enslave and rule those who are not her natural-born
+subjects, and overturn the whole life of man?
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Both together will they not be the best defenders of the whole soul and
+the whole body against attacks from without; the one counselling, and
+the other fighting under his leader, and courageously executing his
+commands and counsels?
+
+True.
+
+And he is to be deemed courageous whose spirit retains in pleasure and
+in pain the commands of reason about what he ought or ought not to
+fear?
+
+Right, he replied.
+
+And him we call wise who has in him that little part which rules, and
+which proclaims these commands; that part too being supposed to have a
+knowledge of what is for the interest of each of the three parts and of
+the whole?
+
+Assuredly.
+
+And would you not say that he is temperate who has these same elements
+in friendly harmony, in whom the one ruling principle of reason, and
+the two subject ones of spirit and desire are equally agreed that
+reason ought to rule, and do not rebel?
+
+Certainly, he said, that is the true account of temperance whether in
+the State or individual.
+
+And surely, I said, we have explained again and again how and by virtue
+of what quality a man will be just.
+
+That is very certain.
+
+And is justice dimmer in the individual, and is her form different, or
+is she the same which we found her to be in the State?
+
+There is no difference in my opinion, he said.
+
+Because, if any doubt is still lingering in our minds, a few
+commonplace instances will satisfy us of the truth of what I am saying.
+
+What sort of instances do you mean?
+
+If the case is put to us, must we not admit that the just State, or the
+man who is trained in the principles of such a State, will be less
+likely than the unjust to make away with a deposit of gold or silver?
+Would any one deny this?
+
+No one, he replied.
+
+Will the just man or citizen ever be guilty of sacrilege or theft, or
+treachery either to his friends or to his country?
+
+Never.
+
+Neither will he ever break faith where there have been oaths or
+agreements?
+
+Impossible.
+
+No one will be less likely to commit adultery, or to dishonour his
+father and mother, or to fail in his religious duties?
+
+No one.
+
+And the reason is that each part of him is doing its own business,
+whether in ruling or being ruled?
+
+Exactly so.
+
+Are you satisfied then that the quality which makes such men and such
+states is justice, or do you hope to discover some other?
+
+Not I, indeed.
+
+Then our dream has been realized; and the suspicion which we
+entertained at the beginning of our work of construction, that some
+divine power must have conducted us to a primary form of justice, has
+now been verified?
+
+Yes, certainly.
+
+And the division of labour which required the carpenter and the
+shoemaker and the rest of the citizens to be doing each his own
+business, and not another’s, was a shadow of justice, and for that
+reason it was of use?
+
+Clearly.
+
+But in reality justice was such as we were describing, being concerned
+however, not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the
+true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not permit the
+several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of
+them to do the work of others,—he sets in order his own inner life, and
+is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself; and when
+he has bound together the three principles within him, which may be
+compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, and the
+intermediate intervals—when he has bound all these together, and is no
+longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly
+adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in
+a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some
+affair of politics or private business; always thinking and calling
+that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition,
+just and good action, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom,
+and that which at any time impairs this condition, he will call unjust
+action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance.
+
+You have said the exact truth, Socrates.
+
+Very good; and if we were to affirm that we had discovered the just man
+and the just State, and the nature of justice in each of them, we
+should not be telling a falsehood?
+
+Most certainly not.
+
+May we say so, then?
+
+Let us say so.
+
+And now, I said, injustice has to be considered.
+
+Clearly.
+
+Must not injustice be a strife which arises among the three
+principles—a meddlesomeness, and interference, and rising up of a part
+of the soul against the whole, an assertion of unlawful authority,
+which is made by a rebellious subject against a true prince, of whom he
+is the natural vassal,—what is all this confusion and delusion but
+injustice, and intemperance and cowardice and ignorance, and every form
+of vice?
+
+Exactly so.
+
+And if the nature of justice and injustice be known, then the meaning
+of acting unjustly and being unjust, or, again, of acting justly, will
+also be perfectly clear?
+
+What do you mean? he said.
+
+Why, I said, they are like disease and health; being in the soul just
+what disease and health are in the body.
+
+How so? he said.
+
+Why, I said, that which is healthy causes health, and that which is
+unhealthy causes disease.
+
+Yes.
+
+And just actions cause justice, and unjust actions cause injustice?
+
+That is certain.
+
+And the creation of health is the institution of a natural order and
+government of one by another in the parts of the body; and the creation
+of disease is the production of a state of things at variance with this
+natural order?
+
+True.
+
+And is not the creation of justice the institution of a natural order
+and government of one by another in the parts of the soul, and the
+creation of injustice the production of a state of things at variance
+with the natural order?
+
+Exactly so, he said.
+
+Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and
+vice the disease and weakness and deformity of the same?
+
+True.
+
+And do not good practices lead to virtue, and evil practices to vice?
+
+Assuredly.
+
+Still our old question of the comparative advantage of justice and
+injustice has not been answered: Which is the more profitable, to be
+just and act justly and practise virtue, whether seen or unseen of gods
+and men, or to be unjust and act unjustly, if only unpunished and
+unreformed?
+
+In my judgment, Socrates, the question has now become ridiculous. We
+know that, when the bodily constitution is gone, life is no longer
+endurable, though pampered with all kinds of meats and drinks, and
+having all wealth and all power; and shall we be told that when the
+very essence of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, life
+is still worth having to a man, if only he be allowed to do whatever he
+likes with the single exception that he is not to acquire justice and
+virtue, or to escape from injustice and vice; assuming them both to be
+such as we have described?
+
+Yes, I said, the question is, as you say, ridiculous. Still, as we are
+near the spot at which we may see the truth in the clearest manner with
+our own eyes, let us not faint by the way.
+
+Certainly not, he replied.
+
+Come up hither, I said, and behold the various forms of vice, those of
+them, I mean, which are worth looking at.
+
+I am following you, he replied: proceed.
+
+I said, The argument seems to have reached a height from which, as from
+some tower of speculation, a man may look down and see that virtue is
+one, but that the forms of vice are innumerable; there being four
+special ones which are deserving of note.
+
+What do you mean? he said.
+
+I mean, I replied, that there appear to be as many forms of the soul as
+there are distinct forms of the State.
+
+How many?
+
+There are five of the State, and five of the soul, I said.
+
+What are they?
+
+The first, I said, is that which we have been describing, and which may
+be said to have two names, monarchy and aristocracy, accordingly as
+rule is exercised by one distinguished man or by many.
+
+True, he replied.
+
+But I regard the two names as describing one form only; for whether the
+government is in the hands of one or many, if the governors have been
+trained in the manner which we have supposed, the fundamental laws of
+the State will be maintained.
+
+That is true, he replied.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK V.
+
+
+Such is the good and true City or State, and the good and true man is
+of the same pattern; and if this is right every other is wrong; and the
+evil is one which affects not only the ordering of the State, but also
+the regulation of the individual soul, and is exhibited in four forms.
+
+What are they? he said.
+
+I was proceeding to tell the order in which the four evil forms
+appeared to me to succeed one another, when Polemarchus, who was
+sitting a little way off, just beyond Adeimantus, began to whisper to
+him: stretching forth his hand, he took hold of the upper part of his
+coat by the shoulder, and drew him towards him, leaning forward himself
+so as to be quite close and saying something in his ear, of which I
+only caught the words, ‘Shall we let him off, or what shall we do?’
+
+Certainly not, said Adeimantus, raising his voice.
+
+Who is it, I said, whom you are refusing to let off?
+
+You, he said.
+
+I repeated, Why am I especially not to be let off?
+
+Why, he said, we think that you are lazy, and mean to cheat us out of a
+whole chapter which is a very important part of the story; and you
+fancy that we shall not notice your airy way of proceeding; as if it
+were self-evident to everybody, that in the matter of women and
+children ‘friends have all things in common.’
+
+And was I not right, Adeimantus?
+
+Yes, he said; but what is right in this particular case, like
+everything else, requires to be explained; for community may be of many
+kinds. Please, therefore, to say what sort of community you mean. We
+have been long expecting that you would tell us something about the
+family life of your citizens—how they will bring children into the
+world, and rear them when they have arrived, and, in general, what is
+the nature of this community of women and children—for we are of
+opinion that the right or wrong management of such matters will have a
+great and paramount influence on the State for good or for evil. And
+now, since the question is still undetermined, and you are taking in
+hand another State, we have resolved, as you heard, not to let you go
+until you give an account of all this.
+
+To that resolution, said Glaucon, you may regard me as saying Agreed.
+
+And without more ado, said Thrasymachus, you may consider us all to be
+equally agreed.
+
+I said, You know not what you are doing in thus assailing me: What an
+argument are you raising about the State! Just as I thought that I had
+finished, and was only too glad that I had laid this question to sleep,
+and was reflecting how fortunate I was in your acceptance of what I
+then said, you ask me to begin again at the very foundation, ignorant
+of what a hornet’s nest of words you are stirring. Now I foresaw this
+gathering trouble, and avoided it.
+
+For what purpose do you conceive that we have come here, said
+Thrasymachus,—to look for gold, or to hear discourse?
+
+Yes, but discourse should have a limit.
+
+Yes, Socrates, said Glaucon, and the whole of life is the only limit
+which wise men assign to the hearing of such discourses. But never mind
+about us; take heart yourself and answer the question in your own way:
+What sort of community of women and children is this which is to
+prevail among our guardians? and how shall we manage the period between
+birth and education, which seems to require the greatest care? Tell us
+how these things will be.
+
+Yes, my simple friend, but the answer is the reverse of easy; many more
+doubts arise about this than about our previous conclusions. For the
+practicability of what is said may be doubted; and looked at in another
+point of view, whether the scheme, if ever so practicable, would be for
+the best, is also doubtful. Hence I feel a reluctance to approach the
+subject, lest our aspiration, my dear friend, should turn out to be a
+dream only.
+
+Fear not, he replied, for your audience will not be hard upon you; they
+are not sceptical or hostile.
+
+I said: My good friend, I suppose that you mean to encourage me by
+these words.
+
+Yes, he said.
+
+Then let me tell you that you are doing just the reverse; the
+encouragement which you offer would have been all very well had I
+myself believed that I knew what I was talking about: to declare the
+truth about matters of high interest which a man honours and loves
+among wise men who love him need occasion no fear or faltering in his
+mind; but to carry on an argument when you are yourself only a
+hesitating enquirer, which is my condition, is a dangerous and slippery
+thing; and the danger is not that I shall be laughed at (of which the
+fear would be childish), but that I shall miss the truth where I have
+most need to be sure of my footing, and drag my friends after me in my
+fall. And I pray Nemesis not to visit upon me the words which I am
+going to utter. For I do indeed believe that to be an involuntary
+homicide is a less crime than to be a deceiver about beauty or goodness
+or justice in the matter of laws. And that is a risk which I would
+rather run among enemies than among friends, and therefore you do well
+to encourage me.
+
+Glaucon laughed and said: Well then, Socrates, in case you and your
+argument do us any serious injury you shall be acquitted beforehand of
+the homicide, and shall not be held to be a deceiver; take courage then
+and speak.
+
+Well, I said, the law says that when a man is acquitted he is free from
+guilt, and what holds at law may hold in argument.
+
+Then why should you mind?
+
+Well, I replied, I suppose that I must retrace my steps and say what I
+perhaps ought to have said before in the proper place. The part of the
+men has been played out, and now properly enough comes the turn of the
+women. Of them I will proceed to speak, and the more readily since I am
+invited by you.
+
+For men born and educated like our citizens, the only way, in my
+opinion, of arriving at a right conclusion about the possession and use
+of women and children is to follow the path on which we originally
+started, when we said that the men were to be the guardians and
+watchdogs of the herd.
+
+True.
+
+Let us further suppose the birth and education of our women to be
+subject to similar or nearly similar regulations; then we shall see
+whether the result accords with our design.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+What I mean may be put into the form of a question, I said: Are dogs
+divided into hes and shes, or do they both share equally in hunting and
+in keeping watch and in the other duties of dogs? or do we entrust to
+the males the entire and exclusive care of the flocks, while we leave
+the females at home, under the idea that the bearing and suckling their
+puppies is labour enough for them?
+
+No, he said, they share alike; the only difference between them is that
+the males are stronger and the females weaker.
+
+But can you use different animals for the same purpose, unless they are
+bred and fed in the same way?
+
+You cannot.
+
+Then, if women are to have the same duties as men, they must have the
+same nurture and education?
+
+Yes.
+
+The education which was assigned to the men was music and gymnastic.
+
+Yes.
+
+Then women must be taught music and gymnastic and also the art of war,
+which they must practise like the men?
+
+That is the inference, I suppose.
+
+I should rather expect, I said, that several of our proposals, if they
+are carried out, being unusual, may appear ridiculous.
+
+No doubt of it.
+
+Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women
+naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men, especially when they
+are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of beauty, any
+more than the enthusiastic old men who in spite of wrinkles and
+ugliness continue to frequent the gymnasia.
+
+Yes, indeed, he said: according to present notions the proposal would
+be thought ridiculous.
+
+But then, I said, as we have determined to speak our minds, we must not
+fear the jests of the wits which will be directed against this sort of
+innovation; how they will talk of women’s attainments both in music and
+gymnastic, and above all about their wearing armour and riding upon
+horseback!
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+Yet having begun we must go forward to the rough places of the law; at
+the same time begging of these gentlemen for once in their life to be
+serious. Not long ago, as we shall remind them, the Hellenes were of
+the opinion, which is still generally received among the barbarians,
+that the sight of a naked man was ridiculous and improper; and when
+first the Cretans and then the Lacedaemonians introduced the custom,
+the wits of that day might equally have ridiculed the innovation.
+
+No doubt.
+
+But when experience showed that to let all things be uncovered was far
+better than to cover them up, and the ludicrous effect to the outward
+eye vanished before the better principle which reason asserted, then
+the man was perceived to be a fool who directs the shafts of his
+ridicule at any other sight but that of folly and vice, or seriously
+inclines to weigh the beautiful by any other standard but that of the
+good.
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+First, then, whether the question is to be put in jest or in earnest,
+let us come to an understanding about the nature of woman: Is she
+capable of sharing either wholly or partially in the actions of men, or
+not at all? And is the art of war one of those arts in which she can or
+can not share? That will be the best way of commencing the enquiry, and
+will probably lead to the fairest conclusion.
+
+That will be much the best way.
+
+Shall we take the other side first and begin by arguing against
+ourselves; in this manner the adversary’s position will not be
+undefended.
+
+Why not? he said.
+
+Then let us put a speech into the mouths of our opponents. They will
+say: ‘Socrates and Glaucon, no adversary need convict you, for you
+yourselves, at the first foundation of the State, admitted the
+principle that everybody was to do the one work suited to his own
+nature.’ And certainly, if I am not mistaken, such an admission was
+made by us. ‘And do not the natures of men and women differ very much
+indeed?’ And we shall reply: Of course they do. Then we shall be asked,
+‘Whether the tasks assigned to men and to women should not be
+different, and such as are agreeable to their different natures?’
+Certainly they should. ‘But if so, have you not fallen into a serious
+inconsistency in saying that men and women, whose natures are so
+entirely different, ought to perform the same actions?’—What defence
+will you make for us, my good Sir, against any one who offers these
+objections?
+
+That is not an easy question to answer when asked suddenly; and I shall
+and I do beg of you to draw out the case on our side.
+
+These are the objections, Glaucon, and there are many others of a like
+kind, which I foresaw long ago; they made me afraid and reluctant to
+take in hand any law about the possession and nurture of women and
+children.
+
+By Zeus, he said, the problem to be solved is anything but easy.
+
+Why yes, I said, but the fact is that when a man is out of his depth,
+whether he has fallen into a little swimming bath or into mid ocean, he
+has to swim all the same.
+
+Very true.
+
+And must not we swim and try to reach the shore: we will hope that
+Arion’s dolphin or some other miraculous help may save us?
+
+I suppose so, he said.
+
+Well then, let us see if any way of escape can be found. We
+acknowledged—did we not? that different natures ought to have different
+pursuits, and that men’s and women’s natures are different. And now
+what are we saying?—that different natures ought to have the same
+pursuits,—this is the inconsistency which is charged upon us.
+
+Precisely.
+
+Verily, Glaucon, I said, glorious is the power of the art of
+contradiction!
+
+Why do you say so?
+
+Because I think that many a man falls into the practice against his
+will. When he thinks that he is reasoning he is really disputing, just
+because he cannot define and divide, and so know that of which he is
+speaking; and he will pursue a merely verbal opposition in the spirit
+of contention and not of fair discussion.
+
+Yes, he replied, such is very often the case; but what has that to do
+with us and our argument?
+
+A great deal; for there is certainly a danger of our getting
+unintentionally into a verbal opposition.
+
+In what way?
+
+Why we valiantly and pugnaciously insist upon the verbal truth, that
+different natures ought to have different pursuits, but we never
+considered at all what was the meaning of sameness or difference of
+nature, or why we distinguished them when we assigned different
+pursuits to different natures and the same to the same natures.
+
+Why, no, he said, that was never considered by us.
+
+I said: Suppose that by way of illustration we were to ask the question
+whether there is not an opposition in nature between bald men and hairy
+men; and if this is admitted by us, then, if bald men are cobblers, we
+should forbid the hairy men to be cobblers, and conversely?
+
+That would be a jest, he said.
+
+Yes, I said, a jest; and why? because we never meant when we
+constructed the State, that the opposition of natures should extend to
+every difference, but only to those differences which affected the
+pursuit in which the individual is engaged; we should have argued, for
+example, that a physician and one who is in mind a physician may be
+said to have the same nature.
+
+True.
+
+Whereas the physician and the carpenter have different natures?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And if, I said, the male and female sex appear to differ in their
+fitness for any art or pursuit, we should say that such pursuit or art
+ought to be assigned to one or the other of them; but if the difference
+consists only in women bearing and men begetting children, this does
+not amount to a proof that a woman differs from a man in respect of the
+sort of education she should receive; and we shall therefore continue
+to maintain that our guardians and their wives ought to have the same
+pursuits.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Next, we shall ask our opponent how, in reference to any of the
+pursuits or arts of civic life, the nature of a woman differs from that
+of a man?
+
+That will be quite fair.
+
+And perhaps he, like yourself, will reply that to give a sufficient
+answer on the instant is not easy; but after a little reflection there
+is no difficulty.
+
+Yes, perhaps.
+
+Suppose then that we invite him to accompany us in the argument, and
+then we may hope to show him that there is nothing peculiar in the
+constitution of women which would affect them in the administration of
+the State.
+
+By all means.
+
+Let us say to him: Come now, and we will ask you a question:—when you
+spoke of a nature gifted or not gifted in any respect, did you mean to
+say that one man will acquire a thing easily, another with difficulty;
+a little learning will lead the one to discover a great deal; whereas
+the other, after much study and application, no sooner learns than he
+forgets; or again, did you mean, that the one has a body which is a
+good servant to his mind, while the body of the other is a hindrance to
+him?—would not these be the sort of differences which distinguish the
+man gifted by nature from the one who is ungifted?
+
+No one will deny that.
+
+And can you mention any pursuit of mankind in which the male sex has
+not all these gifts and qualities in a higher degree than the female?
+Need I waste time in speaking of the art of weaving, and the management
+of pancakes and preserves, in which womankind does really appear to be
+great, and in which for her to be beaten by a man is of all things the
+most absurd?
+
+You are quite right, he replied, in maintaining the general inferiority
+of the female sex: although many women are in many things superior to
+many men, yet on the whole what you say is true.
+
+And if so, my friend, I said, there is no special faculty of
+administration in a state which a woman has because she is a woman, or
+which a man has by virtue of his sex, but the gifts of nature are alike
+diffused in both; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women
+also, but in all of them a woman is inferior to a man.
+
+Very true.
+
+Then are we to impose all our enactments on men and none of them on
+women?
+
+That will never do.
+
+One woman has a gift of healing, another not; one is a musician, and
+another has no music in her nature?
+
+Very true.
+
+And one woman has a turn for gymnastic and military exercises, and
+another is unwarlike and hates gymnastics?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And one woman is a philosopher, and another is an enemy of philosophy;
+one has spirit, and another is without spirit?
+
+That is also true.
+
+Then one woman will have the temper of a guardian, and another not. Was
+not the selection of the male guardians determined by differences of
+this sort?
+
+Yes.
+
+Men and women alike possess the qualities which make a guardian; they
+differ only in their comparative strength or weakness.
+
+Obviously.
+
+And those women who have such qualities are to be selected as the
+companions and colleagues of men who have similar qualities and whom
+they resemble in capacity and in character?
+
+Very true.
+
+And ought not the same natures to have the same pursuits?
+
+They ought.
+
+Then, as we were saying before, there is nothing unnatural in assigning
+music and gymnastic to the wives of the guardians—to that point we come
+round again.
+
+Certainly not.
+
+The law which we then enacted was agreeable to nature, and therefore
+not an impossibility or mere aspiration; and the contrary practice,
+which prevails at present, is in reality a violation of nature.
+
+That appears to be true.
+
+We had to consider, first, whether our proposals were possible, and
+secondly whether they were the most beneficial?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the possibility has been acknowledged?
+
+Yes.
+
+The very great benefit has next to be established?
+
+Quite so.
+
+You will admit that the same education which makes a man a good
+guardian will make a woman a good guardian; for their original nature
+is the same?
+
+Yes.
+
+I should like to ask you a question.
+
+What is it?
+
+Would you say that all men are equal in excellence, or is one man
+better than another?
+
+The latter.
+
+And in the commonwealth which we were founding do you conceive the
+guardians who have been brought up on our model system to be more
+perfect men, or the cobblers whose education has been cobbling?
+
+What a ridiculous question!
+
+You have answered me, I replied: Well, and may we not further say that
+our guardians are the best of our citizens?
+
+By far the best.
+
+And will not their wives be the best women?
+
+Yes, by far the best.
+
+And can there be anything better for the interests of the State than
+that the men and women of a State should be as good as possible?
+
+There can be nothing better.
+
+And this is what the arts of music and gymnastic, when present in such
+manner as we have described, will accomplish?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then we have made an enactment not only possible but in the highest
+degree beneficial to the State?
+
+True.
+
+Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be
+their robe, and let them share in the toils of war and the defence of
+their country; only in the distribution of labours the lighter are to
+be assigned to the women, who are the weaker natures, but in other
+respects their duties are to be the same. And as for the man who laughs
+at naked women exercising their bodies from the best of motives, in his
+laughter he is plucking
+
+‘A fruit of unripe wisdom,’
+
+and he himself is ignorant of what he is laughing at, or what he is
+about;—for that is, and ever will be, the best of sayings, That the
+useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base.
+
+Very true.
+
+Here, then, is one difficulty in our law about women, which we may say
+that we have now escaped; the wave has not swallowed us up alive for
+enacting that the guardians of either sex should have all their
+pursuits in common; to the utility and also to the possibility of this
+arrangement the consistency of the argument with itself bears witness.
+
+Yes, that was a mighty wave which you have escaped.
+
+Yes, I said, but a greater is coming; you will not think much of this
+when you see the next.
+
+Go on; let me see.
+
+The law, I said, which is the sequel of this and of all that has
+preceded, is to the following effect,—‘that the wives of our guardians
+are to be common, and their children are to be common, and no parent is
+to know his own child, nor any child his parent.’
+
+Yes, he said, that is a much greater wave than the other; and the
+possibility as well as the utility of such a law are far more
+questionable.
+
+I do not think, I said, that there can be any dispute about the very
+great utility of having wives and children in common; the possibility
+is quite another matter, and will be very much disputed.
+
+I think that a good many doubts may be raised about both.
+
+You imply that the two questions must be combined, I replied. Now I
+meant that you should admit the utility; and in this way, as I thought,
+I should escape from one of them, and then there would remain only the
+possibility.
+
+But that little attempt is detected, and therefore you will please to
+give a defence of both.
+
+Well, I said, I submit to my fate. Yet grant me a little favour: let me
+feast my mind with the dream as day dreamers are in the habit of
+feasting themselves when they are walking alone; for before they have
+discovered any means of effecting their wishes—that is a matter which
+never troubles them—they would rather not tire themselves by thinking
+about possibilities; but assuming that what they desire is already
+granted to them, they proceed with their plan, and delight in detailing
+what they mean to do when their wish has come true—that is a way which
+they have of not doing much good to a capacity which was never good for
+much. Now I myself am beginning to lose heart, and I should like, with
+your permission, to pass over the question of possibility at present.
+Assuming therefore the possibility of the proposal, I shall now proceed
+to enquire how the rulers will carry out these arrangements, and I
+shall demonstrate that our plan, if executed, will be of the greatest
+benefit to the State and to the guardians. First of all, then, if you
+have no objection, I will endeavour with your help to consider the
+advantages of the measure; and hereafter the question of possibility.
+
+I have no objection; proceed.
+
+First, I think that if our rulers and their auxiliaries are to be
+worthy of the name which they bear, there must be willingness to obey
+in the one and the power of command in the other; the guardians must
+themselves obey the laws, and they must also imitate the spirit of them
+in any details which are entrusted to their care.
+
+That is right, he said.
+
+You, I said, who are their legislator, having selected the men, will
+now select the women and give them to them;—they must be as far as
+possible of like natures with them; and they must live in common houses
+and meet at common meals. None of them will have anything specially his
+or her own; they will be together, and will be brought up together, and
+will associate at gymnastic exercises. And so they will be drawn by a
+necessity of their natures to have intercourse with each
+other—necessity is not too strong a word, I think?
+
+Yes, he said;—necessity, not geometrical, but another sort of necessity
+which lovers know, and which is far more convincing and constraining to
+the mass of mankind.
+
+True, I said; and this, Glaucon, like all the rest, must proceed after
+an orderly fashion; in a city of the blessed, licentiousness is an
+unholy thing which the rulers will forbid.
+
+Yes, he said, and it ought not to be permitted.
+
+Then clearly the next thing will be to make matrimony sacred in the
+highest degree, and what is most beneficial will be deemed sacred?
+
+Exactly.
+
+And how can marriages be made most beneficial?—that is a question which
+I put to you, because I see in your house dogs for hunting, and of the
+nobler sort of birds not a few. Now, I beseech you, do tell me, have
+you ever attended to their pairing and breeding?
+
+In what particulars?
+
+Why, in the first place, although they are all of a good sort, are not
+some better than others?
+
+True.
+
+And do you breed from them all indifferently, or do you take care to
+breed from the best only?
+
+From the best.
+
+And do you take the oldest or the youngest, or only those of ripe age?
+
+I choose only those of ripe age.
+
+And if care was not taken in the breeding, your dogs and birds would
+greatly deteriorate?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And the same of horses and animals in general?
+
+Undoubtedly.
+
+Good heavens! my dear friend, I said, what consummate skill will our
+rulers need if the same principle holds of the human species!
+
+Certainly, the same principle holds; but why does this involve any
+particular skill?
+
+Because, I said, our rulers will often have to practise upon the body
+corporate with medicines. Now you know that when patients do not
+require medicines, but have only to be put under a regimen, the
+inferior sort of practitioner is deemed to be good enough; but when
+medicine has to be given, then the doctor should be more of a man.
+
+That is quite true, he said; but to what are you alluding?
+
+I mean, I replied, that our rulers will find a considerable dose of
+falsehood and deceit necessary for the good of their subjects: we were
+saying that the use of all these things regarded as medicines might be
+of advantage.
+
+And we were very right.
+
+And this lawful use of them seems likely to be often needed in the
+regulations of marriages and births.
+
+How so?
+
+Why, I said, the principle has been already laid down that the best of
+either sex should be united with the best as often, and the inferior
+with the inferior, as seldom as possible; and that they should rear the
+offspring of the one sort of union, but not of the other, if the flock
+is to be maintained in first-rate condition. Now these goings on must
+be a secret which the rulers only know, or there will be a further
+danger of our herd, as the guardians may be termed, breaking out into
+rebellion.
+
+Very true.
+
+Had we not better appoint certain festivals at which we will bring
+together the brides and bridegrooms, and sacrifices will be offered and
+suitable hymeneal songs composed by our poets: the number of weddings
+is a matter which must be left to the discretion of the rulers, whose
+aim will be to preserve the average of population? There are many other
+things which they will have to consider, such as the effects of wars
+and diseases and any similar agencies, in order as far as this is
+possible to prevent the State from becoming either too large or too
+small.
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+We shall have to invent some ingenious kind of lots which the less
+worthy may draw on each occasion of our bringing them together, and
+then they will accuse their own ill-luck and not the rulers.
+
+To be sure, he said.
+
+And I think that our braver and better youth, besides their other
+honours and rewards, might have greater facilities of intercourse with
+women given them; their bravery will be a reason, and such fathers
+ought to have as many sons as possible.
+
+True.
+
+And the proper officers, whether male or female or both, for offices
+are to be held by women as well as by men—
+
+Yes—
+
+The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to the
+pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who
+dwell in a separate quarter; but the offspring of the inferior, or of
+the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some
+mysterious, unknown place, as they should be.
+
+Yes, he said, that must be done if the breed of the guardians is to be
+kept pure.
+
+They will provide for their nurture, and will bring the mothers to the
+fold when they are full of milk, taking the greatest possible care that
+no mother recognises her own child; and other wet-nurses may be engaged
+if more are required. Care will also be taken that the process of
+suckling shall not be protracted too long; and the mothers will have no
+getting up at night or other trouble, but will hand over all this sort
+of thing to the nurses and attendants.
+
+You suppose the wives of our guardians to have a fine easy time of it
+when they are having children.
+
+Why, said I, and so they ought. Let us, however, proceed with our
+scheme. We were saying that the parents should be in the prime of life?
+
+Very true.
+
+And what is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of
+about twenty years in a woman’s life, and thirty in a man’s?
+
+Which years do you mean to include?
+
+A woman, I said, at twenty years of age may begin to bear children to
+the State, and continue to bear them until forty; a man may begin at
+five-and-twenty, when he has passed the point at which the pulse of
+life beats quickest, and continue to beget children until he be
+fifty-five.
+
+Certainly, he said, both in men and women those years are the prime of
+physical as well as of intellectual vigour.
+
+Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part in the public
+hymeneals shall be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing;
+the child of which he is the father, if it steals into life, will have
+been conceived under auspices very unlike the sacrifices and prayers,
+which at each hymeneal priestesses and priest and the whole city will
+offer, that the new generation may be better and more useful than their
+good and useful parents, whereas his child will be the offspring of
+darkness and strange lust.
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+And the same law will apply to any one of those within the prescribed
+age who forms a connection with any woman in the prime of life without
+the sanction of the rulers; for we shall say that he is raising up a
+bastard to the State, uncertified and unconsecrated.
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+This applies, however, only to those who are within the specified age:
+after that we allow them to range at will, except that a man may not
+marry his daughter or his daughter’s daughter, or his mother or his
+mother’s mother; and women, on the other hand, are prohibited from
+marrying their sons or fathers, or son’s son or father’s father, and so
+on in either direction. And we grant all this, accompanying the
+permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into
+being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the
+parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be
+maintained, and arrange accordingly.
+
+That also, he said, is a reasonable proposition. But how will they know
+who are fathers and daughters, and so on?
+
+They will never know. The way will be this:—dating from the day of the
+hymeneal, the bridegroom who was then married will call all the male
+children who are born in the seventh and tenth month afterwards his
+sons, and the female children his daughters, and they will call him
+father, and he will call their children his grandchildren, and they
+will call the elder generation grandfathers and grandmothers. All who
+were begotten at the time when their fathers and mothers came together
+will be called their brothers and sisters, and these, as I was saying,
+will be forbidden to inter-marry. This, however, is not to be
+understood as an absolute prohibition of the marriage of brothers and
+sisters; if the lot favours them, and they receive the sanction of the
+Pythian oracle, the law will allow them.
+
+Quite right, he replied.
+
+Such is the scheme, Glaucon, according to which the guardians of our
+State are to have their wives and families in common. And now you would
+have the argument show that this community is consistent with the rest
+of our polity, and also that nothing can be better—would you not?
+
+Yes, certainly.
+
+Shall we try to find a common basis by asking of ourselves what ought
+to be the chief aim of the legislator in making laws and in the
+organization of a State,—what is the greatest good, and what is the
+greatest evil, and then consider whether our previous description has
+the stamp of the good or of the evil?
+
+By all means.
+
+Can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction and
+plurality where unity ought to reign? or any greater good than the bond
+of unity?
+
+There cannot.
+
+And there is unity where there is community of pleasures and
+pains—where all the citizens are glad or grieved on the same occasions
+of joy and sorrow?
+
+No doubt.
+
+Yes; and where there is no common but only private feeling a State is
+disorganized—when you have one half of the world triumphing and the
+other plunged in grief at the same events happening to the city or the
+citizens?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Such differences commonly originate in a disagreement about the use of
+the terms ‘mine’ and ‘not mine,’ ‘his’ and ‘not his.’
+
+Exactly so.
+
+And is not that the best-ordered State in which the greatest number of
+persons apply the terms ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ in the same way to the
+same thing?
+
+Quite true.
+
+Or that again which most nearly approaches to the condition of the
+individual—as in the body, when but a finger of one of us is hurt, the
+whole frame, drawn towards the soul as a centre and forming one kingdom
+under the ruling power therein, feels the hurt and sympathizes all
+together with the part affected, and we say that the man has a pain in
+his finger; and the same expression is used about any other part of the
+body, which has a sensation of pain at suffering or of pleasure at the
+alleviation of suffering.
+
+Very true, he replied; and I agree with you that in the best-ordered
+State there is the nearest approach to this common feeling which you
+describe.
+
+Then when any one of the citizens experiences any good or evil, the
+whole State will make his case their own, and will either rejoice or
+sorrow with him?
+
+Yes, he said, that is what will happen in a well-ordered State.
+
+It will now be time, I said, for us to return to our State and see
+whether this or some other form is most in accordance with these
+fundamental principles.
+
+Very good.
+
+Our State like every other has rulers and subjects?
+
+True.
+
+All of whom will call one another citizens?
+
+Of course.
+
+But is there not another name which people give to their rulers in
+other States?
+
+Generally they call them masters, but in democratic States they simply
+call them rulers.
+
+And in our State what other name besides that of citizens do the people
+give the rulers?
+
+They are called saviours and helpers, he replied.
+
+And what do the rulers call the people?
+
+Their maintainers and foster-fathers.
+
+And what do they call them in other States?
+
+Slaves.
+
+And what do the rulers call one another in other States?
+
+Fellow-rulers.
+
+And what in ours?
+
+Fellow-guardians.
+
+Did you ever know an example in any other State of a ruler who would
+speak of one of his colleagues as his friend and of another as not
+being his friend?
+
+Yes, very often.
+
+And the friend he regards and describes as one in whom he has an
+interest, and the other as a stranger in whom he has no interest?
+
+Exactly.
+
+But would any of your guardians think or speak of any other guardian as
+a stranger?
+
+Certainly he would not; for every one whom they meet will be regarded
+by them either as a brother or sister, or father or mother, or son or
+daughter, or as the child or parent of those who are thus connected
+with him.
+
+Capital, I said; but let me ask you once more: Shall they be a family
+in name only; or shall they in all their actions be true to the name?
+For example, in the use of the word ‘father,’ would the care of a
+father be implied and the filial reverence and duty and obedience to
+him which the law commands; and is the violator of these duties to be
+regarded as an impious and unrighteous person who is not likely to
+receive much good either at the hands of God or of man? Are these to be
+or not to be the strains which the children will hear repeated in their
+ears by all the citizens about those who are intimated to them to be
+their parents and the rest of their kinsfolk?
+
+These, he said, and none other; for what can be more ridiculous than
+for them to utter the names of family ties with the lips only and not
+to act in the spirit of them?
+
+Then in our city the language of harmony and concord will be more often
+heard than in any other. As I was describing before, when any one is
+well or ill, the universal word will be ‘with me it is well’ or ‘it is
+ill.’
+
+Most true.
+
+And agreeably to this mode of thinking and speaking, were we not saying
+that they will have their pleasures and pains in common?
+
+Yes, and so they will.
+
+And they will have a common interest in the same thing which they will
+alike call ‘my own,’ and having this common interest they will have a
+common feeling of pleasure and pain?
+
+Yes, far more so than in other States.
+
+And the reason of this, over and above the general constitution of the
+State, will be that the guardians will have a community of women and
+children?
+
+That will be the chief reason.
+
+And this unity of feeling we admitted to be the greatest good, as was
+implied in our own comparison of a well-ordered State to the relation
+of the body and the members, when affected by pleasure or pain?
+
+That we acknowledged, and very rightly.
+
+Then the community of wives and children among our citizens is clearly
+the source of the greatest good to the State?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And this agrees with the other principle which we were affirming,—that
+the guardians were not to have houses or lands or any other property;
+their pay was to be their food, which they were to receive from the
+other citizens, and they were to have no private expenses; for we
+intended them to preserve their true character of guardians.
+
+Right, he replied.
+
+Both the community of property and the community of families, as I am
+saying, tend to make them more truly guardians; they will not tear the
+city in pieces by differing about ‘mine’ and ‘not mine;’ each man
+dragging any acquisition which he has made into a separate house of his
+own, where he has a separate wife and children and private pleasures
+and pains; but all will be affected as far as may be by the same
+pleasures and pains because they are all of one opinion about what is
+near and dear to them, and therefore they all tend towards a common
+end.
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+And as they have nothing but their persons which they can call their
+own, suits and complaints will have no existence among them; they will
+be delivered from all those quarrels of which money or children or
+relations are the occasion.
+
+Of course they will.
+
+Neither will trials for assault or insult ever be likely to occur among
+them. For that equals should defend themselves against equals we shall
+maintain to be honourable and right; we shall make the protection of
+the person a matter of necessity.
+
+That is good, he said.
+
+Yes; and there is a further good in the law; viz. that if a man has a
+quarrel with another he will satisfy his resentment then and there, and
+not proceed to more dangerous lengths.
+
+Certainly.
+
+To the elder shall be assigned the duty of ruling and chastising the
+younger.
+
+Clearly.
+
+Nor can there be a doubt that the younger will not strike or do any
+other violence to an elder, unless the magistrates command him; nor
+will he slight him in any way. For there are two guardians, shame and
+fear, mighty to prevent him: shame, which makes men refrain from laying
+hands on those who are to them in the relation of parents; fear, that
+the injured one will be succoured by the others who are his brothers,
+sons, fathers.
+
+That is true, he replied.
+
+Then in every way the laws will help the citizens to keep the peace
+with one another?
+
+Yes, there will be no want of peace.
+
+And as the guardians will never quarrel among themselves there will be
+no danger of the rest of the city being divided either against them or
+against one another.
+
+None whatever.
+
+I hardly like even to mention the little meannesses of which they will
+be rid, for they are beneath notice: such, for example, as the flattery
+of the rich by the poor, and all the pains and pangs which men
+experience in bringing up a family, and in finding money to buy
+necessaries for their household, borrowing and then repudiating,
+getting how they can, and giving the money into the hands of women and
+slaves to keep—the many evils of so many kinds which people suffer in
+this way are mean enough and obvious enough, and not worth speaking of.
+
+Yes, he said, a man has no need of eyes in order to perceive that.
+
+And from all these evils they will be delivered, and their life will be
+blessed as the life of Olympic victors and yet more blessed.
+
+How so?
+
+The Olympic victor, I said, is deemed happy in receiving a part only of
+the blessedness which is secured to our citizens, who have won a more
+glorious victory and have a more complete maintenance at the public
+cost. For the victory which they have won is the salvation of the whole
+State; and the crown with which they and their children are crowned is
+the fulness of all that life needs; they receive rewards from the hands
+of their country while living, and after death have an honourable
+burial.
+
+Yes, he said, and glorious rewards they are.
+
+Do you remember, I said, how in the course of the previous discussion
+some one who shall be nameless accused us of making our guardians
+unhappy—they had nothing and might have possessed all things—to whom we
+replied that, if an occasion offered, we might perhaps hereafter
+consider this question, but that, as at present advised, we would make
+our guardians truly guardians, and that we were fashioning the State
+with a view to the greatest happiness, not of any particular class, but
+of the whole?
+
+Yes, I remember.
+
+And what do you say, now that the life of our protectors is made out to
+be far better and nobler than that of Olympic victors—is the life of
+shoemakers, or any other artisans, or of husbandmen, to be compared
+with it?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+At the same time I ought here to repeat what I have said elsewhere,
+that if any of our guardians shall try to be happy in such a manner
+that he will cease to be a guardian, and is not content with this safe
+and harmonious life, which, in our judgment, is of all lives the best,
+but infatuated by some youthful conceit of happiness which gets up into
+his head shall seek to appropriate the whole state to himself, then he
+will have to learn how wisely Hesiod spoke, when he said, ‘half is more
+than the whole.’
+
+If he were to consult me, I should say to him: Stay where you are, when
+you have the offer of such a life.
+
+You agree then, I said, that men and women are to have a common way of
+life such as we have described—common education, common children; and
+they are to watch over the citizens in common whether abiding in the
+city or going out to war; they are to keep watch together, and to hunt
+together like dogs; and always and in all things, as far as they are
+able, women are to share with the men? And in so doing they will do
+what is best, and will not violate, but preserve the natural relation
+of the sexes.
+
+I agree with you, he replied.
+
+The enquiry, I said, has yet to be made, whether such a community be
+found possible—as among other animals, so also among men—and if
+possible, in what way possible?
+
+You have anticipated the question which I was about to suggest.
+
+There is no difficulty, I said, in seeing how war will be carried on by
+them.
+
+How?
+
+Why, of course they will go on expeditions together; and will take with
+them any of their children who are strong enough, that, after the
+manner of the artisan’s child, they may look on at the work which they
+will have to do when they are grown up; and besides looking on they
+will have to help and be of use in war, and to wait upon their fathers
+and mothers. Did you never observe in the arts how the potters’ boys
+look on and help, long before they touch the wheel?
+
+Yes, I have.
+
+And shall potters be more careful in educating their children and in
+giving them the opportunity of seeing and practising their duties than
+our guardians will be?
+
+The idea is ridiculous, he said.
+
+There is also the effect on the parents, with whom, as with other
+animals, the presence of their young ones will be the greatest
+incentive to valour.
+
+That is quite true, Socrates; and yet if they are defeated, which may
+often happen in war, how great the danger is! the children will be lost
+as well as their parents, and the State will never recover.
+
+True, I said; but would you never allow them to run any risk?
+
+I am far from saying that.
+
+Well, but if they are ever to run a risk should they not do so on some
+occasion when, if they escape disaster, they will be the better for it?
+
+Clearly.
+
+Whether the future soldiers do or do not see war in the days of their
+youth is a very important matter, for the sake of which some risk may
+fairly be incurred.
+
+Yes, very important.
+
+This then must be our first step,—to make our children spectators of
+war; but we must also contrive that they shall be secured against
+danger; then all will be well.
+
+True.
+
+Their parents may be supposed not to be blind to the risks of war, but
+to know, as far as human foresight can, what expeditions are safe and
+what dangerous?
+
+That may be assumed.
+
+And they will take them on the safe expeditions and be cautious about
+the dangerous ones?
+
+True.
+
+And they will place them under the command of experienced veterans who
+will be their leaders and teachers?
+
+Very properly.
+
+Still, the dangers of war cannot be always foreseen; there is a good
+deal of chance about them?
+
+True.
+
+Then against such chances the children must be at once furnished with
+wings, in order that in the hour of need they may fly away and escape.
+
+What do you mean? he said.
+
+I mean that we must mount them on horses in their earliest youth, and
+when they have learnt to ride, take them on horseback to see war: the
+horses must not be spirited and warlike, but the most tractable and yet
+the swiftest that can be had. In this way they will get an excellent
+view of what is hereafter to be their own business; and if there is
+danger they have only to follow their elder leaders and escape.
+
+I believe that you are right, he said.
+
+Next, as to war; what are to be the relations of your soldiers to one
+another and to their enemies? I should be inclined to propose that the
+soldier who leaves his rank or throws away his arms, or is guilty of
+any other act of cowardice, should be degraded into the rank of a
+husbandman or artisan. What do you think?
+
+By all means, I should say.
+
+And he who allows himself to be taken prisoner may as well be made a
+present of to his enemies; he is their lawful prey, and let them do
+what they like with him.
+
+Certainly.
+
+But the hero who has distinguished himself, what shall be done to him?
+In the first place, he shall receive honour in the army from his
+youthful comrades; every one of them in succession shall crown him.
+What do you say?
+
+I approve.
+
+And what do you say to his receiving the right hand of fellowship?
+
+To that too, I agree.
+
+But you will hardly agree to my next proposal.
+
+What is your proposal?
+
+That he should kiss and be kissed by them.
+
+Most certainly, and I should be disposed to go further, and say: Let no
+one whom he has a mind to kiss refuse to be kissed by him while the
+expedition lasts. So that if there be a lover in the army, whether his
+love be youth or maiden, he may be more eager to win the prize of
+valour.
+
+Capital, I said. That the brave man is to have more wives than others
+has been already determined: and he is to have first choices in such
+matters more than others, in order that he may have as many children as
+possible?
+
+Agreed.
+
+Again, there is another manner in which, according to Homer, brave
+youths should be honoured; for he tells how Ajax, after he had
+distinguished himself in battle, was rewarded with long chines, which
+seems to be a compliment appropriate to a hero in the flower of his
+age, being not only a tribute of honour but also a very strengthening
+thing.
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+Then in this, I said, Homer shall be our teacher; and we too, at
+sacrifices and on the like occasions, will honour the brave according
+to the measure of their valour, whether men or women, with hymns and
+those other distinctions which we were mentioning; also with
+
+‘seats of precedence, and meats and full cups;’
+
+and in honouring them, we shall be at the same time training them.
+
+That, he replied, is excellent.
+
+Yes, I said; and when a man dies gloriously in war shall we not say, in
+the first place, that he is of the golden race?
+
+To be sure.
+
+Nay, have we not the authority of Hesiod for affirming that when they
+are dead
+
+‘They are holy angels upon the earth, authors of good, averters of
+evil, the guardians of speech-gifted men’?
+
+Yes; and we accept his authority.
+
+We must learn of the god how we are to order the sepulture of divine
+and heroic personages, and what is to be their special distinction; and
+we must do as he bids?
+
+By all means.
+
+And in ages to come we will reverence them and kneel before their
+sepulchres as at the graves of heroes. And not only they but any who
+are deemed pre-eminently good, whether they die from age, or in any
+other way, shall be admitted to the same honours.
+
+That is very right, he said.
+
+Next, how shall our soldiers treat their enemies? What about this?
+
+In what respect do you mean?
+
+First of all, in regard to slavery? Do you think it right that Hellenes
+should enslave Hellenic States, or allow others to enslave them, if
+they can help? Should not their custom be to spare them, considering
+the danger which there is that the whole race may one day fall under
+the yoke of the barbarians?
+
+To spare them is infinitely better.
+
+Then no Hellene should be owned by them as a slave; that is a rule
+which they will observe and advise the other Hellenes to observe.
+
+Certainly, he said; they will in this way be united against the
+barbarians and will keep their hands off one another.
+
+Next as to the slain; ought the conquerors, I said, to take anything
+but their armour? Does not the practice of despoiling an enemy afford
+an excuse for not facing the battle? Cowards skulk about the dead,
+pretending that they are fulfilling a duty, and many an army before now
+has been lost from this love of plunder.
+
+Very true.
+
+And is there not illiberality and avarice in robbing a corpse, and also
+a degree of meanness and womanishness in making an enemy of the dead
+body when the real enemy has flown away and left only his fighting gear
+behind him,—is not this rather like a dog who cannot get at his
+assailant, quarrelling with the stones which strike him instead?
+
+Very like a dog, he said.
+
+Then we must abstain from spoiling the dead or hindering their burial?
+
+Yes, he replied, we most certainly must.
+
+Neither shall we offer up arms at the temples of the gods, least of all
+the arms of Hellenes, if we care to maintain good feeling with other
+Hellenes; and, indeed, we have reason to fear that the offering of
+spoils taken from kinsmen may be a pollution unless commanded by the
+god himself?
+
+Very true.
+
+Again, as to the devastation of Hellenic territory or the burning of
+houses, what is to be the practice?
+
+May I have the pleasure, he said, of hearing your opinion?
+
+Both should be forbidden, in my judgment; I would take the annual
+produce and no more. Shall I tell you why?
+
+Pray do.
+
+Why, you see, there is a difference in the names ‘discord’ and ‘war,’
+and I imagine that there is also a difference in their natures; the one
+is expressive of what is internal and domestic, the other of what is
+external and foreign; and the first of the two is termed discord, and
+only the second, war.
+
+That is a very proper distinction, he replied.
+
+And may I not observe with equal propriety that the Hellenic race is
+all united together by ties of blood and friendship, and alien and
+strange to the barbarians?
+
+Very good, he said.
+
+And therefore when Hellenes fight with barbarians and barbarians with
+Hellenes, they will be described by us as being at war when they fight,
+and by nature enemies, and this kind of antagonism should be called
+war; but when Hellenes fight with one another we shall say that Hellas
+is then in a state of disorder and discord, they being by nature
+friends; and such enmity is to be called discord.
+
+I agree.
+
+Consider then, I said, when that which we have acknowledged to be
+discord occurs, and a city is divided, if both parties destroy the
+lands and burn the houses of one another, how wicked does the strife
+appear! No true lover of his country would bring himself to tear in
+pieces his own nurse and mother: There might be reason in the conqueror
+depriving the conquered of their harvest, but still they would have the
+idea of peace in their hearts and would not mean to go on fighting for
+ever.
+
+Yes, he said, that is a better temper than the other.
+
+And will not the city, which you are founding, be an Hellenic city?
+
+It ought to be, he replied.
+
+Then will not the citizens be good and civilized?
+
+Yes, very civilized.
+
+And will they not be lovers of Hellas, and think of Hellas as their own
+land, and share in the common temples?
+
+Most certainly.
+
+And any difference which arises among them will be regarded by them as
+discord only—a quarrel among friends, which is not to be called a war?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Then they will quarrel as those who intend some day to be reconciled?
+
+Certainly.
+
+They will use friendly correction, but will not enslave or destroy
+their opponents; they will be correctors, not enemies?
+
+Just so.
+
+And as they are Hellenes themselves they will not devastate Hellas, nor
+will they burn houses, nor ever suppose that the whole population of a
+city—men, women, and children—are equally their enemies, for they know
+that the guilt of war is always confined to a few persons and that the
+many are their friends. And for all these reasons they will be
+unwilling to waste their lands and rase their houses; their enmity to
+them will only last until the many innocent sufferers have compelled
+the guilty few to give satisfaction?
+
+I agree, he said, that our citizens should thus deal with their
+Hellenic enemies; and with barbarians as the Hellenes now deal with one
+another.
+
+Then let us enact this law also for our guardians:—that they are
+neither to devastate the lands of Hellenes nor to burn their houses.
+
+Agreed; and we may agree also in thinking that these, like all our
+previous enactments, are very good.
+
+But still I must say, Socrates, that if you are allowed to go on in
+this way you will entirely forget the other question which at the
+commencement of this discussion you thrust aside:—Is such an order of
+things possible, and how, if at all? For I am quite ready to
+acknowledge that the plan which you propose, if only feasible, would do
+all sorts of good to the State. I will add, what you have omitted, that
+your citizens will be the bravest of warriors, and will never leave
+their ranks, for they will all know one another, and each will call the
+other father, brother, son; and if you suppose the women to join their
+armies, whether in the same rank or in the rear, either as a terror to
+the enemy, or as auxiliaries in case of need, I know that they will
+then be absolutely invincible; and there are many domestic advantages
+which might also be mentioned and which I also fully acknowledge: but,
+as I admit all these advantages and as many more as you please, if only
+this State of yours were to come into existence, we need say no more
+about them; assuming then the existence of the State, let us now turn
+to the question of possibility and ways and means—the rest may be left.
+
+If I loiter for a moment, you instantly make a raid upon me, I said,
+and have no mercy; I have hardly escaped the first and second waves,
+and you seem not to be aware that you are now bringing upon me the
+third, which is the greatest and heaviest. When you have seen and heard
+the third wave, I think you will be more considerate and will
+acknowledge that some fear and hesitation was natural respecting a
+proposal so extraordinary as that which I have now to state and
+investigate.
+
+The more appeals of this sort which you make, he said, the more
+determined are we that you shall tell us how such a State is possible:
+speak out and at once.
+
+Let me begin by reminding you that we found our way hither in the
+search after justice and injustice.
+
+True, he replied; but what of that?
+
+I was only going to ask whether, if we have discovered them, we are to
+require that the just man should in nothing fail of absolute justice;
+or may we be satisfied with an approximation, and the attainment in him
+of a higher degree of justice than is to be found in other men?
+
+The approximation will be enough.
+
+We were enquiring into the nature of absolute justice and into the
+character of the perfectly just, and into injustice and the perfectly
+unjust, that we might have an ideal. We were to look at these in order
+that we might judge of our own happiness and unhappiness according to
+the standard which they exhibited and the degree in which we resembled
+them, but not with any view of showing that they could exist in fact.
+
+True, he said.
+
+Would a painter be any the worse because, after having delineated with
+consummate art an ideal of a perfectly beautiful man, he was unable to
+show that any such man could ever have existed?
+
+He would be none the worse.
+
+Well, and were we not creating an ideal of a perfect State?
+
+To be sure.
+
+And is our theory a worse theory because we are unable to prove the
+possibility of a city being ordered in the manner described?
+
+Surely not, he replied.
+
+That is the truth, I said. But if, at your request, I am to try and
+show how and under what conditions the possibility is highest, I must
+ask you, having this in view, to repeat your former admissions.
+
+What admissions?
+
+I want to know whether ideals are ever fully realized in language? Does
+not the word express more than the fact, and must not the actual,
+whatever a man may think, always, in the nature of things, fall short
+of the truth? What do you say?
+
+I agree.
+
+Then you must not insist on my proving that the actual State will in
+every respect coincide with the ideal: if we are only able to discover
+how a city may be governed nearly as we proposed, you will admit that
+we have discovered the possibility which you demand; and will be
+contented. I am sure that I should be contented—will not you?
+
+Yes, I will.
+
+Let me next endeavour to show what is that fault in States which is the
+cause of their present maladministration, and what is the least change
+which will enable a State to pass into the truer form; and let the
+change, if possible, be of one thing only, or, if not, of two; at any
+rate, let the changes be as few and slight as possible.
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+I think, I said, that there might be a reform of the State if only one
+change were made, which is not a slight or easy though still a possible
+one.
+
+What is it? he said.
+
+Now then, I said, I go to meet that which I liken to the greatest of
+the waves; yet shall the word be spoken, even though the wave break and
+drown me in laughter and dishonour; and do you mark my words.
+
+Proceed.
+
+I said: ‘Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this
+world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness
+and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to
+the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will
+never have rest from their evils,—nor the human race, as I believe,—and
+then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the
+light of day.’ Such was the thought, my dear Glaucon, which I would
+fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant; for to be
+convinced that in no other State can there be happiness private or
+public is indeed a hard thing.
+
+Socrates, what do you mean? I would have you consider that the word
+which you have uttered is one at which numerous persons, and very
+respectable persons too, in a figure pulling off their coats all in a
+moment, and seizing any weapon that comes to hand, will run at you
+might and main, before you know where you are, intending to do heaven
+knows what; and if you don’t prepare an answer, and put yourself in
+motion, you will be ‘pared by their fine wits,’ and no mistake.
+
+You got me into the scrape, I said.
+
+And I was quite right; however, I will do all I can to get you out of
+it; but I can only give you good-will and good advice, and, perhaps, I
+may be able to fit answers to your questions better than another—that
+is all. And now, having such an auxiliary, you must do your best to
+show the unbelievers that you are right.
+
+I ought to try, I said, since you offer me such invaluable assistance.
+And I think that, if there is to be a chance of our escaping, we must
+explain to them whom we mean when we say that philosophers are to rule
+in the State; then we shall be able to defend ourselves: There will be
+discovered to be some natures who ought to study philosophy and to be
+leaders in the State; and others who are not born to be philosophers,
+and are meant to be followers rather than leaders.
+
+Then now for a definition, he said.
+
+Follow me, I said, and I hope that I may in some way or other be able
+to give you a satisfactory explanation.
+
+Proceed.
+
+I dare say that you remember, and therefore I need not remind you, that
+a lover, if he is worthy of the name, ought to show his love, not to
+some one part of that which he loves, but to the whole.
+
+I really do not understand, and therefore beg of you to assist my
+memory.
+
+Another person, I said, might fairly reply as you do; but a man of
+pleasure like yourself ought to know that all who are in the flower of
+youth do somehow or other raise a pang or emotion in a lover’s breast,
+and are thought by him to be worthy of his affectionate regards. Is not
+this a way which you have with the fair: one has a snub nose, and you
+praise his charming face; the hook-nose of another has, you say, a
+royal look; while he who is neither snub nor hooked has the grace of
+regularity: the dark visage is manly, the fair are children of the
+gods; and as to the sweet ‘honey pale,’ as they are called, what is the
+very name but the invention of a lover who talks in diminutives, and is
+not averse to paleness if appearing on the cheek of youth? In a word,
+there is no excuse which you will not make, and nothing which you will
+not say, in order not to lose a single flower that blooms in the
+spring-time of youth.
+
+If you make me an authority in matters of love, for the sake of the
+argument, I assent.
+
+And what do you say of lovers of wine? Do you not see them doing the
+same? They are glad of any pretext of drinking any wine.
+
+Very good.
+
+And the same is true of ambitious men; if they cannot command an army,
+they are willing to command a file; and if they cannot be honoured by
+really great and important persons, they are glad to be honoured by
+lesser and meaner people,—but honour of some kind they must have.
+
+Exactly.
+
+Once more let me ask: Does he who desires any class of goods, desire
+the whole class or a part only?
+
+The whole.
+
+And may we not say of the philosopher that he is a lover, not of a part
+of wisdom only, but of the whole?
+
+Yes, of the whole.
+
+And he who dislikes learning, especially in youth, when he has no power
+of judging what is good and what is not, such an one we maintain not to
+be a philosopher or a lover of knowledge, just as he who refuses his
+food is not hungry, and may be said to have a bad appetite and not a
+good one?
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Whereas he who has a taste for every sort of knowledge and who is
+curious to learn and is never satisfied, may be justly termed a
+philosopher? Am I not right?
+
+Glaucon said: If curiosity makes a philosopher, you will find many a
+strange being will have a title to the name. All the lovers of sights
+have a delight in learning, and must therefore be included. Musical
+amateurs, too, are a folk strangely out of place among philosophers,
+for they are the last persons in the world who would come to anything
+like a philosophical discussion, if they could help, while they run
+about at the Dionysiac festivals as if they had let out their ears to
+hear every chorus; whether the performance is in town or country—that
+makes no difference—they are there. Now are we to maintain that all
+these and any who have similar tastes, as well as the professors of
+quite minor arts, are philosophers?
+
+Certainly not, I replied; they are only an imitation.
+
+He said: Who then are the true philosophers?
+
+Those, I said, who are lovers of the vision of truth.
+
+That is also good, he said; but I should like to know what you mean?
+
+To another, I replied, I might have a difficulty in explaining; but I
+am sure that you will admit a proposition which I am about to make.
+
+What is the proposition?
+
+That since beauty is the opposite of ugliness, they are two?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And inasmuch as they are two, each of them is one?
+
+True again.
+
+And of just and unjust, good and evil, and of every other class, the
+same remark holds: taken singly, each of them is one; but from the
+various combinations of them with actions and things and with one
+another, they are seen in all sorts of lights and appear many?
+
+Very true.
+
+And this is the distinction which I draw between the sight-loving,
+art-loving, practical class and those of whom I am speaking, and who
+are alone worthy of the name of philosophers.
+
+How do you distinguish them? he said.
+
+The lovers of sounds and sights, I replied, are, as I conceive, fond of
+fine tones and colours and forms and all the artificial products that
+are made out of them, but their mind is incapable of seeing or loving
+absolute beauty.
+
+True, he replied.
+
+Few are they who are able to attain to the sight of this.
+
+Very true.
+
+And he who, having a sense of beautiful things has no sense of absolute
+beauty, or who, if another lead him to a knowledge of that beauty is
+unable to follow—of such an one I ask, Is he awake or in a dream only?
+Reflect: is not the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens
+dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object?
+
+I should certainly say that such an one was dreaming.
+
+But take the case of the other, who recognises the existence of
+absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects
+which participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place
+of the idea nor the idea in the place of the objects—is he a dreamer,
+or is he awake?
+
+He is wide awake.
+
+And may we not say that the mind of the one who knows has knowledge,
+and that the mind of the other, who opines only, has opinion?
+
+Certainly.
+
+But suppose that the latter should quarrel with us and dispute our
+statement, can we administer any soothing cordial or advice to him,
+without revealing to him that there is sad disorder in his wits?
+
+We must certainly offer him some good advice, he replied.
+
+Come, then, and let us think of something to say to him. Shall we begin
+by assuring him that he is welcome to any knowledge which he may have,
+and that we are rejoiced at his having it? But we should like to ask
+him a question: Does he who has knowledge know something or nothing?
+(You must answer for him.)
+
+I answer that he knows something.
+
+Something that is or is not?
+
+Something that is; for how can that which is not ever be known?
+
+And are we assured, after looking at the matter from many points of
+view, that absolute being is or may be absolutely known, but that the
+utterly non-existent is utterly unknown?
+
+Nothing can be more certain.
+
+Good. But if there be anything which is of such a nature as to be and
+not to be, that will have a place intermediate between pure being and
+the absolute negation of being?
+
+Yes, between them.
+
+And, as knowledge corresponded to being and ignorance of necessity to
+not-being, for that intermediate between being and not-being there has
+to be discovered a corresponding intermediate between ignorance and
+knowledge, if there be such?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Do we admit the existence of opinion?
+
+Undoubtedly.
+
+As being the same with knowledge, or another faculty?
+
+Another faculty.
+
+Then opinion and knowledge have to do with different kinds of matter
+corresponding to this difference of faculties?
+
+Yes.
+
+And knowledge is relative to being and knows being. But before I
+proceed further I will make a division.
+
+What division?
+
+I will begin by placing faculties in a class by themselves: they are
+powers in us, and in all other things, by which we do as we do. Sight
+and hearing, for example, I should call faculties. Have I clearly
+explained the class which I mean?
+
+Yes, I quite understand.
+
+Then let me tell you my view about them. I do not see them, and
+therefore the distinctions of figure, colour, and the like, which
+enable me to discern the differences of some things, do not apply to
+them. In speaking of a faculty I think only of its sphere and its
+result; and that which has the same sphere and the same result I call
+the same faculty, but that which has another sphere and another result
+I call different. Would that be your way of speaking?
+
+Yes.
+
+And will you be so very good as to answer one more question? Would you
+say that knowledge is a faculty, or in what class would you place it?
+
+Certainly knowledge is a faculty, and the mightiest of all faculties.
+
+And is opinion also a faculty?
+
+Certainly, he said; for opinion is that with which we are able to form
+an opinion.
+
+And yet you were acknowledging a little while ago that knowledge is not
+the same as opinion?
+
+Why, yes, he said: how can any reasonable being ever identify that
+which is infallible with that which errs?
+
+An excellent answer, proving, I said, that we are quite conscious of a
+distinction between them.
+
+Yes.
+
+Then knowledge and opinion having distinct powers have also distinct
+spheres or subject-matters?
+
+That is certain.
+
+Being is the sphere or subject-matter of knowledge, and knowledge is to
+know the nature of being?
+
+Yes.
+
+And opinion is to have an opinion?
+
+Yes.
+
+And do we know what we opine? or is the subject-matter of opinion the
+same as the subject-matter of knowledge?
+
+Nay, he replied, that has been already disproven; if difference in
+faculty implies difference in the sphere or subject-matter, and if, as
+we were saying, opinion and knowledge are distinct faculties, then the
+sphere of knowledge and of opinion cannot be the same.
+
+Then if being is the subject-matter of knowledge, something else must
+be the subject-matter of opinion?
+
+Yes, something else.
+
+Well then, is not-being the subject-matter of opinion? or, rather, how
+can there be an opinion at all about not-being? Reflect: when a man has
+an opinion, has he not an opinion about something? Can he have an
+opinion which is an opinion about nothing?
+
+Impossible.
+
+He who has an opinion has an opinion about some one thing?
+
+Yes.
+
+And not-being is not one thing but, properly speaking, nothing?
+
+True.
+
+Of not-being, ignorance was assumed to be the necessary correlative; of
+being, knowledge?
+
+True, he said.
+
+Then opinion is not concerned either with being or with not-being?
+
+Not with either.
+
+And can therefore neither be ignorance nor knowledge?
+
+That seems to be true.
+
+But is opinion to be sought without and beyond either of them, in a
+greater clearness than knowledge, or in a greater darkness than
+ignorance?
+
+In neither.
+
+Then I suppose that opinion appears to you to be darker than knowledge,
+but lighter than ignorance?
+
+Both; and in no small degree.
+
+And also to be within and between them?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then you would infer that opinion is intermediate?
+
+No question.
+
+But were we not saying before, that if anything appeared to be of a
+sort which is and is not at the same time, that sort of thing would
+appear also to lie in the interval between pure being and absolute
+not-being; and that the corresponding faculty is neither knowledge nor
+ignorance, but will be found in the interval between them?
+
+True.
+
+And in that interval there has now been discovered something which we
+call opinion?
+
+There has.
+
+Then what remains to be discovered is the object which partakes equally
+of the nature of being and not-being, and cannot rightly be termed
+either, pure and simple; this unknown term, when discovered, we may
+truly call the subject of opinion, and assign each to their proper
+faculty,—the extremes to the faculties of the extremes and the mean to
+the faculty of the mean.
+
+True.
+
+This being premised, I would ask the gentleman who is of opinion that
+there is no absolute or unchangeable idea of beauty—in whose opinion
+the beautiful is the manifold—he, I say, your lover of beautiful
+sights, who cannot bear to be told that the beautiful is one, and the
+just is one, or that anything is one—to him I would appeal, saying,
+Will you be so very kind, sir, as to tell us whether, of all these
+beautiful things, there is one which will not be found ugly; or of the
+just, which will not be found unjust; or of the holy, which will not
+also be unholy?
+
+No, he replied; the beautiful will in some point of view be found ugly;
+and the same is true of the rest.
+
+And may not the many which are doubles be also halves?—doubles, that
+is, of one thing, and halves of another?
+
+Quite true.
+
+And things great and small, heavy and light, as they are termed, will
+not be denoted by these any more than by the opposite names?
+
+True; both these and the opposite names will always attach to all of
+them.
+
+And can any one of those many things which are called by particular
+names be said to be this rather than not to be this?
+
+He replied: They are like the punning riddles which are asked at feasts
+or the children’s puzzle about the eunuch aiming at the bat, with what
+he hit him, as they say in the puzzle, and upon what the bat was
+sitting. The individual objects of which I am speaking are also a
+riddle, and have a double sense: nor can you fix them in your mind,
+either as being or not-being, or both, or neither.
+
+Then what will you do with them? I said. Can they have a better place
+than between being and not-being? For they are clearly not in greater
+darkness or negation than not-being, or more full of light and
+existence than being.
+
+That is quite true, he said.
+
+Thus then we seem to have discovered that the many ideas which the
+multitude entertain about the beautiful and about all other things are
+tossing about in some region which is half-way between pure being and
+pure not-being?
+
+We have.
+
+Yes; and we had before agreed that anything of this kind which we might
+find was to be described as matter of opinion, and not as matter of
+knowledge; being the intermediate flux which is caught and detained by
+the intermediate faculty.
+
+Quite true.
+
+Then those who see the many beautiful, and who yet neither see absolute
+beauty, nor can follow any guide who points the way thither; who see
+the many just, and not absolute justice, and the like,—such persons may
+be said to have opinion but not knowledge?
+
+That is certain.
+
+But those who see the absolute and eternal and immutable may be said to
+know, and not to have opinion only?
+
+Neither can that be denied.
+
+The one love and embrace the subjects of knowledge, the other those of
+opinion? The latter are the same, as I dare say you will remember, who
+listened to sweet sounds and gazed upon fair colours, but would not
+tolerate the existence of absolute beauty.
+
+Yes, I remember.
+
+Shall we then be guilty of any impropriety in calling them lovers of
+opinion rather than lovers of wisdom, and will they be very angry with
+us for thus describing them?
+
+I shall tell them not to be angry; no man should be angry at what is
+true.
+
+But those who love the truth in each thing are to be called lovers of
+wisdom and not lovers of opinion.
+
+Assuredly.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK VI.
+
+
+And thus, Glaucon, after the argument has gone a weary way, the true
+and the false philosophers have at length appeared in view.
+
+I do not think, he said, that the way could have been shortened.
+
+I suppose not, I said; and yet I believe that we might have had a
+better view of both of them if the discussion could have been confined
+to this one subject and if there were not many other questions awaiting
+us, which he who desires to see in what respect the life of the just
+differs from that of the unjust must consider.
+
+And what is the next question? he asked.
+
+Surely, I said, the one which follows next in order. Inasmuch as
+philosophers only are able to grasp the eternal and unchangeable, and
+those who wander in the region of the many and variable are not
+philosophers, I must ask you which of the two classes should be the
+rulers of our State?
+
+And how can we rightly answer that question?
+
+Whichever of the two are best able to guard the laws and institutions
+of our State—let them be our guardians.
+
+Very good.
+
+Neither, I said, can there be any question that the guardian who is to
+keep anything should have eyes rather than no eyes?
+
+There can be no question of that.
+
+And are not those who are verily and indeed wanting in the knowledge of
+the true being of each thing, and who have in their souls no clear
+pattern, and are unable as with a painter’s eye to look at the absolute
+truth and to that original to repair, and having perfect vision of the
+other world to order the laws about beauty, goodness, justice in this,
+if not already ordered, and to guard and preserve the order of them—are
+not such persons, I ask, simply blind?
+
+Truly, he replied, they are much in that condition.
+
+And shall they be our guardians when there are others who, besides
+being their equals in experience and falling short of them in no
+particular of virtue, also know the very truth of each thing?
+
+There can be no reason, he said, for rejecting those who have this
+greatest of all great qualities; they must always have the first place
+unless they fail in some other respect.
+
+Suppose then, I said, that we determine how far they can unite this and
+the other excellences.
+
+By all means.
+
+In the first place, as we began by observing, the nature of the
+philosopher has to be ascertained. We must come to an understanding
+about him, and, when we have done so, then, if I am not mistaken, we
+shall also acknowledge that such an union of qualities is possible, and
+that those in whom they are united, and those only, should be rulers in
+the State.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+Let us suppose that philosophical minds always love knowledge of a sort
+which shows them the eternal nature not varying from generation and
+corruption.
+
+Agreed.
+
+And further, I said, let us agree that they are lovers of all true
+being; there is no part whether greater or less, or more or less
+honourable, which they are willing to renounce; as we said before of
+the lover and the man of ambition.
+
+True.
+
+And if they are to be what we were describing, is there not another
+quality which they should also possess?
+
+What quality?
+
+Truthfulness: they will never intentionally receive into their mind
+falsehood, which is their detestation, and they will love the truth.
+
+Yes, that may be safely affirmed of them.
+
+‘May be,’ my friend, I replied, is not the word; say rather ‘must be
+affirmed:’ for he whose nature is amorous of anything cannot help
+loving all that belongs or is akin to the object of his affections.
+
+Right, he said.
+
+And is there anything more akin to wisdom than truth?
+
+How can there be?
+
+Can the same nature be a lover of wisdom and a lover of falsehood?
+
+Never.
+
+The true lover of learning then must from his earliest youth, as far as
+in him lies, desire all truth?
+
+Assuredly.
+
+But then again, as we know by experience, he whose desires are strong
+in one direction will have them weaker in others; they will be like a
+stream which has been drawn off into another channel.
+
+True.
+
+He whose desires are drawn towards knowledge in every form will be
+absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and will hardly feel bodily
+pleasure—I mean, if he be a true philosopher and not a sham one.
+
+That is most certain.
+
+Such an one is sure to be temperate and the reverse of covetous; for
+the motives which make another man desirous of having and spending,
+have no place in his character.
+
+Very true.
+
+Another criterion of the philosophical nature has also to be
+considered.
+
+What is that?
+
+There should be no secret corner of illiberality; nothing can be more
+antagonistic than meanness to a soul which is ever longing after the
+whole of things both divine and human.
+
+Most true, he replied.
+
+Then how can he who has magnificence of mind and is the spectator of
+all time and all existence, think much of human life?
+
+He cannot.
+
+Or can such an one account death fearful?
+
+No indeed.
+
+Then the cowardly and mean nature has no part in true philosophy?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Or again: can he who is harmoniously constituted, who is not covetous
+or mean, or a boaster, or a coward—can he, I say, ever be unjust or
+hard in his dealings?
+
+Impossible.
+
+Then you will soon observe whether a man is just and gentle, or rude
+and unsociable; these are the signs which distinguish even in youth the
+philosophical nature from the unphilosophical.
+
+True.
+
+There is another point which should be remarked.
+
+What point?
+
+Whether he has or has not a pleasure in learning; for no one will love
+that which gives him pain, and in which after much toil he makes little
+progress.
+
+Certainly not.
+
+And again, if he is forgetful and retains nothing of what he learns,
+will he not be an empty vessel?
+
+That is certain.
+
+Labouring in vain, he must end in hating himself and his fruitless
+occupation? Yes.
+
+Then a soul which forgets cannot be ranked among genuine philosophic
+natures; we must insist that the philosopher should have a good memory?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And once more, the inharmonious and unseemly nature can only tend to
+disproportion?
+
+Undoubtedly.
+
+And do you consider truth to be akin to proportion or to disproportion?
+
+To proportion.
+
+Then, besides other qualities, we must try to find a naturally
+well-proportioned and gracious mind, which will move spontaneously
+towards the true being of everything.
+
+Certainly.
+
+Well, and do not all these qualities, which we have been enumerating,
+go together, and are they not, in a manner, necessary to a soul, which
+is to have a full and perfect participation of being?
+
+They are absolutely necessary, he replied.
+
+And must not that be a blameless study which he only can pursue who has
+the gift of a good memory, and is quick to learn,—noble, gracious, the
+friend of truth, justice, courage, temperance, who are his kindred?
+
+The god of jealousy himself, he said, could find no fault with such a
+study.
+
+And to men like him, I said, when perfected by years and education, and
+to these only you will entrust the State.
+
+Here Adeimantus interposed and said: To these statements, Socrates, no
+one can offer a reply; but when you talk in this way, a strange feeling
+passes over the minds of your hearers: They fancy that they are led
+astray a little at each step in the argument, owing to their own want
+of skill in asking and answering questions; these littles accumulate,
+and at the end of the discussion they are found to have sustained a
+mighty overthrow and all their former notions appear to be turned
+upside down. And as unskilful players of draughts are at last shut up
+by their more skilful adversaries and have no piece to move, so they
+too find themselves shut up at last; for they have nothing to say in
+this new game of which words are the counters; and yet all the time
+they are in the right. The observation is suggested to me by what is
+now occurring. For any one of us might say, that although in words he
+is not able to meet you at each step of the argument, he sees as a fact
+that the votaries of philosophy, when they carry on the study, not only
+in youth as a part of education, but as the pursuit of their maturer
+years, most of them become strange monsters, not to say utter rogues,
+and that those who may be considered the best of them are made useless
+to the world by the very study which you extol.
+
+Well, and do you think that those who say so are wrong?
+
+I cannot tell, he replied; but I should like to know what is your
+opinion.
+
+Hear my answer; I am of opinion that they are quite right.
+
+Then how can you be justified in saying that cities will not cease from
+evil until philosophers rule in them, when philosophers are
+acknowledged by us to be of no use to them?
+
+You ask a question, I said, to which a reply can only be given in a
+parable.
+
+Yes, Socrates; and that is a way of speaking to which you are not at
+all accustomed, I suppose.
+
+I perceive, I said, that you are vastly amused at having plunged me
+into such a hopeless discussion; but now hear the parable, and then you
+will be still more amused at the meagreness of my imagination: for the
+manner in which the best men are treated in their own States is so
+grievous that no single thing on earth is comparable to it; and
+therefore, if I am to plead their cause, I must have recourse to
+fiction, and put together a figure made up of many things, like the
+fabulous unions of goats and stags which are found in pictures. Imagine
+then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and
+stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a
+similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much
+better. The sailors are quarrelling with one another about the
+steering—every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer, though
+he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught
+him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be
+taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the
+contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to
+commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but
+others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them
+overboard, and having first chained up the noble captain’s senses with
+drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the
+ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they
+proceed on their voyage in such manner as might be expected of them.
+Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for
+getting the ship out of the captain’s hands into their own whether by
+force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot,
+able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a
+good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the
+year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs
+to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the command of a
+ship, and that he must and will be the steerer, whether other people
+like or not—the possibility of this union of authority with the
+steerer’s art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been
+made part of their calling. Now in vessels which are in a state of
+mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be
+regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a
+good-for-nothing?
+
+Of course, said Adeimantus.
+
+Then you will hardly need, I said, to hear the interpretation of the
+figure, which describes the true philosopher in his relation to the
+State; for you understand already.
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then suppose you now take this parable to the gentleman who is
+surprised at finding that philosophers have no honour in their cities;
+explain it to him and try to convince him that their having honour
+would be far more extraordinary.
+
+I will.
+
+Say to him, that, in deeming the best votaries of philosophy to be
+useless to the rest of the world, he is right; but also tell him to
+attribute their uselessness to the fault of those who will not use
+them, and not to themselves. The pilot should not humbly beg the
+sailors to be commanded by him—that is not the order of nature; neither
+are ‘the wise to go to the doors of the rich’—the ingenious author of
+this saying told a lie—but the truth is, that, when a man is ill,
+whether he be rich or poor, to the physician he must go, and he who
+wants to be governed, to him who is able to govern. The ruler who is
+good for anything ought not to beg his subjects to be ruled by him;
+although the present governors of mankind are of a different stamp;
+they may be justly compared to the mutinous sailors, and the true
+helmsmen to those who are called by them good-for-nothings and
+star-gazers.
+
+Precisely so, he said.
+
+For these reasons, and among men like these, philosophy, the noblest
+pursuit of all, is not likely to be much esteemed by those of the
+opposite faction; not that the greatest and most lasting injury is done
+to her by her opponents, but by her own professing followers, the same
+of whom you suppose the accuser to say, that the greater number of them
+are arrant rogues, and the best are useless; in which opinion I agreed.
+
+Yes.
+
+And the reason why the good are useless has now been explained?
+
+True.
+
+Then shall we proceed to show that the corruption of the majority is
+also unavoidable, and that this is not to be laid to the charge of
+philosophy any more than the other?
+
+By all means.
+
+And let us ask and answer in turn, first going back to the description
+of the gentle and noble nature. Truth, as you will remember, was his
+leader, whom he followed always and in all things; failing in this, he
+was an impostor, and had no part or lot in true philosophy.
+
+Yes, that was said.
+
+Well, and is not this one quality, to mention no others, greatly at
+variance with present notions of him?
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+And have we not a right to say in his defence, that the true lover of
+knowledge is always striving after being—that is his nature; he will
+not rest in the multiplicity of individuals which is an appearance
+only, but will go on—the keen edge will not be blunted, nor the force
+of his desire abate until he have attained the knowledge of the true
+nature of every essence by a sympathetic and kindred power in the soul,
+and by that power drawing near and mingling and becoming incorporate
+with very being, having begotten mind and truth, he will have knowledge
+and will live and grow truly, and then, and not till then, will he
+cease from his travail.
+
+Nothing, he said, can be more just than such a description of him.
+
+And will the love of a lie be any part of a philosopher’s nature? Will
+he not utterly hate a lie?
+
+He will.
+
+And when truth is the captain, we cannot suspect any evil of the band
+which he leads?
+
+Impossible.
+
+Justice and health of mind will be of the company, and temperance will
+follow after?
+
+True, he replied.
+
+Neither is there any reason why I should again set in array the
+philosopher’s virtues, as you will doubtless remember that courage,
+magnificence, apprehension, memory, were his natural gifts. And you
+objected that, although no one could deny what I then said, still, if
+you leave words and look at facts, the persons who are thus described
+are some of them manifestly useless, and the greater number utterly
+depraved; we were then led to enquire into the grounds of these
+accusations, and have now arrived at the point of asking why are the
+majority bad, which question of necessity brought us back to the
+examination and definition of the true philosopher.
+
+Exactly.
+
+And we have next to consider the corruptions of the philosophic nature,
+why so many are spoiled and so few escape spoiling—I am speaking of
+those who were said to be useless but not wicked—and, when we have done
+with them, we will speak of the imitators of philosophy, what manner of
+men are they who aspire after a profession which is above them and of
+which they are unworthy, and then, by their manifold inconsistencies,
+bring upon philosophy, and upon all philosophers, that universal
+reprobation of which we speak.
+
+What are these corruptions? he said.
+
+I will see if I can explain them to you. Every one will admit that a
+nature having in perfection all the qualities which we required in a
+philosopher, is a rare plant which is seldom seen among men.
+
+Rare indeed.
+
+And what numberless and powerful causes tend to destroy these rare
+natures!
+
+What causes?
+
+In the first place there are their own virtues, their courage,
+temperance, and the rest of them, every one of which praiseworthy
+qualities (and this is a most singular circumstance) destroys and
+distracts from philosophy the soul which is the possessor of them.
+
+That is very singular, he replied.
+
+Then there are all the ordinary goods of life—beauty, wealth, strength,
+rank, and great connections in the State—you understand the sort of
+things—these also have a corrupting and distracting effect.
+
+I understand; but I should like to know more precisely what you mean
+about them.
+
+Grasp the truth as a whole, I said, and in the right way; you will then
+have no difficulty in apprehending the preceding remarks, and they will
+no longer appear strange to you.
+
+And how am I to do so? he asked.
+
+Why, I said, we know that all germs or seeds, whether vegetable or
+animal, when they fail to meet with proper nutriment or climate or
+soil, in proportion to their vigour, are all the more sensitive to the
+want of a suitable environment, for evil is a greater enemy to what is
+good than to what is not.
+
+Very true.
+
+There is reason in supposing that the finest natures, when under alien
+conditions, receive more injury than the inferior, because the contrast
+is greater.
+
+Certainly.
+
+And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted minds, when they
+are ill-educated, become pre-eminently bad? Do not great crimes and the
+spirit of pure evil spring out of a fulness of nature ruined by
+education rather than from any inferiority, whereas weak natures are
+scarcely capable of any very great good or very great evil?
+
+There I think that you are right.
+
+And our philosopher follows the same analogy—he is like a plant which,
+having proper nurture, must necessarily grow and mature into all
+virtue, but, if sown and planted in an alien soil, becomes the most
+noxious of all weeds, unless he be preserved by some divine power. Do
+you really think, as people so often say, that our youth are corrupted
+by Sophists, or that private teachers of the art corrupt them in any
+degree worth speaking of? Are not the public who say these things the
+greatest of all Sophists? And do they not educate to perfection young
+and old, men and women alike, and fashion them after their own hearts?
+
+When is this accomplished? he said.
+
+When they meet together, and the world sits down at an assembly, or in
+a court of law, or a theatre, or a camp, or in any other popular
+resort, and there is a great uproar, and they praise some things which
+are being said or done, and blame other things, equally exaggerating
+both, shouting and clapping their hands, and the echo of the rocks and
+the place in which they are assembled redoubles the sound of the praise
+or blame—at such a time will not a young man’s heart, as they say, leap
+within him? Will any private training enable him to stand firm against
+the overwhelming flood of popular opinion? or will he be carried away
+by the stream? Will he not have the notions of good and evil which the
+public in general have—he will do as they do, and as they are, such
+will he be?
+
+Yes, Socrates; necessity will compel him.
+
+And yet, I said, there is a still greater necessity, which has not been
+mentioned.
+
+What is that?
+
+The gentle force of attainder or confiscation or death, which, as you
+are aware, these new Sophists and educators, who are the public, apply
+when their words are powerless.
+
+Indeed they do; and in right good earnest.
+
+Now what opinion of any other Sophist, or of any private person, can be
+expected to overcome in such an unequal contest?
+
+None, he replied.
+
+No, indeed, I said, even to make the attempt is a great piece of folly;
+there neither is, nor has been, nor is ever likely to be, any different
+type of character which has had no other training in virtue but that
+which is supplied by public opinion—I speak, my friend, of human virtue
+only; what is more than human, as the proverb says, is not included:
+for I would not have you ignorant that, in the present evil state of
+governments, whatever is saved and comes to good is saved by the power
+of God, as we may truly say.
+
+I quite assent, he replied.
+
+Then let me crave your assent also to a further observation.
+
+What are you going to say?
+
+Why, that all those mercenary individuals, whom the many call Sophists
+and whom they deem to be their adversaries, do, in fact, teach nothing
+but the opinion of the many, that is to say, the opinions of their
+assemblies; and this is their wisdom. I might compare them to a man who
+should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is
+fed by him—he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what
+times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is
+the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another
+utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further,
+that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in
+all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or
+art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what
+he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but
+calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just
+or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great
+brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and
+evil to be that which he dislikes; and he can give no other account of
+them except that the just and noble are the necessary, having never
+himself seen, and having no power of explaining to others the nature of
+either, or the difference between them, which is immense. By heaven,
+would not such an one be a rare educator?
+
+Indeed he would.
+
+And in what way does he who thinks that wisdom is the discernment of
+the tempers and tastes of the motley multitude, whether in painting or
+music, or, finally, in politics, differ from him whom I have been
+describing? For when a man consorts with the many, and exhibits to them
+his poem or other work of art or the service which he has done the
+State, making them his judges when he is not obliged, the so-called
+necessity of Diomede will oblige him to produce whatever they praise.
+And yet the reasons are utterly ludicrous which they give in
+confirmation of their own notions about the honourable and good. Did
+you ever hear any of them which were not?
+
+No, nor am I likely to hear.
+
+You recognise the truth of what I have been saying? Then let me ask you
+to consider further whether the world will ever be induced to believe
+in the existence of absolute beauty rather than of the many beautiful,
+or of the absolute in each kind rather than of the many in each kind?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Then the world cannot possibly be a philosopher?
+
+Impossible.
+
+And therefore philosophers must inevitably fall under the censure of
+the world?
+
+They must.
+
+And of individuals who consort with the mob and seek to please them?
+
+That is evident.
+
+Then, do you see any way in which the philosopher can be preserved in
+his calling to the end? and remember what we were saying of him, that
+he was to have quickness and memory and courage and magnificence—these
+were admitted by us to be the true philosopher’s gifts.
+
+Yes.
+
+Will not such an one from his early childhood be in all things first
+among all, especially if his bodily endowments are like his mental
+ones?
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+And his friends and fellow-citizens will want to use him as he gets
+older for their own purposes?
+
+No question.
+
+Falling at his feet, they will make requests to him and do him honour
+and flatter him, because they want to get into their hands now, the
+power which he will one day possess.
+
+That often happens, he said.
+
+And what will a man such as he is be likely to do under such
+circumstances, especially if he be a citizen of a great city, rich and
+noble, and a tall proper youth? Will he not be full of boundless
+aspirations, and fancy himself able to manage the affairs of Hellenes
+and of barbarians, and having got such notions into his head will he
+not dilate and elevate himself in the fulness of vain pomp and
+senseless pride?
+
+To be sure he will.
+
+Now, when he is in this state of mind, if some one gently comes to him
+and tells him that he is a fool and must get understanding, which can
+only be got by slaving for it, do you think that, under such adverse
+circumstances, he will be easily induced to listen?
+
+Far otherwise.
+
+And even if there be some one who through inherent goodness or natural
+reasonableness has had his eyes opened a little and is humbled and
+taken captive by philosophy, how will his friends behave when they
+think that they are likely to lose the advantage which they were hoping
+to reap from his companionship? Will they not do and say anything to
+prevent him from yielding to his better nature and to render his
+teacher powerless, using to this end private intrigues as well as
+public prosecutions?
+
+There can be no doubt of it.
+
+And how can one who is thus circumstanced ever become a philosopher?
+
+Impossible.
+
+Then were we not right in saying that even the very qualities which
+make a man a philosopher may, if he be ill-educated, divert him from
+philosophy, no less than riches and their accompaniments and the other
+so-called goods of life?
+
+We were quite right.
+
+Thus, my excellent friend, is brought about all that ruin and failure
+which I have been describing of the natures best adapted to the best of
+all pursuits; they are natures which we maintain to be rare at any
+time; this being the class out of which come the men who are the
+authors of the greatest evil to States and individuals; and also of the
+greatest good when the tide carries them in that direction; but a small
+man never was the doer of any great thing either to individuals or to
+States.
+
+That is most true, he said.
+
+And so philosophy is left desolate, with her marriage rite incomplete:
+for her own have fallen away and forsaken her, and while they are
+leading a false and unbecoming life, other unworthy persons, seeing
+that she has no kinsmen to be her protectors, enter in and dishonour
+her; and fasten upon her the reproaches which, as you say, her
+reprovers utter, who affirm of her votaries that some are good for
+nothing, and that the greater number deserve the severest punishment.
+
+That is certainly what people say.
+
+Yes; and what else would you expect, I said, when you think of the puny
+creatures who, seeing this land open to them—a land well stocked with
+fair names and showy titles—like prisoners running out of prison into a
+sanctuary, take a leap out of their trades into philosophy; those who
+do so being probably the cleverest hands at their own miserable crafts?
+For, although philosophy be in this evil case, still there remains a
+dignity about her which is not to be found in the arts. And many are
+thus attracted by her whose natures are imperfect and whose souls are
+maimed and disfigured by their meannesses, as their bodies are by their
+trades and crafts. Is not this unavoidable?
+
+Yes.
+
+Are they not exactly like a bald little tinker who has just got out of
+durance and come into a fortune; he takes a bath and puts on a new
+coat, and is decked out as a bridegroom going to marry his master’s
+daughter, who is left poor and desolate?
+
+A most exact parallel.
+
+What will be the issue of such marriages? Will they not be vile and
+bastard?
+
+There can be no question of it.
+
+And when persons who are unworthy of education approach philosophy and
+make an alliance with her who is in a rank above them what sort of
+ideas and opinions are likely to be generated? Will they not be
+sophisms captivating to the ear, having nothing in them genuine, or
+worthy of or akin to true wisdom?
+
+No doubt, he said.
+
+Then, Adeimantus, I said, the worthy disciples of philosophy will be
+but a small remnant: perchance some noble and well-educated person,
+detained by exile in her service, who in the absence of corrupting
+influences remains devoted to her; or some lofty soul born in a mean
+city, the politics of which he contemns and neglects; and there may be
+a gifted few who leave the arts, which they justly despise, and come to
+her;—or peradventure there are some who are restrained by our friend
+Theages’ bridle; for everything in the life of Theages conspired to
+divert him from philosophy; but ill-health kept him away from politics.
+My own case of the internal sign is hardly worth mentioning, for
+rarely, if ever, has such a monitor been given to any other man. Those
+who belong to this small class have tasted how sweet and blessed a
+possession philosophy is, and have also seen enough of the madness of
+the multitude; and they know that no politician is honest, nor is there
+any champion of justice at whose side they may fight and be saved. Such
+an one may be compared to a man who has fallen among wild beasts—he
+will not join in the wickedness of his fellows, but neither is he able
+singly to resist all their fierce natures, and therefore seeing that he
+would be of no use to the State or to his friends, and reflecting that
+he would have to throw away his life without doing any good either to
+himself or others, he holds his peace, and goes his own way. He is like
+one who, in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries
+along, retires under the shelter of a wall; and seeing the rest of
+mankind full of wickedness, he is content, if only he can live his own
+life and be pure from evil or unrighteousness, and depart in peace and
+good-will, with bright hopes.
+
+Yes, he said, and he will have done a great work before he departs.
+
+A great work—yes; but not the greatest, unless he find a State suitable
+to him; for in a State which is suitable to him, he will have a larger
+growth and be the saviour of his country, as well as of himself.
+
+The causes why philosophy is in such an evil name have now been
+sufficiently explained: the injustice of the charges against her has
+been shown—is there anything more which you wish to say?
+
+Nothing more on that subject, he replied; but I should like to know
+which of the governments now existing is in your opinion the one
+adapted to her.
+
+Not any of them, I said; and that is precisely the accusation which I
+bring against them—not one of them is worthy of the philosophic nature,
+and hence that nature is warped and estranged;—as the exotic seed which
+is sown in a foreign land becomes denaturalized, and is wont to be
+overpowered and to lose itself in the new soil, even so this growth of
+philosophy, instead of persisting, degenerates and receives another
+character. But if philosophy ever finds in the State that perfection
+which she herself is, then will be seen that she is in truth divine,
+and that all other things, whether natures of men or institutions, are
+but human;—and now, I know, that you are going to ask, What that State
+is:
+
+No, he said; there you are wrong, for I was going to ask another
+question—whether it is the State of which we are the founders and
+inventors, or some other?
+
+Yes, I replied, ours in most respects; but you may remember my saying
+before, that some living authority would always be required in the
+State having the same idea of the constitution which guided you when as
+legislator you were laying down the laws.
+
+That was said, he replied.
+
+Yes, but not in a satisfactory manner; you frightened us by interposing
+objections, which certainly showed that the discussion would be long
+and difficult; and what still remains is the reverse of easy.
+
+What is there remaining?
+
+The question how the study of philosophy may be so ordered as not to be
+the ruin of the State: All great attempts are attended with risk; ‘hard
+is the good,’ as men say.
+
+Still, he said, let the point be cleared up, and the enquiry will then
+be complete.
+
+I shall not be hindered, I said, by any want of will, but, if at all,
+by a want of power: my zeal you may see for yourselves; and please to
+remark in what I am about to say how boldly and unhesitatingly I
+declare that States should pursue philosophy, not as they do now, but
+in a different spirit.
+
+In what manner?
+
+At present, I said, the students of philosophy are quite young;
+beginning when they are hardly past childhood, they devote only the
+time saved from moneymaking and housekeeping to such pursuits; and even
+those of them who are reputed to have most of the philosophic spirit,
+when they come within sight of the great difficulty of the subject, I
+mean dialectic, take themselves off. In after life when invited by some
+one else, they may, perhaps, go and hear a lecture, and about this they
+make much ado, for philosophy is not considered by them to be their
+proper business: at last, when they grow old, in most cases they are
+extinguished more truly than Heracleitus’ sun, inasmuch as they never
+light up again. (Heraclitus said that the sun was extinguished every
+evening and relighted every morning.)
+
+But what ought to be their course?
+
+Just the opposite. In childhood and youth their study, and what
+philosophy they learn, should be suited to their tender years: during
+this period while they are growing up towards manhood, the chief and
+special care should be given to their bodies that they may have them to
+use in the service of philosophy; as life advances and the intellect
+begins to mature, let them increase the gymnastics of the soul; but
+when the strength of our citizens fails and is past civil and military
+duties, then let them range at will and engage in no serious labour, as
+we intend them to live happily here, and to crown this life with a
+similar happiness in another.
+
+How truly in earnest you are, Socrates! he said; I am sure of that; and
+yet most of your hearers, if I am not mistaken, are likely to be still
+more earnest in their opposition to you, and will never be convinced;
+Thrasymachus least of all.
+
+Do not make a quarrel, I said, between Thrasymachus and me, who have
+recently become friends, although, indeed, we were never enemies; for I
+shall go on striving to the utmost until I either convert him and other
+men, or do something which may profit them against the day when they
+live again, and hold the like discourse in another state of existence.
+
+You are speaking of a time which is not very near.
+
+Rather, I replied, of a time which is as nothing in comparison with
+eternity. Nevertheless, I do not wonder that the many refuse to
+believe; for they have never seen that of which we are now speaking
+realized; they have seen only a conventional imitation of philosophy,
+consisting of words artificially brought together, not like these of
+ours having a natural unity. But a human being who in word and work is
+perfectly moulded, as far as he can be, into the proportion and
+likeness of virtue—such a man ruling in a city which bears the same
+image, they have never yet seen, neither one nor many of them—do you
+think that they ever did?
+
+No indeed.
+
+No, my friend, and they have seldom, if ever, heard free and noble
+sentiments; such as men utter when they are earnestly and by every
+means in their power seeking after truth for the sake of knowledge,
+while they look coldly on the subtleties of controversy, of which the
+end is opinion and strife, whether they meet with them in the courts of
+law or in society.
+
+They are strangers, he said, to the words of which you speak.
+
+And this was what we foresaw, and this was the reason why truth forced
+us to admit, not without fear and hesitation, that neither cities nor
+States nor individuals will ever attain perfection until the small
+class of philosophers whom we termed useless but not corrupt are
+providentially compelled, whether they will or not, to take care of the
+State, and until a like necessity be laid on the State to obey them; or
+until kings, or if not kings, the sons of kings or princes, are
+divinely inspired with a true love of true philosophy. That either or
+both of these alternatives are impossible, I see no reason to affirm:
+if they were so, we might indeed be justly ridiculed as dreamers and
+visionaries. Am I not right?
+
+Quite right.
+
+If then, in the countless ages of the past, or at the present hour in
+some foreign clime which is far away and beyond our ken, the perfected
+philosopher is or has been or hereafter shall be compelled by a
+superior power to have the charge of the State, we are ready to assert
+to the death, that this our constitution has been, and is—yea, and will
+be whenever the Muse of Philosophy is queen. There is no impossibility
+in all this; that there is a difficulty, we acknowledge ourselves.
+
+My opinion agrees with yours, he said.
+
+But do you mean to say that this is not the opinion of the multitude?
+
+I should imagine not, he replied.
+
+O my friend, I said, do not attack the multitude: they will change
+their minds, if, not in an aggressive spirit, but gently and with the
+view of soothing them and removing their dislike of over-education, you
+show them your philosophers as they really are and describe as you were
+just now doing their character and profession, and then mankind will
+see that he of whom you are speaking is not such as they supposed—if
+they view him in this new light, they will surely change their notion
+of him, and answer in another strain. Who can be at enmity with one who
+loves them, who that is himself gentle and free from envy will be
+jealous of one in whom there is no jealousy? Nay, let me answer for
+you, that in a few this harsh temper may be found but not in the
+majority of mankind.
+
+I quite agree with you, he said.
+
+And do you not also think, as I do, that the harsh feeling which the
+many entertain towards philosophy originates in the pretenders, who
+rush in uninvited, and are always abusing them, and finding fault with
+them, who make persons instead of things the theme of their
+conversation? and nothing can be more unbecoming in philosophers than
+this.
+
+It is most unbecoming.
+
+For he, Adeimantus, whose mind is fixed upon true being, has surely no
+time to look down upon the affairs of earth, or to be filled with
+malice and envy, contending against men; his eye is ever directed
+towards things fixed and immutable, which he sees neither injuring nor
+injured by one another, but all in order moving according to reason;
+these he imitates, and to these he will, as far as he can, conform
+himself. Can a man help imitating that with which he holds reverential
+converse?
+
+Impossible.
+
+And the philosopher holding converse with the divine order, becomes
+orderly and divine, as far as the nature of man allows; but like every
+one else, he will suffer from detraction.
+
+Of course.
+
+And if a necessity be laid upon him of fashioning, not only himself,
+but human nature generally, whether in States or individuals, into that
+which he beholds elsewhere, will he, think you, be an unskilful
+artificer of justice, temperance, and every civil virtue?
+
+Anything but unskilful.
+
+And if the world perceives that what we are saying about him is the
+truth, will they be angry with philosophy? Will they disbelieve us,
+when we tell them that no State can be happy which is not designed by
+artists who imitate the heavenly pattern?
+
+They will not be angry if they understand, he said. But how will they
+draw out the plan of which you are speaking?
+
+They will begin by taking the State and the manners of men, from which,
+as from a tablet, they will rub out the picture, and leave a clean
+surface. This is no easy task. But whether easy or not, herein will lie
+the difference between them and every other legislator,—they will have
+nothing to do either with individual or State, and will inscribe no
+laws, until they have either found, or themselves made, a clean
+surface.
+
+They will be very right, he said.
+
+Having effected this, they will proceed to trace an outline of the
+constitution?
+
+No doubt.
+
+And when they are filling in the work, as I conceive, they will often
+turn their eyes upwards and downwards: I mean that they will first look
+at absolute justice and beauty and temperance, and again at the human
+copy; and will mingle and temper the various elements of life into the
+image of a man; and this they will conceive according to that other
+image, which, when existing among men, Homer calls the form and
+likeness of God.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+And one feature they will erase, and another they will put in, until
+they have made the ways of men, as far as possible, agreeable to the
+ways of God?
+
+Indeed, he said, in no way could they make a fairer picture.
+
+And now, I said, are we beginning to persuade those whom you described
+as rushing at us with might and main, that the painter of constitutions
+is such an one as we are praising; at whom they were so very indignant
+because to his hands we committed the State; and are they growing a
+little calmer at what they have just heard?
+
+Much calmer, if there is any sense in them.
+
+Why, where can they still find any ground for objection? Will they
+doubt that the philosopher is a lover of truth and being?
+
+They would not be so unreasonable.
+
+Or that his nature, being such as we have delineated, is akin to the
+highest good?
+
+Neither can they doubt this.
+
+But again, will they tell us that such a nature, placed under
+favourable circumstances, will not be perfectly good and wise if any
+ever was? Or will they prefer those whom we have rejected?
+
+Surely not.
+
+Then will they still be angry at our saying, that, until philosophers
+bear rule, States and individuals will have no rest from evil, nor will
+this our imaginary State ever be realized?
+
+I think that they will be less angry.
+
+Shall we assume that they are not only less angry but quite gentle, and
+that they have been converted and for very shame, if for no other
+reason, cannot refuse to come to terms?
+
+By all means, he said.
+
+Then let us suppose that the reconciliation has been effected. Will any
+one deny the other point, that there may be sons of kings or princes
+who are by nature philosophers?
+
+Surely no man, he said.
+
+And when they have come into being will any one say that they must of
+necessity be destroyed; that they can hardly be saved is not denied
+even by us; but that in the whole course of ages no single one of them
+can escape—who will venture to affirm this?
+
+Who indeed!
+
+But, said I, one is enough; let there be one man who has a city
+obedient to his will, and he might bring into existence the ideal
+polity about which the world is so incredulous.
+
+Yes, one is enough.
+
+The ruler may impose the laws and institutions which we have been
+describing, and the citizens may possibly be willing to obey them?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And that others should approve, of what we approve, is no miracle or
+impossibility?
+
+I think not.
+
+But we have sufficiently shown, in what has preceded, that all this, if
+only possible, is assuredly for the best.
+
+We have.
+
+And now we say not only that our laws, if they could be enacted, would
+be for the best, but also that the enactment of them, though difficult,
+is not impossible.
+
+Very good.
+
+And so with pain and toil we have reached the end of one subject, but
+more remains to be discussed;—how and by what studies and pursuits will
+the saviours of the constitution be created, and at what ages are they
+to apply themselves to their several studies?
+
+Certainly.
+
+I omitted the troublesome business of the possession of women, and the
+procreation of children, and the appointment of the rulers, because I
+knew that the perfect State would be eyed with jealousy and was
+difficult of attainment; but that piece of cleverness was not of much
+service to me, for I had to discuss them all the same. The women and
+children are now disposed of, but the other question of the rulers must
+be investigated from the very beginning. We were saying, as you will
+remember, that they were to be lovers of their country, tried by the
+test of pleasures and pains, and neither in hardships, nor in dangers,
+nor at any other critical moment were to lose their patriotism—he was
+to be rejected who failed, but he who always came forth pure, like gold
+tried in the refiner’s fire, was to be made a ruler, and to receive
+honours and rewards in life and after death. This was the sort of thing
+which was being said, and then the argument turned aside and veiled her
+face; not liking to stir the question which has now arisen.
+
+I perfectly remember, he said.
+
+Yes, my friend, I said, and I then shrank from hazarding the bold word;
+but now let me dare to say—that the perfect guardian must be a
+philosopher.
+
+Yes, he said, let that be affirmed.
+
+And do not suppose that there will be many of them; for the gifts which
+were deemed by us to be essential rarely grow together; they are mostly
+found in shreds and patches.
+
+What do you mean? he said.
+
+You are aware, I replied, that quick intelligence, memory, sagacity,
+cleverness, and similar qualities, do not often grow together, and that
+persons who possess them and are at the same time high-spirited and
+magnanimous are not so constituted by nature as to live orderly and in
+a peaceful and settled manner; they are driven any way by their
+impulses, and all solid principle goes out of them.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+On the other hand, those steadfast natures which can better be depended
+upon, which in a battle are impregnable to fear and immovable, are
+equally immovable when there is anything to be learned; they are always
+in a torpid state, and are apt to yawn and go to sleep over any
+intellectual toil.
+
+Quite true.
+
+And yet we were saying that both qualities were necessary in those to
+whom the higher education is to be imparted, and who are to share in
+any office or command.
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+And will they be a class which is rarely found?
+
+Yes, indeed.
+
+Then the aspirant must not only be tested in those labours and dangers
+and pleasures which we mentioned before, but there is another kind of
+probation which we did not mention—he must be exercised also in many
+kinds of knowledge, to see whether the soul will be able to endure the
+highest of all, or will faint under them, as in any other studies and
+exercises.
+
+Yes, he said, you are quite right in testing him. But what do you mean
+by the highest of all knowledge?
+
+You may remember, I said, that we divided the soul into three parts;
+and distinguished the several natures of justice, temperance, courage,
+and wisdom?
+
+Indeed, he said, if I had forgotten, I should not deserve to hear more.
+
+And do you remember the word of caution which preceded the discussion
+of them?
+
+To what do you refer?
+
+We were saying, if I am not mistaken, that he who wanted to see them in
+their perfect beauty must take a longer and more circuitous way, at the
+end of which they would appear; but that we could add on a popular
+exposition of them on a level with the discussion which had preceded.
+And you replied that such an exposition would be enough for you, and so
+the enquiry was continued in what to me seemed to be a very inaccurate
+manner; whether you were satisfied or not, it is for you to say.
+
+Yes, he said, I thought and the others thought that you gave us a fair
+measure of truth.
+
+But, my friend, I said, a measure of such things which in any degree
+falls short of the whole truth is not fair measure; for nothing
+imperfect is the measure of anything, although persons are too apt to
+be contented and think that they need search no further.
+
+Not an uncommon case when people are indolent.
+
+Yes, I said; and there cannot be any worse fault in a guardian of the
+State and of the laws.
+
+True.
+
+The guardian then, I said, must be required to take the longer circuit,
+and toil at learning as well as at gymnastics, or he will never reach
+the highest knowledge of all which, as we were just now saying, is his
+proper calling.
+
+What, he said, is there a knowledge still higher than this—higher than
+justice and the other virtues?
+
+Yes, I said, there is. And of the virtues too we must behold not the
+outline merely, as at present—nothing short of the most finished
+picture should satisfy us. When little things are elaborated with an
+infinity of pains, in order that they may appear in their full beauty
+and utmost clearness, how ridiculous that we should not think the
+highest truths worthy of attaining the highest accuracy!
+
+A right noble thought; but do you suppose that we shall refrain from
+asking you what is this highest knowledge?
+
+Nay, I said, ask if you will; but I am certain that you have heard the
+answer many times, and now you either do not understand me or, as I
+rather think, you are disposed to be troublesome; for you have often
+been told that the idea of good is the highest knowledge, and that all
+other things become useful and advantageous only by their use of this.
+You can hardly be ignorant that of this I was about to speak,
+concerning which, as you have often heard me say, we know so little;
+and, without which, any other knowledge or possession of any kind will
+profit us nothing. Do you think that the possession of all other things
+is of any value if we do not possess the good? or the knowledge of all
+other things if we have no knowledge of beauty and goodness?
+
+Assuredly not.
+
+You are further aware that most people affirm pleasure to be the good,
+but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge?
+
+Yes.
+
+And you are aware too that the latter cannot explain what they mean by
+knowledge, but are obliged after all to say knowledge of the good?
+
+How ridiculous!
+
+Yes, I said, that they should begin by reproaching us with our
+ignorance of the good, and then presume our knowledge of it—for the
+good they define to be knowledge of the good, just as if we understood
+them when they use the term ‘good’—this is of course ridiculous.
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+And those who make pleasure their good are in equal perplexity; for
+they are compelled to admit that there are bad pleasures as well as
+good.
+
+Certainly.
+
+And therefore to acknowledge that bad and good are the same?
+
+True.
+
+There can be no doubt about the numerous difficulties in which this
+question is involved.
+
+There can be none.
+
+Further, do we not see that many are willing to do or to have or to
+seem to be what is just and honourable without the reality; but no one
+is satisfied with the appearance of good—the reality is what they seek;
+in the case of the good, appearance is despised by every one.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Of this then, which every soul of man pursues and makes the end of all
+his actions, having a presentiment that there is such an end, and yet
+hesitating because neither knowing the nature nor having the same
+assurance of this as of other things, and therefore losing whatever
+good there is in other things,—of a principle such and so great as this
+ought the best men in our State, to whom everything is entrusted, to be
+in the darkness of ignorance?
+
+Certainly not, he said.
+
+I am sure, I said, that he who does not know how the beautiful and the
+just are likewise good will be but a sorry guardian of them; and I
+suspect that no one who is ignorant of the good will have a true
+knowledge of them.
+
+That, he said, is a shrewd suspicion of yours.
+
+And if we only have a guardian who has this knowledge our State will be
+perfectly ordered?
+
+Of course, he replied; but I wish that you would tell me whether you
+conceive this supreme principle of the good to be knowledge or
+pleasure, or different from either?
+
+Aye, I said, I knew all along that a fastidious gentleman like you
+would not be contented with the thoughts of other people about these
+matters.
+
+True, Socrates; but I must say that one who like you has passed a
+lifetime in the study of philosophy should not be always repeating the
+opinions of others, and never telling his own.
+
+Well, but has any one a right to say positively what he does not know?
+
+Not, he said, with the assurance of positive certainty; he has no right
+to do that: but he may say what he thinks, as a matter of opinion.
+
+And do you not know, I said, that all mere opinions are bad, and the
+best of them blind? You would not deny that those who have any true
+notion without intelligence are only like blind men who feel their way
+along the road?
+
+Very true.
+
+And do you wish to behold what is blind and crooked and base, when
+others will tell you of brightness and beauty?
+
+Still, I must implore you, Socrates, said Glaucon, not to turn away
+just as you are reaching the goal; if you will only give such an
+explanation of the good as you have already given of justice and
+temperance and the other virtues, we shall be satisfied.
+
+Yes, my friend, and I shall be at least equally satisfied, but I cannot
+help fearing that I shall fail, and that my indiscreet zeal will bring
+ridicule upon me. No, sweet sirs, let us not at present ask what is the
+actual nature of the good, for to reach what is now in my thoughts
+would be an effort too great for me. But of the child of the good who
+is likest him, I would fain speak, if I could be sure that you wished
+to hear—otherwise, not.
+
+By all means, he said, tell us about the child, and you shall remain in
+our debt for the account of the parent.
+
+I do indeed wish, I replied, that I could pay, and you receive, the
+account of the parent, and not, as now, of the offspring only; take,
+however, this latter by way of interest, and at the same time have a
+care that I do not render a false account, although I have no intention
+of deceiving you.
+
+Yes, we will take all the care that we can: proceed.
+
+Yes, I said, but I must first come to an understanding with you, and
+remind you of what I have mentioned in the course of this discussion,
+and at many other times.
+
+What?
+
+The old story, that there is a many beautiful and a many good, and so
+of other things which we describe and define; to all of them the term
+‘many’ is applied.
+
+True, he said.
+
+And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other
+things to which the term ‘many’ is applied there is an absolute; for
+they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of
+each.
+
+Very true.
+
+The many, as we say, are seen but not known, and the ideas are known
+but not seen.
+
+Exactly.
+
+And what is the organ with which we see the visible things?
+
+The sight, he said.
+
+And with the hearing, I said, we hear, and with the other senses
+perceive the other objects of sense?
+
+True.
+
+But have you remarked that sight is by far the most costly and complex
+piece of workmanship which the artificer of the senses ever contrived?
+
+No, I never have, he said.
+
+Then reflect; has the ear or voice need of any third or additional
+nature in order that the one may be able to hear and the other to be
+heard?
+
+Nothing of the sort.
+
+No, indeed, I replied; and the same is true of most, if not all, the
+other senses—you would not say that any of them requires such an
+addition?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+But you see that without the addition of some other nature there is no
+seeing or being seen?
+
+How do you mean?
+
+Sight being, as I conceive, in the eyes, and he who has eyes wanting to
+see; colour being also present in them, still unless there be a third
+nature specially adapted to the purpose, the owner of the eyes will see
+nothing and the colours will be invisible.
+
+Of what nature are you speaking?
+
+Of that which you term light, I replied.
+
+True, he said.
+
+Noble, then, is the bond which links together sight and visibility, and
+great beyond other bonds by no small difference of nature; for light is
+their bond, and light is no ignoble thing?
+
+Nay, he said, the reverse of ignoble.
+
+And which, I said, of the gods in heaven would you say was the lord of
+this element? Whose is that light which makes the eye to see perfectly
+and the visible to appear?
+
+You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say.
+
+May not the relation of sight to this deity be described as follows?
+
+How?
+
+Neither sight nor the eye in which sight resides is the sun?
+
+No.
+
+Yet of all the organs of sense the eye is the most like the sun?
+
+By far the most like.
+
+And the power which the eye possesses is a sort of effluence which is
+dispensed from the sun?
+
+Exactly.
+
+Then the sun is not sight, but the author of sight who is recognised by
+sight?
+
+True, he said.
+
+And this is he whom I call the child of the good, whom the good begat
+in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation to sight
+and the things of sight, what the good is in the intellectual world in
+relation to mind and the things of mind:
+
+Will you be a little more explicit? he said.
+
+Why, you know, I said, that the eyes, when a person directs them
+towards objects on which the light of day is no longer shining, but the
+moon and stars only, see dimly, and are nearly blind; they seem to have
+no clearness of vision in them?
+
+Very true.
+
+But when they are directed towards objects on which the sun shines,
+they see clearly and there is sight in them?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And the soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and
+being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with
+intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of becoming and
+perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and is
+first of one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no
+intelligence?
+
+Just so.
+
+Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to
+the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good, and this you
+will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the
+latter becomes the subject of knowledge; beautiful too, as are both
+truth and knowledge, you will be right in esteeming this other nature
+as more beautiful than either; and, as in the previous instance, light
+and sight may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not to be the
+sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be deemed to be
+like the good, but not the good; the good has a place of honour yet
+higher.
+
+What a wonder of beauty that must be, he said, which is the author of
+science and truth, and yet surpasses them in beauty; for you surely
+cannot mean to say that pleasure is the good?
+
+God forbid, I replied; but may I ask you to consider the image in
+another point of view?
+
+In what point of view?
+
+You would say, would you not, that the sun is not only the author of
+visibility in all visible things, but of generation and nourishment and
+growth, though he himself is not generation?
+
+Certainly.
+
+In like manner the good may be said to be not only the author of
+knowledge to all things known, but of their being and essence, and yet
+the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power.
+
+Glaucon said, with a ludicrous earnestness: By the light of heaven, how
+amazing!
+
+Yes, I said, and the exaggeration may be set down to you; for you made
+me utter my fancies.
+
+And pray continue to utter them; at any rate let us hear if there is
+anything more to be said about the similitude of the sun.
+
+Yes, I said, there is a great deal more.
+
+Then omit nothing, however slight.
+
+I will do my best, I said; but I should think that a great deal will
+have to be omitted.
+
+I hope not, he said.
+
+You have to imagine, then, that there are two ruling powers, and that
+one of them is set over the intellectual world, the other over the
+visible. I do not say heaven, lest you should fancy that I am playing
+upon the name (‘ourhanoz, orhatoz’). May I suppose that you have this
+distinction of the visible and intelligible fixed in your mind?
+
+I have.
+
+Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal parts, and divide
+each of them again in the same proportion, and suppose the two main
+divisions to answer, one to the visible and the other to the
+intelligible, and then compare the subdivisions in respect of their
+clearness and want of clearness, and you will find that the first
+section in the sphere of the visible consists of images. And by images
+I mean, in the first place, shadows, and in the second place,
+reflections in water and in solid, smooth and polished bodies and the
+like: Do you understand?
+
+Yes, I understand.
+
+Imagine, now, the other section, of which this is only the resemblance,
+to include the animals which we see, and everything that grows or is
+made.
+
+Very good.
+
+Would you not admit that both the sections of this division have
+different degrees of truth, and that the copy is to the original as the
+sphere of opinion is to the sphere of knowledge?
+
+Most undoubtedly.
+
+Next proceed to consider the manner in which the sphere of the
+intellectual is to be divided.
+
+In what manner?
+
+Thus:—There are two subdivisions, in the lower of which the soul uses
+the figures given by the former division as images; the enquiry can
+only be hypothetical, and instead of going upwards to a principle
+descends to the other end; in the higher of the two, the soul passes
+out of hypotheses, and goes up to a principle which is above
+hypotheses, making no use of images as in the former case, but
+proceeding only in and through the ideas themselves.
+
+I do not quite understand your meaning, he said.
+
+Then I will try again; you will understand me better when I have made
+some preliminary remarks. You are aware that students of geometry,
+arithmetic, and the kindred sciences assume the odd and the even and
+the figures and three kinds of angles and the like in their several
+branches of science; these are their hypotheses, which they and every
+body are supposed to know, and therefore they do not deign to give any
+account of them either to themselves or others; but they begin with
+them, and go on until they arrive at last, and in a consistent manner,
+at their conclusion?
+
+Yes, he said, I know.
+
+And do you not know also that although they make use of the visible
+forms and reason about them, they are thinking not of these, but of the
+ideals which they resemble; not of the figures which they draw, but of
+the absolute square and the absolute diameter, and so on—the forms
+which they draw or make, and which have shadows and reflections in
+water of their own, are converted by them into images, but they are
+really seeking to behold the things themselves, which can only be seen
+with the eye of the mind?
+
+That is true.
+
+And of this kind I spoke as the intelligible, although in the search
+after it the soul is compelled to use hypotheses; not ascending to a
+first principle, because she is unable to rise above the region of
+hypothesis, but employing the objects of which the shadows below are
+resemblances in their turn as images, they having in relation to the
+shadows and reflections of them a greater distinctness, and therefore a
+higher value.
+
+I understand, he said, that you are speaking of the province of
+geometry and the sister arts.
+
+And when I speak of the other division of the intelligible, you will
+understand me to speak of that other sort of knowledge which reason
+herself attains by the power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as
+first principles, but only as hypotheses—that is to say, as steps and
+points of departure into a world which is above hypotheses, in order
+that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole; and
+clinging to this and then to that which depends on this, by successive
+steps she descends again without the aid of any sensible object, from
+ideas, through ideas, and in ideas she ends.
+
+I understand you, he replied; not perfectly, for you seem to me to be
+describing a task which is really tremendous; but, at any rate, I
+understand you to say that knowledge and being, which the science of
+dialectic contemplates, are clearer than the notions of the arts, as
+they are termed, which proceed from hypotheses only: these are also
+contemplated by the understanding, and not by the senses: yet, because
+they start from hypotheses and do not ascend to a principle, those who
+contemplate them appear to you not to exercise the higher reason upon
+them, although when a first principle is added to them they are
+cognizable by the higher reason. And the habit which is concerned with
+geometry and the cognate sciences I suppose that you would term
+understanding and not reason, as being intermediate between opinion and
+reason.
+
+You have quite conceived my meaning, I said; and now, corresponding to
+these four divisions, let there be four faculties in the soul—reason
+answering to the highest, understanding to the second, faith (or
+conviction) to the third, and perception of shadows to the last—and let
+there be a scale of them, and let us suppose that the several faculties
+have clearness in the same degree that their objects have truth.
+
+I understand, he replied, and give my assent, and accept your
+arrangement.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK VII.
+
+
+And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is
+enlightened or unenlightened:—Behold! human beings living in a
+underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching
+all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have
+their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see
+before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their
+heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and
+between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will
+see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which
+marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the
+puppets.
+
+I see.
+
+And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts
+of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone
+and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are
+talking, others silent.
+
+You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
+
+Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the
+shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of
+the cave?
+
+True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were
+never allowed to move their heads?
+
+And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would
+only see the shadows?
+
+Yes, he said.
+
+And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not
+suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?
+
+Very true.
+
+And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the
+other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by
+spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
+
+No question, he replied.
+
+To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows
+of the images.
+
+That is certain.
+
+And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners
+are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them
+is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round
+and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the
+glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of
+which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive
+some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but
+that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned
+towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision,—what will be his
+reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to
+the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them,—will he not be
+perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are
+truer than the objects which are now shown to him?
+
+Far truer.
+
+And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have
+a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the
+objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in
+reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?
+
+True, he said.
+
+And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and
+rugged ascent, and held fast until he is forced into the presence of
+the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he
+approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able
+to see anything at all of what are now called realities.
+
+Not all in a moment, he said.
+
+He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And
+first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and
+other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he
+will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled
+heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the
+sun or the light of the sun by day?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of
+him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not
+in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.
+
+Certainly.
+
+He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and
+the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and
+in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have
+been accustomed to behold?
+
+Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.
+
+And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den
+and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate
+himself on the change, and pity them?
+
+Certainly, he would.
+
+And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on
+those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark
+which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were
+together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to
+the future, do you think that he would care for such honours and
+glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,
+
+‘Better to be the poor servant of a poor master,’
+
+and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after
+their manner?
+
+Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than
+entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.
+
+Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun
+to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have
+his eyes full of darkness?
+
+To be sure, he said.
+
+And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the
+shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while
+his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and
+the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might
+be very considerable), would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him
+that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was
+better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose
+another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender,
+and they would put him to death.
+
+No question, he said.
+
+This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the
+previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of
+the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret
+the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual
+world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have
+expressed—whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or
+false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good
+appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen,
+is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and
+right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world,
+and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and
+that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in
+public or private life must have his eye fixed.
+
+I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.
+
+Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this
+beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their
+souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to
+dwell; which desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be
+trusted.
+
+Yes, very natural.
+
+And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine
+contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a
+ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has
+become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight
+in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows
+of images of justice, and is endeavouring to meet the conceptions of
+those who have never yet seen absolute justice?
+
+Anything but surprising, he replied.
+
+Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of
+the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from
+coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of
+the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who
+remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak,
+will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of
+man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because
+unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is
+dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his
+condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he
+have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light,
+there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him
+who returns from above out of the light into the den.
+
+That, he said, is a very just distinction.
+
+But then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong
+when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not
+there before, like sight into blind eyes.
+
+They undoubtedly say this, he replied.
+
+Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning
+exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn
+from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of
+knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the
+world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure
+the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other
+words, of the good.
+
+Very true.
+
+And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the
+easiest and quickest manner; not implanting the faculty of sight, for
+that exists already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is
+looking away from the truth?
+
+Yes, he said, such an art may be presumed.
+
+And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to
+bodily qualities, for even when they are not originally innate they can
+be implanted later by habit and exercise, the virtue of wisdom more
+than anything else contains a divine element which always remains, and
+by this conversion is rendered useful and profitable; or, on the other
+hand, hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow
+intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue—how eager he
+is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the
+reverse of blind, but his keen eye-sight is forced into the service of
+evil, and he is mischievous in proportion to his cleverness?
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days
+of their youth; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures,
+such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached
+to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of
+their souls upon the things that are below—if, I say, they had been
+released from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction,
+the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as
+they see what their eyes are turned to now.
+
+Very likely.
+
+Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely, or rather a
+necessary inference from what has preceded, that neither the uneducated
+and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of
+their education, will be able ministers of State; not the former,
+because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of all their
+actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will
+not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already
+dwelling apart in the islands of the blest.
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will
+be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have
+already shown to be the greatest of all—they must continue to ascend
+until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen
+enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be
+allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the
+den, and partake of their labours and honours, whether they are worth
+having or not.
+
+But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life,
+when they might have a better?
+
+You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the
+legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy
+above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held
+the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them
+benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to
+this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his
+instruments in binding up the State.
+
+True, he said, I had forgotten.
+
+Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our
+philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain
+to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to
+share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow
+up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have
+them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude
+for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you
+into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the
+other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly
+than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the
+double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down
+to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the
+dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times
+better than the inhabitants of the den, and you will know what the
+several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the
+beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State, which
+is also yours, will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be
+administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men
+fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the
+struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the
+truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to
+govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in
+which they are most eager, the worst.
+
+Quite true, he replied.
+
+And will our pupils, when they hear this, refuse to take their turn at
+the toils of State, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of
+their time with one another in the heavenly light?
+
+Impossible, he answered; for they are just men, and the commands which
+we impose upon them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of
+them will take office as a stern necessity, and not after the fashion
+of our present rulers of State.
+
+Yes, my friend, I said; and there lies the point. You must contrive for
+your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and
+then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which
+offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold,
+but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life. Whereas
+if they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and hungering
+after their own private advantage, thinking that hence they are to
+snatch the chief good, order there can never be; for they will be
+fighting about office, and the civil and domestic broils which thus
+arise will be the ruin of the rulers themselves and of the whole State.
+
+Most true, he replied.
+
+And the only life which looks down upon the life of political ambition
+is that of true philosophy. Do you know of any other?
+
+Indeed, I do not, he said.
+
+And those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they
+are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight.
+
+No question.
+
+Who then are those whom we shall compel to be guardians? Surely they
+will be the men who are wisest about affairs of State, and by whom the
+State is best administered, and who at the same time have other honours
+and another and a better life than that of politics?
+
+They are the men, and I will choose them, he replied.
+
+And now shall we consider in what way such guardians will be produced,
+and how they are to be brought from darkness to light,—as some are said
+to have ascended from the world below to the gods?
+
+By all means, he replied.
+
+The process, I said, is not the turning over of an oyster-shell (In
+allusion to a game in which two parties fled or pursued according as an
+oyster-shell which was thrown into the air fell with the dark or light
+side uppermost.), but the turning round of a soul passing from a day
+which is little better than night to the true day of being, that is,
+the ascent from below, which we affirm to be true philosophy?
+
+Quite so.
+
+And should we not enquire what sort of knowledge has the power of
+effecting such a change?
+
+Certainly.
+
+What sort of knowledge is there which would draw the soul from becoming
+to being? And another consideration has just occurred to me: You will
+remember that our young men are to be warrior athletes?
+
+Yes, that was said.
+
+Then this new kind of knowledge must have an additional quality?
+
+What quality?
+
+Usefulness in war.
+
+Yes, if possible.
+
+There were two parts in our former scheme of education, were there not?
+
+Just so.
+
+There was gymnastic which presided over the growth and decay of the
+body, and may therefore be regarded as having to do with generation and
+corruption?
+
+True.
+
+Then that is not the knowledge which we are seeking to discover?
+
+No.
+
+But what do you say of music, which also entered to a certain extent
+into our former scheme?
+
+Music, he said, as you will remember, was the counterpart of gymnastic,
+and trained the guardians by the influences of habit, by harmony making
+them harmonious, by rhythm rhythmical, but not giving them science; and
+the words, whether fabulous or possibly true, had kindred elements of
+rhythm and harmony in them. But in music there was nothing which tended
+to that good which you are now seeking.
+
+You are most accurate, I said, in your recollection; in music there
+certainly was nothing of the kind. But what branch of knowledge is
+there, my dear Glaucon, which is of the desired nature; since all the
+useful arts were reckoned mean by us?
+
+Undoubtedly; and yet if music and gymnastic are excluded, and the arts
+are also excluded, what remains?
+
+Well, I said, there may be nothing left of our special subjects; and
+then we shall have to take something which is not special, but of
+universal application.
+
+What may that be?
+
+A something which all arts and sciences and intelligences use in
+common, and which every one first has to learn among the elements of
+education.
+
+What is that?
+
+The little matter of distinguishing one, two, and three—in a word,
+number and calculation:—do not all arts and sciences necessarily
+partake of them?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then the art of war partakes of them?
+
+To be sure.
+
+Then Palamedes, whenever he appears in tragedy, proves Agamemnon
+ridiculously unfit to be a general. Did you never remark how he
+declares that he had invented number, and had numbered the ships and
+set in array the ranks of the army at Troy; which implies that they had
+never been numbered before, and Agamemnon must be supposed literally to
+have been incapable of counting his own feet—how could he if he was
+ignorant of number? And if that is true, what sort of general must he
+have been?
+
+I should say a very strange one, if this was as you say.
+
+Can we deny that a warrior should have a knowledge of arithmetic?
+
+Certainly he should, if he is to have the smallest understanding of
+military tactics, or indeed, I should rather say, if he is to be a man
+at all.
+
+I should like to know whether you have the same notion which I have of
+this study?
+
+What is your notion?
+
+It appears to me to be a study of the kind which we are seeking, and
+which leads naturally to reflection, but never to have been rightly
+used; for the true use of it is simply to draw the soul towards being.
+
+Will you explain your meaning? he said.
+
+I will try, I said; and I wish you would share the enquiry with me, and
+say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when I attempt to distinguish in my own mind what
+branches of knowledge have this attracting power, in order that we may
+have clearer proof that arithmetic is, as I suspect, one of them.
+
+Explain, he said.
+
+I mean to say that objects of sense are of two kinds; some of them do
+not invite thought because the sense is an adequate judge of them;
+while in the case of other objects sense is so untrustworthy that
+further enquiry is imperatively demanded.
+
+You are clearly referring, he said, to the manner in which the senses
+are imposed upon by distance, and by painting in light and shade.
+
+No, I said, that is not at all my meaning.
+
+Then what is your meaning?
+
+When speaking of uninviting objects, I mean those which do not pass
+from one sensation to the opposite; inviting objects are those which
+do; in this latter case the sense coming upon the object, whether at a
+distance or near, gives no more vivid idea of anything in particular
+than of its opposite. An illustration will make my meaning
+clearer:—here are three fingers—a little finger, a second finger, and a
+middle finger.
+
+Very good.
+
+You may suppose that they are seen quite close: And here comes the
+point.
+
+What is it?
+
+Each of them equally appears a finger, whether seen in the middle or at
+the extremity, whether white or black, or thick or thin—it makes no
+difference; a finger is a finger all the same. In these cases a man is
+not compelled to ask of thought the question what is a finger? for the
+sight never intimates to the mind that a finger is other than a finger.
+
+True.
+
+And therefore, I said, as we might expect, there is nothing here which
+invites or excites intelligence.
+
+There is not, he said.
+
+But is this equally true of the greatness and smallness of the fingers?
+Can sight adequately perceive them? and is no difference made by the
+circumstance that one of the fingers is in the middle and another at
+the extremity? And in like manner does the touch adequately perceive
+the qualities of thickness or thinness, of softness or hardness? And so
+of the other senses; do they give perfect intimations of such matters?
+Is not their mode of operation on this wise—the sense which is
+concerned with the quality of hardness is necessarily concerned also
+with the quality of softness, and only intimates to the soul that the
+same thing is felt to be both hard and soft?
+
+You are quite right, he said.
+
+And must not the soul be perplexed at this intimation which the sense
+gives of a hard which is also soft? What, again, is the meaning of
+light and heavy, if that which is light is also heavy, and that which
+is heavy, light?
+
+Yes, he said, these intimations which the soul receives are very
+curious and require to be explained.
+
+Yes, I said, and in these perplexities the soul naturally summons to
+her aid calculation and intelligence, that she may see whether the
+several objects announced to her are one or two.
+
+True.
+
+And if they turn out to be two, is not each of them one and different?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And if each is one, and both are two, she will conceive the two as in a
+state of division, for if there were undivided they could only be
+conceived of as one?
+
+True.
+
+The eye certainly did see both small and great, but only in a confused
+manner; they were not distinguished.
+
+Yes.
+
+Whereas the thinking mind, intending to light up the chaos, was
+compelled to reverse the process, and look at small and great as
+separate and not confused.
+
+Very true.
+
+Was not this the beginning of the enquiry ‘What is great?’ and ‘What is
+small?’
+
+Exactly so.
+
+And thus arose the distinction of the visible and the intelligible.
+
+Most true.
+
+This was what I meant when I spoke of impressions which invited the
+intellect, or the reverse—those which are simultaneous with opposite
+impressions, invite thought; those which are not simultaneous do not.
+
+I understand, he said, and agree with you.
+
+And to which class do unity and number belong?
+
+I do not know, he replied.
+
+Think a little and you will see that what has preceded will supply the
+answer; for if simple unity could be adequately perceived by the sight
+or by any other sense, then, as we were saying in the case of the
+finger, there would be nothing to attract towards being; but when there
+is some contradiction always present, and one is the reverse of one and
+involves the conception of plurality, then thought begins to be aroused
+within us, and the soul perplexed and wanting to arrive at a decision
+asks ‘What is absolute unity?’ This is the way in which the study of
+the one has a power of drawing and converting the mind to the
+contemplation of true being.
+
+And surely, he said, this occurs notably in the case of one; for we see
+the same thing to be both one and infinite in multitude?
+
+Yes, I said; and this being true of one must be equally true of all
+number?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And all arithmetic and calculation have to do with number?
+
+Yes.
+
+And they appear to lead the mind towards truth?
+
+Yes, in a very remarkable manner.
+
+Then this is knowledge of the kind for which we are seeking, having a
+double use, military and philosophical; for the man of war must learn
+the art of number or he will not know how to array his troops, and the
+philosopher also, because he has to rise out of the sea of change and
+lay hold of true being, and therefore he must be an arithmetician.
+
+That is true.
+
+And our guardian is both warrior and philosopher?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then this is a kind of knowledge which legislation may fitly prescribe;
+and we must endeavour to persuade those who are to be the principal men
+of our State to go and learn arithmetic, not as amateurs, but they must
+carry on the study until they see the nature of numbers with the mind
+only; nor again, like merchants or retail-traders, with a view to
+buying or selling, but for the sake of their military use, and of the
+soul herself; and because this will be the easiest way for her to pass
+from becoming to truth and being.
+
+That is excellent, he said.
+
+Yes, I said, and now having spoken of it, I must add how charming the
+science is! and in how many ways it conduces to our desired end, if
+pursued in the spirit of a philosopher, and not of a shopkeeper!
+
+How do you mean?
+
+I mean, as I was saying, that arithmetic has a very great and elevating
+effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and
+rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into
+the argument. You know how steadily the masters of the art repel and
+ridicule any one who attempts to divide absolute unity when he is
+calculating, and if you divide, they multiply (Meaning either (1) that
+they integrate the number because they deny the possibility of
+fractions; or (2) that division is regarded by them as a process of
+multiplication, for the fractions of one continue to be units.), taking
+care that one shall continue one and not become lost in fractions.
+
+That is very true.
+
+Now, suppose a person were to say to them: O my friends, what are these
+wonderful numbers about which you are reasoning, in which, as you say,
+there is a unity such as you demand, and each unit is equal,
+invariable, indivisible,—what would they answer?
+
+They would answer, as I should conceive, that they were speaking of
+those numbers which can only be realized in thought.
+
+Then you see that this knowledge may be truly called necessary,
+necessitating as it clearly does the use of the pure intelligence in
+the attainment of pure truth?
+
+Yes; that is a marked characteristic of it.
+
+And have you further observed, that those who have a natural talent for
+calculation are generally quick at every other kind of knowledge; and
+even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they
+may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than
+they would otherwise have been.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+And indeed, you will not easily find a more difficult study, and not
+many as difficult.
+
+You will not.
+
+And, for all these reasons, arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which
+the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up.
+
+I agree.
+
+Let this then be made one of our subjects of education. And next, shall
+we enquire whether the kindred science also concerns us?
+
+You mean geometry?
+
+Exactly so.
+
+Clearly, he said, we are concerned with that part of geometry which
+relates to war; for in pitching a camp, or taking up a position, or
+closing or extending the lines of an army, or any other military
+manoeuvre, whether in actual battle or on a march, it will make all the
+difference whether a general is or is not a geometrician.
+
+Yes, I said, but for that purpose a very little of either geometry or
+calculation will be enough; the question relates rather to the greater
+and more advanced part of geometry—whether that tends in any degree to
+make more easy the vision of the idea of good; and thither, as I was
+saying, all things tend which compel the soul to turn her gaze towards
+that place, where is the full perfection of being, which she ought, by
+all means, to behold.
+
+True, he said.
+
+Then if geometry compels us to view being, it concerns us; if becoming
+only, it does not concern us?
+
+Yes, that is what we assert.
+
+Yet anybody who has the least acquaintance with geometry will not deny
+that such a conception of the science is in flat contradiction to the
+ordinary language of geometricians.
+
+How so?
+
+They have in view practice only, and are always speaking, in a narrow
+and ridiculous manner, of squaring and extending and applying and the
+like—they confuse the necessities of geometry with those of daily life;
+whereas knowledge is the real object of the whole science.
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+Then must not a further admission be made?
+
+What admission?
+
+That the knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal,
+and not of aught perishing and transient.
+
+That, he replied, may be readily allowed, and is true.
+
+Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul towards truth, and
+create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now
+unhappily allowed to fall down.
+
+Nothing will be more likely to have such an effect.
+
+Then nothing should be more sternly laid down than that the inhabitants
+of your fair city should by all means learn geometry. Moreover the
+science has indirect effects, which are not small.
+
+Of what kind? he said.
+
+There are the military advantages of which you spoke, I said; and in
+all departments of knowledge, as experience proves, any one who has
+studied geometry is infinitely quicker of apprehension than one who has
+not.
+
+Yes indeed, he said, there is an infinite difference between them.
+
+Then shall we propose this as a second branch of knowledge which our
+youth will study?
+
+Let us do so, he replied.
+
+And suppose we make astronomy the third—what do you say?
+
+I am strongly inclined to it, he said; the observation of the seasons
+and of months and years is as essential to the general as it is to the
+farmer or sailor.
+
+I am amused, I said, at your fear of the world, which makes you guard
+against the appearance of insisting upon useless studies; and I quite
+admit the difficulty of believing that in every man there is an eye of
+the soul which, when by other pursuits lost and dimmed, is by these
+purified and re-illumined; and is more precious far than ten thousand
+bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen. Now there are two classes
+of persons: one class of those who will agree with you and will take
+your words as a revelation; another class to whom they will be utterly
+unmeaning, and who will naturally deem them to be idle tales, for they
+see no sort of profit which is to be obtained from them. And therefore
+you had better decide at once with which of the two you are proposing
+to argue. You will very likely say with neither, and that your chief
+aim in carrying on the argument is your own improvement; at the same
+time you do not grudge to others any benefit which they may receive.
+
+I think that I should prefer to carry on the argument mainly on my own
+behalf.
+
+Then take a step backward, for we have gone wrong in the order of the
+sciences.
+
+What was the mistake? he said.
+
+After plane geometry, I said, we proceeded at once to solids in
+revolution, instead of taking solids in themselves; whereas after the
+second dimension the third, which is concerned with cubes and
+dimensions of depth, ought to have followed.
+
+That is true, Socrates; but so little seems to be known as yet about
+these subjects.
+
+Why, yes, I said, and for two reasons:—in the first place, no
+government patronises them; this leads to a want of energy in the
+pursuit of them, and they are difficult; in the second place, students
+cannot learn them unless they have a director. But then a director can
+hardly be found, and even if he could, as matters now stand, the
+students, who are very conceited, would not attend to him. That,
+however, would be otherwise if the whole State became the director of
+these studies and gave honour to them; then disciples would want to
+come, and there would be continuous and earnest search, and discoveries
+would be made; since even now, disregarded as they are by the world,
+and maimed of their fair proportions, and although none of their
+votaries can tell the use of them, still these studies force their way
+by their natural charm, and very likely, if they had the help of the
+State, they would some day emerge into light.
+
+Yes, he said, there is a remarkable charm in them. But I do not clearly
+understand the change in the order. First you began with a geometry of
+plane surfaces?
+
+Yes, I said.
+
+And you placed astronomy next, and then you made a step backward?
+
+Yes, and I have delayed you by my hurry; the ludicrous state of solid
+geometry, which, in natural order, should have followed, made me pass
+over this branch and go on to astronomy, or motion of solids.
+
+True, he said.
+
+Then assuming that the science now omitted would come into existence if
+encouraged by the State, let us go on to astronomy, which will be
+fourth.
+
+The right order, he replied. And now, Socrates, as you rebuked the
+vulgar manner in which I praised astronomy before, my praise shall be
+given in your own spirit. For every one, as I think, must see that
+astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world
+to another.
+
+Every one but myself, I said; to every one else this may be clear, but
+not to me.
+
+And what then would you say?
+
+I should rather say that those who elevate astronomy into philosophy
+appear to me to make us look downwards and not upwards.
+
+What do you mean? he asked.
+
+You, I replied, have in your mind a truly sublime conception of our
+knowledge of the things above. And I dare say that if a person were to
+throw his head back and study the fretted ceiling, you would still
+think that his mind was the percipient, and not his eyes. And you are
+very likely right, and I may be a simpleton: but, in my opinion, that
+knowledge only which is of being and of the unseen can make the soul
+look upwards, and whether a man gapes at the heavens or blinks on the
+ground, seeking to learn some particular of sense, I would deny that he
+can learn, for nothing of that sort is matter of science; his soul is
+looking downwards, not upwards, whether his way to knowledge is by
+water or by land, whether he floats, or only lies on his back.
+
+I acknowledge, he said, the justice of your rebuke. Still, I should
+like to ascertain how astronomy can be learned in any manner more
+conducive to that knowledge of which we are speaking?
+
+I will tell you, I said: The starry heaven which we behold is wrought
+upon a visible ground, and therefore, although the fairest and most
+perfect of visible things, must necessarily be deemed inferior far to
+the true motions of absolute swiftness and absolute slowness, which are
+relative to each other, and carry with them that which is contained in
+them, in the true number and in every true figure. Now, these are to be
+apprehended by reason and intelligence, but not by sight.
+
+True, he replied.
+
+The spangled heavens should be used as a pattern and with a view to
+that higher knowledge; their beauty is like the beauty of figures or
+pictures excellently wrought by the hand of Daedalus, or some other
+great artist, which we may chance to behold; any geometrician who saw
+them would appreciate the exquisiteness of their workmanship, but he
+would never dream of thinking that in them he could find the true equal
+or the true double, or the truth of any other proportion.
+
+No, he replied, such an idea would be ridiculous.
+
+And will not a true astronomer have the same feeling when he looks at
+the movements of the stars? Will he not think that heaven and the
+things in heaven are framed by the Creator of them in the most perfect
+manner? But he will never imagine that the proportions of night and
+day, or of both to the month, or of the month to the year, or of the
+stars to these and to one another, and any other things that are
+material and visible can also be eternal and subject to no
+deviation—that would be absurd; and it is equally absurd to take so
+much pains in investigating their exact truth.
+
+I quite agree, though I never thought of this before.
+
+Then, I said, in astronomy, as in geometry, we should employ problems,
+and let the heavens alone if we would approach the subject in the right
+way and so make the natural gift of reason to be of any real use.
+
+That, he said, is a work infinitely beyond our present astronomers.
+
+Yes, I said; and there are many other things which must also have a
+similar extension given to them, if our legislation is to be of any
+value. But can you tell me of any other suitable study?
+
+No, he said, not without thinking.
+
+Motion, I said, has many forms, and not one only; two of them are
+obvious enough even to wits no better than ours; and there are others,
+as I imagine, which may be left to wiser persons.
+
+But where are the two?
+
+There is a second, I said, which is the counterpart of the one already
+named.
+
+And what may that be?
+
+The second, I said, would seem relatively to the ears to be what the
+first is to the eyes; for I conceive that as the eyes are designed to
+look up at the stars, so are the ears to hear harmonious motions; and
+these are sister sciences—as the Pythagoreans say, and we, Glaucon,
+agree with them?
+
+Yes, he replied.
+
+But this, I said, is a laborious study, and therefore we had better go
+and learn of them; and they will tell us whether there are any other
+applications of these sciences. At the same time, we must not lose
+sight of our own higher object.
+
+What is that?
+
+There is a perfection which all knowledge ought to reach, and which our
+pupils ought also to attain, and not to fall short of, as I was saying
+that they did in astronomy. For in the science of harmony, as you
+probably know, the same thing happens. The teachers of harmony compare
+the sounds and consonances which are heard only, and their labour, like
+that of the astronomers, is in vain.
+
+Yes, by heaven! he said; and ’tis as good as a play to hear them
+talking about their condensed notes, as they call them; they put their
+ears close alongside of the strings like persons catching a sound from
+their neighbour’s wall—one set of them declaring that they distinguish
+an intermediate note and have found the least interval which should be
+the unit of measurement; the others insisting that the two sounds have
+passed into the same—either party setting their ears before their
+understanding.
+
+You mean, I said, those gentlemen who tease and torture the strings and
+rack them on the pegs of the instrument: I might carry on the metaphor
+and speak after their manner of the blows which the plectrum gives, and
+make accusations against the strings, both of backwardness and
+forwardness to sound; but this would be tedious, and therefore I will
+only say that these are not the men, and that I am referring to the
+Pythagoreans, of whom I was just now proposing to enquire about
+harmony. For they too are in error, like the astronomers; they
+investigate the numbers of the harmonies which are heard, but they
+never attain to problems—that is to say, they never reach the natural
+harmonies of number, or reflect why some numbers are harmonious and
+others not.
+
+That, he said, is a thing of more than mortal knowledge.
+
+A thing, I replied, which I would rather call useful; that is, if
+sought after with a view to the beautiful and good; but if pursued in
+any other spirit, useless.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Now, when all these studies reach the point of inter-communion and
+connection with one another, and come to be considered in their mutual
+affinities, then, I think, but not till then, will the pursuit of them
+have a value for our objects; otherwise there is no profit in them.
+
+I suspect so; but you are speaking, Socrates, of a vast work.
+
+What do you mean? I said; the prelude or what? Do you not know that all
+this is but the prelude to the actual strain which we have to learn?
+For you surely would not regard the skilled mathematician as a
+dialectician?
+
+Assuredly not, he said; I have hardly ever known a mathematician who
+was capable of reasoning.
+
+But do you imagine that men who are unable to give and take a reason
+will have the knowledge which we require of them?
+
+Neither can this be supposed.
+
+And so, Glaucon, I said, we have at last arrived at the hymn of
+dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but
+which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate; for
+sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold
+the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself. And so
+with dialectic; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute
+by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and
+perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of
+the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the
+intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible.
+
+Exactly, he said.
+
+Then this is the progress which you call dialectic?
+
+True.
+
+But the release of the prisoners from chains, and their translation
+from the shadows to the images and to the light, and the ascent from
+the underground den to the sun, while in his presence they are vainly
+trying to look on animals and plants and the light of the sun, but are
+able to perceive even with their weak eyes the images in the water
+(which are divine), and are the shadows of true existence (not shadows
+of images cast by a light of fire, which compared with the sun is only
+an image)—this power of elevating the highest principle in the soul to
+the contemplation of that which is best in existence, with which we may
+compare the raising of that faculty which is the very light of the body
+to the sight of that which is brightest in the material and visible
+world—this power is given, as I was saying, by all that study and
+pursuit of the arts which has been described.
+
+I agree in what you are saying, he replied, which may be hard to
+believe, yet, from another point of view, is harder still to deny.
+This, however, is not a theme to be treated of in passing only, but
+will have to be discussed again and again. And so, whether our
+conclusion be true or false, let us assume all this, and proceed at
+once from the prelude or preamble to the chief strain (A play upon the
+Greek word, which means both ‘law’ and ‘strain.’), and describe that in
+like manner. Say, then, what is the nature and what are the divisions
+of dialectic, and what are the paths which lead thither; for these
+paths will also lead to our final rest.
+
+Dear Glaucon, I said, you will not be able to follow me here, though I
+would do my best, and you should behold not an image only but the
+absolute truth, according to my notion. Whether what I told you would
+or would not have been a reality I cannot venture to say; but you would
+have seen something like reality; of that I am confident.
+
+Doubtless, he replied.
+
+But I must also remind you, that the power of dialectic alone can
+reveal this, and only to one who is a disciple of the previous
+sciences.
+
+Of that assertion you may be as confident as of the last.
+
+And assuredly no one will argue that there is any other method of
+comprehending by any regular process all true existence or of
+ascertaining what each thing is in its own nature; for the arts in
+general are concerned with the desires or opinions of men, or are
+cultivated with a view to production and construction, or for the
+preservation of such productions and constructions; and as to the
+mathematical sciences which, as we were saying, have some apprehension
+of true being—geometry and the like—they only dream about being, but
+never can they behold the waking reality so long as they leave the
+hypotheses which they use unexamined, and are unable to give an account
+of them. For when a man knows not his own first principle, and when the
+conclusion and intermediate steps are also constructed out of he knows
+not what, how can he imagine that such a fabric of convention can ever
+become science?
+
+Impossible, he said.
+
+Then dialectic, and dialectic alone, goes directly to the first
+principle and is the only science which does away with hypotheses in
+order to make her ground secure; the eye of the soul, which is
+literally buried in an outlandish slough, is by her gentle aid lifted
+upwards; and she uses as handmaids and helpers in the work of
+conversion, the sciences which we have been discussing. Custom terms
+them sciences, but they ought to have some other name, implying greater
+clearness than opinion and less clearness than science: and this, in
+our previous sketch, was called understanding. But why should we
+dispute about names when we have realities of such importance to
+consider?
+
+Why indeed, he said, when any name will do which expresses the thought
+of the mind with clearness?
+
+At any rate, we are satisfied, as before, to have four divisions; two
+for intellect and two for opinion, and to call the first division
+science, the second understanding, the third belief, and the fourth
+perception of shadows, opinion being concerned with becoming, and
+intellect with being; and so to make a proportion:—
+
+As being is to becoming, so is pure intellect to opinion. And as
+intellect is to opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to
+the perception of shadows.
+
+But let us defer the further correlation and subdivision of the
+subjects of opinion and of intellect, for it will be a long enquiry,
+many times longer than this has been.
+
+As far as I understand, he said, I agree.
+
+And do you also agree, I said, in describing the dialectician as one
+who attains a conception of the essence of each thing? And he who does
+not possess and is therefore unable to impart this conception, in
+whatever degree he fails, may in that degree also be said to fail in
+intelligence? Will you admit so much?
+
+Yes, he said; how can I deny it?
+
+And you would say the same of the conception of the good? Until the
+person is able to abstract and define rationally the idea of good, and
+unless he can run the gauntlet of all objections, and is ready to
+disprove them, not by appeals to opinion, but to absolute truth, never
+faltering at any step of the argument—unless he can do all this, you
+would say that he knows neither the idea of good nor any other good; he
+apprehends only a shadow, if anything at all, which is given by opinion
+and not by science;—dreaming and slumbering in this life, before he is
+well awake here, he arrives at the world below, and has his final
+quietus.
+
+In all that I should most certainly agree with you.
+
+And surely you would not have the children of your ideal State, whom
+you are nurturing and educating—if the ideal ever becomes a reality—you
+would not allow the future rulers to be like posts (Literally ‘lines,’
+probably the starting-point of a race-course.), having no reason in
+them, and yet to be set in authority over the highest matters?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Then you will make a law that they shall have such an education as will
+enable them to attain the greatest skill in asking and answering
+questions?
+
+Yes, he said, you and I together will make it.
+
+Dialectic, then, as you will agree, is the coping-stone of the
+sciences, and is set over them; no other science can be placed
+higher—the nature of knowledge can no further go?
+
+I agree, he said.
+
+But to whom we are to assign these studies, and in what way they are to
+be assigned, are questions which remain to be considered.
+
+Yes, clearly.
+
+You remember, I said, how the rulers were chosen before?
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+The same natures must still be chosen, and the preference again given
+to the surest and the bravest, and, if possible, to the fairest; and,
+having noble and generous tempers, they should also have the natural
+gifts which will facilitate their education.
+
+And what are these?
+
+Such gifts as keenness and ready powers of acquisition; for the mind
+more often faints from the severity of study than from the severity of
+gymnastics: the toil is more entirely the mind’s own, and is not shared
+with the body.
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+Further, he of whom we are in search should have a good memory, and be
+an unwearied solid man who is a lover of labour in any line; or he will
+never be able to endure the great amount of bodily exercise and to go
+through all the intellectual discipline and study which we require of
+him.
+
+Certainly, he said; he must have natural gifts.
+
+The mistake at present is, that those who study philosophy have no
+vocation, and this, as I was before saying, is the reason why she has
+fallen into disrepute: her true sons should take her by the hand and
+not bastards.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+In the first place, her votary should not have a lame or halting
+industry—I mean, that he should not be half industrious and half idle:
+as, for example, when a man is a lover of gymnastic and hunting, and
+all other bodily exercises, but a hater rather than a lover of the
+labour of learning or listening or enquiring. Or the occupation to
+which he devotes himself may be of an opposite kind, and he may have
+the other sort of lameness.
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+And as to truth, I said, is not a soul equally to be deemed halt and
+lame which hates voluntary falsehood and is extremely indignant at
+herself and others when they tell lies, but is patient of involuntary
+falsehood, and does not mind wallowing like a swinish beast in the mire
+of ignorance, and has no shame at being detected?
+
+To be sure.
+
+And, again, in respect of temperance, courage, magnificence, and every
+other virtue, should we not carefully distinguish between the true son
+and the bastard? for where there is no discernment of such qualities
+states and individuals unconsciously err; and the state makes a ruler,
+and the individual a friend, of one who, being defective in some part
+of virtue, is in a figure lame or a bastard.
+
+That is very true, he said.
+
+All these things, then, will have to be carefully considered by us; and
+if only those whom we introduce to this vast system of education and
+training are sound in body and mind, justice herself will have nothing
+to say against us, and we shall be the saviours of the constitution and
+of the State; but, if our pupils are men of another stamp, the reverse
+will happen, and we shall pour a still greater flood of ridicule on
+philosophy than she has to endure at present.
+
+That would not be creditable.
+
+Certainly not, I said; and yet perhaps, in thus turning jest into
+earnest I am equally ridiculous.
+
+In what respect?
+
+I had forgotten, I said, that we were not serious, and spoke with too
+much excitement. For when I saw philosophy so undeservedly trampled
+under foot of men I could not help feeling a sort of indignation at the
+authors of her disgrace: and my anger made me too vehement.
+
+Indeed! I was listening, and did not think so.
+
+But I, who am the speaker, felt that I was. And now let me remind you
+that, although in our former selection we chose old men, we must not do
+so in this. Solon was under a delusion when he said that a man when he
+grows old may learn many things—for he can no more learn much than he
+can run much; youth is the time for any extraordinary toil.
+
+Of course.
+
+And, therefore, calculation and geometry and all the other elements of
+instruction, which are a preparation for dialectic, should be presented
+to the mind in childhood; not, however, under any notion of forcing our
+system of education.
+
+Why not?
+
+Because a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of
+knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm
+to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains
+no hold on the mind.
+
+Very true.
+
+Then, my good friend, I said, do not use compulsion, but let early
+education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find
+out the natural bent.
+
+That is a very rational notion, he said.
+
+Do you remember that the children, too, were to be taken to see the
+battle on horseback; and that if there were no danger they were to be
+brought close up and, like young hounds, have a taste of blood given
+them?
+
+Yes, I remember.
+
+The same practice may be followed, I said, in all these things—labours,
+lessons, dangers—and he who is most at home in all of them ought to be
+enrolled in a select number.
+
+At what age?
+
+At the age when the necessary gymnastics are over: the period whether
+of two or three years which passes in this sort of training is useless
+for any other purpose; for sleep and exercise are unpropitious to
+learning; and the trial of who is first in gymnastic exercises is one
+of the most important tests to which our youth are subjected.
+
+Certainly, he replied.
+
+After that time those who are selected from the class of twenty years
+old will be promoted to higher honour, and the sciences which they
+learned without any order in their early education will now be brought
+together, and they will be able to see the natural relationship of them
+to one another and to true being.
+
+Yes, he said, that is the only kind of knowledge which takes lasting
+root.
+
+Yes, I said; and the capacity for such knowledge is the great criterion
+of dialectical talent: the comprehensive mind is always the
+dialectical.
+
+I agree with you, he said.
+
+These, I said, are the points which you must consider; and those who
+have most of this comprehension, and who are most steadfast in their
+learning, and in their military and other appointed duties, when they
+have arrived at the age of thirty have to be chosen by you out of the
+select class, and elevated to higher honour; and you will have to prove
+them by the help of dialectic, in order to learn which of them is able
+to give up the use of sight and the other senses, and in company with
+truth to attain absolute being: And here, my friend, great caution is
+required.
+
+Why great caution?
+
+Do you not remark, I said, how great is the evil which dialectic has
+introduced?
+
+What evil? he said.
+
+The students of the art are filled with lawlessness.
+
+Quite true, he said.
+
+Do you think that there is anything so very unnatural or inexcusable in
+their case? or will you make allowance for them?
+
+In what way make allowance?
+
+I want you, I said, by way of parallel, to imagine a supposititious son
+who is brought up in great wealth; he is one of a great and numerous
+family, and has many flatterers. When he grows up to manhood, he learns
+that his alleged are not his real parents; but who the real are he is
+unable to discover. Can you guess how he will be likely to behave
+towards his flatterers and his supposed parents, first of all during
+the period when he is ignorant of the false relation, and then again
+when he knows? Or shall I guess for you?
+
+If you please.
+
+Then I should say, that while he is ignorant of the truth he will be
+likely to honour his father and his mother and his supposed relations
+more than the flatterers; he will be less inclined to neglect them when
+in need, or to do or say anything against them; and he will be less
+willing to disobey them in any important matter.
+
+He will.
+
+But when he has made the discovery, I should imagine that he would
+diminish his honour and regard for them, and would become more devoted
+to the flatterers; their influence over him would greatly increase; he
+would now live after their ways, and openly associate with them, and,
+unless he were of an unusually good disposition, he would trouble
+himself no more about his supposed parents or other relations.
+
+Well, all that is very probable. But how is the image applicable to the
+disciples of philosophy?
+
+In this way: you know that there are certain principles about justice
+and honour, which were taught us in childhood, and under their parental
+authority we have been brought up, obeying and honouring them.
+
+That is true.
+
+There are also opposite maxims and habits of pleasure which flatter and
+attract the soul, but do not influence those of us who have any sense
+of right, and they continue to obey and honour the maxims of their
+fathers.
+
+True.
+
+Now, when a man is in this state, and the questioning spirit asks what
+is fair or honourable, and he answers as the legislator has taught him,
+and then arguments many and diverse refute his words, until he is
+driven into believing that nothing is honourable any more than
+dishonourable, or just and good any more than the reverse, and so of
+all the notions which he most valued, do you think that he will still
+honour and obey them as before?
+
+Impossible.
+
+And when he ceases to think them honourable and natural as heretofore,
+and he fails to discover the true, can he be expected to pursue any
+life other than that which flatters his desires?
+
+He cannot.
+
+And from being a keeper of the law he is converted into a breaker of
+it?
+
+Unquestionably.
+
+Now all this is very natural in students of philosophy such as I have
+described, and also, as I was just now saying, most excusable.
+
+Yes, he said; and, I may add, pitiable.
+
+Therefore, that your feelings may not be moved to pity about our
+citizens who are now thirty years of age, every care must be taken in
+introducing them to dialectic.
+
+Certainly.
+
+There is a danger lest they should taste the dear delight too early;
+for youngsters, as you may have observed, when they first get the taste
+in their mouths, argue for amusement, and are always contradicting and
+refuting others in imitation of those who refute them; like puppy-dogs,
+they rejoice in pulling and tearing at all who come near them.
+
+Yes, he said, there is nothing which they like better.
+
+And when they have made many conquests and received defeats at the
+hands of many, they violently and speedily get into a way of not
+believing anything which they believed before, and hence, not only
+they, but philosophy and all that relates to it is apt to have a bad
+name with the rest of the world.
+
+Too true, he said.
+
+But when a man begins to get older, he will no longer be guilty of such
+insanity; he will imitate the dialectician who is seeking for truth,
+and not the eristic, who is contradicting for the sake of amusement;
+and the greater moderation of his character will increase instead of
+diminishing the honour of the pursuit.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+And did we not make special provision for this, when we said that the
+disciples of philosophy were to be orderly and steadfast, not, as now,
+any chance aspirant or intruder?
+
+Very true.
+
+Suppose, I said, the study of philosophy to take the place of
+gymnastics and to be continued diligently and earnestly and exclusively
+for twice the number of years which were passed in bodily exercise—will
+that be enough?
+
+Would you say six or four years? he asked.
+
+Say five years, I replied; at the end of the time they must be sent
+down again into the den and compelled to hold any military or other
+office which young men are qualified to hold: in this way they will get
+their experience of life, and there will be an opportunity of trying
+whether, when they are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they
+will stand firm or flinch.
+
+And how long is this stage of their lives to last?
+
+Fifteen years, I answered; and when they have reached fifty years of
+age, then let those who still survive and have distinguished themselves
+in every action of their lives and in every branch of knowledge come at
+last to their consummation: the time has now arrived at which they must
+raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all
+things, and behold the absolute good; for that is the pattern according
+to which they are to order the State and the lives of individuals, and
+the remainder of their own lives also; making philosophy their chief
+pursuit, but, when their turn comes, toiling also at politics and
+ruling for the public good, not as though they were performing some
+heroic action, but simply as a matter of duty; and when they have
+brought up in each generation others like themselves and left them in
+their place to be governors of the State, then they will depart to the
+Islands of the Blest and dwell there; and the city will give them
+public memorials and sacrifices and honour them, if the Pythian oracle
+consent, as demigods, but if not, as in any case blessed and divine.
+
+You are a sculptor, Socrates, and have made statues of our governors
+faultless in beauty.
+
+Yes, I said, Glaucon, and of our governesses too; for you must not
+suppose that what I have been saying applies to men only and not to
+women as far as their natures can go.
+
+There you are right, he said, since we have made them to share in all
+things like the men.
+
+Well, I said, and you would agree (would you not?) that what has been
+said about the State and the government is not a mere dream, and
+although difficult not impossible, but only possible in the way which
+has been supposed; that is to say, when the true philosopher kings are
+born in a State, one or more of them, despising the honours of this
+present world which they deem mean and worthless, esteeming above all
+things right and the honour that springs from right, and regarding
+justice as the greatest and most necessary of all things, whose
+ministers they are, and whose principles will be exalted by them when
+they set in order their own city?
+
+How will they proceed?
+
+They will begin by sending out into the country all the inhabitants of
+the city who are more than ten years old, and will take possession of
+their children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents;
+these they will train in their own habits and laws, I mean in the laws
+which we have given them: and in this way the State and constitution of
+which we were speaking will soonest and most easily attain happiness,
+and the nation which has such a constitution will gain most.
+
+Yes, that will be the best way. And I think, Socrates, that you have
+very well described how, if ever, such a constitution might come into
+being.
+
+Enough then of the perfect State, and of the man who bears its
+image—there is no difficulty in seeing how we shall describe him.
+
+There is no difficulty, he replied; and I agree with you in thinking
+that nothing more need be said.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK VIII.
+
+
+And so, Glaucon, we have arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect
+State wives and children are to be in common; and that all education
+and the pursuits of war and peace are also to be common, and the best
+philosophers and the bravest warriors are to be their kings?
+
+That, replied Glaucon, has been acknowledged.
+
+Yes, I said; and we have further acknowledged that the governors, when
+appointed themselves, will take their soldiers and place them in houses
+such as we were describing, which are common to all, and contain
+nothing private, or individual; and about their property, you remember
+what we agreed?
+
+Yes, I remember that no one was to have any of the ordinary possessions
+of mankind; they were to be warrior athletes and guardians, receiving
+from the other citizens, in lieu of annual payment, only their
+maintenance, and they were to take care of themselves and of the whole
+State.
+
+True, I said; and now that this division of our task is concluded, let
+us find the point at which we digressed, that we may return into the
+old path.
+
+There is no difficulty in returning; you implied, then as now, that you
+had finished the description of the State: you said that such a State
+was good, and that the man was good who answered to it, although, as
+now appears, you had more excellent things to relate both of State and
+man. And you said further, that if this was the true form, then the
+others were false; and of the false forms, you said, as I remember,
+that there were four principal ones, and that their defects, and the
+defects of the individuals corresponding to them, were worth examining.
+When we had seen all the individuals, and finally agreed as to who was
+the best and who was the worst of them, we were to consider whether the
+best was not also the happiest, and the worst the most miserable. I
+asked you what were the four forms of government of which you spoke,
+and then Polemarchus and Adeimantus put in their word; and you began
+again, and have found your way to the point at which we have now
+arrived.
+
+Your recollection, I said, is most exact.
+
+Then, like a wrestler, he replied, you must put yourself again in the
+same position; and let me ask the same questions, and do you give me
+the same answer which you were about to give me then.
+
+Yes, if I can, I will, I said.
+
+I shall particularly wish to hear what were the four constitutions of
+which you were speaking.
+
+That question, I said, is easily answered: the four governments of
+which I spoke, so far as they have distinct names, are, first, those of
+Crete and Sparta, which are generally applauded; what is termed
+oligarchy comes next; this is not equally approved, and is a form of
+government which teems with evils: thirdly, democracy, which naturally
+follows oligarchy, although very different: and lastly comes tyranny,
+great and famous, which differs from them all, and is the fourth and
+worst disorder of a State. I do not know, do you? of any other
+constitution which can be said to have a distinct character. There are
+lordships and principalities which are bought and sold, and some other
+intermediate forms of government. But these are nondescripts and may be
+found equally among Hellenes and among barbarians.
+
+Yes, he replied, we certainly hear of many curious forms of government
+which exist among them.
+
+Do you know, I said, that governments vary as the dispositions of men
+vary, and that there must be as many of the one as there are of the
+other? For we cannot suppose that States are made of ‘oak and rock,’
+and not out of the human natures which are in them, and which in a
+figure turn the scale and draw other things after them?
+
+Yes, he said, the States are as the men are; they grow out of human
+characters.
+
+Then if the constitutions of States are five, the dispositions of
+individual minds will also be five?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Him who answers to aristocracy, and whom we rightly call just and good,
+we have already described.
+
+We have.
+
+Then let us now proceed to describe the inferior sort of natures, being
+the contentious and ambitious, who answer to the Spartan polity; also
+the oligarchical, democratical, and tyrannical. Let us place the most
+just by the side of the most unjust, and when we see them we shall be
+able to compare the relative happiness or unhappiness of him who leads
+a life of pure justice or pure injustice. The enquiry will then be
+completed. And we shall know whether we ought to pursue injustice, as
+Thrasymachus advises, or in accordance with the conclusions of the
+argument to prefer justice.
+
+Certainly, he replied, we must do as you say.
+
+Shall we follow our old plan, which we adopted with a view to
+clearness, of taking the State first and then proceeding to the
+individual, and begin with the government of honour?—I know of no name
+for such a government other than timocracy, or perhaps timarchy. We
+will compare with this the like character in the individual; and, after
+that, consider oligarchy and the oligarchical man; and then again we
+will turn our attention to democracy and the democratical man; and
+lastly, we will go and view the city of tyranny, and once more take a
+look into the tyrant’s soul, and try to arrive at a satisfactory
+decision.
+
+That way of viewing and judging of the matter will be very suitable.
+
+First, then, I said, let us enquire how timocracy (the government of
+honour) arises out of aristocracy (the government of the best).
+Clearly, all political changes originate in divisions of the actual
+governing power; a government which is united, however small, cannot be
+moved.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+In what way, then, will our city be moved, and in what manner will the
+two classes of auxiliaries and rulers disagree among themselves or with
+one another? Shall we, after the manner of Homer, pray the Muses to
+tell us ‘how discord first arose’? Shall we imagine them in solemn
+mockery, to play and jest with us as if we were children, and to
+address us in a lofty tragic vein, making believe to be in earnest?
+
+How would they address us?
+
+After this manner:—A city which is thus constituted can hardly be
+shaken; but, seeing that everything which has a beginning has also an
+end, even a constitution such as yours will not last for ever, but will
+in time be dissolved. And this is the dissolution:—In plants that grow
+in the earth, as well as in animals that move on the earth’s surface,
+fertility and sterility of soul and body occur when the circumferences
+of the circles of each are completed, which in short-lived existences
+pass over a short space, and in long-lived ones over a long space. But
+to the knowledge of human fecundity and sterility all the wisdom and
+education of your rulers will not attain; the laws which regulate them
+will not be discovered by an intelligence which is alloyed with sense,
+but will escape them, and they will bring children into the world when
+they ought not. Now that which is of divine birth has a period which is
+contained in a perfect number (i.e. a cyclical number, such as 6, which
+is equal to the sum of its divisors 1, 2, 3, so that when the circle or
+time represented by 6 is completed, the lesser times or rotations
+represented by 1, 2, 3 are also completed.), but the period of human
+birth is comprehended in a number in which first increments by
+involution and evolution (or squared and cubed) obtaining three
+intervals and four terms of like and unlike, waxing and waning numbers,
+make all the terms commensurable and agreeable to one another.
+(Probably the numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 of which the three first = the sides
+of the Pythagorean triangle. The terms will then be 3 cubed, 4 cubed, 5
+cubed, which together = 6 cubed = 216.) The base of these (3) with a
+third added (4) when combined with five (20) and raised to the third
+power furnishes two harmonies; the first a square which is a hundred
+times as great (400 = 4 x 100) (Or the first a square which is 100 x
+100 = 10,000. The whole number will then be 17,500 = a square of 100,
+and an oblong of 100 by 75.), and the other a figure having one side
+equal to the former, but oblong, consisting of a hundred numbers
+squared upon rational diameters of a square (i.e. omitting fractions),
+the side of which is five (7 x 7 = 49 x 100 = 4900), each of them being
+less by one (than the perfect square which includes the fractions, sc.
+50) or less by (Or, ‘consisting of two numbers squared upon irrational
+diameters,’ etc. = 100. For other explanations of the passage see
+Introduction.) two perfect squares of irrational diameters (of a square
+the side of which is five = 50 + 50 = 100); and a hundred cubes of
+three (27 x 100 = 2700 + 4900 + 400 = 8000). Now this number represents
+a geometrical figure which has control over the good and evil of
+births. For when your guardians are ignorant of the law of births, and
+unite bride and bridegroom out of season, the children will not be
+goodly or fortunate. And though only the best of them will be appointed
+by their predecessors, still they will be unworthy to hold their
+fathers’ places, and when they come into power as guardians, they will
+soon be found to fail in taking care of us, the Muses, first by
+under-valuing music; which neglect will soon extend to gymnastic; and
+hence the young men of your State will be less cultivated. In the
+succeeding generation rulers will be appointed who have lost the
+guardian power of testing the metal of your different races, which,
+like Hesiod’s, are of gold and silver and brass and iron. And so iron
+will be mingled with silver, and brass with gold, and hence there will
+arise dissimilarity and inequality and irregularity, which always and
+in all places are causes of hatred and war. This the Muses affirm to be
+the stock from which discord has sprung, wherever arising; and this is
+their answer to us.
+
+Yes, and we may assume that they answer truly.
+
+Why, yes, I said, of course they answer truly; how can the Muses speak
+falsely?
+
+And what do the Muses say next?
+
+When discord arose, then the two races were drawn different ways: the
+iron and brass fell to acquiring money and land and houses and gold and
+silver; but the gold and silver races, not wanting money but having the
+true riches in their own nature, inclined towards virtue and the
+ancient order of things. There was a battle between them, and at last
+they agreed to distribute their land and houses among individual
+owners; and they enslaved their friends and maintainers, whom they had
+formerly protected in the condition of freemen, and made of them
+subjects and servants; and they themselves were engaged in war and in
+keeping a watch against them.
+
+I believe that you have rightly conceived the origin of the change.
+
+And the new government which thus arises will be of a form intermediate
+between oligarchy and aristocracy?
+
+Very true.
+
+Such will be the change, and after the change has been made, how will
+they proceed? Clearly, the new State, being in a mean between oligarchy
+and the perfect State, will partly follow one and partly the other, and
+will also have some peculiarities.
+
+True, he said.
+
+In the honour given to rulers, in the abstinence of the warrior class
+from agriculture, handicrafts, and trade in general, in the institution
+of common meals, and in the attention paid to gymnastics and military
+training—in all these respects this State will resemble the former.
+
+True.
+
+But in the fear of admitting philosophers to power, because they are no
+longer to be had simple and earnest, but are made up of mixed elements;
+and in turning from them to passionate and less complex characters, who
+are by nature fitted for war rather than peace; and in the value set by
+them upon military stratagems and contrivances, and in the waging of
+everlasting wars—this State will be for the most part peculiar.
+
+Yes.
+
+Yes, I said; and men of this stamp will be covetous of money, like
+those who live in oligarchies; they will have, a fierce secret longing
+after gold and silver, which they will hoard in dark places, having
+magazines and treasuries of their own for the deposit and concealment
+of them; also castles which are just nests for their eggs, and in which
+they will spend large sums on their wives, or on any others whom they
+please.
+
+That is most true, he said.
+
+And they are miserly because they have no means of openly acquiring the
+money which they prize; they will spend that which is another man’s on
+the gratification of their desires, stealing their pleasures and
+running away like children from the law, their father: they have been
+schooled not by gentle influences but by force, for they have neglected
+her who is the true Muse, the companion of reason and philosophy, and
+have honoured gymnastic more than music.
+
+Undoubtedly, he said, the form of government which you describe is a
+mixture of good and evil.
+
+Why, there is a mixture, I said; but one thing, and one thing only, is
+predominantly seen,—the spirit of contention and ambition; and these
+are due to the prevalence of the passionate or spirited element.
+
+Assuredly, he said.
+
+Such is the origin and such the character of this State, which has been
+described in outline only; the more perfect execution was not required,
+for a sketch is enough to show the type of the most perfectly just and
+most perfectly unjust; and to go through all the States and all the
+characters of men, omitting none of them, would be an interminable
+labour.
+
+Very true, he replied.
+
+Now what man answers to this form of government-how did he come into
+being, and what is he like?
+
+I think, said Adeimantus, that in the spirit of contention which
+characterises him, he is not unlike our friend Glaucon.
+
+Perhaps, I said, he may be like him in that one point; but there are
+other respects in which he is very different.
+
+In what respects?
+
+He should have more of self-assertion and be less cultivated, and yet a
+friend of culture; and he should be a good listener, but no speaker.
+Such a person is apt to be rough with slaves, unlike the educated man,
+who is too proud for that; and he will also be courteous to freemen,
+and remarkably obedient to authority; he is a lover of power and a
+lover of honour; claiming to be a ruler, not because he is eloquent, or
+on any ground of that sort, but because he is a soldier and has
+performed feats of arms; he is also a lover of gymnastic exercises and
+of the chase.
+
+Yes, that is the type of character which answers to timocracy.
+
+Such an one will despise riches only when he is young; but as he gets
+older he will be more and more attracted to them, because he has a
+piece of the avaricious nature in him, and is not single-minded towards
+virtue, having lost his best guardian.
+
+Who was that? said Adeimantus.
+
+Philosophy, I said, tempered with music, who comes and takes up her
+abode in a man, and is the only saviour of his virtue throughout life.
+
+Good, he said.
+
+Such, I said, is the timocratical youth, and he is like the
+timocratical State.
+
+Exactly.
+
+His origin is as follows:—He is often the young son of a brave father,
+who dwells in an ill-governed city, of which he declines the honours
+and offices, and will not go to law, or exert himself in any way, but
+is ready to waive his rights in order that he may escape trouble.
+
+And how does the son come into being?
+
+The character of the son begins to develope when he hears his mother
+complaining that her husband has no place in the government, of which
+the consequence is that she has no precedence among other women.
+Further, when she sees her husband not very eager about money, and
+instead of battling and railing in the law courts or assembly, taking
+whatever happens to him quietly; and when she observes that his
+thoughts always centre in himself, while he treats her with very
+considerable indifference, she is annoyed, and says to her son that his
+father is only half a man and far too easy-going: adding all the other
+complaints about her own ill-treatment which women are so fond of
+rehearsing.
+
+Yes, said Adeimantus, they give us plenty of them, and their complaints
+are so like themselves.
+
+And you know, I said, that the old servants also, who are supposed to
+be attached to the family, from time to time talk privately in the same
+strain to the son; and if they see any one who owes money to his
+father, or is wronging him in any way, and he fails to prosecute them,
+they tell the youth that when he grows up he must retaliate upon people
+of this sort, and be more of a man than his father. He has only to walk
+abroad and he hears and sees the same sort of thing: those who do their
+own business in the city are called simpletons, and held in no esteem,
+while the busy-bodies are honoured and applauded. The result is that
+the young man, hearing and seeing all these things—hearing, too, the
+words of his father, and having a nearer view of his way of life, and
+making comparisons of him and others—is drawn opposite ways: while his
+father is watering and nourishing the rational principle in his soul,
+the others are encouraging the passionate and appetitive; and he being
+not originally of a bad nature, but having kept bad company, is at last
+brought by their joint influence to a middle point, and gives up the
+kingdom which is within him to the middle principle of contentiousness
+and passion, and becomes arrogant and ambitious.
+
+You seem to me to have described his origin perfectly.
+
+Then we have now, I said, the second form of government and the second
+type of character?
+
+We have.
+
+Next, let us look at another man who, as Aeschylus says,
+
+‘Is set over against another State;’
+
+or rather, as our plan requires, begin with the State.
+
+By all means.
+
+I believe that oligarchy follows next in order.
+
+And what manner of government do you term oligarchy?
+
+A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have
+power and the poor man is deprived of it.
+
+I understand, he replied.
+
+Ought I not to begin by describing how the change from timocracy to
+oligarchy arises?
+
+Yes.
+
+Well, I said, no eyes are required in order to see how the one passes
+into the other.
+
+How?
+
+The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals is the
+ruin of timocracy; they invent illegal modes of expenditure; for what
+do they or their wives care about the law?
+
+Yes, indeed.
+
+And then one, seeing another grow rich, seeks to rival him, and thus
+the great mass of the citizens become lovers of money.
+
+Likely enough.
+
+And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they think of making a
+fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are
+placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as
+the other falls.
+
+True.
+
+And in proportion as riches and rich men are honoured in the State,
+virtue and the virtuous are dishonoured.
+
+Clearly.
+
+And what is honoured is cultivated, and that which has no honour is
+neglected.
+
+That is obvious.
+
+And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men become
+lovers of trade and money; they honour and look up to the rich man, and
+make a ruler of him, and dishonour the poor man.
+
+They do so.
+
+They next proceed to make a law which fixes a sum of money as the
+qualification of citizenship; the sum is higher in one place and lower
+in another, as the oligarchy is more or less exclusive; and they allow
+no one whose property falls below the amount fixed to have any share in
+the government. These changes in the constitution they effect by force
+of arms, if intimidation has not already done their work.
+
+Very true.
+
+And this, speaking generally, is the way in which oligarchy is
+established.
+
+Yes, he said; but what are the characteristics of this form of
+government, and what are the defects of which we were speaking?
+
+First of all, I said, consider the nature of the qualification. Just
+think what would happen if pilots were to be chosen according to their
+property, and a poor man were refused permission to steer, even though
+he were a better pilot?
+
+You mean that they would shipwreck?
+
+Yes; and is not this true of the government of anything?
+
+I should imagine so.
+
+Except a city?—or would you include a city?
+
+Nay, he said, the case of a city is the strongest of all, inasmuch as
+the rule of a city is the greatest and most difficult of all.
+
+This, then, will be the first great defect of oligarchy?
+
+Clearly.
+
+And here is another defect which is quite as bad.
+
+What defect?
+
+The inevitable division: such a State is not one, but two States, the
+one of poor, the other of rich men; and they are living on the same
+spot and always conspiring against one another.
+
+That, surely, is at least as bad.
+
+Another discreditable feature is, that, for a like reason, they are
+incapable of carrying on any war. Either they arm the multitude, and
+then they are more afraid of them than of the enemy; or, if they do not
+call them out in the hour of battle, they are oligarchs indeed, few to
+fight as they are few to rule. And at the same time their fondness for
+money makes them unwilling to pay taxes.
+
+How discreditable!
+
+And, as we said before, under such a constitution the same persons have
+too many callings—they are husbandmen, tradesmen, warriors, all in one.
+Does that look well?
+
+Anything but well.
+
+There is another evil which is, perhaps, the greatest of all, and to
+which this State first begins to be liable.
+
+What evil?
+
+A man may sell all that he has, and another may acquire his property;
+yet after the sale he may dwell in the city of which he is no longer a
+part, being neither trader, nor artisan, nor horseman, nor hoplite, but
+only a poor, helpless creature.
+
+Yes, that is an evil which also first begins in this State.
+
+The evil is certainly not prevented there; for oligarchies have both
+the extremes of great wealth and utter poverty.
+
+True.
+
+But think again: In his wealthy days, while he was spending his money,
+was a man of this sort a whit more good to the State for the purposes
+of citizenship? Or did he only seem to be a member of the ruling body,
+although in truth he was neither ruler nor subject, but just a
+spendthrift?
+
+As you say, he seemed to be a ruler, but was only a spendthrift.
+
+May we not say that this is the drone in the house who is like the
+drone in the honeycomb, and that the one is the plague of the city as
+the other is of the hive?
+
+Just so, Socrates.
+
+And God has made the flying drones, Adeimantus, all without stings,
+whereas of the walking drones he has made some without stings but
+others have dreadful stings; of the stingless class are those who in
+their old age end as paupers; of the stingers come all the criminal
+class, as they are termed.
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+Clearly then, whenever you see paupers in a State, somewhere in that
+neighborhood there are hidden away thieves, and cut-purses and robbers
+of temples, and all sorts of malefactors.
+
+Clearly.
+
+Well, I said, and in oligarchical States do you not find paupers?
+
+Yes, he said; nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a ruler.
+
+And may we be so bold as to affirm that there are also many criminals
+to be found in them, rogues who have stings, and whom the authorities
+are careful to restrain by force?
+
+Certainly, we may be so bold.
+
+The existence of such persons is to be attributed to want of education,
+ill-training, and an evil constitution of the State?
+
+True.
+
+Such, then, is the form and such are the evils of oligarchy; and there
+may be many other evils.
+
+Very likely.
+
+Then oligarchy, or the form of government in which the rulers are
+elected for their wealth, may now be dismissed. Let us next proceed to
+consider the nature and origin of the individual who answers to this
+State.
+
+By all means.
+
+Does not the timocratical man change into the oligarchical on this
+wise?
+
+How?
+
+A time arrives when the representative of timocracy has a son: at first
+he begins by emulating his father and walking in his footsteps, but
+presently he sees him of a sudden foundering against the State as upon
+a sunken reef, and he and all that he has is lost; he may have been a
+general or some other high officer who is brought to trial under a
+prejudice raised by informers, and either put to death, or exiled, or
+deprived of the privileges of a citizen, and all his property taken
+from him.
+
+Nothing more likely.
+
+And the son has seen and known all this—he is a ruined man, and his
+fear has taught him to knock ambition and passion headforemost from his
+bosom’s throne; humbled by poverty he takes to money-making and by mean
+and miserly savings and hard work gets a fortune together. Is not such
+an one likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous element on the
+vacant throne and to suffer it to play the great king within him, girt
+with tiara and chain and scimitar?
+
+Most true, he replied.
+
+And when he has made reason and spirit sit down on the ground
+obediently on either side of their sovereign, and taught them to know
+their place, he compels the one to think only of how lesser sums may be
+turned into larger ones, and will not allow the other to worship and
+admire anything but riches and rich men, or to be ambitious of anything
+so much as the acquisition of wealth and the means of acquiring it.
+
+Of all changes, he said, there is none so speedy or so sure as the
+conversion of the ambitious youth into the avaricious one.
+
+And the avaricious, I said, is the oligarchical youth?
+
+Yes, he said; at any rate the individual out of whom he came is like
+the State out of which oligarchy came.
+
+Let us then consider whether there is any likeness between them.
+
+Very good.
+
+First, then, they resemble one another in the value which they set upon
+wealth?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Also in their penurious, laborious character; the individual only
+satisfies his necessary appetites, and confines his expenditure to
+them; his other desires he subdues, under the idea that they are
+unprofitable.
+
+True.
+
+He is a shabby fellow, who saves something out of everything and makes
+a purse for himself; and this is the sort of man whom the vulgar
+applaud. Is he not a true image of the State which he represents?
+
+He appears to me to be so; at any rate money is highly valued by him as
+well as by the State.
+
+You see that he is not a man of cultivation, I said.
+
+I imagine not, he said; had he been educated he would never have made a
+blind god director of his chorus, or given him chief honour.
+
+Excellent! I said. Yet consider: Must we not further admit that owing
+to this want of cultivation there will be found in him dronelike
+desires as of pauper and rogue, which are forcibly kept down by his
+general habit of life?
+
+True.
+
+Do you know where you will have to look if you want to discover his
+rogueries?
+
+Where must I look?
+
+You should see him where he has some great opportunity of acting
+dishonestly, as in the guardianship of an orphan.
+
+Aye.
+
+It will be clear enough then that in his ordinary dealings which give
+him a reputation for honesty he coerces his bad passions by an enforced
+virtue; not making them see that they are wrong, or taming them by
+reason, but by necessity and fear constraining them, and because he
+trembles for his possessions.
+
+To be sure.
+
+Yes, indeed, my dear friend, but you will find that the natural desires
+of the drone commonly exist in him all the same whenever he has to
+spend what is not his own.
+
+Yes, and they will be strong in him too.
+
+The man, then, will be at war with himself; he will be two men, and not
+one; but, in general, his better desires will be found to prevail over
+his inferior ones.
+
+True.
+
+For these reasons such an one will be more respectable than most
+people; yet the true virtue of a unanimous and harmonious soul will
+flee far away and never come near him.
+
+I should expect so.
+
+And surely, the miser individually will be an ignoble competitor in a
+State for any prize of victory, or other object of honourable ambition;
+he will not spend his money in the contest for glory; so afraid is he
+of awakening his expensive appetites and inviting them to help and join
+in the struggle; in true oligarchical fashion he fights with a small
+part only of his resources, and the result commonly is that he loses
+the prize and saves his money.
+
+Very true.
+
+Can we any longer doubt, then, that the miser and money-maker answers
+to the oligarchical State?
+
+There can be no doubt.
+
+Next comes democracy; of this the origin and nature have still to be
+considered by us; and then we will enquire into the ways of the
+democratic man, and bring him up for judgment.
+
+That, he said, is our method.
+
+Well, I said, and how does the change from oligarchy into democracy
+arise? Is it not on this wise?—The good at which such a State aims is
+to become as rich as possible, a desire which is insatiable?
+
+What then?
+
+The rulers, being aware that their power rests upon their wealth,
+refuse to curtail by law the extravagance of the spendthrift youth
+because they gain by their ruin; they take interest from them and buy
+up their estates and thus increase their own wealth and importance?
+
+To be sure.
+
+There can be no doubt that the love of wealth and the spirit of
+moderation cannot exist together in citizens of the same state to any
+considerable extent; one or the other will be disregarded.
+
+That is tolerably clear.
+
+And in oligarchical States, from the general spread of carelessness and
+extravagance, men of good family have often been reduced to beggary?
+
+Yes, often.
+
+And still they remain in the city; there they are, ready to sting and
+fully armed, and some of them owe money, some have forfeited their
+citizenship; a third class are in both predicaments; and they hate and
+conspire against those who have got their property, and against
+everybody else, and are eager for revolution.
+
+That is true.
+
+On the other hand, the men of business, stooping as they walk, and
+pretending not even to see those whom they have already ruined, insert
+their sting—that is, their money—into some one else who is not on his
+guard against them, and recover the parent sum many times over
+multiplied into a family of children: and so they make drone and pauper
+to abound in the State.
+
+Yes, he said, there are plenty of them—that is certain.
+
+The evil blazes up like a fire; and they will not extinguish it, either
+by restricting a man’s use of his own property, or by another remedy:
+
+What other?
+
+One which is the next best, and has the advantage of compelling the
+citizens to look to their characters:—Let there be a general rule that
+every one shall enter into voluntary contracts at his own risk, and
+there will be less of this scandalous money-making, and the evils of
+which we were speaking will be greatly lessened in the State.
+
+Yes, they will be greatly lessened.
+
+At present the governors, induced by the motives which I have named,
+treat their subjects badly; while they and their adherents, especially
+the young men of the governing class, are habituated to lead a life of
+luxury and idleness both of body and mind; they do nothing, and are
+incapable of resisting either pleasure or pain.
+
+Very true.
+
+They themselves care only for making money, and are as indifferent as
+the pauper to the cultivation of virtue.
+
+Yes, quite as indifferent.
+
+Such is the state of affairs which prevails among them. And often
+rulers and their subjects may come in one another’s way, whether on a
+journey or on some other occasion of meeting, on a pilgrimage or a
+march, as fellow-soldiers or fellow-sailors; aye and they may observe
+the behaviour of each other in the very moment of danger—for where
+danger is, there is no fear that the poor will be despised by the
+rich—and very likely the wiry sunburnt poor man may be placed in battle
+at the side of a wealthy one who has never spoilt his complexion and
+has plenty of superfluous flesh—when he sees such an one puffing and at
+his wits’-end, how can he avoid drawing the conclusion that men like
+him are only rich because no one has the courage to despoil them? And
+when they meet in private will not people be saying to one another ‘Our
+warriors are not good for much’?
+
+Yes, he said, I am quite aware that this is their way of talking.
+
+And, as in a body which is diseased the addition of a touch from
+without may bring on illness, and sometimes even when there is no
+external provocation a commotion may arise within—in the same way
+wherever there is weakness in the State there is also likely to be
+illness, of which the occasion may be very slight, the one party
+introducing from without their oligarchical, the other their
+democratical allies, and then the State falls sick, and is at war with
+herself; and may be at times distracted, even when there is no external
+cause.
+
+Yes, surely.
+
+And then democracy comes into being after the poor have conquered their
+opponents, slaughtering some and banishing some, while to the remainder
+they give an equal share of freedom and power; and this is the form of
+government in which the magistrates are commonly elected by lot.
+
+Yes, he said, that is the nature of democracy, whether the revolution
+has been effected by arms, or whether fear has caused the opposite
+party to withdraw.
+
+And now what is their manner of life, and what sort of a government
+have they? for as the government is, such will be the man.
+
+Clearly, he said.
+
+In the first place, are they not free; and is not the city full of
+freedom and frankness—a man may say and do what he likes?
+
+’Tis said so, he replied.
+
+And where freedom is, the individual is clearly able to order for
+himself his own life as he pleases?
+
+Clearly.
+
+Then in this kind of State there will be the greatest variety of human
+natures?
+
+There will.
+
+This, then, seems likely to be the fairest of States, being like an
+embroidered robe which is spangled with every sort of flower. And just
+as women and children think a variety of colours to be of all things
+most charming, so there are many men to whom this State, which is
+spangled with the manners and characters of mankind, will appear to be
+the fairest of States.
+
+Yes.
+
+Yes, my good Sir, and there will be no better in which to look for a
+government.
+
+Why?
+
+Because of the liberty which reigns there—they have a complete
+assortment of constitutions; and he who has a mind to establish a
+State, as we have been doing, must go to a democracy as he would to a
+bazaar at which they sell them, and pick out the one that suits him;
+then, when he has made his choice, he may found his State.
+
+He will be sure to have patterns enough.
+
+And there being no necessity, I said, for you to govern in this State,
+even if you have the capacity, or to be governed, unless you like, or
+go to war when the rest go to war, or to be at peace when others are at
+peace, unless you are so disposed—there being no necessity also,
+because some law forbids you to hold office or be a dicast, that you
+should not hold office or be a dicast, if you have a fancy—is not this
+a way of life which for the moment is supremely delightful?
+
+For the moment, yes.
+
+And is not their humanity to the condemned in some cases quite
+charming? Have you not observed how, in a democracy, many persons,
+although they have been sentenced to death or exile, just stay where
+they are and walk about the world—the gentleman parades like a hero,
+and nobody sees or cares?
+
+Yes, he replied, many and many a one.
+
+See too, I said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the ‘don’t
+care’ about trifles, and the disregard which she shows of all the fine
+principles which we solemnly laid down at the foundation of the city—as
+when we said that, except in the case of some rarely gifted nature,
+there never will be a good man who has not from his childhood been used
+to play amid things of beauty and make of them a joy and a study—how
+grandly does she trample all these fine notions of ours under her feet,
+never giving a thought to the pursuits which make a statesman, and
+promoting to honour any one who professes to be the people’s friend.
+
+Yes, she is of a noble spirit.
+
+These and other kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which
+is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and
+dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
+
+We know her well.
+
+Consider now, I said, what manner of man the individual is, or rather
+consider, as in the case of the State, how he comes into being.
+
+Very good, he said.
+
+Is not this the way—he is the son of the miserly and oligarchical
+father who has trained him in his own habits?
+
+Exactly.
+
+And, like his father, he keeps under by force the pleasures which are
+of the spending and not of the getting sort, being those which are
+called unnecessary?
+
+Obviously.
+
+Would you like, for the sake of clearness, to distinguish which are the
+necessary and which are the unnecessary pleasures?
+
+I should.
+
+Are not necessary pleasures those of which we cannot get rid, and of
+which the satisfaction is a benefit to us? And they are rightly called
+so, because we are framed by nature to desire both what is beneficial
+and what is necessary, and cannot help it.
+
+True.
+
+We are not wrong therefore in calling them necessary?
+
+We are not.
+
+And the desires of which a man may get rid, if he takes pains from his
+youth upwards—of which the presence, moreover, does no good, and in
+some cases the reverse of good—shall we not be right in saying that all
+these are unnecessary?
+
+Yes, certainly.
+
+Suppose we select an example of either kind, in order that we may have
+a general notion of them?
+
+Very good.
+
+Will not the desire of eating, that is, of simple food and condiments,
+in so far as they are required for health and strength, be of the
+necessary class?
+
+That is what I should suppose.
+
+The pleasure of eating is necessary in two ways; it does us good and it
+is essential to the continuance of life?
+
+Yes.
+
+But the condiments are only necessary in so far as they are good for
+health?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And the desire which goes beyond this, of more delicate food, or other
+luxuries, which might generally be got rid of, if controlled and
+trained in youth, and is hurtful to the body, and hurtful to the soul
+in the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, may be rightly called unnecessary?
+
+Very true.
+
+May we not say that these desires spend, and that the others make money
+because they conduce to production?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And of the pleasures of love, and all other pleasures, the same holds
+good?
+
+True.
+
+And the drone of whom we spoke was he who was surfeited in pleasures
+and desires of this sort, and was the slave of the unnecessary desires,
+whereas he who was subject to the necessary only was miserly and
+oligarchical?
+
+Very true.
+
+Again, let us see how the democratical man grows out of the
+oligarchical: the following, as I suspect, is commonly the process.
+
+What is the process?
+
+When a young man who has been brought up as we were just now
+describing, in a vulgar and miserly way, has tasted drones’ honey and
+has come to associate with fierce and crafty natures who are able to
+provide for him all sorts of refinements and varieties of
+pleasure—then, as you may imagine, the change will begin of the
+oligarchical principle within him into the democratical?
+
+Inevitably.
+
+And as in the city like was helping like, and the change was effected
+by an alliance from without assisting one division of the citizens, so
+too the young man is changed by a class of desires coming from without
+to assist the desires within him, that which is akin and alike again
+helping that which is akin and alike?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And if there be any ally which aids the oligarchical principle within
+him, whether the influence of a father or of kindred, advising or
+rebuking him, then there arises in his soul a faction and an opposite
+faction, and he goes to war with himself.
+
+It must be so.
+
+And there are times when the democratical principle gives way to the
+oligarchical, and some of his desires die, and others are banished; a
+spirit of reverence enters into the young man’s soul and order is
+restored.
+
+Yes, he said, that sometimes happens.
+
+And then, again, after the old desires have been driven out, fresh ones
+spring up, which are akin to them, and because he their father does not
+know how to educate them, wax fierce and numerous.
+
+Yes, he said, that is apt to be the way.
+
+They draw him to his old associates, and holding secret intercourse
+with them, breed and multiply in him.
+
+Very true.
+
+At length they seize upon the citadel of the young man’s soul, which
+they perceive to be void of all accomplishments and fair pursuits and
+true words, which make their abode in the minds of men who are dear to
+the gods, and are their best guardians and sentinels.
+
+None better.
+
+False and boastful conceits and phrases mount upwards and take their
+place.
+
+They are certain to do so.
+
+And so the young man returns into the country of the lotus-eaters, and
+takes up his dwelling there in the face of all men; and if any help be
+sent by his friends to the oligarchical part of him, the aforesaid vain
+conceits shut the gate of the king’s fastness; and they will neither
+allow the embassy itself to enter, nor if private advisers offer the
+fatherly counsel of the aged will they listen to them or receive them.
+There is a battle and they gain the day, and then modesty, which they
+call silliness, is ignominiously thrust into exile by them, and
+temperance, which they nickname unmanliness, is trampled in the mire
+and cast forth; they persuade men that moderation and orderly
+expenditure are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a rabble
+of evil appetites, they drive them beyond the border.
+
+Yes, with a will.
+
+And when they have emptied and swept clean the soul of him who is now
+in their power and who is being initiated by them in great mysteries,
+the next thing is to bring back to their house insolence and anarchy
+and waste and impudence in bright array having garlands on their heads,
+and a great company with them, hymning their praises and calling them
+by sweet names; insolence they term breeding, and anarchy liberty, and
+waste magnificence, and impudence courage. And so the young man passes
+out of his original nature, which was trained in the school of
+necessity, into the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary
+pleasures.
+
+Yes, he said, the change in him is visible enough.
+
+After this he lives on, spending his money and labour and time on
+unnecessary pleasures quite as much as on necessary ones; but if he be
+fortunate, and is not too much disordered in his wits, when years have
+elapsed, and the heyday of passion is over—supposing that he then
+re-admits into the city some part of the exiled virtues, and does not
+wholly give himself up to their successors—in that case he balances his
+pleasures and lives in a sort of equilibrium, putting the government of
+himself into the hands of the one which comes first and wins the turn;
+and when he has had enough of that, then into the hands of another; he
+despises none of them but encourages them all equally.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Neither does he receive or let pass into the fortress any true word of
+advice; if any one says to him that some pleasures are the
+satisfactions of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires,
+and that he ought to use and honour some and chastise and master the
+others—whenever this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says
+that they are all alike, and that one is as good as another.
+
+Yes, he said; that is the way with him.
+
+Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the
+hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute;
+then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a
+turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then
+once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with
+politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into
+his head; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is
+in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life
+has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy
+and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.
+
+Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality.
+
+Yes, I said; his life is motley and manifold and an epitome of the
+lives of many;—he answers to the State which we described as fair and
+spangled. And many a man and many a woman will take him for their
+pattern, and many a constitution and many an example of manners is
+contained in him.
+
+Just so.
+
+Let him then be set over against democracy; he may truly be called the
+democratic man.
+
+Let that be his place, he said.
+
+Last of all comes the most beautiful of all, man and State alike,
+tyranny and the tyrant; these we have now to consider.
+
+Quite true, he said.
+
+Say then, my friend, In what manner does tyranny arise?—that it has a
+democratic origin is evident.
+
+Clearly.
+
+And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as
+democracy from oligarchy—I mean, after a sort?
+
+How?
+
+The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it
+was maintained was excess of wealth—am I not right?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all other things
+for the sake of money-getting was also the ruin of oligarchy?
+
+True.
+
+And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings
+her to dissolution?
+
+What good?
+
+Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the
+glory of the State—and that therefore in a democracy alone will the
+freeman of nature deign to dwell.
+
+Yes; the saying is in every body’s mouth.
+
+I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the
+neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which
+occasions a demand for tyranny.
+
+How so?
+
+When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cup-bearers
+presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine
+of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a
+plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and
+says that they are cursed oligarchs.
+
+Yes, he replied, a very common occurrence.
+
+Yes, I said; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her slaves
+who hug their chains and men of naught; she would have subjects who are
+like rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are men after her
+own heart, whom she praises and honours both in private and public.
+Now, in such a State, can liberty have any limit?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses, and ends by
+getting among the animals and infecting them.
+
+How do you mean?
+
+I mean that the father grows accustomed to descend to the level of his
+sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level with his father, he
+having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is
+his freedom, and the metic is equal with the citizen and the citizen
+with the metic, and the stranger is quite as good as either.
+
+Yes, he said, that is the way.
+
+And these are not the only evils, I said—there are several lesser ones:
+In such a state of society the master fears and flatters his scholars,
+and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are
+all alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready
+to compete with him in word or deed; and old men condescend to the
+young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loth to be
+thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners
+of the young.
+
+Quite true, he said.
+
+The last extreme of popular liberty is when the slave bought with
+money, whether male or female, is just as free as his or her purchaser;
+nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes
+in relation to each other.
+
+Why not, as Aeschylus says, utter the word which rises to our lips?
+
+That is what I am doing, I replied; and I must add that no one who does
+not know would believe, how much greater is the liberty which the
+animals who are under the dominion of man have in a democracy than in
+any other State: for truly, the she-dogs, as the proverb says, are as
+good as their she-mistresses, and the horses and asses have a way of
+marching along with all the rights and dignities of freemen; and they
+will run at any body who comes in their way if he does not leave the
+road clear for them: and all things are just ready to burst with
+liberty.
+
+When I take a country walk, he said, I often experience what you
+describe. You and I have dreamed the same thing.
+
+And above all, I said, and as the result of all, see how sensitive the
+citizens become; they chafe impatiently at the least touch of
+authority, and at length, as you know, they cease to care even for the
+laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them.
+
+Yes, he said, I know it too well.
+
+Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of
+which springs tyranny.
+
+Glorious indeed, he said. But what is the next step?
+
+The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same disease
+magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy—the truth
+being that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction
+in the opposite direction; and this is the case not only in the seasons
+and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government.
+
+True.
+
+The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to
+pass into excess of slavery.
+
+Yes, the natural order.
+
+And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most
+aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of
+liberty?
+
+As we might expect.
+
+That, however, was not, as I believe, your question—you rather desired
+to know what is that disorder which is generated alike in oligarchy and
+democracy, and is the ruin of both?
+
+Just so, he replied.
+
+Well, I said, I meant to refer to the class of idle spendthrifts, of
+whom the more courageous are the leaders and the more timid the
+followers, the same whom we were comparing to drones, some stingless,
+and others having stings.
+
+A very just comparison.
+
+These two classes are the plagues of every city in which they are
+generated, being what phlegm and bile are to the body. And the good
+physician and lawgiver of the State ought, like the wise bee-master, to
+keep them at a distance and prevent, if possible, their ever coming in;
+and if they have anyhow found a way in, then he should have them and
+their cells cut out as speedily as possible.
+
+Yes, by all means, he said.
+
+Then, in order that we may see clearly what we are doing, let us
+imagine democracy to be divided, as indeed it is, into three classes;
+for in the first place freedom creates rather more drones in the
+democratic than there were in the oligarchical State.
+
+That is true.
+
+And in the democracy they are certainly more intensified.
+
+How so?
+
+Because in the oligarchical State they are disqualified and driven from
+office, and therefore they cannot train or gather strength; whereas in
+a democracy they are almost the entire ruling power, and while the
+keener sort speak and act, the rest keep buzzing about the bema and do
+not suffer a word to be said on the other side; hence in democracies
+almost everything is managed by the drones.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Then there is another class which is always being severed from the
+mass.
+
+What is that?
+
+They are the orderly class, which in a nation of traders is sure to be
+the richest.
+
+Naturally so.
+
+They are the most squeezable persons and yield the largest amount of
+honey to the drones.
+
+Why, he said, there is little to be squeezed out of people who have
+little.
+
+And this is called the wealthy class, and the drones feed upon them.
+
+That is pretty much the case, he said.
+
+The people are a third class, consisting of those who work with their
+own hands; they are not politicians, and have not much to live upon.
+This, when assembled, is the largest and most powerful class in a
+democracy.
+
+True, he said; but then the multitude is seldom willing to congregate
+unless they get a little honey.
+
+And do they not share? I said. Do not their leaders deprive the rich of
+their estates and distribute them among the people; at the same time
+taking care to reserve the larger part for themselves?
+
+Why, yes, he said, to that extent the people do share.
+
+And the persons whose property is taken from them are compelled to
+defend themselves before the people as they best can?
+
+What else can they do?
+
+And then, although they may have no desire of change, the others charge
+them with plotting against the people and being friends of oligarchy?
+
+True.
+
+And the end is that when they see the people, not of their own accord,
+but through ignorance, and because they are deceived by informers,
+seeking to do them wrong, then at last they are forced to become
+oligarchs in reality; they do not wish to be, but the sting of the
+drones torments them and breeds revolution in them.
+
+That is exactly the truth.
+
+Then come impeachments and judgments and trials of one another.
+
+True.
+
+The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse
+into greatness.
+
+Yes, that is their way.
+
+This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he
+first appears above ground he is a protector.
+
+Yes, that is quite clear.
+
+How then does a protector begin to change into a tyrant? Clearly when
+he does what the man is said to do in the tale of the Arcadian temple
+of Lycaean Zeus.
+
+What tale?
+
+The tale is that he who has tasted the entrails of a single human
+victim minced up with the entrails of other victims is destined to
+become a wolf. Did you never hear it?
+
+Oh, yes.
+
+And the protector of the people is like him; having a mob entirely at
+his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen;
+by the favourite method of false accusation he brings them into court
+and murders them, making the life of man to disappear, and with unholy
+tongue and lips tasting the blood of his fellow citizens; some he kills
+and others he banishes, at the same time hinting at the abolition of
+debts and partition of lands: and after this, what will be his destiny?
+Must he not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from being a
+man become a wolf—that is, a tyrant?
+
+Inevitably.
+
+This, I said, is he who begins to make a party against the rich?
+
+The same.
+
+After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his
+enemies, a tyrant full grown.
+
+That is clear.
+
+And if they are unable to expel him, or to get him condemned to death
+by a public accusation, they conspire to assassinate him.
+
+Yes, he said, that is their usual way.
+
+Then comes the famous request for a body-guard, which is the device of
+all those who have got thus far in their tyrannical career—‘Let not the
+people’s friend,’ as they say, ‘be lost to them.’
+
+Exactly.
+
+The people readily assent; all their fears are for him—they have none
+for themselves.
+
+Very true.
+
+And when a man who is wealthy and is also accused of being an enemy of
+the people sees this, then, my friend, as the oracle said to Croesus,
+
+‘By pebbly Hermus’ shore he flees and rests not, and is not ashamed to
+be a coward.’
+
+And quite right too, said he, for if he were, he would never be ashamed
+again.
+
+But if he is caught he dies.
+
+Of course.
+
+And he, the protector of whom we spoke, is to be seen, not ‘larding the
+plain’ with his bulk, but himself the overthrower of many, standing up
+in the chariot of State with the reins in his hand, no longer
+protector, but tyrant absolute.
+
+No doubt, he said.
+
+And now let us consider the happiness of the man, and also of the State
+in which a creature like him is generated.
+
+Yes, he said, let us consider that.
+
+At first, in the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he
+salutes every one whom he meets;—he to be called a tyrant, who is
+making promises in public and also in private! liberating debtors, and
+distributing land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so
+kind and good to every one!
+
+Of course, he said.
+
+But when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and
+there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some
+war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
+
+To be sure.
+
+Has he not also another object, which is that they may be impoverished
+by payment of taxes, and thus compelled to devote themselves to their
+daily wants and therefore less likely to conspire against him?
+
+Clearly.
+
+And if any of them are suspected by him of having notions of freedom,
+and of resistance to his authority, he will have a good pretext for
+destroying them by placing them at the mercy of the enemy; and for all
+these reasons the tyrant must be always getting up a war.
+
+He must.
+
+Now he begins to grow unpopular.
+
+A necessary result.
+
+Then some of those who joined in setting him up, and who are in power,
+speak their minds to him and to one another, and the more courageous of
+them cast in his teeth what is being done.
+
+Yes, that may be expected.
+
+And the tyrant, if he means to rule, must get rid of them; he cannot
+stop while he has a friend or an enemy who is good for anything.
+
+He cannot.
+
+And therefore he must look about him and see who is valiant, who is
+high-minded, who is wise, who is wealthy; happy man, he is the enemy of
+them all, and must seek occasion against them whether he will or no,
+until he has made a purgation of the State.
+
+Yes, he said, and a rare purgation.
+
+Yes, I said, not the sort of purgation which the physicians make of the
+body; for they take away the worse and leave the better part, but he
+does the reverse.
+
+If he is to rule, I suppose that he cannot help himself.
+
+What a blessed alternative, I said:—to be compelled to dwell only with
+the many bad, and to be by them hated, or not to live at all!
+
+Yes, that is the alternative.
+
+And the more detestable his actions are to the citizens the more
+satellites and the greater devotion in them will he require?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And who are the devoted band, and where will he procure them?
+
+They will flock to him, he said, of their own accord, if he pays them.
+
+By the dog! I said, here are more drones, of every sort and from every
+land.
+
+Yes, he said, there are.
+
+But will he not desire to get them on the spot?
+
+How do you mean?
+
+He will rob the citizens of their slaves; he will then set them free
+and enrol them in his body-guard.
+
+To be sure, he said; and he will be able to trust them best of all.
+
+What a blessed creature, I said, must this tyrant be; he has put to
+death the others and has these for his trusted friends.
+
+Yes, he said; they are quite of his sort.
+
+Yes, I said, and these are the new citizens whom he has called into
+existence, who admire him and are his companions, while the good hate
+and avoid him.
+
+Of course.
+
+Verily, then, tragedy is a wise thing and Euripides a great tragedian.
+
+Why so?
+
+Why, because he is the author of the pregnant saying,
+
+‘Tyrants are wise by living with the wise;’
+
+and he clearly meant to say that they are the wise whom the tyrant
+makes his companions.
+
+Yes, he said, and he also praises tyranny as godlike; and many other
+things of the same kind are said by him and by the other poets.
+
+And therefore, I said, the tragic poets being wise men will forgive us
+and any others who live after our manner if we do not receive them into
+our State, because they are the eulogists of tyranny.
+
+Yes, he said, those who have the wit will doubtless forgive us.
+
+But they will continue to go to other cities and attract mobs, and hire
+voices fair and loud and persuasive, and draw the cities over to
+tyrannies and democracies.
+
+Very true.
+
+Moreover, they are paid for this and receive honour—the greatest
+honour, as might be expected, from tyrants, and the next greatest from
+democracies; but the higher they ascend our constitution hill, the more
+their reputation fails, and seems unable from shortness of breath to
+proceed further.
+
+True.
+
+But we are wandering from the subject: Let us therefore return and
+enquire how the tyrant will maintain that fair and numerous and various
+and ever-changing army of his.
+
+If, he said, there are sacred treasures in the city, he will confiscate
+and spend them; and in so far as the fortunes of attainted persons may
+suffice, he will be able to diminish the taxes which he would otherwise
+have to impose upon the people.
+
+And when these fail?
+
+Why, clearly, he said, then he and his boon companions, whether male or
+female, will be maintained out of his father’s estate.
+
+You mean to say that the people, from whom he has derived his being,
+will maintain him and his companions?
+
+Yes, he said; they cannot help themselves.
+
+But what if the people fly into a passion, and aver that a grown-up son
+ought not to be supported by his father, but that the father should be
+supported by the son? The father did not bring him into being, or
+settle him in life, in order that when his son became a man he should
+himself be the servant of his own servants and should support him and
+his rabble of slaves and companions; but that his son should protect
+him, and that by his help he might be emancipated from the government
+of the rich and aristocratic, as they are termed. And so he bids him
+and his companions depart, just as any other father might drive out of
+the house a riotous son and his undesirable associates.
+
+By heaven, he said, then the parent will discover what a monster he has
+been fostering in his bosom; and, when he wants to drive him out, he
+will find that he is weak and his son strong.
+
+Why, you do not mean to say that the tyrant will use violence? What!
+beat his father if he opposes him?
+
+Yes, he will, having first disarmed him.
+
+Then he is a parricide, and a cruel guardian of an aged parent; and
+this is real tyranny, about which there can be no longer a mistake: as
+the saying is, the people who would escape the smoke which is the
+slavery of freemen, has fallen into the fire which is the tyranny of
+slaves. Thus liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes into
+the harshest and bitterest form of slavery.
+
+True, he said.
+
+Very well; and may we not rightly say that we have sufficiently
+discussed the nature of tyranny, and the manner of the transition from
+democracy to tyranny?
+
+Yes, quite enough, he said.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK IX.
+
+
+Last of all comes the tyrannical man; about whom we have once more to
+ask, how is he formed out of the democratical? and how does he live, in
+happiness or in misery?
+
+Yes, he said, he is the only one remaining.
+
+There is, however, I said, a previous question which remains
+unanswered.
+
+What question?
+
+I do not think that we have adequately determined the nature and number
+of the appetites, and until this is accomplished the enquiry will
+always be confused.
+
+Well, he said, it is not too late to supply the omission.
+
+Very true, I said; and observe the point which I want to understand:
+Certain of the unnecessary pleasures and appetites I conceive to be
+unlawful; every one appears to have them, but in some persons they are
+controlled by the laws and by reason, and the better desires prevail
+over them—either they are wholly banished or they become few and weak;
+while in the case of others they are stronger, and there are more of
+them.
+
+Which appetites do you mean?
+
+I mean those which are awake when the reasoning and human and ruling
+power is asleep; then the wild beast within us, gorged with meat or
+drink, starts up and having shaken off sleep, goes forth to satisfy his
+desires; and there is no conceivable folly or crime—not excepting
+incest or any other unnatural union, or parricide, or the eating of
+forbidden food—which at such a time, when he has parted company with
+all shame and sense, a man may not be ready to commit.
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+But when a man’s pulse is healthy and temperate, and when before going
+to sleep he has awakened his rational powers, and fed them on noble
+thoughts and enquiries, collecting himself in meditation; after having
+first indulged his appetites neither too much nor too little, but just
+enough to lay them to sleep, and prevent them and their enjoyments and
+pains from interfering with the higher principle—which he leaves in the
+solitude of pure abstraction, free to contemplate and aspire to the
+knowledge of the unknown, whether in past, present, or future: when
+again he has allayed the passionate element, if he has a quarrel
+against any one—I say, when, after pacifying the two irrational
+principles, he rouses up the third, which is reason, before he takes
+his rest, then, as you know, he attains truth most nearly, and is least
+likely to be the sport of fantastic and lawless visions.
+
+I quite agree.
+
+In saying this I have been running into a digression; but the point
+which I desire to note is that in all of us, even in good men, there is
+a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep. Pray, consider
+whether I am right, and you agree with me.
+
+Yes, I agree.
+
+And now remember the character which we attributed to the democratic
+man. He was supposed from his youth upwards to have been trained under
+a miserly parent, who encouraged the saving appetites in him, but
+discountenanced the unnecessary, which aim only at amusement and
+ornament?
+
+True.
+
+And then he got into the company of a more refined, licentious sort of
+people, and taking to all their wanton ways rushed into the opposite
+extreme from an abhorrence of his father’s meanness. At last, being a
+better man than his corruptors, he was drawn in both directions until
+he halted midway and led a life, not of vulgar and slavish passion, but
+of what he deemed moderate indulgence in various pleasures. After this
+manner the democrat was generated out of the oligarch?
+
+Yes, he said; that was our view of him, and is so still.
+
+And now, I said, years will have passed away, and you must conceive
+this man, such as he is, to have a son, who is brought up in his
+father’s principles.
+
+I can imagine him.
+
+Then you must further imagine the same thing to happen to the son which
+has already happened to the father:—he is drawn into a perfectly
+lawless life, which by his seducers is termed perfect liberty; and his
+father and friends take part with his moderate desires, and the
+opposite party assist the opposite ones. As soon as these dire
+magicians and tyrant-makers find that they are losing their hold on
+him, they contrive to implant in him a master passion, to be lord over
+his idle and spendthrift lusts—a sort of monstrous winged drone—that is
+the only image which will adequately describe him.
+
+Yes, he said, that is the only adequate image of him.
+
+And when his other lusts, amid clouds of incense and perfumes and
+garlands and wines, and all the pleasures of a dissolute life, now let
+loose, come buzzing around him, nourishing to the utmost the sting of
+desire which they implant in his drone-like nature, then at last this
+lord of the soul, having Madness for the captain of his guard, breaks
+out into a frenzy: and if he finds in himself any good opinions or
+appetites in process of formation, and there is in him any sense of
+shame remaining, to these better principles he puts an end, and casts
+them forth until he has purged away temperance and brought in madness
+to the full.
+
+Yes, he said, that is the way in which the tyrannical man is generated.
+
+And is not this the reason why of old love has been called a tyrant?
+
+I should not wonder.
+
+Further, I said, has not a drunken man also the spirit of a tyrant?
+
+He has.
+
+And you know that a man who is deranged and not right in his mind, will
+fancy that he is able to rule, not only over men, but also over the
+gods?
+
+That he will.
+
+And the tyrannical man in the true sense of the word comes into being
+when, either under the influence of nature, or habit, or both, he
+becomes drunken, lustful, passionate? O my friend, is not that so?
+
+Assuredly.
+
+Such is the man and such is his origin. And next, how does he live?
+
+Suppose, as people facetiously say, you were to tell me.
+
+I imagine, I said, at the next step in his progress, that there will be
+feasts and carousals and revellings and courtezans, and all that sort
+of thing; Love is the lord of the house within him, and orders all the
+concerns of his soul.
+
+That is certain.
+
+Yes; and every day and every night desires grow up many and formidable,
+and their demands are many.
+
+They are indeed, he said.
+
+His revenues, if he has any, are soon spent.
+
+True.
+
+Then comes debt and the cutting down of his property.
+
+Of course.
+
+When he has nothing left, must not his desires, crowding in the nest
+like young ravens, be crying aloud for food; and he, goaded on by them,
+and especially by love himself, who is in a manner the captain of them,
+is in a frenzy, and would fain discover whom he can defraud or despoil
+of his property, in order that he may gratify them?
+
+Yes, that is sure to be the case.
+
+He must have money, no matter how, if he is to escape horrid pains and
+pangs.
+
+He must.
+
+And as in himself there was a succession of pleasures, and the new got
+the better of the old and took away their rights, so he being younger
+will claim to have more than his father and his mother, and if he has
+spent his own share of the property, he will take a slice of theirs.
+
+No doubt he will.
+
+And if his parents will not give way, then he will try first of all to
+cheat and deceive them.
+
+Very true.
+
+And if he fails, then he will use force and plunder them.
+
+Yes, probably.
+
+And if the old man and woman fight for their own, what then, my friend?
+Will the creature feel any compunction at tyrannizing over them?
+
+Nay, he said, I should not feel at all comfortable about his parents.
+
+But, O heavens! Adeimantus, on account of some new-fangled love of a
+harlot, who is anything but a necessary connection, can you believe
+that he would strike the mother who is his ancient friend and necessary
+to his very existence, and would place her under the authority of the
+other, when she is brought under the same roof with her; or that, under
+like circumstances, he would do the same to his withered old father,
+first and most indispensable of friends, for the sake of some
+newly-found blooming youth who is the reverse of indispensable?
+
+Yes, indeed, he said; I believe that he would.
+
+Truly, then, I said, a tyrannical son is a blessing to his father and
+mother.
+
+He is indeed, he replied.
+
+He first takes their property, and when that fails, and pleasures are
+beginning to swarm in the hive of his soul, then he breaks into a
+house, or steals the garments of some nightly wayfarer; next he
+proceeds to clear a temple. Meanwhile the old opinions which he had
+when a child, and which gave judgment about good and evil, are
+overthrown by those others which have just been emancipated, and are
+now the body-guard of love and share his empire. These in his
+democratic days, when he was still subject to the laws and to his
+father, were only let loose in the dreams of sleep. But now that he is
+under the dominion of love, he becomes always and in waking reality
+what he was then very rarely and in a dream only; he will commit the
+foulest murder, or eat forbidden food, or be guilty of any other horrid
+act. Love is his tyrant, and lives lordly in him and lawlessly, and
+being himself a king, leads him on, as a tyrant leads a State, to the
+performance of any reckless deed by which he can maintain himself and
+the rabble of his associates, whether those whom evil communications
+have brought in from without, or those whom he himself has allowed to
+break loose within him by reason of a similar evil nature in himself.
+Have we not here a picture of his way of life?
+
+Yes, indeed, he said.
+
+And if there are only a few of them in the State, and the rest of the
+people are well disposed, they go away and become the body-guard or
+mercenary soldiers of some other tyrant who may probably want them for
+a war; and if there is no war, they stay at home and do many little
+pieces of mischief in the city.
+
+What sort of mischief?
+
+For example, they are the thieves, burglars, cut-purses, foot-pads,
+robbers of temples, man-stealers of the community; or if they are able
+to speak they turn informers, and bear false witness, and take bribes.
+
+A small catalogue of evils, even if the perpetrators of them are few in
+number.
+
+Yes, I said; but small and great are comparative terms, and all these
+things, in the misery and evil which they inflict upon a State, do not
+come within a thousand miles of the tyrant; when this noxious class and
+their followers grow numerous and become conscious of their strength,
+assisted by the infatuation of the people, they choose from among
+themselves the one who has most of the tyrant in his own soul, and him
+they create their tyrant.
+
+Yes, he said, and he will be the most fit to be a tyrant.
+
+If the people yield, well and good; but if they resist him, as he began
+by beating his own father and mother, so now, if he has the power, he
+beats them, and will keep his dear old fatherland or motherland, as the
+Cretans say, in subjection to his young retainers whom he has
+introduced to be their rulers and masters. This is the end of his
+passions and desires.
+
+Exactly.
+
+When such men are only private individuals and before they get power,
+this is their character; they associate entirely with their own
+flatterers or ready tools; or if they want anything from anybody, they
+in their turn are equally ready to bow down before them: they profess
+every sort of affection for them; but when they have gained their point
+they know them no more.
+
+Yes, truly.
+
+They are always either the masters or servants and never the friends of
+anybody; the tyrant never tastes of true freedom or friendship.
+
+Certainly not.
+
+And may we not rightly call such men treacherous?
+
+No question.
+
+Also they are utterly unjust, if we were right in our notion of
+justice?
+
+Yes, he said, and we were perfectly right.
+
+Let us then sum up in a word, I said, the character of the worst man:
+he is the waking reality of what we dreamed.
+
+Most true.
+
+And this is he who being by nature most of a tyrant bears rule, and the
+longer he lives the more of a tyrant he becomes.
+
+That is certain, said Glaucon, taking his turn to answer.
+
+And will not he who has been shown to be the wickedest, be also the
+most miserable? and he who has tyrannized longest and most, most
+continually and truly miserable; although this may not be the opinion
+of men in general?
+
+Yes, he said, inevitably.
+
+And must not the tyrannical man be like the tyrannical State, and the
+democratical man like the democratical State; and the same of the
+others?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And as State is to State in virtue and happiness, so is man in relation
+to man?
+
+To be sure.
+
+Then comparing our original city, which was under a king, and the city
+which is under a tyrant, how do they stand as to virtue?
+
+They are the opposite extremes, he said, for one is the very best and
+the other is the very worst.
+
+There can be no mistake, I said, as to which is which, and therefore I
+will at once enquire whether you would arrive at a similar decision
+about their relative happiness and misery. And here we must not allow
+ourselves to be panic-stricken at the apparition of the tyrant, who is
+only a unit and may perhaps have a few retainers about him; but let us
+go as we ought into every corner of the city and look all about, and
+then we will give our opinion.
+
+A fair invitation, he replied; and I see, as every one must, that a
+tyranny is the wretchedest form of government, and the rule of a king
+the happiest.
+
+And in estimating the men too, may I not fairly make a like request,
+that I should have a judge whose mind can enter into and see through
+human nature? he must not be like a child who looks at the outside and
+is dazzled at the pompous aspect which the tyrannical nature assumes to
+the beholder, but let him be one who has a clear insight. May I suppose
+that the judgment is given in the hearing of us all by one who is able
+to judge, and has dwelt in the same place with him, and been present at
+his dally life and known him in his family relations, where he may be
+seen stripped of his tragedy attire, and again in the hour of public
+danger—he shall tell us about the happiness and misery of the tyrant
+when compared with other men?
+
+That again, he said, is a very fair proposal.
+
+Shall I assume that we ourselves are able and experienced judges and
+have before now met with such a person? We shall then have some one who
+will answer our enquiries.
+
+By all means.
+
+Let me ask you not to forget the parallel of the individual and the
+State; bearing this in mind, and glancing in turn from one to the other
+of them, will you tell me their respective conditions?
+
+What do you mean? he asked.
+
+Beginning with the State, I replied, would you say that a city which is
+governed by a tyrant is free or enslaved?
+
+No city, he said, can be more completely enslaved.
+
+And yet, as you see, there are freemen as well as masters in such a
+State?
+
+Yes, he said, I see that there are—a few; but the people, speaking
+generally, and the best of them are miserably degraded and enslaved.
+
+Then if the man is like the State, I said, must not the same rule
+prevail? his soul is full of meanness and vulgarity—the best elements
+in him are enslaved; and there is a small ruling part, which is also
+the worst and maddest.
+
+Inevitably.
+
+And would you say that the soul of such an one is the soul of a
+freeman, or of a slave?
+
+He has the soul of a slave, in my opinion.
+
+And the State which is enslaved under a tyrant is utterly incapable of
+acting voluntarily?
+
+Utterly incapable.
+
+And also the soul which is under a tyrant (I am speaking of the soul
+taken as a whole) is least capable of doing what she desires; there is
+a gadfly which goads her, and she is full of trouble and remorse?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And is the city which is under a tyrant rich or poor?
+
+Poor.
+
+And the tyrannical soul must be always poor and insatiable?
+
+True.
+
+And must not such a State and such a man be always full of fear?
+
+Yes, indeed.
+
+Is there any State in which you will find more of lamentation and
+sorrow and groaning and pain?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+And is there any man in whom you will find more of this sort of misery
+than in the tyrannical man, who is in a fury of passions and desires?
+
+Impossible.
+
+Reflecting upon these and similar evils, you held the tyrannical State
+to be the most miserable of States?
+
+And I was right, he said.
+
+Certainly, I said. And when you see the same evils in the tyrannical
+man, what do you say of him?
+
+I say that he is by far the most miserable of all men.
+
+There, I said, I think that you are beginning to go wrong.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+I do not think that he has as yet reached the utmost extreme of misery.
+
+Then who is more miserable?
+
+One of whom I am about to speak.
+
+Who is that?
+
+He who is of a tyrannical nature, and instead of leading a private life
+has been cursed with the further misfortune of being a public tyrant.
+
+From what has been said, I gather that you are right.
+
+Yes, I replied, but in this high argument you should be a little more
+certain, and should not conjecture only; for of all questions, this
+respecting good and evil is the greatest.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Let me then offer you an illustration, which may, I think, throw a
+light upon this subject.
+
+What is your illustration?
+
+The case of rich individuals in cities who possess many slaves: from
+them you may form an idea of the tyrant’s condition, for they both have
+slaves; the only difference is that he has more slaves.
+
+Yes, that is the difference.
+
+You know that they live securely and have nothing to apprehend from
+their servants?
+
+What should they fear?
+
+Nothing. But do you observe the reason of this?
+
+Yes; the reason is, that the whole city is leagued together for the
+protection of each individual.
+
+Very true, I said. But imagine one of these owners, the master say of
+some fifty slaves, together with his family and property and slaves,
+carried off by a god into the wilderness, where there are no freemen to
+help him—will he not be in an agony of fear lest he and his wife and
+children should be put to death by his slaves?
+
+Yes, he said, he will be in the utmost fear.
+
+The time has arrived when he will be compelled to flatter divers of his
+slaves, and make many promises to them of freedom and other things,
+much against his will—he will have to cajole his own servants.
+
+Yes, he said, that will be the only way of saving himself.
+
+And suppose the same god, who carried him away, to surround him with
+neighbours who will not suffer one man to be the master of another, and
+who, if they could catch the offender, would take his life?
+
+His case will be still worse, if you suppose him to be everywhere
+surrounded and watched by enemies.
+
+And is not this the sort of prison in which the tyrant will be bound—he
+who being by nature such as we have described, is full of all sorts of
+fears and lusts? His soul is dainty and greedy, and yet alone, of all
+men in the city, he is never allowed to go on a journey, or to see the
+things which other freemen desire to see, but he lives in his hole like
+a woman hidden in the house, and is jealous of any other citizen who
+goes into foreign parts and sees anything of interest.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+And amid evils such as these will not he who is ill-governed in his own
+person—the tyrannical man, I mean—whom you just now decided to be the
+most miserable of all—will not he be yet more miserable when, instead
+of leading a private life, he is constrained by fortune to be a public
+tyrant? He has to be master of others when he is not master of himself:
+he is like a diseased or paralytic man who is compelled to pass his
+life, not in retirement, but fighting and combating with other men.
+
+Yes, he said, the similitude is most exact.
+
+Is not his case utterly miserable? and does not the actual tyrant lead
+a worse life than he whose life you determined to be the worst?
+
+Certainly.
+
+He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave,
+and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to
+be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is
+utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is
+truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his
+life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions and
+distractions, even as the State which he resembles: and surely the
+resemblance holds?
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Moreover, as we were saying before, he grows worse from having power:
+he becomes and is of necessity more jealous, more faithless, more
+unjust, more friendless, more impious, than he was at first; he is the
+purveyor and cherisher of every sort of vice, and the consequence is
+that he is supremely miserable, and that he makes everybody else as
+miserable as himself.
+
+No man of any sense will dispute your words.
+
+Come then, I said, and as the general umpire in theatrical contests
+proclaims the result, do you also decide who in your opinion is first
+in the scale of happiness, and who second, and in what order the others
+follow: there are five of them in all—they are the royal, timocratical,
+oligarchical, democratical, tyrannical.
+
+The decision will be easily given, he replied; they shall be choruses
+coming on the stage, and I must judge them in the order in which they
+enter, by the criterion of virtue and vice, happiness and misery.
+
+Need we hire a herald, or shall I announce, that the son of Ariston
+(the best) has decided that the best and justest is also the happiest,
+and that this is he who is the most royal man and king over himself;
+and that the worst and most unjust man is also the most miserable, and
+that this is he who being the greatest tyrant of himself is also the
+greatest tyrant of his State?
+
+Make the proclamation yourself, he said.
+
+And shall I add, ‘whether seen or unseen by gods and men’?
+
+Let the words be added.
+
+Then this, I said, will be our first proof; and there is another, which
+may also have some weight.
+
+What is that?
+
+The second proof is derived from the nature of the soul: seeing that
+the individual soul, like the State, has been divided by us into three
+principles, the division may, I think, furnish a new demonstration.
+
+Of what nature?
+
+It seems to me that to these three principles three pleasures
+correspond; also three desires and governing powers.
+
+How do you mean? he said.
+
+There is one principle with which, as we were saying, a man learns,
+another with which he is angry; the third, having many forms, has no
+special name, but is denoted by the general term appetitive, from the
+extraordinary strength and vehemence of the desires of eating and
+drinking and the other sensual appetites which are the main elements of
+it; also money-loving, because such desires are generally satisfied by
+the help of money.
+
+That is true, he said.
+
+If we were to say that the loves and pleasures of this third part were
+concerned with gain, we should then be able to fall back on a single
+notion; and might truly and intelligibly describe this part of the soul
+as loving gain or money.
+
+I agree with you.
+
+Again, is not the passionate element wholly set on ruling and
+conquering and getting fame?
+
+True.
+
+Suppose we call it the contentious or ambitious—would the term be
+suitable?
+
+Extremely suitable.
+
+On the other hand, every one sees that the principle of knowledge is
+wholly directed to the truth, and cares less than either of the others
+for gain or fame.
+
+Far less.
+
+‘Lover of wisdom,’ ‘lover of knowledge,’ are titles which we may fitly
+apply to that part of the soul?
+
+Certainly.
+
+One principle prevails in the souls of one class of men, another in
+others, as may happen?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then we may begin by assuming that there are three classes of
+men—lovers of wisdom, lovers of honour, lovers of gain?
+
+Exactly.
+
+And there are three kinds of pleasure, which are their several objects?
+
+Very true.
+
+Now, if you examine the three classes of men, and ask of them in turn
+which of their lives is pleasantest, each will be found praising his
+own and depreciating that of others: the money-maker will contrast the
+vanity of honour or of learning if they bring no money with the solid
+advantages of gold and silver?
+
+True, he said.
+
+And the lover of honour—what will be his opinion? Will he not think
+that the pleasure of riches is vulgar, while the pleasure of learning,
+if it brings no distinction, is all smoke and nonsense to him?
+
+Very true.
+
+And are we to suppose, I said, that the philosopher sets any value on
+other pleasures in comparison with the pleasure of knowing the truth,
+and in that pursuit abiding, ever learning, not so far indeed from the
+heaven of pleasure? Does he not call the other pleasures necessary,
+under the idea that if there were no necessity for them, he would
+rather not have them?
+
+There can be no doubt of that, he replied.
+
+Since, then, the pleasures of each class and the life of each are in
+dispute, and the question is not which life is more or less honourable,
+or better or worse, but which is the more pleasant or painless—how
+shall we know who speaks truly?
+
+I cannot myself tell, he said.
+
+Well, but what ought to be the criterion? Is any better than experience
+and wisdom and reason?
+
+There cannot be a better, he said.
+
+Then, I said, reflect. Of the three individuals, which has the greatest
+experience of all the pleasures which we enumerated? Has the lover of
+gain, in learning the nature of essential truth, greater experience of
+the pleasure of knowledge than the philosopher has of the pleasure of
+gain?
+
+The philosopher, he replied, has greatly the advantage; for he has of
+necessity always known the taste of the other pleasures from his
+childhood upwards: but the lover of gain in all his experience has not
+of necessity tasted—or, I should rather say, even had he desired, could
+hardly have tasted—the sweetness of learning and knowing truth.
+
+Then the lover of wisdom has a great advantage over the lover of gain,
+for he has a double experience?
+
+Yes, very great.
+
+Again, has he greater experience of the pleasures of honour, or the
+lover of honour of the pleasures of wisdom?
+
+Nay, he said, all three are honoured in proportion as they attain their
+object; for the rich man and the brave man and the wise man alike have
+their crowd of admirers, and as they all receive honour they all have
+experience of the pleasures of honour; but the delight which is to be
+found in the knowledge of true being is known to the philosopher only.
+
+His experience, then, will enable him to judge better than any one?
+
+Far better.
+
+And he is the only one who has wisdom as well as experience?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Further, the very faculty which is the instrument of judgment is not
+possessed by the covetous or ambitious man, but only by the
+philosopher?
+
+What faculty?
+
+Reason, with whom, as we were saying, the decision ought to rest.
+
+Yes.
+
+And reasoning is peculiarly his instrument?
+
+Certainly.
+
+If wealth and gain were the criterion, then the praise or blame of the
+lover of gain would surely be the most trustworthy?
+
+Assuredly.
+
+Or if honour or victory or courage, in that case the judgment of the
+ambitious or pugnacious would be the truest?
+
+Clearly.
+
+But since experience and wisdom and reason are the judges—
+
+The only inference possible, he replied, is that pleasures which are
+approved by the lover of wisdom and reason are the truest.
+
+And so we arrive at the result, that the pleasure of the intelligent
+part of the soul is the pleasantest of the three, and that he of us in
+whom this is the ruling principle has the pleasantest life.
+
+Unquestionably, he said, the wise man speaks with authority when he
+approves of his own life.
+
+And what does the judge affirm to be the life which is next, and the
+pleasure which is next?
+
+Clearly that of the soldier and lover of honour; who is nearer to
+himself than the money-maker.
+
+Last comes the lover of gain?
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Twice in succession, then, has the just man overthrown the unjust in
+this conflict; and now comes the third trial, which is dedicated to
+Olympian Zeus the saviour: a sage whispers in my ear that no pleasure
+except that of the wise is quite true and pure—all others are a shadow
+only; and surely this will prove the greatest and most decisive of
+falls?
+
+Yes, the greatest; but will you explain yourself?
+
+I will work out the subject and you shall answer my questions.
+
+Proceed.
+
+Say, then, is not pleasure opposed to pain?
+
+True.
+
+And there is a neutral state which is neither pleasure nor pain?
+
+There is.
+
+A state which is intermediate, and a sort of repose of the soul about
+either—that is what you mean?
+
+Yes.
+
+You remember what people say when they are sick?
+
+What do they say?
+
+That after all nothing is pleasanter than health. But then they never
+knew this to be the greatest of pleasures until they were ill.
+
+Yes, I know, he said.
+
+And when persons are suffering from acute pain, you must have heard
+them say that there is nothing pleasanter than to get rid of their
+pain?
+
+I have.
+
+And there are many other cases of suffering in which the mere rest and
+cessation of pain, and not any positive enjoyment, is extolled by them
+as the greatest pleasure?
+
+Yes, he said; at the time they are pleased and well content to be at
+rest.
+
+Again, when pleasure ceases, that sort of rest or cessation will be
+painful?
+
+Doubtless, he said.
+
+Then the intermediate state of rest will be pleasure and will also be
+pain?
+
+So it would seem.
+
+But can that which is neither become both?
+
+I should say not.
+
+And both pleasure and pain are motions of the soul, are they not?
+
+Yes.
+
+But that which is neither was just now shown to be rest and not motion,
+and in a mean between them?
+
+Yes.
+
+How, then, can we be right in supposing that the absence of pain is
+pleasure, or that the absence of pleasure is pain?
+
+Impossible.
+
+This then is an appearance only and not a reality; that is to say, the
+rest is pleasure at the moment and in comparison of what is painful,
+and painful in comparison of what is pleasant; but all these
+representations, when tried by the test of true pleasure, are not real
+but a sort of imposition?
+
+That is the inference.
+
+Look at the other class of pleasures which have no antecedent pains and
+you will no longer suppose, as you perhaps may at present, that
+pleasure is only the cessation of pain, or pain of pleasure.
+
+What are they, he said, and where shall I find them?
+
+There are many of them: take as an example the pleasures of smell,
+which are very great and have no antecedent pains; they come in a
+moment, and when they depart leave no pain behind them.
+
+Most true, he said.
+
+Let us not, then, be induced to believe that pure pleasure is the
+cessation of pain, or pain of pleasure.
+
+No.
+
+Still, the more numerous and violent pleasures which reach the soul
+through the body are generally of this sort—they are reliefs of pain.
+
+That is true.
+
+And the anticipations of future pleasures and pains are of a like
+nature?
+
+Yes.
+
+Shall I give you an illustration of them?
+
+Let me hear.
+
+You would allow, I said, that there is in nature an upper and lower and
+middle region?
+
+I should.
+
+And if a person were to go from the lower to the middle region, would
+he not imagine that he is going up; and he who is standing in the
+middle and sees whence he has come, would imagine that he is already in
+the upper region, if he has never seen the true upper world?
+
+To be sure, he said; how can he think otherwise?
+
+But if he were taken back again he would imagine, and truly imagine,
+that he was descending?
+
+No doubt.
+
+All that would arise out of his ignorance of the true upper and middle
+and lower regions?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then can you wonder that persons who are inexperienced in the truth, as
+they have wrong ideas about many other things, should also have wrong
+ideas about pleasure and pain and the intermediate state; so that when
+they are only being drawn towards the painful they feel pain and think
+the pain which they experience to be real, and in like manner, when
+drawn away from pain to the neutral or intermediate state, they firmly
+believe that they have reached the goal of satiety and pleasure; they,
+not knowing pleasure, err in contrasting pain with the absence of pain,
+which is like contrasting black with grey instead of white—can you
+wonder, I say, at this?
+
+No, indeed; I should be much more disposed to wonder at the opposite.
+
+Look at the matter thus:—Hunger, thirst, and the like, are inanitions
+of the bodily state?
+
+Yes.
+
+And ignorance and folly are inanitions of the soul?
+
+True.
+
+And food and wisdom are the corresponding satisfactions of either?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And is the satisfaction derived from that which has less or from that
+which has more existence the truer?
+
+Clearly, from that which has more.
+
+What classes of things have a greater share of pure existence in your
+judgment—those of which food and drink and condiments and all kinds of
+sustenance are examples, or the class which contains true opinion and
+knowledge and mind and all the different kinds of virtue? Put the
+question in this way:—Which has a more pure being—that which is
+concerned with the invariable, the immortal, and the true, and is of
+such a nature, and is found in such natures; or that which is concerned
+with and found in the variable and mortal, and is itself variable and
+mortal?
+
+Far purer, he replied, is the being of that which is concerned with the
+invariable.
+
+And does the essence of the invariable partake of knowledge in the same
+degree as of essence?
+
+Yes, of knowledge in the same degree.
+
+And of truth in the same degree?
+
+Yes.
+
+And, conversely, that which has less of truth will also have less of
+essence?
+
+Necessarily.
+
+Then, in general, those kinds of things which are in the service of the
+body have less of truth and essence than those which are in the service
+of the soul?
+
+Far less.
+
+And has not the body itself less of truth and essence than the soul?
+
+Yes.
+
+What is filled with more real existence, and actually has a more real
+existence, is more really filled than that which is filled with less
+real existence and is less real?
+
+Of course.
+
+And if there be a pleasure in being filled with that which is according
+to nature, that which is more really filled with more real being will
+more really and truly enjoy true pleasure; whereas that which
+participates in less real being will be less truly and surely
+satisfied, and will participate in an illusory and less real pleasure?
+
+Unquestionably.
+
+Those then who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with
+gluttony and sensuality, go down and up again as far as the mean; and
+in this region they move at random throughout life, but they never pass
+into the true upper world; thither they neither look, nor do they ever
+find their way, neither are they truly filled with true being, nor do
+they taste of pure and abiding pleasure. Like cattle, with their eyes
+always looking down and their heads stooping to the earth, that is, to
+the dining-table, they fatten and feed and breed, and, in their
+excessive love of these delights, they kick and butt at one another
+with horns and hoofs which are made of iron; and they kill one another
+by reason of their insatiable lust. For they fill themselves with that
+which is not substantial, and the part of themselves which they fill is
+also unsubstantial and incontinent.
+
+Verily, Socrates, said Glaucon, you describe the life of the many like
+an oracle.
+
+Their pleasures are mixed with pains—how can they be otherwise? For
+they are mere shadows and pictures of the true, and are coloured by
+contrast, which exaggerates both light and shade, and so they implant
+in the minds of fools insane desires of themselves; and they are fought
+about as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the shadow of
+Helen at Troy in ignorance of the truth.
+
+Something of that sort must inevitably happen.
+
+And must not the like happen with the spirited or passionate element of
+the soul? Will not the passionate man who carries his passion into
+action, be in the like case, whether he is envious and ambitious, or
+violent and contentious, or angry and discontented, if he be seeking to
+attain honour and victory and the satisfaction of his anger without
+reason or sense?
+
+Yes, he said, the same will happen with the spirited element also.
+
+Then may we not confidently assert that the lovers of money and honour,
+when they seek their pleasures under the guidance and in the company of
+reason and knowledge, and pursue after and win the pleasures which
+wisdom shows them, will also have the truest pleasures in the highest
+degree which is attainable to them, inasmuch as they follow truth; and
+they will have the pleasures which are natural to them, if that which
+is best for each one is also most natural to him?
+
+Yes, certainly; the best is the most natural.
+
+And when the whole soul follows the philosophical principle, and there
+is no division, the several parts are just, and do each of them their
+own business, and enjoy severally the best and truest pleasures of
+which they are capable?
+
+Exactly.
+
+But when either of the two other principles prevails, it fails in
+attaining its own pleasure, and compels the rest to pursue after a
+pleasure which is a shadow only and which is not their own?
+
+True.
+
+And the greater the interval which separates them from philosophy and
+reason, the more strange and illusive will be the pleasure?
+
+Yes.
+
+And is not that farthest from reason which is at the greatest distance
+from law and order?
+
+Clearly.
+
+And the lustful and tyrannical desires are, as we saw, at the greatest
+distance? Yes.
+
+And the royal and orderly desires are nearest?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then the tyrant will live at the greatest distance from true or natural
+pleasure, and the king at the least?
+
+Certainly.
+
+But if so, the tyrant will live most unpleasantly, and the king most
+pleasantly?
+
+Inevitably.
+
+Would you know the measure of the interval which separates them?
+
+Will you tell me?
+
+There appear to be three pleasures, one genuine and two spurious: now
+the transgression of the tyrant reaches a point beyond the spurious; he
+has run away from the region of law and reason, and taken up his abode
+with certain slave pleasures which are his satellites, and the measure
+of his inferiority can only be expressed in a figure.
+
+How do you mean?
+
+I assume, I said, that the tyrant is in the third place from the
+oligarch; the democrat was in the middle?
+
+Yes.
+
+And if there is truth in what has preceded, he will be wedded to an
+image of pleasure which is thrice removed as to truth from the pleasure
+of the oligarch?
+
+He will.
+
+And the oligarch is third from the royal; since we count as one royal
+and aristocratical?
+
+Yes, he is third.
+
+Then the tyrant is removed from true pleasure by the space of a number
+which is three times three?
+
+Manifestly.
+
+The shadow then of tyrannical pleasure determined by the number of
+length will be a plane figure.
+
+Certainly.
+
+And if you raise the power and make the plane a solid, there is no
+difficulty in seeing how vast is the interval by which the tyrant is
+parted from the king.
+
+Yes; the arithmetician will easily do the sum.
+
+Or if some person begins at the other end and measures the interval by
+which the king is parted from the tyrant in truth of pleasure, he will
+find him, when the multiplication is completed, living 729 times more
+pleasantly, and the tyrant more painfully by this same interval.
+
+What a wonderful calculation! And how enormous is the distance which
+separates the just from the unjust in regard to pleasure and pain!
+
+Yet a true calculation, I said, and a number which nearly concerns
+human life, if human beings are concerned with days and nights and
+months and years. (729 NEARLY equals the number of days and nights in
+the year.)
+
+Yes, he said, human life is certainly concerned with them.
+
+Then if the good and just man be thus superior in pleasure to the evil
+and unjust, his superiority will be infinitely greater in propriety of
+life and in beauty and virtue?
+
+Immeasurably greater.
+
+Well, I said, and now having arrived at this stage of the argument, we
+may revert to the words which brought us hither: Was not some one
+saying that injustice was a gain to the perfectly unjust who was
+reputed to be just?
+
+Yes, that was said.
+
+Now then, having determined the power and quality of justice and
+injustice, let us have a little conversation with him.
+
+What shall we say to him?
+
+Let us make an image of the soul, that he may have his own words
+presented before his eyes.
+
+Of what sort?
+
+An ideal image of the soul, like the composite creations of ancient
+mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are
+many others in which two or more different natures are said to grow
+into one.
+
+There are said of have been such unions.
+
+Then do you now model the form of a multitudinous, many-headed monster,
+having a ring of heads of all manner of beasts, tame and wild, which he
+is able to generate and metamorphose at will.
+
+You suppose marvellous powers in the artist; but, as language is more
+pliable than wax or any similar substance, let there be such a model as
+you propose.
+
+Suppose now that you make a second form as of a lion, and a third of a
+man, the second smaller than the first, and the third smaller than the
+second.
+
+That, he said, is an easier task; and I have made them as you say.
+
+And now join them, and let the three grow into one.
+
+That has been accomplished.
+
+Next fashion the outside of them into a single image, as of a man, so
+that he who is not able to look within, and sees only the outer hull,
+may believe the beast to be a single human creature.
+
+I have done so, he said.
+
+And now, to him who maintains that it is profitable for the human
+creature to be unjust, and unprofitable to be just, let us reply that,
+if he be right, it is profitable for this creature to feast the
+multitudinous monster and strengthen the lion and the lion-like
+qualities, but to starve and weaken the man, who is consequently liable
+to be dragged about at the mercy of either of the other two; and he is
+not to attempt to familiarize or harmonize them with one another—he
+ought rather to suffer them to fight and bite and devour one another.
+
+Certainly, he said; that is what the approver of injustice says.
+
+To him the supporter of justice makes answer that he should ever so
+speak and act as to give the man within him in some way or other the
+most complete mastery over the entire human creature. He should watch
+over the many-headed monster like a good husbandman, fostering and
+cultivating the gentle qualities, and preventing the wild ones from
+growing; he should be making the lion-heart his ally, and in common
+care of them all should be uniting the several parts with one another
+and with himself.
+
+Yes, he said, that is quite what the maintainer of justice say.
+
+And so from every point of view, whether of pleasure, honour, or
+advantage, the approver of justice is right and speaks the truth, and
+the disapprover is wrong and false and ignorant?
+
+Yes, from every point of view.
+
+Come, now, and let us gently reason with the unjust, who is not
+intentionally in error. ‘Sweet Sir,’ we will say to him, ‘what think
+you of things esteemed noble and ignoble? Is not the noble that which
+subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the god in man; and the
+ignoble that which subjects the man to the beast?’ He can hardly avoid
+saying Yes—can he now?
+
+Not if he has any regard for my opinion.
+
+But, if he agree so far, we may ask him to answer another question:
+‘Then how would a man profit if he received gold and silver on the
+condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst?
+Who can imagine that a man who sold his son or daughter into slavery
+for money, especially if he sold them into the hands of fierce and evil
+men, would be the gainer, however large might be the sum which he
+received? And will any one say that he is not a miserable caitiff who
+remorselessly sells his own divine being to that which is most godless
+and detestable? Eriphyle took the necklace as the price of her
+husband’s life, but he is taking a bribe in order to compass a worse
+ruin.’
+
+Yes, said Glaucon, far worse—I will answer for him.
+
+Has not the intemperate been censured of old, because in him the huge
+multiform monster is allowed to be too much at large?
+
+Clearly.
+
+And men are blamed for pride and bad temper when the lion and serpent
+element in them disproportionately grows and gains strength?
+
+Yes.
+
+And luxury and softness are blamed, because they relax and weaken this
+same creature, and make a coward of him?
+
+Very true.
+
+And is not a man reproached for flattery and meanness who subordinates
+the spirited animal to the unruly monster, and, for the sake of money,
+of which he can never have enough, habituates him in the days of his
+youth to be trampled in the mire, and from being a lion to become a
+monkey?
+
+True, he said.
+
+And why are mean employments and manual arts a reproach? Only because
+they imply a natural weakness of the higher principle; the individual
+is unable to control the creatures within him, but has to court them,
+and his great study is how to flatter them.
+
+Such appears to be the reason.
+
+And therefore, being desirous of placing him under a rule like that of
+the best, we say that he ought to be the servant of the best, in whom
+the Divine rules; not, as Thrasymachus supposed, to the injury of the
+servant, but because every one had better be ruled by divine wisdom
+dwelling within him; or, if this be impossible, then by an external
+authority, in order that we may be all, as far as possible, under the
+same government, friends and equals.
+
+True, he said.
+
+And this is clearly seen to be the intention of the law, which is the
+ally of the whole city; and is seen also in the authority which we
+exercise over children, and the refusal to let them be free until we
+have established in them a principle analogous to the constitution of a
+state, and by cultivation of this higher element have set up in their
+hearts a guardian and ruler like our own, and when this is done they
+may go their ways.
+
+Yes, he said, the purpose of the law is manifest.
+
+From what point of view, then, and on what ground can we say that a man
+is profited by injustice or intemperance or other baseness, which will
+make him a worse man, even though he acquire money or power by his
+wickedness?
+
+From no point of view at all.
+
+What shall he profit, if his injustice be undetected and unpunished? He
+who is undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and
+punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced and humanized; the
+gentler element in him is liberated, and his whole soul is perfected
+and ennobled by the acquirement of justice and temperance and wisdom,
+more than the body ever is by receiving gifts of beauty, strength and
+health, in proportion as the soul is more honourable than the body.
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+To this nobler purpose the man of understanding will devote the
+energies of his life. And in the first place, he will honour studies
+which impress these qualities on his soul and will disregard others?
+
+Clearly, he said.
+
+In the next place, he will regulate his bodily habit and training, and
+so far will he be from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasures,
+that he will regard even health as quite a secondary matter; his first
+object will be not that he may be fair or strong or well, unless he is
+likely thereby to gain temperance, but he will always desire so to
+attemper the body as to preserve the harmony of the soul?
+
+Certainly he will, if he has true music in him.
+
+And in the acquisition of wealth there is a principle of order and
+harmony which he will also observe; he will not allow himself to be
+dazzled by the foolish applause of the world, and heap up riches to his
+own infinite harm?
+
+Certainly not, he said.
+
+He will look at the city which is within him, and take heed that no
+disorder occur in it, such as might arise either from superfluity or
+from want; and upon this principle he will regulate his property and
+gain or spend according to his means.
+
+Very true.
+
+And, for the same reason, he will gladly accept and enjoy such honours
+as he deems likely to make him a better man; but those, whether private
+or public, which are likely to disorder his life, he will avoid?
+
+Then, if that is his motive, he will not be a statesman.
+
+By the dog of Egypt, he will! in the city which is his own he certainly
+will, though in the land of his birth perhaps not, unless he have a
+divine call.
+
+I understand; you mean that he will be a ruler in the city of which we
+are the founders, and which exists in idea only; for I do not believe
+that there is such an one anywhere on earth?
+
+In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which
+he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own house in
+order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in fact, is
+no matter; for he will live after the manner of that city, having
+nothing to do with any other.
+
+I think so, he said.
+
+
+
+
+ BOOK X.
+
+
+Of the many excellences which I perceive in the order of our State,
+there is none which upon reflection pleases me better than the rule
+about poetry.
+
+To what do you refer?
+
+To the rejection of imitative poetry, which certainly ought not to be
+received; as I see far more clearly now that the parts of the soul have
+been distinguished.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+Speaking in confidence, for I should not like to have my words repeated
+to the tragedians and the rest of the imitative tribe—but I do not mind
+saying to you, that all poetical imitations are ruinous to the
+understanding of the hearers, and that the knowledge of their true
+nature is the only antidote to them.
+
+Explain the purport of your remark.
+
+Well, I will tell you, although I have always from my earliest youth
+had an awe and love of Homer, which even now makes the words falter on
+my lips, for he is the great captain and teacher of the whole of that
+charming tragic company; but a man is not to be reverenced more than
+the truth, and therefore I will speak out.
+
+Very good, he said.
+
+Listen to me then, or rather, answer me.
+
+Put your question.
+
+Can you tell me what imitation is? for I really do not know.
+
+A likely thing, then, that I should know.
+
+Why not? for the duller eye may often see a thing sooner than the
+keener.
+
+Very true, he said; but in your presence, even if I had any faint
+notion, I could not muster courage to utter it. Will you enquire
+yourself?
+
+Well then, shall we begin the enquiry in our usual manner: Whenever a
+number of individuals have a common name, we assume them to have also a
+corresponding idea or form:—do you understand me?
+
+I do.
+
+Let us take any common instance; there are beds and tables in the
+world—plenty of them, are there not?
+
+Yes.
+
+But there are only two ideas or forms of them—one the idea of a bed,
+the other of a table.
+
+True.
+
+And the maker of either of them makes a bed or he makes a table for our
+use, in accordance with the idea—that is our way of speaking in this
+and similar instances—but no artificer makes the ideas themselves: how
+could he?
+
+Impossible.
+
+And there is another artist,—I should like to know what you would say
+of him.
+
+Who is he?
+
+One who is the maker of all the works of all other workmen.
+
+What an extraordinary man!
+
+Wait a little, and there will be more reason for your saying so. For
+this is he who is able to make not only vessels of every kind, but
+plants and animals, himself and all other things—the earth and heaven,
+and the things which are in heaven or under the earth; he makes the
+gods also.
+
+He must be a wizard and no mistake.
+
+Oh! you are incredulous, are you? Do you mean that there is no such
+maker or creator, or that in one sense there might be a maker of all
+these things but in another not? Do you see that there is a way in
+which you could make them all yourself?
+
+What way?
+
+An easy way enough; or rather, there are many ways in which the feat
+might be quickly and easily accomplished, none quicker than that of
+turning a mirror round and round—you would soon enough make the sun and
+the heavens, and the earth and yourself, and other animals and plants,
+and all the other things of which we were just now speaking, in the
+mirror.
+
+Yes, he said; but they would be appearances only.
+
+Very good, I said, you are coming to the point now. And the painter too
+is, as I conceive, just such another—a creator of appearances, is he
+not?
+
+Of course.
+
+But then I suppose you will say that what he creates is untrue. And yet
+there is a sense in which the painter also creates a bed?
+
+Yes, he said, but not a real bed.
+
+And what of the maker of the bed? were you not saying that he too
+makes, not the idea which, according to our view, is the essence of the
+bed, but only a particular bed?
+
+Yes, I did.
+
+Then if he does not make that which exists he cannot make true
+existence, but only some semblance of existence; and if any one were to
+say that the work of the maker of the bed, or of any other workman, has
+real existence, he could hardly be supposed to be speaking the truth.
+
+At any rate, he replied, philosophers would say that he was not
+speaking the truth.
+
+No wonder, then, that his work too is an indistinct expression of
+truth.
+
+No wonder.
+
+Suppose now that by the light of the examples just offered we enquire
+who this imitator is?
+
+If you please.
+
+Well then, here are three beds: one existing in nature, which is made
+by God, as I think that we may say—for no one else can be the maker?
+
+No.
+
+There is another which is the work of the carpenter?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the work of the painter is a third?
+
+Yes.
+
+Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are three artists who
+superintend them: God, the maker of the bed, and the painter?
+
+Yes, there are three of them.
+
+God, whether from choice or from necessity, made one bed in nature and
+one only; two or more such ideal beds neither ever have been nor ever
+will be made by God.
+
+Why is that?
+
+Because even if He had made but two, a third would still appear behind
+them which both of them would have for their idea, and that would be
+the ideal bed and not the two others.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+God knew this, and He desired to be the real maker of a real bed, not a
+particular maker of a particular bed, and therefore He created a bed
+which is essentially and by nature one only.
+
+So we believe.
+
+Shall we, then, speak of Him as the natural author or maker of the bed?
+
+Yes, he replied; inasmuch as by the natural process of creation He is
+the author of this and of all other things.
+
+And what shall we say of the carpenter—is not he also the maker of the
+bed?
+
+Yes.
+
+But would you call the painter a creator and maker?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Yet if he is not the maker, what is he in relation to the bed?
+
+I think, he said, that we may fairly designate him as the imitator of
+that which the others make.
+
+Good, I said; then you call him who is third in the descent from nature
+an imitator?
+
+Certainly, he said.
+
+And the tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all other
+imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and from the truth?
+
+That appears to be so.
+
+Then about the imitator we are agreed. And what about the painter?—I
+would like to know whether he may be thought to imitate that which
+originally exists in nature, or only the creations of artists?
+
+The latter.
+
+As they are or as they appear? you have still to determine this.
+
+What do you mean?
+
+I mean, that you may look at a bed from different points of view,
+obliquely or directly or from any other point of view, and the bed will
+appear different, but there is no difference in reality. And the same
+of all things.
+
+Yes, he said, the difference is only apparent.
+
+Now let me ask you another question: Which is the art of painting
+designed to be—an imitation of things as they are, or as they appear—of
+appearance or of reality?
+
+Of appearance.
+
+Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and can do all
+things because he lightly touches on a small part of them, and that
+part an image. For example: A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter,
+or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he
+is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he
+shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will
+fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter.
+
+Certainly.
+
+And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all
+the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single
+thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man—whoever tells
+us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature
+who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he
+met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to
+analyse the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.
+
+Most true.
+
+And so, when we hear persons saying that the tragedians, and Homer, who
+is at their head, know all the arts and all things human, virtue as
+well as vice, and divine things too, for that the good poet cannot
+compose well unless he knows his subject, and that he who has not this
+knowledge can never be a poet, we ought to consider whether here also
+there may not be a similar illusion. Perhaps they may have come across
+imitators and been deceived by them; they may not have remembered when
+they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from
+the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth,
+because they are appearances only and not realities? Or, after all,
+they may be in the right, and poets do really know the things about
+which they seem to the many to speak so well?
+
+The question, he said, should by all means be considered.
+
+Now do you suppose that if a person were able to make the original as
+well as the image, he would seriously devote himself to the
+image-making branch? Would he allow imitation to be the ruling
+principle of his life, as if he had nothing higher in him?
+
+I should say not.
+
+The real artist, who knew what he was imitating, would be interested in
+realities and not in imitations; and would desire to leave as memorials
+of himself works many and fair; and, instead of being the author of
+encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them.
+
+Yes, he said, that would be to him a source of much greater honour and
+profit.
+
+Then, I said, we must put a question to Homer; not about medicine, or
+any of the arts to which his poems only incidentally refer: we are not
+going to ask him, or any other poet, whether he has cured patients like
+Asclepius, or left behind him a school of medicine such as the
+Asclepiads were, or whether he only talks about medicine and other arts
+at second-hand; but we have a right to know respecting military
+tactics, politics, education, which are the chiefest and noblest
+subjects of his poems, and we may fairly ask him about them. ‘Friend
+Homer,’ then we say to him, ‘if you are only in the second remove from
+truth in what you say of virtue, and not in the third—not an image
+maker or imitator—and if you are able to discern what pursuits make men
+better or worse in private or public life, tell us what State was ever
+better governed by your help? The good order of Lacedaemon is due to
+Lycurgus, and many other cities great and small have been similarly
+benefited by others; but who says that you have been a good legislator
+to them and have done them any good? Italy and Sicily boast of
+Charondas, and there is Solon who is renowned among us; but what city
+has anything to say about you?’ Is there any city which he might name?
+
+I think not, said Glaucon; not even the Homerids themselves pretend
+that he was a legislator.
+
+Well, but is there any war on record which was carried on successfully
+by him, or aided by his counsels, when he was alive?
+
+There is not.
+
+Or is there any invention of his, applicable to the arts or to human
+life, such as Thales the Milesian or Anacharsis the Scythian, and other
+ingenious men have conceived, which is attributed to him?
+
+There is absolutely nothing of the kind.
+
+But, if Homer never did any public service, was he privately a guide or
+teacher of any? Had he in his lifetime friends who loved to associate
+with him, and who handed down to posterity an Homeric way of life, such
+as was established by Pythagoras who was so greatly beloved for his
+wisdom, and whose followers are to this day quite celebrated for the
+order which was named after him?
+
+Nothing of the kind is recorded of him. For surely, Socrates,
+Creophylus, the companion of Homer, that child of flesh, whose name
+always makes us laugh, might be more justly ridiculed for his
+stupidity, if, as is said, Homer was greatly neglected by him and
+others in his own day when he was alive?
+
+Yes, I replied, that is the tradition. But can you imagine, Glaucon,
+that if Homer had really been able to educate and improve mankind—if he
+had possessed knowledge and not been a mere imitator—can you imagine, I
+say, that he would not have had many followers, and been honoured and
+loved by them? Protagoras of Abdera, and Prodicus of Ceos, and a host
+of others, have only to whisper to their contemporaries: ‘You will
+never be able to manage either your own house or your own State until
+you appoint us to be your ministers of education’—and this ingenious
+device of theirs has such an effect in making men love them that their
+companions all but carry them about on their shoulders. And is it
+conceivable that the contemporaries of Homer, or again of Hesiod, would
+have allowed either of them to go about as rhapsodists, if they had
+really been able to make mankind virtuous? Would they not have been as
+unwilling to part with them as with gold, and have compelled them to
+stay at home with them? Or, if the master would not stay, then the
+disciples would have followed him about everywhere, until they had got
+education enough?
+
+Yes, Socrates, that, I think, is quite true.
+
+Then must we not infer that all these poetical individuals, beginning
+with Homer, are only imitators; they copy images of virtue and the
+like, but the truth they never reach? The poet is like a painter who,
+as we have already observed, will make a likeness of a cobbler though
+he understands nothing of cobbling; and his picture is good enough for
+those who know no more than he does, and judge only by colours and
+figures.
+
+Quite so.
+
+In like manner the poet with his words and phrases may be said to lay
+on the colours of the several arts, himself understanding their nature
+only enough to imitate them; and other people, who are as ignorant as
+he is, and judge only from his words, imagine that if he speaks of
+cobbling, or of military tactics, or of anything else, in metre and
+harmony and rhythm, he speaks very well—such is the sweet influence
+which melody and rhythm by nature have. And I think that you must have
+observed again and again what a poor appearance the tales of poets make
+when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in
+simple prose.
+
+Yes, he said.
+
+They are like faces which were never really beautiful, but only
+blooming; and now the bloom of youth has passed away from them?
+
+Exactly.
+
+Here is another point: The imitator or maker of the image knows nothing
+of true existence; he knows appearances only. Am I not right?
+
+Yes.
+
+Then let us have a clear understanding, and not be satisfied with half
+an explanation.
+
+Proceed.
+
+Of the painter we say that he will paint reins, and he will paint a
+bit?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the worker in leather and brass will make them?
+
+Certainly.
+
+But does the painter know the right form of the bit and reins? Nay,
+hardly even the workers in brass and leather who make them; only the
+horseman who knows how to use them—he knows their right form.
+
+Most true.
+
+And may we not say the same of all things?
+
+What?
+
+That there are three arts which are concerned with all things: one
+which uses, another which makes, a third which imitates them?
+
+Yes.
+
+And the excellence or beauty or truth of every structure, animate or
+inanimate, and of every action of man, is relative to the use for which
+nature or the artist has intended them.
+
+True.
+
+Then the user of them must have the greatest experience of them, and he
+must indicate to the maker the good or bad qualities which develop
+themselves in use; for example, the flute-player will tell the
+flute-maker which of his flutes is satisfactory to the performer; he
+will tell him how he ought to make them, and the other will attend to
+his instructions?
+
+Of course.
+
+The one knows and therefore speaks with authority about the goodness
+and badness of flutes, while the other, confiding in him, will do what
+he is told by him?
+
+True.
+
+The instrument is the same, but about the excellence or badness of it
+the maker will only attain to a correct belief; and this he will gain
+from him who knows, by talking to him and being compelled to hear what
+he has to say, whereas the user will have knowledge?
+
+True.
+
+But will the imitator have either? Will he know from use whether or no
+his drawing is correct or beautiful? or will he have right opinion from
+being compelled to associate with another who knows and gives him
+instructions about what he should draw?
+
+Neither.
+
+Then he will no more have true opinion than he will have knowledge
+about the goodness or badness of his imitations?
+
+I suppose not.
+
+The imitative artist will be in a brilliant state of intelligence about
+his own creations?
+
+Nay, very much the reverse.
+
+And still he will go on imitating without knowing what makes a thing
+good or bad, and may be expected therefore to imitate only that which
+appears to be good to the ignorant multitude?
+
+Just so.
+
+Thus far then we are pretty well agreed that the imitator has no
+knowledge worth mentioning of what he imitates. Imitation is only a
+kind of play or sport, and the tragic poets, whether they write in
+Iambic or in Heroic verse, are imitators in the highest degree?
+
+Very true.
+
+And now tell me, I conjure you, has not imitation been shown by us to
+be concerned with that which is thrice removed from the truth?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And what is the faculty in man to which imitation is addressed?
+
+What do you mean?
+
+I will explain: The body which is large when seen near, appears small
+when seen at a distance?
+
+True.
+
+And the same object appears straight when looked at out of the water,
+and crooked when in the water; and the concave becomes convex, owing to
+the illusion about colours to which the sight is liable. Thus every
+sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of
+the human mind on which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by light
+and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon
+us like magic.
+
+True.
+
+And the arts of measuring and numbering and weighing come to the rescue
+of the human understanding—there is the beauty of them—and the apparent
+greater or less, or more or heavier, no longer have the mastery over
+us, but give way before calculation and measure and weight?
+
+Most true.
+
+And this, surely, must be the work of the calculating and rational
+principle in the soul?
+
+To be sure.
+
+And when this principle measures and certifies that some things are
+equal, or that some are greater or less than others, there occurs an
+apparent contradiction?
+
+True.
+
+But were we not saying that such a contradiction is impossible—the same
+faculty cannot have contrary opinions at the same time about the same
+thing?
+
+Very true.
+
+Then that part of the soul which has an opinion contrary to measure is
+not the same with that which has an opinion in accordance with measure?
+
+True.
+
+And the better part of the soul is likely to be that which trusts to
+measure and calculation?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And that which is opposed to them is one of the inferior principles of
+the soul?
+
+No doubt.
+
+This was the conclusion at which I was seeking to arrive when I said
+that painting or drawing, and imitation in general, when doing their
+own proper work, are far removed from truth, and the companions and
+friends and associates of a principle within us which is equally
+removed from reason, and that they have no true or healthy aim.
+
+Exactly.
+
+The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior, and has
+inferior offspring.
+
+Very true.
+
+And is this confined to the sight only, or does it extend to the
+hearing also, relating in fact to what we term poetry?
+
+Probably the same would be true of poetry.
+
+Do not rely, I said, on a probability derived from the analogy of
+painting; but let us examine further and see whether the faculty with
+which poetical imitation is concerned is good or bad.
+
+By all means.
+
+We may state the question thus:—Imitation imitates the actions of men,
+whether voluntary or involuntary, on which, as they imagine, a good or
+bad result has ensued, and they rejoice or sorrow accordingly. Is there
+anything more?
+
+No, there is nothing else.
+
+But in all this variety of circumstances is the man at unity with
+himself—or rather, as in the instance of sight there was confusion and
+opposition in his opinions about the same things, so here also is there
+not strife and inconsistency in his life? Though I need hardly raise
+the question again, for I remember that all this has been already
+admitted; and the soul has been acknowledged by us to be full of these
+and ten thousand similar oppositions occurring at the same moment?
+
+And we were right, he said.
+
+Yes, I said, thus far we were right; but there was an omission which
+must now be supplied.
+
+What was the omission?
+
+Were we not saying that a good man, who has the misfortune to lose his
+son or anything else which is most dear to him, will bear the loss with
+more equanimity than another?
+
+Yes.
+
+But will he have no sorrow, or shall we say that although he cannot
+help sorrowing, he will moderate his sorrow?
+
+The latter, he said, is the truer statement.
+
+Tell me: will he be more likely to struggle and hold out against his
+sorrow when he is seen by his equals, or when he is alone?
+
+It will make a great difference whether he is seen or not.
+
+When he is by himself he will not mind saying or doing many things
+which he would be ashamed of any one hearing or seeing him do?
+
+True.
+
+There is a principle of law and reason in him which bids him resist, as
+well as a feeling of his misfortune which is forcing him to indulge his
+sorrow?
+
+True.
+
+But when a man is drawn in two opposite directions, to and from the
+same object, this, as we affirm, necessarily implies two distinct
+principles in him?
+
+Certainly.
+
+One of them is ready to follow the guidance of the law?
+
+How do you mean?
+
+The law would say that to be patient under suffering is best, and that
+we should not give way to impatience, as there is no knowing whether
+such things are good or evil; and nothing is gained by impatience;
+also, because no human thing is of serious importance, and grief stands
+in the way of that which at the moment is most required.
+
+What is most required? he asked.
+
+That we should take counsel about what has happened, and when the dice
+have been thrown order our affairs in the way which reason deems best;
+not, like children who have had a fall, keeping hold of the part struck
+and wasting time in setting up a howl, but always accustoming the soul
+forthwith to apply a remedy, raising up that which is sickly and
+fallen, banishing the cry of sorrow by the healing art.
+
+Yes, he said, that is the true way of meeting the attacks of fortune.
+
+Yes, I said; and the higher principle is ready to follow this
+suggestion of reason?
+
+Clearly.
+
+And the other principle, which inclines us to recollection of our
+troubles and to lamentation, and can never have enough of them, we may
+call irrational, useless, and cowardly?
+
+Indeed, we may.
+
+And does not the latter—I mean the rebellious principle—furnish a great
+variety of materials for imitation? Whereas the wise and calm
+temperament, being always nearly equable, is not easy to imitate or to
+appreciate when imitated, especially at a public festival when a
+promiscuous crowd is assembled in a theatre. For the feeling
+represented is one to which they are strangers.
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then the imitative poet who aims at being popular is not by nature
+made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect the rational
+principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful
+temper, which is easily imitated?
+
+Clearly.
+
+And now we may fairly take him and place him by the side of the
+painter, for he is like him in two ways: first, inasmuch as his
+creations have an inferior degree of truth—in this, I say, he is like
+him; and he is also like him in being concerned with an inferior part
+of the soul; and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him
+into a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and
+strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason. As in a city when the
+evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the
+way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the imitative poet implants
+an evil constitution, for he indulges the irrational nature which has
+no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same thing at one
+time great and at another small—he is a manufacturer of images and is
+very far removed from the truth.
+
+Exactly.
+
+But we have not yet brought forward the heaviest count in our
+accusation:—the power which poetry has of harming even the good (and
+there are very few who are not harmed), is surely an awful thing?
+
+Yes, certainly, if the effect is what you say.
+
+Hear and judge: The best of us, as I conceive, when we listen to a
+passage of Homer, or one of the tragedians, in which he represents some
+pitiful hero who is drawling out his sorrows in a long oration, or
+weeping, and smiting his breast—the best of us, you know, delight in
+giving way to sympathy, and are in raptures at the excellence of the
+poet who stirs our feelings most.
+
+Yes, of course I know.
+
+But when any sorrow of our own happens to us, then you may observe that
+we pride ourselves on the opposite quality—we would fain be quiet and
+patient; this is the manly part, and the other which delighted us in
+the recitation is now deemed to be the part of a woman.
+
+Very true, he said.
+
+Now can we be right in praising and admiring another who is doing that
+which any one of us would abominate and be ashamed of in his own
+person?
+
+No, he said, that is certainly not reasonable.
+
+Nay, I said, quite reasonable from one point of view.
+
+What point of view?
+
+If you consider, I said, that when in misfortune we feel a natural
+hunger and desire to relieve our sorrow by weeping and lamentation, and
+that this feeling which is kept under control in our own calamities is
+satisfied and delighted by the poets;—the better nature in each of us,
+not having been sufficiently trained by reason or habit, allows the
+sympathetic element to break loose because the sorrow is another’s; and
+the spectator fancies that there can be no disgrace to himself in
+praising and pitying any one who comes telling him what a good man he
+is, and making a fuss about his troubles; he thinks that the pleasure
+is a gain, and why should he be supercilious and lose this and the poem
+too? Few persons ever reflect, as I should imagine, that from the evil
+of other men something of evil is communicated to themselves. And so
+the feeling of sorrow which has gathered strength at the sight of the
+misfortunes of others is with difficulty repressed in our own.
+
+How very true!
+
+And does not the same hold also of the ridiculous? There are jests
+which you would be ashamed to make yourself, and yet on the comic
+stage, or indeed in private, when you hear them, you are greatly amused
+by them, and are not at all disgusted at their unseemliness;—the case
+of pity is repeated;—there is a principle in human nature which is
+disposed to raise a laugh, and this which you once restrained by
+reason, because you were afraid of being thought a buffoon, is now let
+out again; and having stimulated the risible faculty at the theatre,
+you are betrayed unconsciously to yourself into playing the comic poet
+at home.
+
+Quite true, he said.
+
+And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other
+affections, of desire and pain and pleasure, which are held to be
+inseparable from every action—in all of them poetry feeds and waters
+the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although
+they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in
+happiness and virtue.
+
+I cannot deny it.
+
+Therefore, Glaucon, I said, whenever you meet with any of the eulogists
+of Homer declaring that he has been the educator of Hellas, and that he
+is profitable for education and for the ordering of human things, and
+that you should take him up again and again and get to know him and
+regulate your whole life according to him, we may love and honour those
+who say these things—they are excellent people, as far as their lights
+extend; and we are ready to acknowledge that Homer is the greatest of
+poets and first of tragedy writers; but we must remain firm in our
+conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the
+only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State. For if you go
+beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or
+lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent
+have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in
+our State.
+
+That is most true, he said.
+
+And now since we have reverted to the subject of poetry, let this our
+defence serve to show the reasonableness of our former judgment in
+sending away out of our State an art having the tendencies which we
+have described; for reason constrained us. But that she may not impute
+to us any harshness or want of politeness, let us tell her that there
+is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry; of which there are
+many proofs, such as the saying of ‘the yelping hound howling at her
+lord,’ or of one ‘mighty in the vain talk of fools,’ and ‘the mob of
+sages circumventing Zeus,’ and the ‘subtle thinkers who are beggars
+after all’; and there are innumerable other signs of ancient enmity
+between them. Notwithstanding this, let us assure our sweet friend and
+the sister arts of imitation, that if she will only prove her title to
+exist in a well-ordered State we shall be delighted to receive her—we
+are very conscious of her charms; but we may not on that account betray
+the truth. I dare say, Glaucon, that you are as much charmed by her as
+I am, especially when she appears in Homer?
+
+Yes, indeed, I am greatly charmed.
+
+Shall I propose, then, that she be allowed to return from exile, but
+upon this condition only—that she make a defence of herself in lyrical
+or some other metre?
+
+Certainly.
+
+And we may further grant to those of her defenders who are lovers of
+poetry and yet not poets the permission to speak in prose on her
+behalf: let them show not only that she is pleasant but also useful to
+States and to human life, and we will listen in a kindly spirit; for if
+this can be proved we shall surely be the gainers—I mean, if there is a
+use in poetry as well as a delight?
+
+Certainly, he said, we shall be the gainers.
+
+If her defence fails, then, my dear friend, like other persons who are
+enamoured of something, but put a restraint upon themselves when they
+think their desires are opposed to their interests, so too must we
+after the manner of lovers give her up, though not without a struggle.
+We too are inspired by that love of poetry which the education of noble
+States has implanted in us, and therefore we would have her appear at
+her best and truest; but so long as she is unable to make good her
+defence, this argument of ours shall be a charm to us, which we will
+repeat to ourselves while we listen to her strains; that we may not
+fall away into the childish love of her which captivates the many. At
+all events we are well aware that poetry being such as we have
+described is not to be regarded seriously as attaining to the truth;
+and he who listens to her, fearing for the safety of the city which is
+within him, should be on his guard against her seductions and make our
+words his law.
+
+Yes, he said, I quite agree with you.
+
+Yes, I said, my dear Glaucon, for great is the issue at stake, greater
+than appears, whether a man is to be good or bad. And what will any one
+be profited if under the influence of honour or money or power, aye, or
+under the excitement of poetry, he neglect justice and virtue?
+
+Yes, he said; I have been convinced by the argument, as I believe that
+any one else would have been.
+
+And yet no mention has been made of the greatest prizes and rewards
+which await virtue.
+
+What, are there any greater still? If there are, they must be of an
+inconceivable greatness.
+
+Why, I said, what was ever great in a short time? The whole period of
+three score years and ten is surely but a little thing in comparison
+with eternity?
+
+Say rather ‘nothing,’ he replied.
+
+And should an immortal being seriously think of this little space
+rather than of the whole?
+
+Of the whole, certainly. But why do you ask?
+
+Are you not aware, I said, that the soul of man is immortal and
+imperishable?
+
+He looked at me in astonishment, and said: No, by heaven: And are you
+really prepared to maintain this?
+
+Yes, I said, I ought to be, and you too—there is no difficulty in
+proving it.
+
+I see a great difficulty; but I should like to hear you state this
+argument of which you make so light.
+
+Listen then.
+
+I am attending.
+
+There is a thing which you call good and another which you call evil?
+
+Yes, he replied.
+
+Would you agree with me in thinking that the corrupting and destroying
+element is the evil, and the saving and improving element the good?
+
+Yes.
+
+And you admit that every thing has a good and also an evil; as
+ophthalmia is the evil of the eyes and disease of the whole body; as
+mildew is of corn, and rot of timber, or rust of copper and iron: in
+everything, or in almost everything, there is an inherent evil and
+disease?
+
+Yes, he said.
+
+And anything which is infected by any of these evils is made evil, and
+at last wholly dissolves and dies?
+
+True.
+
+The vice and evil which is inherent in each is the destruction of each;
+and if this does not destroy them there is nothing else that will; for
+good certainly will not destroy them, nor again, that which is neither
+good nor evil.
+
+Certainly not.
+
+If, then, we find any nature which having this inherent corruption
+cannot be dissolved or destroyed, we may be certain that of such a
+nature there is no destruction?
+
+That may be assumed.
+
+Well, I said, and is there no evil which corrupts the soul?
+
+Yes, he said, there are all the evils which we were just now passing in
+review: unrighteousness, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance.
+
+But does any of these dissolve or destroy her?—and here do not let us
+fall into the error of supposing that the unjust and foolish man, when
+he is detected, perishes through his own injustice, which is an evil of
+the soul. Take the analogy of the body: The evil of the body is a
+disease which wastes and reduces and annihilates the body; and all the
+things of which we were just now speaking come to annihilation through
+their own corruption attaching to them and inhering in them and so
+destroying them. Is not this true?
+
+Yes.
+
+Consider the soul in like manner. Does the injustice or other evil
+which exists in the soul waste and consume her? Do they by attaching to
+the soul and inhering in her at last bring her to death, and so
+separate her from the body?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+And yet, I said, it is unreasonable to suppose that anything can perish
+from without through affection of external evil which could not be
+destroyed from within by a corruption of its own?
+
+It is, he replied.
+
+Consider, I said, Glaucon, that even the badness of food, whether
+staleness, decomposition, or any other bad quality, when confined to
+the actual food, is not supposed to destroy the body; although, if the
+badness of food communicates corruption to the body, then we should say
+that the body has been destroyed by a corruption of itself, which is
+disease, brought on by this; but that the body, being one thing, can be
+destroyed by the badness of food, which is another, and which does not
+engender any natural infection—this we shall absolutely deny?
+
+Very true.
+
+And, on the same principle, unless some bodily evil can produce an evil
+of the soul, we must not suppose that the soul, which is one thing, can
+be dissolved by any merely external evil which belongs to another?
+
+Yes, he said, there is reason in that.
+
+Either, then, let us refute this conclusion, or, while it remains
+unrefuted, let us never say that fever, or any other disease, or the
+knife put to the throat, or even the cutting up of the whole body into
+the minutest pieces, can destroy the soul, until she herself is proved
+to become more unholy or unrighteous in consequence of these things
+being done to the body; but that the soul, or anything else if not
+destroyed by an internal evil, can be destroyed by an external one, is
+not to be affirmed by any man.
+
+And surely, he replied, no one will ever prove that the souls of men
+become more unjust in consequence of death.
+
+But if some one who would rather not admit the immortality of the soul
+boldly denies this, and says that the dying do really become more evil
+and unrighteous, then, if the speaker is right, I suppose that
+injustice, like disease, must be assumed to be fatal to the unjust, and
+that those who take this disorder die by the natural inherent power of
+destruction which evil has, and which kills them sooner or later, but
+in quite another way from that in which, at present, the wicked receive
+death at the hands of others as the penalty of their deeds?
+
+Nay, he said, in that case injustice, if fatal to the unjust, will not
+be so very terrible to him, for he will be delivered from evil. But I
+rather suspect the opposite to be the truth, and that injustice which,
+if it have the power, will murder others, keeps the murderer alive—aye,
+and well awake too; so far removed is her dwelling-place from being a
+house of death.
+
+True, I said; if the inherent natural vice or evil of the soul is
+unable to kill or destroy her, hardly will that which is appointed to
+be the destruction of some other body, destroy a soul or anything else
+except that of which it was appointed to be the destruction.
+
+Yes, that can hardly be.
+
+But the soul which cannot be destroyed by an evil, whether inherent or
+external, must exist for ever, and if existing for ever, must be
+immortal?
+
+Certainly.
+
+That is the conclusion, I said; and, if a true conclusion, then the
+souls must always be the same, for if none be destroyed they will not
+diminish in number. Neither will they increase, for the increase of the
+immortal natures must come from something mortal, and all things would
+thus end in immortality.
+
+Very true.
+
+But this we cannot believe—reason will not allow us—any more than we
+can believe the soul, in her truest nature, to be full of variety and
+difference and dissimilarity.
+
+What do you mean? he said.
+
+The soul, I said, being, as is now proven, immortal, must be the
+fairest of compositions and cannot be compounded of many elements?
+
+Certainly not.
+
+Her immortality is demonstrated by the previous argument, and there are
+many other proofs; but to see her as she really is, not as we now
+behold her, marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you
+must contemplate her with the eye of reason, in her original purity;
+and then her beauty will be revealed, and justice and injustice and all
+the things which we have described will be manifested more clearly.
+Thus far, we have spoken the truth concerning her as she appears at
+present, but we must remember also that we have seen her only in a
+condition which may be compared to that of the sea-god Glaucus, whose
+original image can hardly be discerned because his natural members are
+broken off and crushed and damaged by the waves in all sorts of ways,
+and incrustations have grown over them of seaweed and shells and
+stones, so that he is more like some monster than he is to his own
+natural form. And the soul which we behold is in a similar condition,
+disfigured by ten thousand ills. But not there, Glaucon, not there must
+we look.
+
+Where then?
+
+At her love of wisdom. Let us see whom she affects, and what society
+and converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal
+and eternal and divine; also how different she would become if wholly
+following this superior principle, and borne by a divine impulse out of
+the ocean in which she now is, and disengaged from the stones and
+shells and things of earth and rock which in wild variety spring up
+around her because she feeds upon earth, and is overgrown by the good
+things of this life as they are termed: then you would see her as she
+is, and know whether she have one shape only or many, or what her
+nature is. Of her affections and of the forms which she takes in this
+present life I think that we have now said enough.
+
+True, he replied.
+
+And thus, I said, we have fulfilled the conditions of the argument; we
+have not introduced the rewards and glories of justice, which, as you
+were saying, are to be found in Homer and Hesiod; but justice in her
+own nature has been shown to be best for the soul in her own nature.
+Let a man do what is just, whether he have the ring of Gyges or not,
+and even if in addition to the ring of Gyges he put on the helmet of
+Hades.
+
+Very true.
+
+And now, Glaucon, there will be no harm in further enumerating how many
+and how great are the rewards which justice and the other virtues
+procure to the soul from gods and men, both in life and after death.
+
+Certainly not, he said.
+
+Will you repay me, then, what you borrowed in the argument?
+
+What did I borrow?
+
+The assumption that the just man should appear unjust and the unjust
+just: for you were of opinion that even if the true state of the case
+could not possibly escape the eyes of gods and men, still this
+admission ought to be made for the sake of the argument, in order that
+pure justice might be weighed against pure injustice. Do you remember?
+
+I should be much to blame if I had forgotten.
+
+Then, as the cause is decided, I demand on behalf of justice that the
+estimation in which she is held by gods and men and which we
+acknowledge to be her due should now be restored to her by us; since
+she has been shown to confer reality, and not to deceive those who
+truly possess her, let what has been taken from her be given back, that
+so she may win that palm of appearance which is hers also, and which
+she gives to her own.
+
+The demand, he said, is just.
+
+In the first place, I said—and this is the first thing which you will
+have to give back—the nature both of the just and unjust is truly known
+to the gods.
+
+Granted.
+
+And if they are both known to them, one must be the friend and the
+other the enemy of the gods, as we admitted from the beginning?
+
+True.
+
+And the friend of the gods may be supposed to receive from them all
+things at their best, excepting only such evil as is the necessary
+consequence of former sins?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Then this must be our notion of the just man, that even when he is in
+poverty or sickness, or any other seeming misfortune, all things will
+in the end work together for good to him in life and death: for the
+gods have a care of any one whose desire is to become just and to be
+like God, as far as man can attain the divine likeness, by the pursuit
+of virtue?
+
+Yes, he said; if he is like God he will surely not be neglected by him.
+
+And of the unjust may not the opposite be supposed?
+
+Certainly.
+
+Such, then, are the palms of victory which the gods give the just?
+
+That is my conviction.
+
+And what do they receive of men? Look at things as they really are, and
+you will see that the clever unjust are in the case of runners, who run
+well from the starting-place to the goal but not back again from the
+goal: they go off at a great pace, but in the end only look foolish,
+slinking away with their ears draggling on their shoulders, and without
+a crown; but the true runner comes to the finish and receives the prize
+and is crowned. And this is the way with the just; he who endures to
+the end of every action and occasion of his entire life has a good
+report and carries off the prize which men have to bestow.
+
+True.
+
+And now you must allow me to repeat of the just the blessings which you
+were attributing to the fortunate unjust. I shall say of them, what you
+were saying of the others, that as they grow older, they become rulers
+in their own city if they care to be; they marry whom they like and
+give in marriage to whom they will; all that you said of the others I
+now say of these. And, on the other hand, of the unjust I say that the
+greater number, even though they escape in their youth, are found out
+at last and look foolish at the end of their course, and when they come
+to be old and miserable are flouted alike by stranger and citizen; they
+are beaten and then come those things unfit for ears polite, as you
+truly term them; they will be racked and have their eyes burned out, as
+you were saying. And you may suppose that I have repeated the remainder
+of your tale of horrors. But will you let me assume, without reciting
+them, that these things are true?
+
+Certainly, he said, what you say is true.
+
+These, then, are the prizes and rewards and gifts which are bestowed
+upon the just by gods and men in this present life, in addition to the
+other good things which justice of herself provides.
+
+Yes, he said; and they are fair and lasting.
+
+And yet, I said, all these are as nothing either in number or greatness
+in comparison with those other recompenses which await both just and
+unjust after death. And you ought to hear them, and then both just and
+unjust will have received from us a full payment of the debt which the
+argument owes to them.
+
+Speak, he said; there are few things which I would more gladly hear.
+
+Well, I said, I will tell you a tale; not one of the tales which
+Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinous, yet this too is a tale of a hero,
+Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth. He was slain in battle,
+and ten days afterwards, when the bodies of the dead were taken up
+already in a state of corruption, his body was found unaffected by
+decay, and carried away home to be buried. And on the twelfth day, as
+he was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told them
+what he had seen in the other world. He said that when his soul left
+the body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came
+to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth;
+they were near together, and over against them were two other openings
+in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges
+seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgment on them
+and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the
+heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were
+bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also
+bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew
+near, and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would carry
+the report of the other world to men, and they bade him hear and see
+all that was to be heard and seen in that place. Then he beheld and saw
+on one side the souls departing at either opening of heaven and earth
+when sentence had been given on them; and at the two other openings
+other souls, some ascending out of the earth dusty and worn with
+travel, some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And arriving
+ever and anon they seemed to have come from a long journey, and they
+went forth with gladness into the meadow, where they encamped as at a
+festival; and those who knew one another embraced and conversed, the
+souls which came from earth curiously enquiring about the things above,
+and the souls which came from heaven about the things beneath. And they
+told one another of what had happened by the way, those from below
+weeping and sorrowing at the remembrance of the things which they had
+endured and seen in their journey beneath the earth (now the journey
+lasted a thousand years), while those from above were describing
+heavenly delights and visions of inconceivable beauty. The story,
+Glaucon, would take too long to tell; but the sum was this:—He said
+that for every wrong which they had done to any one they suffered
+tenfold; or once in a hundred years—such being reckoned to be the
+length of man’s life, and the penalty being thus paid ten times in a
+thousand years. If, for example, there were any who had been the cause
+of many deaths, or had betrayed or enslaved cities or armies, or been
+guilty of any other evil behaviour, for each and all of their offences
+they received punishment ten times over, and the rewards of beneficence
+and justice and holiness were in the same proportion. I need hardly
+repeat what he said concerning young children dying almost as soon as
+they were born. Of piety and impiety to gods and parents, and of
+murderers, there were retributions other and greater far which he
+described. He mentioned that he was present when one of the spirits
+asked another, ‘Where is Ardiaeus the Great?’ (Now this Ardiaeus lived
+a thousand years before the time of Er: he had been the tyrant of some
+city of Pamphylia, and had murdered his aged father and his elder
+brother, and was said to have committed many other abominable crimes.)
+The answer of the other spirit was: ‘He comes not hither and will never
+come. And this,’ said he, ‘was one of the dreadful sights which we
+ourselves witnessed. We were at the mouth of the cavern, and, having
+completed all our experiences, were about to reascend, when of a sudden
+Ardiaeus appeared and several others, most of whom were tyrants; and
+there were also besides the tyrants private individuals who had been
+great criminals: they were just, as they fancied, about to return into
+the upper world, but the mouth, instead of admitting them, gave a roar,
+whenever any of these incurable sinners or some one who had not been
+sufficiently punished tried to ascend; and then wild men of fiery
+aspect, who were standing by and heard the sound, seized and carried
+them off; and Ardiaeus and others they bound head and foot and hand,
+and threw them down and flayed them with scourges, and dragged them
+along the road at the side, carding them on thorns like wool, and
+declaring to the passers-by what were their crimes, and that they were
+being taken away to be cast into hell.’ And of all the many terrors
+which they had endured, he said that there was none like the terror
+which each of them felt at that moment, lest they should hear the
+voice; and when there was silence, one by one they ascended with
+exceeding joy. These, said Er, were the penalties and retributions, and
+there were blessings as great.
+
+Now when the spirits which were in the meadow had tarried seven days,
+on the eighth they were obliged to proceed on their journey, and, on
+the fourth day after, he said that they came to a place where they
+could see from above a line of light, straight as a column, extending
+right through the whole heaven and through the earth, in colour
+resembling the rainbow, only brighter and purer; another day’s journey
+brought them to the place, and there, in the midst of the light, they
+saw the ends of the chains of heaven let down from above: for this
+light is the belt of heaven, and holds together the circle of the
+universe, like the under-girders of a trireme. From these ends is
+extended the spindle of Necessity, on which all the revolutions turn.
+The shaft and hook of this spindle are made of steel, and the whorl is
+made partly of steel and also partly of other materials. Now the whorl
+is in form like the whorl used on earth; and the description of it
+implied that there is one large hollow whorl which is quite scooped
+out, and into this is fitted another lesser one, and another, and
+another, and four others, making eight in all, like vessels which fit
+into one another; the whorls show their edges on the upper side, and on
+their lower side all together form one continuous whorl. This is
+pierced by the spindle, which is driven home through the centre of the
+eighth. The first and outermost whorl has the rim broadest, and the
+seven inner whorls are narrower, in the following proportions—the sixth
+is next to the first in size, the fourth next to the sixth; then comes
+the eighth; the seventh is fifth, the fifth is sixth, the third is
+seventh, last and eighth comes the second. The largest (or fixed stars)
+is spangled, and the seventh (or sun) is brightest; the eighth (or
+moon) coloured by the reflected light of the seventh; the second and
+fifth (Saturn and Mercury) are in colour like one another, and yellower
+than the preceding; the third (Venus) has the whitest light; the fourth
+(Mars) is reddish; the sixth (Jupiter) is in whiteness second. Now the
+whole spindle has the same motion; but, as the whole revolves in one
+direction, the seven inner circles move slowly in the other, and of
+these the swiftest is the eighth; next in swiftness are the seventh,
+sixth, and fifth, which move together; third in swiftness appeared to
+move according to the law of this reversed motion the fourth; the third
+appeared fourth and the second fifth. The spindle turns on the knees of
+Necessity; and on the upper surface of each circle is a siren, who goes
+round with them, hymning a single tone or note. The eight together form
+one harmony; and round about, at equal intervals, there is another
+band, three in number, each sitting upon her throne: these are the
+Fates, daughters of Necessity, who are clothed in white robes and have
+chaplets upon their heads, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos, who
+accompany with their voices the harmony of the sirens—Lachesis singing
+of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future; Clotho from
+time to time assisting with a touch of her right hand the revolution of
+the outer circle of the whorl or spindle, and Atropos with her left
+hand touching and guiding the inner ones, and Lachesis laying hold of
+either in turn, first with one hand and then with the other.
+
+When Er and the spirits arrived, their duty was to go at once to
+Lachesis; but first of all there came a prophet who arranged them in
+order; then he took from the knees of Lachesis lots and samples of
+lives, and having mounted a high pulpit, spoke as follows: ‘Hear the
+word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new
+cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you,
+but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot
+have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his
+destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honours or dishonours her he will
+have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser—God is
+justified.’ When the Interpreter had thus spoken he scattered lots
+indifferently among them all, and each of them took up the lot which
+fell near him, all but Er himself (he was not allowed), and each as he
+took his lot perceived the number which he had obtained. Then the
+Interpreter placed on the ground before them the samples of lives; and
+there were many more lives than the souls present, and they were of all
+sorts. There were lives of every animal and of man in every condition.
+And there were tyrannies among them, some lasting out the tyrant’s
+life, others which broke off in the middle and came to an end in
+poverty and exile and beggary; and there were lives of famous men, some
+who were famous for their form and beauty as well as for their strength
+and success in games, or, again, for their birth and the qualities of
+their ancestors; and some who were the reverse of famous for the
+opposite qualities. And of women likewise; there was not, however, any
+definite character in them, because the soul, when choosing a new life,
+must of necessity become different. But there was every other quality,
+and the all mingled with one another, and also with elements of wealth
+and poverty, and disease and health; and there were mean states also.
+And here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme peril of our human state; and
+therefore the utmost care should be taken. Let each one of us leave
+every other kind of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only, if
+peradventure he may be able to learn and may find some one who will
+make him able to learn and discern between good and evil, and so to
+choose always and everywhere the better life as he has opportunity. He
+should consider the bearing of all these things which have been
+mentioned severally and collectively upon virtue; he should know what
+the effect of beauty is when combined with poverty or wealth in a
+particular soul, and what are the good and evil consequences of noble
+and humble birth, of private and public station, of strength and
+weakness, of cleverness and dullness, and of all the natural and
+acquired gifts of the soul, and the operation of them when conjoined;
+he will then look at the nature of the soul, and from the consideration
+of all these qualities he will be able to determine which is the better
+and which is the worse; and so he will choose, giving the name of evil
+to the life which will make his soul more unjust, and good to the life
+which will make his soul more just; all else he will disregard. For we
+have seen and know that this is the best choice both in life and after
+death. A man must take with him into the world below an adamantine
+faith in truth and right, that there too he may be undazzled by the
+desire of wealth or the other allurements of evil, lest, coming upon
+tyrannies and similar villainies, he do irremediable wrongs to others
+and suffer yet worse himself; but let him know how to choose the mean
+and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible, not only in
+this life but in all that which is to come. For this is the way of
+happiness.
+
+And according to the report of the messenger from the other world this
+was what the prophet said at the time: ‘Even for the last comer, if he
+chooses wisely and will live diligently, there is appointed a happy and
+not undesirable existence. Let not him who chooses first be careless,
+and let not the last despair.’ And when he had spoken, he who had the
+first choice came forward and in a moment chose the greatest tyranny;
+his mind having been darkened by folly and sensuality, he had not
+thought out the whole matter before he chose, and did not at first
+sight perceive that he was fated, among other evils, to devour his own
+children. But when he had time to reflect, and saw what was in the lot,
+he began to beat his breast and lament over his choice, forgetting the
+proclamation of the prophet; for, instead of throwing the blame of his
+misfortune on himself, he accused chance and the gods, and everything
+rather than himself. Now he was one of those who came from heaven, and
+in a former life had dwelt in a well-ordered State, but his virtue was
+a matter of habit only, and he had no philosophy. And it was true of
+others who were similarly overtaken, that the greater number of them
+came from heaven and therefore they had never been schooled by trial,
+whereas the pilgrims who came from earth having themselves suffered and
+seen others suffer, were not in a hurry to choose. And owing to this
+inexperience of theirs, and also because the lot was a chance, many of
+the souls exchanged a good destiny for an evil or an evil for a good.
+For if a man had always on his arrival in this world dedicated himself
+from the first to sound philosophy, and had been moderately fortunate
+in the number of the lot, he might, as the messenger reported, be happy
+here, and also his journey to another life and return to this, instead
+of being rough and underground, would be smooth and heavenly. Most
+curious, he said, was the spectacle—sad and laughable and strange; for
+the choice of the souls was in most cases based on their experience of
+a previous life. There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus
+choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of women, hating
+to be born of a woman because they had been his murderers; he beheld
+also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale; birds, on
+the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men.
+The soul which obtained the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion, and
+this was the soul of Ajax the son of Telamon, who would not be a man,
+remembering the injustice which was done him in the judgment about the
+arms. The next was Agamemnon, who took the life of an eagle, because,
+like Ajax, he hated human nature by reason of his sufferings. About the
+middle came the lot of Atalanta; she, seeing the great fame of an
+athlete, was unable to resist the temptation: and after her there
+followed the soul of Epeus the son of Panopeus passing into the nature
+of a woman cunning in the arts; and far away among the last who chose,
+the soul of the jester Thersites was putting on the form of a monkey.
+There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and
+his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of
+former toils had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a
+considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no
+cares; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about
+and had been neglected by everybody else; and when he saw it, he said
+that he would have done the same had his lot been first instead of
+last, and that he was delighted to have it. And not only did men pass
+into animals, but I must also mention that there were animals tame and
+wild who changed into one another and into corresponding human
+natures—the good into the gentle and the evil into the savage, in all
+sorts of combinations.
+
+All the souls had now chosen their lives, and they went in the order of
+their choice to Lachesis, who sent with them the genius whom they had
+severally chosen, to be the guardian of their lives and the fulfiller
+of the choice: this genius led the souls first to Clotho, and drew them
+within the revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand, thus
+ratifying the destiny of each; and then, when they were fastened to
+this, carried them to Atropos, who spun the threads and made them
+irreversible, whence without turning round they passed beneath the
+throne of Necessity; and when they had all passed, they marched on in a
+scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness, which was a barren waste
+destitute of trees and verdure; and then towards evening they encamped
+by the river of Unmindfulness, whose water no vessel can hold; of this
+they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity, and those who were
+not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary; and each one as he
+drank forgot all things. Now after they had gone to rest, about the
+middle of the night there was a thunderstorm and earthquake, and then
+in an instant they were driven upwards in all manner of ways to their
+birth, like stars shooting. He himself was hindered from drinking the
+water. But in what manner or by what means he returned to the body he
+could not say; only, in the morning, awaking suddenly, he found himself
+lying on the pyre.
+
+And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not perished, and
+will save us if we are obedient to the word spoken; and we shall pass
+safely over the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be
+defiled. Wherefore my counsel is, that we hold fast ever to the
+heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering
+that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and
+every sort of evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another and to the
+gods, both while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games
+who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be
+well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand
+years which we have been describing.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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