Gymnastic and the Body

So it is, he said.

Well then, I said, does our discussion of music seem to you, too, to have reached its end? It has certainly ended where it ought to end — for musical training, I think, must end in the erotic love of the beautiful.

I agree, he said.

After music, then, our young men are to be reared on gymnastic.

Of course.

In this too they must certainly be reared with care, from childhood throughout their life. It is somehow, I think, like this — consider it yourself too. For it does not seem to me that a good body, by its own virtue, makes a soul good, but on the contrary that a good soul, by its own virtue, renders the body as good as it can possibly be — so how does it seem to you?

So it seems to me too, he said.

Then, if we cared for the mind well enough and handed over to it the precise working-out of matters concerning the body, while we ourselves merely sketched the outlines, so as not to talk at excessive length, would we not be acting rightly?

Certainly.

We have already said that they must abstain from drunkenness; for anyone at all, sooner than a guardian, may get drunk and not know where in the world he is.

Yes, he said, for it would be ridiculous for the guardian himself to need a guardian.

But what about food? These men, after all, are athletes competing in the greatest of contests. Or is that not so?

Yes.

Then would the condition of these ordinary athletes be fitting for them?

Perhaps.

But, I said, that condition is somehow sleepy, and precarious for health. Or do you not see that these athletes sleep their life away, and that if they depart even slightly from their prescribed regimen, they fall gravely and violently ill?

I do.

Our warrior athletes, I said, need some more refined kind of training, since they must be wakeful as watchdogs, and see and hear as keenly as possible, and, amid the many changes they undergo on campaign — of water and other food, of scorching heat and winter cold — must not be liable to break down in health.

So it seems to me.

Then would the best gymnastic be a kind of sister to the simple music we described a little earlier?

What do you mean?

A gymnastic that is simple and decent, I suppose, and especially the kind fit for war.

How so?

One could learn such things from Homer too, I said. For you know that, on campaign, in the feasts of the heroes he never feeds them on fish, even though they are camped by the sea on the Hellespont, nor on boiled meats but only roasted, which are surely the most convenient for soldiers; for pretty much everywhere, so to speak, it is easier to make use of fire itself than to carry pots and pans around.

Quite so.

Nor, I think, does Homer ever once mention seasonings. Or is this something even other athletes know — that a body meant to be in good condition must abstain from all such things?

And rightly so, he said — they know it, and they abstain.

Then, my friend, since these things seem right to you, you evidently do not commend a Syracusan table and the variety of Sicilian relishes.

I do not think I do.

Then you also disapprove of a Corinthian girl as a friend for men who are to be in good bodily condition.

Absolutely.

And the supposed delights of Attic pastries as well?

Necessarily.

For I think that if we compare this whole manner of eating and living to song and melody composed in every mode and every rhythm, we would be comparing it rightly.

Of course.

And there variety bred licentiousness, while here it breeds disease; whereas simplicity, in music, breeds moderation in souls, and in gymnastic, health in bodies?

Most true, he said.

And when licentiousness and disease multiply in a city, do not law courts and clinics open up in great numbers, and advocacy and medicine give themselves airs, when even many free men come to take them very seriously indeed?

How could it be otherwise?

Could you find any greater proof of a city's bad and shameful education than this — that it needs first-rate doctors and judges, not only for the common sort and the manual laborers, but even for those who claim to have been raised in the manner of free men? Or does it not seem shameful, and a great proof of a lack of education, to be forced to use justice imported from others, as though from masters and arbiters, for want of any of one's own?

The most shameful thing of all, he said.

Does it seem to you, I said, that there is something even more shameful than this — when a man not only wears away the greater part of his life in the courts, prosecuting and defending, but even, from sheer want of taste, is persuaded to preen himself on this very thing, as one clever at wrongdoing and able to twist and turn every way, to slip through every loophole and wriggle free, so as to escape justice, and all this for the sake of small and worthless matters, not knowing how much finer and better it would be to arrange his life so as never to need a drowsy judge at all?

No, he said, this is even more shameful than that.

And needing medicine, I said, not on account of wounds or the occasional seasonal illness that befalls one, but because, through idleness and the sort of regimen we have described, filling oneself up like a stagnant pond with fluids and vapors, and forcing the clever sons of Asclepius to fasten names like flatulence and catarrh onto diseases — does that not seem shameful?

Very much so, he said; these truly are strange and newfangled names for diseases.

Such names, I said, did not exist, I think, in the time of Asclepius. And I infer this because his sons, at Troy, when Eurypylus was wounded and given Pramnian wine with a good deal of barley meal sprinkled on it, and grated cheese besides — which are surely thought to cause phlegm — did not reproach the woman who gave it to him to drink, nor did they find fault with Patroclus, who was treating him.

And yet, he said, that is certainly a strange drink to give a man in his condition.

Not so strange, I said, if you consider that the sons of Asclepius, so they say, did not practice this nursemaid style of medicine we have now until Herodicus came along; but Herodicus, being a trainer, and then becoming sickly, mixed gymnastic with medicine, and wore down himself first and foremost, and many others afterward.

How so? He asked.

By making his death a long one, I said. For, tracking a disease that was fatal, he was not able, I think, to cure himself, but lived out his life treating himself to the neglect of everything else, tormented if he departed at all from his accustomed regimen, and, dying hard thanks to his own cleverness, arrived at old age.

A fine reward, he said, he won from his craft.

Medicine, Judges, and Lingering Illness

As you would expect, I said, from someone who does not know that Asclepius did not reveal this kind of medicine to his descendants out of ignorance or inexperience, but because he knew that in every well-ordered city each person has some task assigned to him which he must perform, and no one has the leisure to be sick and under treatment for his whole life. This is something we notice, absurdly enough, in the case of craftsmen, but fail to notice in the case of the rich and those who seem to be prosperous.

How so? He asked.

A carpenter, I said, when he is sick, expects to get a drug from the doctor that will make him vomit up the disease, or to be purged from below, or to be treated with cautery or the knife and so be rid of it; but if someone prescribes him a long regimen — wrapping his head in felt caps and all that goes with them — he quickly says that he has no leisure to be sick and that it is not worth living like that, attending to his illness and neglecting the work in front of him. And after that, having said goodbye to such a doctor, he goes back to his usual regimen, and once he has recovered his health he lives carrying on his own affairs; but if his body is not equal to bearing it, he dies and is rid of his troubles.

Yes, he said, for a person like that it does seem fitting to use medicine that way.

Is that, I said, because he had some work to do, and if he did not do it, life was not worth living?

Clearly, he said.

But the rich man, as we say, has no such work set before him, of a kind that makes life unlivable if he is forced to give it up.

No, that is certainly not said of him.

You have surely heard, I said, how Phocylides says that once a man already has a livelihood, he should practice virtue.

I think, he said, even before that too.

Let us not quarrel with him about this, I said, but let us instead teach ourselves whether the rich man must practice this, and life is not worth living for him if he does not — or whether nursing an illness is an impediment to the carpenter's attention to his craft, and to the other crafts, but no impediment at all to Phocylides' injunction.

Yes, by Zeus, he said. This excessive care of the body that goes beyond gymnastic is pretty much the biggest obstacle of all; for it makes trouble for household management, for military service, and for holding settled office in the city.

But the biggest thing is that it also makes any kind of learning difficult, along with reflection and private study, since it is forever suspecting some headache or dizziness and blaming philosophy for bringing it on, so that wherever virtue is practiced and tested by such study, this excessive care is a hindrance every time; for it always makes a person think he is sick, and, as if in labor, never stop worrying about his body.

That is likely, he said.

So shall we not say that Asclepius, knowing all this, revealed medicine for those who are healthy in body by nature and regimen but have some localized disease within them — treating this sort of constitution by expelling their illness with drugs and surgery, then prescribing their usual regimen so as not to damage their civic duties — but that for bodies diseased through and through, he did not attempt to prolong a wretched life by regimens that drain a little here and pour in a little there, nor to let such people beget children as sickly as themselves, but instead held that a man unable to live out his natural span should not be treated, on the ground that this profits neither himself nor the city?

You are making Asclepius out to be a statesman, he said.

Clearly, I said — and as for his sons, since he was that kind of man, do not you see how at Troy too they showed themselves good in battle, and practiced medicine in the way I mean? And surely you remember that for Menelaus too, from the wound Pandarus gave him— they sucked out the blood and sprinkled soothing remedies on it, but as to what he should eat or drink after that, they prescribed nothing more than they did for Eurypylus, since they thought the drugs were enough to heal men who, before their wounds, were healthy and disciplined in their regimen, even if it happened that they drank a posset on the spot, whereas for a man sickly and undisciplined by nature they thought life was of no benefit either to himself or to others, and that the craft should not exist for such people, nor should they be treated, not even if they were richer than Midas.

You are making Asclepius's sons out to be quite refined people, he said.

It is fitting, I said — and yet, disagreeing with us here, the tragic poets and Pindar say that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, but that, persuaded by gold, he healed a rich man who was already at the point of death, and that this is precisely why he was struck by lightning. But we, in accordance with what has been said before, will not believe them on both counts; rather, we will say that if he was a son of a god, he was not greedy for gain; but if he was greedy for gain, he was not a son of a god.

Quite right, he said, as far as that goes. But what do you say about this, Socrates? Should not we have good doctors in the city? And presumably the best such doctors would be those who have treated the most healthy people and the most sick ones, and likewise the best judges, in turn, would be those who have had dealings with natures of every kind.

Yes indeed, I said, I mean good ones. But do you know whom I consider such people?

I will, if you tell me, he said.

But I will try, I said; you, though, put two unlike matters into a single question.

How so? He asked.

Doctors, I said, would become most skilled if, starting from childhood, in addition to learning the craft they had dealings with as many and as diseased bodies as possible, and if they themselves suffered every illness and were not entirely healthy by nature. For I do not think they treat body with body — since otherwise it would never be possible for bodies themselves to be, or to become, bad — but rather soul treats body, and it is not possible for a soul that has become and remains bad to treat anything well.

Rightly said, he said.

But a judge, my friend, governs soul with soul, and it is not right for that soul to have been raised among wicked souls from youth and to have kept company with them, and to have gone through committing every injustice itself, so that it can shrewdly infer other people's wrongs from its own, the way one infers diseases of the body; rather, it must have grown up inexperienced in and untouched by bad character while still young, if it is to judge just matters soundly by being itself fine and good. That is exactly why decent people, while young, appear simple-minded and are easily deceived by unjust people, since they do not have within themselves examples that correspond to what the wicked feel.

Yes, indeed, he said, that is very much what happens to them.

For this very reason, I said, the good judge must be not young but old, a late learner of what injustice is like — not having perceived it as something native, present in his own soul, but having studied it over a long time as something foreign in foreign souls, so as to discern clearly what sort of evil it is by nature, making use of knowledge, not of experience of his own.

That kind of judge, he said, does seem to be a most noble one, at any rate.

And good too, I said, which is what you were asking; for whoever has a good soul is good. But that clever, suspicious fellow — who has himself done much wrong and thinks himself cunning and wise — whenever he is among people like himself, appears clever, being extremely wary and looking to the models within himself; but whenever he comes near good men, and men now older, he appears foolish in turn, distrusting at the wrong moments and failing to recognize a sound character, since he has no model of that kind in himself. But since he meets with wicked people more often than with decent ones, he ends up seeming wise rather than ignorant, both to himself and to others.

That is absolutely true, he said.

So then, I said, we should not look for that sort of person as our good and wise judge, but for the one described earlier; for wickedness could never come to know both virtue and itself, whereas virtue, as a nature is educated over time, will come to know both itself and wickedness together. So it is this person, as it seems to me, who becomes wise, not the bad one.

I think so too, he said.

So then, will not you legislate for the city both the kind of medicine we described and this kind of judicial practice together, ones that will care for those citizens who are well-formed in body and soul, but as for those who are not, will let die the ones who are so in body, while those who are badly formed and incurable in soul they will put to death themselves?

This has certainly been shown to be the best course, he said, both for the sufferers themselves and for the city.

And as for the young, I said, it is clear that they will be careful about ever needing to resort to the courts, so long as they make use of that simple musical education which we said produces moderation.

What else? He said.

Music and Gymnastic Together Temper the Soul

Then will not the musical man, if he wishes, catch gymnastic too by following these same tracks, so that he has no need of medicine beyond what is unavoidable?

I think so.

And as for the exercises and hardships themselves, he will engage in them with an eye to the spirited element of his nature and to rousing it, rather than for strength, not treating diet and toil the way other athletes do, for the sake of bodily power.

Quite right, he said.

Then, I said, Glaucon, do not those who establish education through music and gymnastic do so not for the reason some suppose, that the body might be tended by the one and the soul by the other?

Well, what else? He said.

They are likely, I said, to establish both mainly for the sake of the soul.

How so?

Do you not notice, I said, how the mind itself is disposed in those who consort with gymnastic throughout life but never touch music? Or again, how those who are disposed the opposite way turn out?

What do you mean, he asked?

Savagery and hardness, I said, and again softness and gentleness—

I do, he said — because those who indulge in unmixed gymnastic turn out more savage than is proper, while those who give themselves to music turn softer than is good for them.

And indeed, I said, it is the spirited part of one's nature that would produce savagery — rightly reared, it would be brave, but stretched more tightly than it should, it would naturally turn hard and harsh.

I think so, he said.

And what about this? Would not the philosophic nature possess gentleness — softer than it should be if let too slack, but gentle and well-ordered if reared well?

That is so.

And we say that the guardians must have both these natures.

Yes, they must.

Then must they not be attuned to one another?

How could they not?

And is not the soul of one who is well attuned moderate and brave?

Certainly.

And the soul of one who is not attuned, cowardly and boorish?

Very much so.

So when someone lets music pipe into his soul and pour through it, through his ears as through a funnel, those sweet and soft and plaintive harmonies we were just now speaking of, and spends his whole life humming and delighting in song, such a man, at first, if he had any spirit in him, softens it like iron and makes it useful instead of useless and hard; but when he does not let up but keeps charming it without relief, from that point on he melts and dissolves it away, until he has melted out the spirit entirely and cut the sinews from his soul, as it were, and made a soft spearman.

Quite so, he said.

And if, I said, he takes hold of a spiritless nature from the start, he accomplishes this quickly; but if the nature is spirited, by weakening its spirit he makes it prone to sudden swings, easily provoked and easily quenched by small things. So instead of being spirited, they become irritable and short-tempered, full of peevishness.

Exactly so.

And what if, in turn, he toils much at gymnastic and feasts very well, but does not touch music or philosophy? Does he not, first, being in good bodily condition, become filled with high spirit and confidence, and grow braver than he was before?

Very much so.

But what happens when he does nothing else and has no share in the Muse at all? Does not whatever love of learning was in his soul, since it tastes no study and inquires into nothing, and takes no part in reasoned discourse or the rest of music, become weak and deaf and blind, since it is neither roused nor nourished, and his perceptions are never purified?

So it is, he said.

Such a man, I think, becomes a hater of reasoned discourse and unmusical, and no longer makes any use of persuasion through argument, but goes about everything by force and savagery like a wild beast, and lives in ignorance and clumsiness, without rhythm and without grace.

That is altogether so, he said.

Then since these two things exist, it seems, I would say some god has given two crafts to mankind — music and gymnastic — directed at the spirited part and the philosophic part, not at soul and body, except incidentally, but at those two, so that they might be attuned to each other, stretched and slackened to the proper degree.

So it seems, he said.

Then the man who blends gymnastic with music most beautifully and brings them to bear on the soul in the best measure — him we would most rightly call the most fully musical and best attuned, far more than the man who tunes strings together with one another.

With good reason, Socrates, he said.

Then in our city too, Glaucon, will there not always be need of some such overseer, if the constitution is to be preserved?

Selecting the Rulers, and the Noble Lie

It will indeed be necessary, so far as that is at all possible.

These, then, would be the outlines of education and upbringing. For why should one go through the particulars of such things — dances, and hunting and the chase, and gymnastic and equestrian contests? For it is more or less clear that these must follow from what has been said, and are no longer hard to discover.

Perhaps not hard, he said.

Well then, I said — what ought we to distinguish next? Is it not the question of these same men themselves — which of them shall rule, and which be ruled?

Of course.

Is it not clear that the rulers must be older, and the ruled younger?

Clear.

And clear too that the rulers must be the best of them?

That too.

And are not the best farmers the ones most skilled at farming?

Yes.

So now, since they must be the best of the guardians, must they not be the ones most skilled at guarding the city?

Yes.

Must they not then be sensible and capable for this, and moreover devoted to the care of the city?

That is so.

And a person would care most for that which he happens to love.

Necessarily.

And indeed he would love most that whose interest he believed to be the same as his own, [especially] when he thought that if it fared well he himself fared well too, and if not, the opposite.

So it is, he said.

We must therefore choose, from among the other guardians, such men as appear to us, on the closest observation, to hold to this above all throughout their whole life: whatever they judge to benefit the city they do with all eagerness, and whatever they judge not to, they are unwilling to do by any means.

Yes, for such men would be fit for it, he said.

It seems to me that we must watch them at every stage of life, to see whether they remain guardians of this conviction, and are not, whether bewitched or forced, made to cast out and forget the opinion that one must do what is best for the city.

What kind of casting-out do you mean, he said?

I will tell you, I said. It seems to me that an opinion leaves the mind either willingly or unwillingly — willingly in the case of the false opinion of one changing his mind, and unwillingly always in the case of the true one.

The willing kind, he said, I understand; but I need to learn about the unwilling kind.

What then? Do you not yourself believe, I said, that men are deprived of good things unwillingly, but of bad things willingly? Or is not being deceived about the truth a bad thing, and holding to the truth a good one? Or does it not seem to you that holding an opinion of things as they are is the same as holding to the truth?

You are right, he said, and it seems to me that men are deprived of a true opinion unwillingly.

Then is it not by being robbed, or bewitched, or forced, that this happens to them?

I do not understand even now, he said.

I am in danger of speaking like a tragedian, I said. For those who are talked out of it, and those who forget, I call robbed — since from the one, time takes it away unnoticed, and from the other, argument does; surely you understand that now?

Yes.

And those whom some pain or distress makes change their opinion, I call forced.

That too I understand, he said, and you are right.

And bewitched, I think, you too would call those who change their opinion, either charmed by pleasure or scared by some fear.

Yes, he said, everything that deceives seems to bewitch.

So then, as I was just saying, we must look for whoever are the best guardians of the conviction within them: that whatever they always judge to be best for the city must be done [by them]. We must watch them, then, right from childhood, setting them tasks in which one would be most likely to forget such a thing, or to be deceived out of it, and we must approve the one who remembers and is hard to deceive, and reject the one who is not. Is that not so?

Yes.

And we must set them, in turn, labors and pains and contests, in which the same things must be watched.

Right, he said.

Then, I said, we must also set up for them a third kind of contest, one of bewitchment, and observe them — just as men lead colts amid noises and uproar to see whether they are fearful, so must young men be led into certain terrors and then, in turn, changed over into pleasures, testing them far more thoroughly than gold is tested in fire — to see whether each shows himself hard to bewitch and graceful in everything, a good guardian of himself and of the music he was taught, keeping himself rhythmic and well-attuned throughout all these trials, being of such a kind as would be most useful both to himself and to the city. And whoever is tested throughout — as a boy, as a young man, and as a man — and comes through always unspoiled, must be established as a ruler of the city and a guardian, and must be given honors both in life and in death, receiving the greatest privileges in burial and in other memorials; but whoever is not of this kind must be rejected. Something of this kind, Glaucon, I said, seems to me to be the selection and establishment of the rulers and guardians — spoken of, that is, in outline, and not with precision.

It appears to me that way too, he said.

Then is it truly most correct to call these men complete guardians, against enemies from without and against friends within — so that the one sort will have no wish, and the other no power, to do wrong — and to call the young men, whom we have until now been calling guardians, auxiliaries and helpers to the convictions of the rulers?

It seems so to me, he said.

What device, then, I said, might we find — among those useful falsehoods we were just now speaking of, told when they are needed — by which we might tell one noble falsehood and persuade, best of all, the rulers themselves, or failing that, the rest of the city?

What sort? He asked.

Nothing new, I said, but something Phoenician — a thing that has already happened in many places before now, as the poets tell us and have persuaded people, though it has not happened in our own time, and I do not know whether it could happen, and it would take no small persuasion to bring anyone to believe it.

You seem, he said, reluctant to tell it.

And you will think, I said, that I am reluctant with very good reason, once I have told it.

Tell it, he said, and do not be afraid.

I will tell it then — though I do not know with what daring or what words I shall say it — and I will try to persuade, first, the rulers themselves and the soldiers, and then the rest of the city as well, that all this upbringing and education we gave them was, as it were, something they only dreamed was happening to them and around them, while in truth, at that time, they were being formed and reared beneath the earth, they themselves and their weapons and the rest of their equipment being fashioned there too, and that when they were completely finished, the earth, being their mother, sent them up, and that now they must think of the land in which they live as a mother and a nurse, and take counsel for it and defend it, should anyone attack it, and must think of the rest of the citizens as their brothers, born of the same earth.

No wonder, he said, that you were so long ashamed to tell the falsehood.

Quite rightly so, I said; but all the same, hear the rest of the story too. You are all brothers, all of you in the city, we shall say to them, telling the story further — but the god, in forming you, mixed gold at birth into those of you who are fit to rule, and that is why they are the most honored; silver into the auxiliaries; and iron and bronze into the farmers and the other craftsmen. Now since you are all kindred, for the most part you will beget children like yourselves, but sometimes a silver child will be born from a golden parent, or a golden child from a silver one, and likewise all the rest from one another. So the god commands the rulers, first and above all, that of nothing shall they be such good guardians, and nothing shall they guard so closely, as their offspring, watching for whichever of these metals is mixed into their souls, and if a child of their own should be born with an admixture of bronze or iron, in no way shall they show it mercy, but shall give it the honor proper to its nature and thrust it out among the craftsmen or the farmers; and if, in turn, a child should be born of these with an admixture of gold or silver, they shall honor it and raise it up, some into the guard, others into the auxiliary force, since there is an oracle that the city will be destroyed whenever it is guarded by a man of iron or of bronze. Do you have any device, then, by which they might be persuaded of this story?

The Guardians' Way of Life: Nothing of Their Own

Not in the least, he said — not these men themselves; but perhaps their sons, and those who come after, and the rest of mankind in later ages.

But even this, I said, would be a good thing, tending to make them care more for the city and for one another — for I think I roughly understand what you mean.

Well, this will go wherever the report may carry it; but let us arm these earthborn men and lead them forth, with their rulers going in front. And when they arrive, let them look out over the city for the best place to make camp, from which they could best hold in check anyone within who was unwilling to obey the laws, and ward off anyone from without, if an enemy should come against the flock like a wolf; and once they have made camp and offered the sacrifices that are due, let them prepare their beds. Or how else?

Just so, he said.

Beds, then, of the sort that would keep out the winter cold and be adequate for the summer heat?

How could they not be? For you seem to me to be speaking of dwellings, he said.

Yes, I said, dwellings fit for soldiers, but not for money-makers.

And how, he said, do you mean this differs from that?

I will try to tell you, I said. For surely it is the most terrible and shameful thing of all for shepherds to raise dogs as helpers for their flocks of such a kind, and in such a fashion, that through indiscipline or hunger or some other bad habit the dogs themselves should turn to doing harm to the sheep, and become like wolves instead of dogs.

Terrible, he said — how could it not be?

Must we not guard in every way against our auxiliaries treating the citizens in any such way — since they are the stronger — and so coming to resemble savage masters instead of friendly allies?

We must guard against it, he said.

Would they not be furnished with the greatest safeguard, if they are truly well educated?

But surely they are, he said.

And I said: this point is not worth insisting on too strongly, dear Glaucon — but what we said just now is worth insisting on, that they need to receive the right education, whatever that may be, if they are going to have the most important thing for being gentle both to themselves and to those under their guard.

And rightly so, he said.

Besides this education, then, anyone with sense would say that their dwellings and the rest of their property must be furnished for them in such a way as neither to stop them from being the best guardians they can be, nor to incite them to do wrong to the rest of the citizens.

And he will say so truly.

Consider, then, I said, whether they must live and dwell in some such way as this, if they are going to be guardians of that kind: first, that no one should possess any private property at all, unless it is altogether necessary; next, that no one should have any dwelling or storeroom of the sort that not everyone who wishes may enter; that as for provisions — whatever moderate and brave men who are athletes of war require — they should agree on an amount and receive it from the other citizens as wages for their guardianship, enough that there is neither anything left over at the end of the year nor anything lacking; that they should go to common meals and live together as if they were encamped; and that as for gold and silver, they should be told that they always have the divine kind in their souls as a gift from the gods, and need nothing more of the human kind, and that it is not holy to defile the possession of that kind by mixing it with the possession of mortal gold, since many unholy things have come about because of the currency ordinary people use, while theirs remains undefiled; but that they alone among the people of the city are not permitted to handle or touch gold and silver, nor to come under the same roof with it, nor to wear it as an ornament, nor to drink from silver or gold. And living in this way they would be safe themselves and would keep the city safe; but whenever they acquire private land and houses and money of their own, they will become householders and farmers instead of guardians, and hostile masters instead of allies of the other citizens, and hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, they will pass their whole life fearing the enemies within far more, and more constantly, than those outside, and racing at that point already very close to their own ruin and that of the rest of the city as well. For all these reasons, then, I said, shall we say that the guardians must be provided for in this way as regards housing and everything else, and shall we lay this down as law, or not?

By all means, said Glaucon.

Book IV

Are the Guardians Happy? The Happiness of the Whole

And Adeimantus broke in: What then, Socrates, will you say in your defense, if someone claims that you are not making these men very happy at all, and this through their own doing — men to whom the city in truth belongs, while they get no good from the city, as others do, who own land and build fine, large houses, and acquire furnishings to suit them, and offer private sacrifices to the gods, and entertain guests, and indeed, as you were just now saying, possess gold and silver and everything that is thought needful for those who are going to be blessed? But plainly, one might say, they seem to sit in the city like hired auxiliaries, doing nothing but standing guard.

Yes, I said, and what is more, fed at a common table and not even receiving pay beyond their food, as the others do, so that not even if they wish to travel abroad on their own business will it be possible for them, nor to give money to mistresses, nor to spend it wherever else they might wish, in the way those who are thought to be happy spend it. You leave these and many other such things out of the charge.

Well, he said, let these too be added to the charge.

So what, you are asking, shall we say in our defense?

Yes.

By going along the same road, I said, we shall find, I think, what we ought to say. For we shall say that it would be no wonder if these men were happiest just as they are, but that in founding the city we are not looking to this, that some one class in it should be exceptionally happy, but that the whole city should be so as far as possible. For we thought that in such a city we would most find justice, and again in the worst-governed one injustice, and that by observing both we could judge the question we have long been seeking. Now then, as we suppose, we are molding the happy city, not marking off a few in it and setting them apart as such, but shaping the whole; and presently we shall examine the opposite kind of city. So then, just as if someone came up to us while we were painting a statue and found fault, saying that we do not apply the most beautiful colors to the most beautiful parts of the creature — for the eyes, the most beautiful part, are painted not with purple but with black — we would seem to answer him reasonably enough by saying: My good man, do not suppose that we ought to paint eyes so fine that they no longer look like eyes, nor the other parts either, but consider whether, by rendering to each its due, we make the whole beautiful; and so now too, do not force us to fasten on the guardians a happiness of that sort, which will make them anything rather than guardians. For we know how to dress the farmers in fine robes, deck them with gold, and bid them work the land for pleasure, and lay the potters down by the fire on their right side, drinking and feasting, their wheel set beside them, to make pottery whenever they please, and to make all the rest blessed in the same way, so that the whole city may be happy. But do not advise us in this way; for if we were to obey you, the farmer would no longer be a farmer, nor the potter a potter, nor would anyone else keep any of the roles out of which a city is made. But the case of the others matters less; for if cobblers turn out badly and are corrupted, and pretend to be what they are not, it is no terrible thing for the city, but when the guardians of the laws and of the city are not truly such but only seem to be, you see that they destroy the whole city root and branch, and, on the other hand, they alone hold the power to govern it well and make it happy. If then we are truly making guardians who do the least harm to the city, while he who says the other thing means some sort of happy farmers, feasting as if at a festival rather than living in a city, he would be talking about something other than a city. We must consider, then, whether it is with this in view that we are to appoint the guardians, so that the greatest possible happiness will come to be in them, or whether we must look rather to the city as a whole and watch for that happiness there, and must compel and persuade these auxiliaries and the guardians to do that other thing, so that they will be the best craftsmen of their own work, and all the others likewise, and so, with the whole city growing and being well founded, we must leave each class to partake of happiness in whatever way its nature allows.

Wealth, Poverty, and the Right Size of a City

Well, he said, I think you put that well.

Then, I said, will you think I am speaking reasonably about its counterpart too?

What exactly do you mean?

Consider in turn whether the following things ruin the other craftsmen too, so that they become bad as well.

What things do you mean?

Wealth, I said, and poverty.

How so?

Like this. Once a potter grows rich, do you think he will still want to attend to his craft?

Not at all, he said.

Will he not become more idle and careless than he was before?

Much more so.

So does he not become a worse potter?

That too, he said, by a great deal.

And what is more, unable through poverty to supply himself with tools or anything else his craft needs, he will produce poorer work and will teach his sons, or whoever else he teaches, to be worse craftsmen.

How could he not?

So under the influence of both, poverty and wealth, the works of the crafts grow worse, and so do the craftsmen themselves.

So it appears.

Then it seems we have found other things for the guardians, which must be guarded against in every way, so that these never slip unnoticed into the city.

What things are these?

Wealth, I said, and poverty — the one breeding luxury, idleness, and a taste for novelty, the other breeding meanness and wrongdoing, on top of that same taste for novelty.

Certainly, he said. But consider this too, Socrates: how our city will be able to wage war when it possesses no money — especially if it is forced to fight against a city that is both large and wealthy.

Clearly, I said, against one such city it will be harder, but against two it will be easier.

What do you mean? So he asked.

First of all, I said, if there is fighting to be done, will they not be fighting rich men while being themselves athletes of war?

Yes, that much is so, he said.

What then, I said, Adeimantus? Would it not seem to you that one boxer, prepared as well as possible for the task, could easily fight two men who are not boxers at all, but rich and fat?

Not at the same time, perhaps, he said.

Not even if he were free, I said, to give ground, and then, whenever the foremost man came at him, to turn and strike him, doing this again and again in the sun and the stifling heat? Would such a man not overpower even more opponents of that kind?

No doubt, he said, there would be nothing surprising in that.

But do you not think that the rich have more knowledge and experience of boxing than of warfare?

I do, he said.

So our athletes will probably fight easily against men twice or three times their own number.

I will grant you that, he said; for I think you are right.

What if we sent an embassy to another city and had it speak the truth, saying: "We ourselves make no use of gold or silver — we are not permitted to, though you are — so join the fighting on our side, and keep for yourselves what belongs to the others"? Do you think anyone who heard this would choose to fight against dogs, hard and lean, rather than, with the dogs as allies, fight against sheep, fat and soft?

It does not seem so to me. But, he said, if the wealth of all the other cities were gathered together into one city, watch that it not bring danger to the one that has no wealth.

You are fortunate, I said, to think that any city other than the kind we have been founding deserves to be called a city at all.

Why, what else should I call it? He said.

The others, I said, we must call by a grander name; for each of them is a great many cities, not a city — the sort of thing riddle-tellers say. Any one of them, whatever else it may be, is at least two cities at war with each other, one of the poor, the other of the rich; and within each of these there are very many more, and if you approach any of them as one, you will be entirely wrong, but if you approach it as many, and hand over the money, the power, or even the persons of one group to the other, you will always have many allies and few enemies. And as long as your city is governed with moderation, in the way we have just arranged, it will be the greatest city — not in reputation, I mean, but truly the greatest, even if it has only a thousand men to fight for it; for a single city that great you will not easily find, either among the Greeks or among the barbarians, though you will find many that seem to be, many times the size of that one. Or do you think otherwise?

What the Rulers Must Guard: Education as the One Great Thing

No, by Zeus, he said.

Then this, I said, would be the finest boundary for our rulers — how large the city must be made, and, once it has reached that size, how much territory it should mark off, letting the rest go.

What boundary? he asked.

I think, I said, this: let it grow up to the point where, as it grows, it is willing to remain one city, and no further.

And nicely put, too, he said.

Then this, in turn, is another command we shall lay on the guardians — to guard in every way that the city be neither small nor merely seem great, but be some one city, sufficient in size.

And perhaps, he said, it is a slight command we shall be laying on them.

And even slighter than that, I said, is this one, which we also mentioned earlier when we said it was necessary — if a poor child is born among the guardians, that he be sent off to the others, but if a worthy one is born among the others, that he be sent to the guardians. This was meant to show that the other citizens too, each one, must be directed toward that single task for which he is naturally fitted, so that each, practicing his own one thing, may become not many but one, and so the whole city too may grow to be one and not many.

Yes, he said, this one is a smaller matter than that.

It is not, my good Adeimantus, I said, as one might suppose, that the commands we are laying on them are many and great; all of them are slight, provided they guard the one great thing, as the saying has it — or rather, instead of great, the one sufficient thing.

What is this? So he asked.

Education, I said, and upbringing: for if men, being well educated, become reasonable, they will easily discern all these matters — and the others too, which we are now passing over: the possession of wives, marriages, and the begetting of children — namely, that according to the proverb, all these things must be made as far as possible common among friends.

That would come about most rightly, he said.

Moreover, I said, a constitution, once it has made a good start, goes on growing like a circle: for sound upbringing and education, when preserved, produce good natures, and in turn good natures, laying hold of such education, grow up even better than those before them, both for other things and for begetting, as also among the other animals.

Likely so, he said.

To put this briefly, then: the overseers of the city must hold fast to this — so that its corruption does not escape their notice, but that they guard it above all else, not innovating in gymnastic or in music against the established order, but guarding it as best they can — taking alarm whenever someone says that … men give more heed to that song which hovers newest among the singers, for fear that someone may suppose the poet means not new songs but a new manner of song, and may praise it. One must neither praise such a thing nor accept it. For one must be wary of changing to a new kind of music, as putting the whole at risk; nowhere are the modes of music moved without the greatest laws of the city being moved too, as Damon says, and I for one am persuaded.

Then count me too, said Adeimantus, among the persuaded.

So it seems, I said, the guardians must build their watch-post somewhere here, in music.

Lawlessness, at any rate, he said, easily slips in unnoticed.

Yes, I said, as if it were part of play, and as if it were doing no harm.

For indeed, he said, it does nothing else but settle in by degrees and quietly flow into people's characters and pursuits; and from there it issues, grown greater, into their dealings with one another; and from these dealings it goes on to the laws and constitutions, Socrates, with a great deal of insolence, until at last it overturns everything, private and public alike.

Well then, I said, is that how it is?

So it seems to me, he said.

Then, as we were saying from the beginning, I said, must not our children from the very start take part in more lawful play, since, if their play becomes lawless, and the children with it, it is impossible for law-abiding and serious men to grow up from them?

How could it be otherwise? So he said.

So then, whenever children, having begun their play well, receive good order through music, the opposite of what happened to those others follows them into everything and grows with them, setting right whatever in the city had gone wrong before.

True indeed, he said.

And so these people, I said, rediscover even the small things that pass for matters of custom — all of which those before them had let go.

Which ⟨ones⟩?

Things like these: the silence that is fitting for the young before their elders; how they take their places at table, and their rising to give way; care for parents; and haircuts, dress, and footwear, and the whole fashioning of the body, and all the other such things. Or do you not think so?

I do.

But to legislate about these things, I think, is naive; for such things neither come about nor would they last through being enacted in speech and writing.

How could they?

At any rate, Adeimantus, I said, it is likely that whichever way one's education sets out, what follows will be of the same kind. Or does not like always call forth like?

Of course.

And in the end, I think, we would say that it turns out to be one complete and full-grown result, either good or else the opposite.

Why not indeed? So he said.

For my part, then, I said, it is because of these things that I would no longer attempt to legislate about such matters.

Reasonably so, he said.

But what, in the name of the gods, I said, about these matters of the marketplace — the contracts that people make with one another there, and, if you like, contracts among craftsmen, and slander, and assault, and the filing of suits, and the appointment of jurors, and whatever dues, whether their collection or their assessment, are needed in the markets or the harbors, or, generally, any market-regulations or city-regulations or harbor-regulations or anything else of the kind — shall we dare to legislate anything about these?

No, he said, it is not fitting to dictate to men who are fine and good; most of these things, whatever needs to be enacted, they will easily discover for themselves.

Yes, my friend, I said, provided a god grants them the preservation of the laws we went through before.

And if not, he said, they will spend their lives always laying down and revising many such things, thinking they will hit upon the best.

You mean, I said, that such people will live like the sick, who, from lack of restraint, are unwilling to give up their bad regimen.

Quite so.

And indeed, they carry on quite charmingly; for being doctored, they accomplish nothing, except that they make their illnesses more complicated and worse, and are always hoping, if someone recommends a remedy, that by it they will become well.

Yes indeed, he said, such are the experiences of those who are sick in this way.

And what of this? I said: is not this charming in them too — that they regard as their worst enemy the man who tells them the truth, because, until he stops getting drunk and stuffing himself and indulging in sex and lazing about, neither drugs, nor cauterizing, nor surgery, nor incantations, nor amulets, nor anything else of that kind will do him any good?

Not very charming, he said, for there is no charm in being angry at one who speaks well.

You are not, it seems, I said, an admirer of such men.

No, by Zeus, indeed not.

Then neither will you praise a city, if, as we were just saying, it acts this way as a whole. Or do they not seem to you to be doing the very same thing as those cities which, being badly governed, proclaim to their citizens that no one is to disturb the established order of the city as a whole, on pain of death for whoever does so — while whoever most agreeably serves them as they govern in this way, and indulges them, fawning on them and anticipating their wishes, and is clever at satisfying them, this man will be accounted a good man, and wise in great matters, and will be honored by them?

Just the same thing, indeed, he said, they seem to me to be doing, and I do not praise it in the least.

But what, in turn, of those who are willing and eager to serve such cities? Do you not admire their courage and their easy readiness?

I do, he said, except for those who have been deceived by them, and think that in truth they are statesmen, because they are praised by the many.

What do you mean? Have you no sympathy, I said, for these men? Or do you think it possible for a man who does not know how to measure, when many other such men tell him that he is four cubits tall, not to believe this about himself?

No, not that, at least, he said.

Then do not be harsh with them; for such people are, I dare say, the most charming of all — legislating the sort of things we just went through, and revising them, always thinking they will find some final limit to the wrongdoing in contracts, and to the things I was just speaking of, unaware that they are, in truth, cutting at a Hydra.

The City Is Founded: Where Is Justice?

And indeed, he said, that is exactly what they do.

Well then, I said, concerning this kind of law and constitution I did not think the true lawgiver needed to trouble himself, in either a badly or a well-governed city — in the one because it is useless and achieves nothing more, in the other because some of these things anyone at all could discover, and others follow automatically from the practices already established.

What, then, he asked, would still be left to us of legislation?

And I said that nothing remained for us, but that to Apollo at Delphi belonged the greatest, finest, and first of the laws.

What sort of laws? So he asked.

The founding of temples, and sacrifices, and other forms of service to gods, spirits, and heroes; and, again, the tombs of the dead, and all that must be done in service to those below to keep them well-disposed toward us. For such things we ourselves do not understand, and in founding a city we will trust no one else, if we have any sense, nor will we employ any interpreter other than the ancestral one; for this god, seated [in the middle] of the earth upon the navel, is surely the ancestral interpreter of such matters for all mankind, and gives his guidance from there.

And you are quite right, he said; and so it must be done.

Well then, I said, the city would now be founded for you, son of Ariston; so examine within it, procuring sufficient light from somewhere — look yourself, and call in your brother too, and Polemarchus, and the rest — in case somehow we can see where justice might be, and where injustice, and how the two differ from each other, and which of them the man who means to be happy must possess, whether or not it escapes the notice of all gods and men.

You are talking nonsense, said Glaucon; for you promised to search for it, on the ground that it would be impious for you not to defend justice with all your power, in every way.

You remind me rightly, I said, and so it must indeed be done; but you must join in helping too.

Well, he said, we will do so.

I expect, then, I said, that we shall find it in this way. I believe our city, if indeed it has been rightly founded, is completely good.

It must be, he said.

Clearly then it is wise, and courageous, and moderate, and just.

Clearly.

Then whichever of these we find in it, will not the remainder be the one not yet found?

What else?

Just as, then, with some other set of four things, if we were looking for one of them in something or other, as soon as we recognized that one first, it would have been enough for us; but if we recognized the three others first, the thing sought would by that very fact have been recognized, for clearly it could be nothing other than what was left.

You are right, he said.

Then must we not search in the same way concerning these too, since they happen to be four?

Clearly.

And indeed it seems to me that wisdom is the first thing clearly visible in it; and something strange appears about it.

What? So he asked.

The city we have described seems to me to be truly wise; for it is well-advised, is it not?

Yes.

And indeed this very thing, good counsel, is clearly a kind of knowledge; for surely people do not counsel well through ignorance, but through knowledge.

Clearly.

But there are many kinds of knowledge of every sort in the city.

How could there not be?

Is it, then, because of the knowledge of carpenters that the city should be called wise and well-advised?

Not at all on account of that, he said — that would make it skilled in carpentry.

Then it is not on account of the knowledge concerning wooden furnishings, deliberating how it might best be arranged, that a city is to be called wise.

No, indeed.

What about this? Is it the knowledge concerning things made of bronze, or any other such knowledge?

Not that one either, he said.

Nor on account of the knowledge of raising crops from the earth — that would make it skilled in farming.

So it seems to me.

But what of this? I said, is there some knowledge, residing in some of the citizens of the city we have just founded, by which one deliberates not about something within the city, but about the city as a whole — how it might best conduct itself, both toward itself and toward other cities?

There is indeed.

Which one, I said, and among whom?

This one, he said — guardianship — and it belongs to these rulers whom we just now called complete guardians.

On account of this knowledge, then, what do you call the city?

Well-advised, he said, and truly wise.

Which, then, I said, do you think there will be more of in our city — smiths, or these true guardians?

Far more smiths, he said.

Then, I said, of all the others also who are called something because they possess some knowledge, would these not be the fewest of all?

By far.

By its smallest class and part, then, and by the knowledge within it that presides and rules, a city founded according to nature would be wise as a whole; and this, as it seems, is by nature the smallest class that comes to be — the one to which it belongs to share in this knowledge, which alone of all the other kinds of knowledge must be called wisdom.

Courage as the Preservation of a Right Belief

What you say is entirely true, he said.

This then is one of our four, and I hardly know in what way we have found it — both the thing itself and where in the city it is situated.

At any rate it seems to me, he said, that it has been found well enough.

But surely it is not at all hard to see courage itself, and the part of the city in which it resides, on account of which the city is to be called courageous.

How so?

Who, I said, would call a city cowardly or courageous by looking to anything other than that part of it which fights in its defense and takes the field on its behalf?

Not a single person, he said, would look to anything else.

For I do not think, I said, that the rest of the people in it, whether cowardly or courageous, have the power to make it one way or the other.

No, they do not.

So a city is courageous by some part of itself, because it has in that part such a power as will preserve, through everything, the belief about what things are to be feared — that they are the same things, and of the same kind, that the lawgiver prescribed in education. Or is this not what you call courage?

I did not quite grasp what you said, he said, so say it again.

I mean, I said, that courage is a kind of preservation.

What kind of preservation?

The preservation of the belief that has come to be, by law and through education, about what things are to be feared and of what kind they are — and by preserving it through everything, I meant that a person keeps it safe in the midst of pains and pleasures and desires and fears, and does not cast it out. And I am willing to compare it, if you like, to something it seems to me to resemble.

Yes, I would like that.

Well then, do you know, I said, that dyers, when they wish to dye wool so that it will be purple, first select out of so many colors the one nature, that of white; then they prepare it beforehand, treating it with no little preparation so that it will take up the bloom as much as possible, and only then do they dye it. And whatever is dyed in this way becomes fast-dyed, and no washing, whether with soap or without, can strip the bloom from it — but whatever is not dyed this way, you know what happens, whether someone dyes other colors, or dyes these same ones without the prior treatment.

I know, he said, that they turn out both washed-out and ridiculous.

Suppose then, I said, that we too were doing something of this kind, so far as we were able, when we selected our soldiers and educated them in music and gymnastic — suppose we were contriving nothing else than that they should be won over and take in our laws as finely as possible, like a dye, so that their belief about what is to be feared, and about everything else, would become fast-dyed, because the nature and the nurture they had were suited to it, and so that these soaps, terribly effective at washing things out, should not wash their dye away — pleasure, which is more potent at doing this than any bleaching-soda and lye, and pain and fear and desire, more potent than any other soap. This power then, and this preservation through everything of right and lawful belief about what is and is not to be feared, is what I call and take to be courage, unless you have something different to say.

I have nothing different to say, he said — for it seems to me that you regard the right belief about these same matters, when it comes about without education, the sort found in beasts and in slaves, as not fully lawful, and that you call it something other than courage.

What you say is entirely true, I said.

I accept, then, that this is courage.

Yes, do accept it, I said — as civic courage, at any rate — and you will be right to accept it; another time, if you like, we will go through it again in still finer detail. For it is not this we are seeking now, but justice — so for the purposes of that inquiry, I think, this is enough.

Well said, he said.

Two things, then, I said, still remain to be discerned in the city: moderation, and that for the sake of which we are seeking everything, justice.

Moderation as Agreement About Who Should Rule

Certainly.

How then might we find justice, so that we need trouble ourselves no further about moderation?

As for me, he said, I neither know, nor would I wish justice to appear first, if that means we are to look no further into moderation; but if you would do me a favor, look into this before that.

Well then, I said, I do wish to, if I am doing nothing unjust.

Look, then, he said.

It must be looked into, I said; and as far as one can see from here, it resembles a kind of concord and harmony more than the things before it.

How so?

Moderation, I said, is a kind of order, and a mastery of certain pleasures and desires, as people say when they declare someone master of himself — I do not know quite how — and other such things are spoken of as traces of it. Is that not so?

Most certainly, he said.

Now is not being master of oneself a ridiculous thing to say? For the one who is master of himself would presumably also be weaker than himself, and the one who is weaker would be master; for the same person is meant by all these terms.

Why not?

But, I said, this phrase seems to me to mean that within the man himself, in his soul, there is a better part and a worse; and whenever the better is by nature in control of the worse, this is called being master of himself — it is certainly meant as praise — but whenever, through bad upbringing or bad company, the better part, being the smaller, is overpowered by the greater mass of the worse, this condition is blamed as a reproach, and the one so disposed is called weaker than himself and unrestrained.

It does seem so, he said.

Look, then, I said, toward our new city, and you will find the one of these two present in it; for you will rightly say it is master of itself, if indeed that in which the better rules over the worse must be called moderate and master of itself.

I am looking, he said, and what you say is true.

And moreover, one would find the many and varied desires and pleasures and pains chiefly in children and women and household slaves, and, among those called free, in the great inferior mass of them.

Certainly.

Whereas the simple and measured desires, which are guided by reasoning together with intelligence and correct opinion, you will meet with only in a few — those best by nature and best raised.

True, he said.

Do you not see this present in your city as well, and the desires of the many and base there mastered by the desires and the practical wisdom found among the fewer and more decent?

I do, he said.

If then any city must be called master of its pleasures and desires and of itself, this one must be so addressed.

Absolutely, he said.

Is it not, then, also moderate in view of all this?

Very much so, he said.

Moreover, if in any other city the same opinion is held by the rulers and the ruled about who ought to rule, this too would be present in that city. Or do you not think so?

Very much so indeed, he said.

In which of the two classes of citizens, then, will you say moderation resides, when they are so disposed? In the rulers, or in the ruled?

In both, I suppose, he said.

Do you see, then, I said, that we were reasonably divining just now that moderation resembles a kind of harmony?

In what way?

Because, unlike courage and wisdom, each of which, residing in one part, made the city wise or courageous respectively, this virtue does not work that way, but is literally stretched through the whole, running through all the parts and making the weakest and the strongest and those in between all sing the same tune — whether by practical wisdom, if you like, or by strength, or by numbers, or by wealth, or by anything else of that kind — so that we would most correctly say that this concord is moderation: an agreement, in accordance with nature, between the worse and the better as to which of the two should rule, both in the city and in each individual.

Justice: Doing One's Own

I quite agree, he said.

Well then, I said — the three things have now been made out for us in the city, or so it would seem at any rate; but the remaining form, on account of which a city might still have a share of virtue — whatever could that be? For clearly this is justice.

Clearly.

So then, Glaucon, we must now post ourselves in a ring, like huntsmen around a thicket, and keep our minds on it, so that justice does not slip away somewhere and vanish out of sight. For clearly it is somewhere around here — so keep watch, and be eager to catch sight of it, in case you should happen to see it before I do and can tell me.

Would that I could, he said. But rather, if you make use of me as a follower, one able to see what is pointed out, you will be making quite reasonable use of me.

Follow, then, I said, after praying along with me.

I will do that, he said; only lead the way.

And indeed, I said, the place appears hard to travel and full of shadow; it is dark, at any rate, and difficult to search out. But all the same we must go on.

We must indeed, he said.

And catching sight of something, I said: Aha, aha, Glaucon — we seem to have some kind of track, and I think it will not altogether get away from us.

Good news, he said.

Truly, I said, our condition has been a foolish one.

What sort of thing?

It seems, my good man, that all this while it has been rolling about at our feet from the very start, and we simply did not see it — we were quite ridiculous, like people who sometimes go looking for the very thing they are holding in their hands, and we, instead of looking at it, kept gazing off somewhere in the distance, which is perhaps just why it escaped our notice.

How, he said, do you mean that?

In this way, I said — it seems to me that all along, both speaking of it and hearing of it, we failed to understand ourselves, namely that we were in a manner already saying it.

That is a long preamble, he said, for someone eager to hear it.

Well, I said, listen and see whether there is anything in what I say. For what we laid down from the beginning as something that must be done throughout, when we were founding the city — this, as it seems to me, is justice, or at any rate justice is some kind of it. We laid it down, I think, and said many times, if you remember, that each single person ought to practice one of the occupations connected with the city, the one for which his nature was best fitted.

We did say that.

And indeed, that doing one's own and not meddling is justice — this too we have heard said by many others, and have often said ourselves.

We have indeed said it.

This, then, my friend, I said, when it comes about in a certain way, is likely to be justice: the doing of one's own. Do you know from what I infer this?

No, but tell me, he said.

It seems to me, I said, that what remains in the city, of the things we have examined — moderation, courage, and practical wisdom — is this: whatever gave all of those the power to come into being, and, once they had come into being, preserves them for as long as it is present. And yet we said that justice would be whatever was left over from those, if we found the three.

Yes, that must be so, he said.

But indeed, I said, if we had to judge which of these, once present, would do the most to make our city good, it would be hard to decide whether it is the like-mindedness of rulers and ruled, or the preservation, among the soldiers, of a lawful opinion about what is to be feared and what is not — whatever such things really are — or the practical wisdom and watchfulness present in the rulers, or whether what makes it good above all is this, present alike in child and woman, slave and free, craftsman, ruler, and ruled: that each person, being one, was doing his own and not meddling.

Hard to decide, he said — how could it not be?

So it seems, then, that the power by which each person in the city does his own is a match, for the city's virtue, for its wisdom and its moderation and its courage.

Very much so, he said.

Then would you not set down as justice whatever is a match for these in the virtue of the city?

Quite so.

Consider it this way too, and see whether it will seem so — will you assign to the rulers in the city the task of judging lawsuits?

What else?

And will they judge, aiming at anything more than this — that each person should neither hold what belongs to another nor be deprived of what is his own?

No, but at this.

As being just?

Yes.

So in this way too, then, it might be agreed that the having and doing of what is one's own and belongs to oneself is justice.

That is so.

See now whether you agree with what I think. If a carpenter undertakes to do the work of a shoemaker, or a shoemaker that of a carpenter, or they exchange with one another their tools or their honors, or the same man undertakes to do both, with everything else interchanged in this way, does it seem to you that this would do any great harm to a city?

Not really, he said.

But whenever, I think, a man who is a craftsman, or by nature some other sort of money-maker, is then puffed up by wealth or numbers or strength or something else of that kind and undertakes to pass into the class of the warrior, or when someone among the warriors passes into the class of counsellor and guardian though unworthy of it, and these exchange with one another their tools and their honors, or when the same man undertakes to do all these things at once — then, I think, you too believe that this exchange and meddling among them is ruin for the city.

Yes, absolutely.

So then, meddling and exchange among the three classes, passing into one another, is the greatest harm to the city, and would most correctly be called, above all, wrongdoing.

Entirely so.

And will you not say that the greatest wrongdoing against one's own city is injustice?

How could it not be?

This, then, is injustice. But let us put it again this way: when the money-making, auxiliary, and guardian classes each do their own in the city, that — being the opposite of the other — would be justice, and would make the city just?

Turning to the Soul: Is It One or Many?

It seems to me to be so and not otherwise, he said.

Let us not yet assert this too firmly, I said, but if this form, applied to each individual man, is agreed to be justice there as well, we shall concede it at once — for what else could we say? But if not, we shall then look into something else. Now let us carry through the examination we had in mind: that if we tried to study it first in something larger that possesses justice ⟨rather⟩ than there in the individual, we might more easily catch sight of what it is like in one man. And it seemed to us that this was the city, and so we founded it to be as good as we could make it, well aware that in a good city at least justice would be found. So let us carry back to the individual what appeared to us there, and if it is confirmed, well and good; but if something different shows up in the one, we shall go back again to the city and test it there, and perhaps, by examining the two side by side and rubbing them together, we might make justice flash out as if from fire-sticks, and once it has come to light we shall fix it firmly in our own minds.

That is the right approach, he said, and that is how we must proceed.

Now then, I said, is a thing that one would call by the same name, when it is larger and when it is smaller, unlike in that respect in which it is called the same, or alike?

Alike, he said.

Then a just man, so far as the form of justice itself is concerned, will not differ at all from a just city, but will be alike.

Alike, he said.

But the city, we agreed, was just when the three kinds of natures in it each did its own work, and moderate, courageous, and wise, in turn, through certain other affections and dispositions belonging to those same classes.

True, he said.

Then we shall claim the same for the individual too, my friend: that having these same forms in his own soul, he rightly deserves, because of the same affections as theirs, the same names as the city.

That is altogether necessary, he said.

Here again, my good man, I said, we have stumbled into a trifling question about the soul — whether it has these three forms in it or not.

It does not seem to me trifling at all, he said, for perhaps, Socrates, the saying is true that fine things are difficult.

So it appears, I said. And be well assured, Glaucon, that my opinion is this: we shall never grasp this with exactness by the kind of methods we are now using in our arguments — for the road that leads to it is another, longer and fuller one — but perhaps adequately enough, given what we have already said and considered.

Well, is that not enough to be content with? So he said — for me, at any rate, it would do well enough for the present.

But it will fully satisfy me too, I said.

Do not give up, then, he said, but keep looking.

Is it not then, I said, a great necessity for us to agree that the same forms and dispositions that are in the city are present also in each of us? For surely they cannot have gotten there from anywhere else. For it would be absurd to suppose that the spirited element in cities has come from anywhere but the private individuals who bear that reputation — such as those around Thrace and Scythia and practically the whole region to the north — or that love of learning, which one would most readily charge to our own region, or love of money, which one would say belongs above all to the Phoenicians and the Egyptians, has come from anywhere else.

Quite so, he said.

This, then, is so, I said, and there is nothing hard about seeing it.

Certainly not.

But here now is the difficult question: whether we do each of these things with this same part, or, there being three parts, with a different one for each — learning with one, feeling anger with another of the parts within us, and desiring, in turn, with some third part, the pleasures connected with nourishment and procreation and all that is akin to them — or whether we act with the whole soul in each of these cases whenever we set out to do them. These are the things that will be hard to define in a way that does justice to the argument.

The Principle of Opposites: Reason and Appetite

So it seems to me too, he said.

Let us then try to define them this way, whether they are the same as one another or different.

How?

Clearly the same thing will not be willing to do or undergo opposites in the same respect and in relation to the same thing at the same time, so that if we ever find this happening in them, we will know that it was not one thing but more than one.

Very well.

Consider, then, what I mean.

Speak on, he said.

Is it possible, I said, for the same thing to stand still and be in motion at the same time in the same respect?

In no way.

Let us then agree still more precisely, so that we do not fall into dispute as we go on. For if someone were to say of a man standing still, but moving his hands and his head, that the same man both stands still and moves at the same time, I do not think we would consider it right to speak that way, but rather that part of him stands still and part moves. Is that not so?

Just so.

Then if the man who said this were to be wittier still, refining the point by saying that spinning tops — whole ones — both stand still and move at the same time, whenever they fix the peg in one spot and turn around it, or that anything else going around in a circle in the same place does the same, we would not accept it, on the ground that such things are not then at rest and in motion in the same respect of themselves; rather we would say that they have a straight element and a curved element in them, and that with respect to the straight they stand still — for they do not lean in any direction — while with respect to the curved they move in a circle, and that when, as it turns, the straight axis leans to the right or to the left or forward or back, then there [is] no standing still for it at all.

And rightly so, he said.

Then none of these sayings will astonish us, nor persuade us any more that a thing that is the same could ever undergo or be or do opposites at the same time in the same respect in relation to the same thing.

Not me, at any rate, he said.

Still, I said, so that we are not forced to draw this out by going through every such dispute and establishing that it is not true, let us assume that this is so and proceed on that basis, agreeing that if it should ever appear otherwise, everything that follows from it for us will be undone.

We must do that, he said.

Then ⟨would⟩ you set nodding assent against shaking the head, and reaching to take something against refusing it, and drawing something toward oneself against pushing it away — all such pairs — among things that are opposites of one another, whether as things done or things undergone? For it will make no difference here.

Opposites, he said.

What then? I said — thirst and hunger, and desires as a whole, and again wishing and wanting, would you not put all these somewhere among those forms just now mentioned? For instance, will you not say that the soul of one who desires always either reaches out for the thing it desires, or draws toward itself what it wishes to have come to be, or else, to the extent that it wants something provided for it, nods assent to this within itself, as though someone were asking it a question, straining after that thing's coming to be?

I would.

And what of this? Shall we not place unwillingness, and not wishing, and not desiring, under pushing away and driving off from oneself, and among all the opposites of those other things ?

How could we not?

Since this is so, shall we say that there is a form of desires, and that among these the clearest are the ones we call thirst and hunger?

We shall, he said.

One of drink, then, and the other of food?

Yes.

Then, to the extent that it is thirst, would it be, in the soul, a desire for anything more than that of which we say it is the desire — is thirst, say, thirst for hot drink or cold, for much or little, or in a word, for a drink of some particular kind? Or is it rather that if some heat attaches itself to the thirst, it will supply along with it a desire for something cold, and if coldness attaches itself, a desire for something hot? And if, because a great quantity is present, the thirst is great, will it supply a desire for a great quantity, and if it is slight, a desire for a small quantity? But thirst itself will never become a desire for anything other than that for which it is by nature a desire, namely drink itself, and hunger in turn a desire for food itself?

Yes, he said, each desire itself is a desire only for that particular thing which it is by nature a desire for; the desire for this kind or that kind is something added on.

Now let no one confound us, since we have not examined this carefully, by objecting that no one desires drink, but good drink, nor food, but good food. For everyone, they will say, desires good things; so if thirst is a desire, it must be a desire for something good, whether drink or whatever else it is a desire for, and likewise with the other desires.

Yes, he said, perhaps the one saying this would seem to have a point.

But surely, I said, of things that are the sort to be relative to something, those that are qualified in some way are relative to something qualified in that same way, as it seems to me, while those that are simply what they are, are relative only to a thing that is simply what it is.

I do not understand, he said.

Do you not understand, I said, that the greater is such as to be greater than something?

Certainly.

Greater than the lesser?

Yes.

And the much greater is greater than the much lesser. Is that not so?

Yes.

And what was once greater is greater than what was once lesser, and what will be greater is greater than what will be lesser?

What else would it be? So he said.

And more, then, in relation to less, and double in relation to half, and all such pairs, and again heavier in relation to lighter, and faster in relation to slower, and further still, hot in relation to cold, and everything like these — is it not the same in all these cases?

Certainly it is.

And what about matters concerning knowledge? Is it not the same way? Knowledge itself is knowledge of a subject of learning itself, or of whatever else we must posit as the object of knowledge, while a particular kind of knowledge, qualified in some way, is knowledge of something qualified in some way and of some particular thing. I mean something like this: was it not because a knowledge of house-construction came into being that it differed from the other branches of knowledge, so that it came to be called the craft of building?

What else?

Is it not by its being of a particular kind, one shared by none of the others?

Yes.

Then, since it was of something qualified in a particular way, did it not itself become qualified in a particular way? And so too the other crafts and branches of knowledge?

That is how it is.

This, then, I said, is what you should take me to have meant back then, if indeed you now understand it — that whatever is of such a nature as to be relative to something is, in itself, relative only to a thing that is itself alone, while what is qualified in some way is relative to something qualified in some way. And I do not mean that things turn out to be of the same kind as that to which they are relative — as though, say, the knowledge of the healthy and the diseased is itself healthy and diseased, or the knowledge of bad things and good things is itself bad and good; rather, since knowledge did not become knowledge of the very thing of which it is knowledge, but of something qualified in a particular way — and this was the healthy and the diseased — it too came to be qualified in a particular way, and this is what caused it to no longer be called simply knowledge, but, once that particular quality was added, medicine.

I understand, he said, and it seems to me to be so.

And thirst, I said — will you not place it among these, as being, in respect of what it itself is, a thirst of something? And it is, presumably, thirst of—

I do, he said — of drink, at least.

Then thirst for a drink of a particular kind is a particular kind of thirst, but thirst itself is by nature a thirst neither for much nor for little, neither for good nor for bad, nor in a word for a drink of any particular kind, but simply for drink itself?

Absolutely.

Then the soul of the thirsty person, insofar as it thirsts, wants nothing other than to drink, and reaches for this, and is set in motion toward this.

Clearly so.

Then if something ever pulls it back when it is thirsty, would there not be something else in it, different from the very thing that thirsts and drives it, like an animal, toward drinking? For surely, we say, the very same thing ⟨would⟩ never do opposite things to itself, by the same part of itself, in the same respect, at the same time.

No, it would not.

Just as, I think, in the case of the archer, it is not correct to say that his hands at the same time push the bow away and draw it toward him, but rather that one hand is the one pushing it away, and the other is the one drawing it toward him.

The Spirited Part

Quite so, he said.

Shall we say, then, that there are people who, though thirsty, are sometimes unwilling to drink?

Indeed, he said, many people, and often.

What then, I said, would one say about this? Is it not that there is in their soul the thing that bids them drink, and also the thing that forbids them to drink, which is something else and overpowers the thing that bids?

That is my view too, he said.

Is it not the case, then, that the thing forbidding such things arises, whenever it does arise, from reasoning, while the things that lead and drag us come about through feelings and disorders?

It appears so.

Then it is not without reason, I said, that we shall claim these are two distinct things, different from one another — calling the part with which the soul reasons the rational part, and the part with which it loves and hungers and thirsts and is agitated over the other desires the irrational and appetitive part, companion of certain fillings and pleasures.

No — we would rightly hold that view, he said.

Let these two forms, then, I said, be marked off for us as present in the soul; but as for the thing belonging to spirit, by which we feel anger, is it a third, or would it share its nature with one of these two?

Perhaps, he said, with the other one, the appetitive.

But, I said, I once heard something, and I trust it: that Leontius, son of Aglaion, coming up from the Piraeus along the outside of the north wall, noticed corpses lying beside the public executioner, and at once he desired to look, but at the same time felt disgust and turned himself away, and for a while he struggled with himself and covered his eyes — but overpowered at last by the desire, he tore his eyes wide open, ran up to the corpses, and cried, "There you are, you wretched men — take your fill of the beautiful sight."

I too have heard it, he said.

Well, this story, I said, shows that anger sometimes wars against the desires, as one thing against another.

It does show that, he said.

Then do we not also notice, I said, in many other places, whenever desires use force on someone contrary to reason, that he reproaches himself and grows angry at the thing within him doing the forcing, and that, as though two parties were at odds, his spirit becomes an ally of his reason in such a case? But I think you would say that you have never noticed such a thing happening in yourself — spirit making common cause with the desires when reason has decided that one ought not to resist them — nor, I think, in anyone else either.

No, by Zeus, he said.

What then, I said, about when someone thinks he is acting unjustly? Is it not the case that the nobler he is, the less he is able to feel anger — even while hungering and suffering cold and enduring anything else of that kind — at someone he believes to be treating him justly, and that, as I say, his spirit is unwilling to be roused against that person?

True, he said.

But what about when someone believes he is being wronged? In that case does he not seethe and grow harsh and fight on the side of what seems just, and, enduring hunger and cold and everything else of that kind, hold out and prevail, and not give up his noble efforts, until either he succeeds or dies, or is called back and calmed, like a dog by a shepherd, by the reason within him?

Quite so, he said; it does resemble what you are describing — and indeed in our city we set the auxiliaries, like dogs, obedient to the rulers, who are like shepherds of the city.

You understand well, I said, what I want to say. But do you also notice this besides?

What is that?

That the opposite of what appeared to us just now is turning out to be true about the spirited part. For at that time we thought it was something appetitive, but now we say it is far from that — rather, in the conflict within the soul, it much more takes up arms on the side of the rational part.

Quite so, he said.

Is it, then, something distinct from this too — from the rational part — or is it some form of the rational, so that there are not three but two forms in the soul, the rational and the appetitive? Or, just as in the city three classes held it together — the money-making, the auxiliary, and the deliberative — so too in the soul is this spirited part a third thing, by nature an ally of the rational part, unless it is corrupted by bad upbringing?

It must be a third, he said.

Yes, I said, provided it turns out to be something other than the rational part, just as it turned out to be different from the appetitive part.

But it is not hard to show, he said; one can see this even in children — that they are full of spirit right from birth, while as for reason, some, it seems to me, never come to share in it at all, and most only quite late.

By Zeus, yes, I said, well put. And one could see in animals too what you say, that it is so. And besides this, what we said above [there], I believe, will also be confirmed by that verse of Homer's — He struck his chest and rebuked his heart with these words; for here Homer has plainly represented the part that had reasoned about the better and the worse as rebuking the part that was raging without reason — the one rebuking the other.

The Virtues in the Soul, and Justice as Health

Quite so, he said; you are right.

So then, I said, we have swum through this much with difficulty, and it has been fairly agreed between us that the same kinds are present both in the city and in the soul of each individual, and equal in number.

That is so.

Then is it not already necessary that, just as the city was wise, and by virtue of what, so the individual too is wise, and by virtue of the same thing?

What else?

And that by which, and the way in which, a private individual is courageous — is it not by that, and in that way, that a city too is courageous, and are not both of them alike in all other respects concerning virtue?

Necessarily.

And a man too, Glaucon, we shall say, I think, is just in the very same way in which the city was just.

And this too follows of complete necessity.

But surely we have not forgotten this — that the city was just because each of its three kinds was doing its own work within it.

I do not think we have forgotten it, he said.

Then we must remember that each of us too, whoever it is in whom each of the parts within him does its own work, will be just, and will be doing his own.

Yes indeed, he said, we must remember it.

Then does it not belong to the rational part to rule, since it is wise and has forethought on behalf of the whole soul, and to the spirited part to be its subject and ally?

Certainly.

Then is it not, as we were saying, a blending of music and gymnastic that will make them concordant, tightening and nourishing the one with fine words and studies, and relaxing the other, soothing and taming it with harmony and rhythm?

Quite so, he said.

And these two, thus reared, and having truly learned and been trained in their own tasks, will take charge of the appetitive part — which is indeed the largest part of the soul in each of us, and by nature the most insatiable for money — and will watch over it, lest, by being filled with the so-called pleasures of the body and becoming great and strong, it should no longer do its own work, but should attempt to enslave and rule over the parts to which it does not belong by its kind, and should overturn the whole life of them all.

Certainly, he said.

Then would not these two, I said, also guard best of all against enemies from outside, on behalf of the whole soul and body — the one deliberating, the other fighting in front, [and] following its ruler and, by its courage, carrying out what has been deliberated?

That is so.

And it is by this part, I think, that we call each and every one of us courageous, whenever his spirited part preserves, through pains and through pleasures, what has been declared by reason to be fearful or not.

Rightly so, he said.

And he is wise, in turn, by that small part which ruled within him and issued these declarations, since it too has within itself the knowledge of what is beneficial for each part and for the whole community formed by all three together.

Certainly.

What then? Is he not moderate by the friendship and concord of these same parts, whenever the ruling part and the two ruled parts agree that the rational part ought to rule, and do not raise faction against it?

Moderation, he said, is indeed nothing other than this, both for the city and for the individual.

But surely a man will also be just by that very thing, which we have so often mentioned, and in that same way.

It is quite necessary.

What then? I said — does it grow at all blurred for us, so that justice seems to be something other than what it appeared to be in the city?

It does not seem so to me, he said.

For in this way, I said, we could fully confirm the point, if anything within our soul still has doubts, by bringing forward commonplace examples to it.

What sort of examples?

For instance, if we had to reach agreement concerning that city, and the man born and raised in a manner similar to it, as to whether such a man, on receiving a deposit of gold or silver, would be likely to withhold it — who do you suppose would think that this man would do such a thing, rather than those who are not of that kind?

No one would, he said.

Then would not this man also be free of temple robberies and thefts and betrayals, whether of friends in private or of cities in public?

Free of them.

And moreover, he would in no way whatever be untrustworthy, either with regard to oaths or to other agreements.

How could he be?

Adulteries, neglect of parents, and failure to worship the gods belong to anyone else rather than to a man of this kind.

To anyone else indeed, he said.

Then is not the cause of all this that each of the parts within him does its own work, both with regard to ruling and being ruled?

This, and nothing else.

Do you still look for justice to be anything other than this power, which produces men and cities of this kind?

By Zeus, he said, I do not.

Then our dream has been perfectly fulfilled for us — the one we said we suspected, that right from the beginning, as we were founding the city, we were probably, by the guidance of some god, setting foot upon some starting point and outline of justice.

Absolutely.

And that, then, Glaucon — which is also why it does good — turns out to have been only an image of justice: that the man naturally suited for shoemaking should rightly practice shoemaking and do nothing else, and the man suited for carpentry should practice carpentry, and so on for the rest.

So it appears.

But the truth, as it seems, was that justice was something of this sort, concerned not with a man's outward doing of his own, but with the inward doing, truly concerning himself and what belongs to him, not allowing the parts within him each to do the work of another, nor allowing the kinds in the soul to meddle with one another, but rather, having truly set his own affairs in good order, and having ruled himself, and set himself in order, and become a friend to himself, and having fitted the three parts together, quite literally like three defining notes of a harmony — the lowest, the highest, and the middle — and whatever others there happen to be between them, having bound all these together, and having become entirely one out of many, moderate and harmonized, only then does he act, if he acts at all, whether about the acquisition of money, or the care of the body, or something political, or private contracts — in all these holding and naming a just and fine action whichever preserves and helps produce this condition, and calling the knowledge that oversees this action wisdom, and calling an unjust action whichever always destroys this condition, and naming ignorance the opinion that in turn oversees that action.

That is altogether true, Socrates, he said.

Well then, I said — if we were to say that we have found the just man, the just city, and justice itself, that is, what it actually is within them, I do not think we would seem to be altogether lying.

By Zeus, no indeed, he said.

Shall we say so, then?

Let us say so.

So be it, then, I said — for after this, I think, we must examine injustice.

Clearly.

Then must not injustice, in turn, given that there are these three parts, be a kind of civil strife among them, and a meddling and doing of another's work, and a rebellion of some part against the whole of the soul, so that it might rule within it though it has no right to, being of such a nature that it is fitting for it to be a slave, while the other, being of the ruling kind, ought not to be enslaved? Something of this kind, I think, we shall say — that this turmoil and wandering astray among them is injustice, and lack of restraint, and cowardice, and ignorance, and, in a word, vice entire.

Just that, he said.

Then, I said, doing unjust things, and acting unjustly, and, in turn, doing just things — are not all these already clearly evident, if injustice and justice themselves are?

How so?

Because, I said, they turn out to be no different from what is healthy and diseased — as those are in the body, so these are in the soul.

In what way? He said.

Healthy things, surely, produce health, while diseased things produce disease.

Yes.

Then does not doing just things produce justice, while doing unjust things produces injustice?

Necessarily.

And to produce health is to establish the parts in the body according to nature, so that they rule and are ruled by one another, while to produce disease is to establish them contrary to nature, so that one rules and is ruled by another.

Yes, it is so.

Then, in turn, I said, is it not that to produce justice is to establish the parts in the soul according to nature, so that they rule and are ruled by one another, while to produce injustice is to establish them contrary to nature, so that one rules and is ruled by another?

Quite so, he said.

Virtue, then, as it seems, would be a kind of health, beauty, and good condition of the soul, while vice would be disease, ugliness, and weakness.

So it is.

Then do not fine practices also lead to the acquisition of virtue, and shameful ones to that of vice?

Necessarily.

What remains for us now, then, as it seems, is to examine whether it is more profitable, in turn, to do just things and practice fine ones and be just, whether or not one goes unnoticed in being such, or to do unjust things and be unjust, provided one does not pay the penalty and is not made better by being punished.

But, Socrates, he said, this inquiry now seems to me to be growing ridiculous, if, when the nature of the body is being destroyed, life is thought not to be worth living, even with every kind of food and drink and all wealth and all power, yet when the very nature of that by which we live is being disturbed and destroyed, life will nonetheless be worth living, provided only that a person does whatever he wishes, except the one thing by which he would be rid of vice and injustice, and would acquire justice and virtue, since each of these has now been shown to be just as we have described them.

It is ridiculous, I said — but nevertheless, since we have come this far, we must not grow weary before seeing as clearly as possible that this is indeed so.

Least of all things, by Zeus, he said, should we grow weary.

Come here, then, I said, so that you may also see how many forms vice has, as it seems to me — ones that are indeed worth beholding.

I am following, he said — only speak.

Well then, I said, as though from a lookout point, now that we have climbed this far in the argument, it appears to me that there is one form of virtue, but countless forms of vice, four of which, among them, are worth mentioning.

What do you mean? He said.

There are likely to be as many kinds of soul, I said, as there are kinds of constitution that have distinct forms.

How many, then?

Five kinds of constitution, I said, and five of soul.

Tell me, he said, what they are.

I say, I replied, that this one, which we have already gone through, would be one kind of constitution, and it might also be named in two ways — for if a single man of outstanding quality should arise among the rulers, it would be called kingship, but if several such men should arise, aristocracy.

True, he said.

This, then, I said, I call one form — for neither several men, nor a single one, arising among the rulers, would disturb any of the laws of the city worth mentioning, if they had made use of the upbringing and education we have described.

No, that is not likely, he said.

Book V

Polemarchus Interrupts: The Community of Women and Children

Such a city, then, and such a constitution I call good and right, and the man who is like it — but the others, if this one is right, I call bad and mistaken, both in the government of cities and in the framing of a private person's character of soul, since they fall under four kinds of badness.

What are these, then? He asked.

And I was going on to describe the constitutions that came next, as they each seemed to me to pass over out of one another — but Polemarchus (he was sitting a little farther off than Adeimantus) reached out his hand, took hold of his cloak from above at the shoulder, drew him toward himself, and, leaning forward, bent over and said something, of which we caught nothing else but this: shall we let him off, then, he said, or what are we to do?

Not in the least, said Adeimantus, already speaking up loudly.

And I asked, What exactly is it that you are not letting go?

You, he said.

Why exactly, I said, is that?

You seem to us, he said, to be shirking — stealing a whole kind of thing out of the argument, and not the smallest one, so that you would not have to go through it, and thinking you could slip it past us by treating it lightly, as if it were obvious to everyone that, when it comes to women and children, friends hold everything in common.

And is it not correct, I said, Adeimantus?

Yes, he said. But this rightness, like everything else, needs some account of what the manner of the community is; for there could be many kinds of it. So do not leave out which manner you mean; for we have long been waiting, thinking that somewhere you would mention the begetting of children — how they will be begotten — and, once born, how they will be raised, and this whole community of women and children that you speak of; for we think it matters a great deal — indeed everything — to the constitution, whether it comes about rightly or not. So now, since you are taking up another constitution before adequately settling these matters, we have resolved on this — which you heard — that you are not to be released until you have gone through all of it, just as you did the rest.

Count me too, then, said Glaucon, as a partner in this vote.

Have no doubt of it, said Thrasymachus — consider this settled by all of us, Socrates.

What a thing you have done, I said, by taking hold of me. What a discussion you are stirring up all over again, as if from the beginning, about the constitution — one I, for my part, was glad to think I had already finished, content if someone would let it stand as accepted, just as it was then stated. By now calling me back to these things, you do not know what a swarm of arguments you are rousing — one I saw and let go at the time, for fear it should cause a great deal of trouble.

What? Thrasymachus said — do you think these men have come here now to smelt gold, rather than to listen to arguments?

Yes, I said, to a moderate amount of them, at least.

But the proper measure for listening to arguments like these, Socrates, said Glaucon, is a whole lifetime, at least for men of sense. But never mind our part; as for what we are asking, do not by any means grow weary of setting it out in whatever way seems best to you — what the community of children and women will be for us, the guardians, and the rearing of them while they are still young, that is, the begetting and the education that takes place in the time between, which indeed seems to be the most laborious part. So try to say in what manner it must come about.

It is not easy, my fortunate friend, I said, to go through it; for it holds many grounds for disbelief — even more than the things we went through before. For it would be doubted that such things are even possible, and, even if they were to come about as fully as could be, that they would be best — on that score too there will be disbelief. That, then, is why there is some hesitation about even touching on them, for fear the account should seem to be no more than a wish, my dear friend.

Do not hesitate at all, he said — those who are going to listen are neither unreasonable, nor distrustful, nor ill-disposed.

And I said, My good man, is it perhaps because you want to encourage me that you say this?

I do, he said.

Then you are doing exactly the opposite, I said. For if I trusted myself to know what I am saying, the encouragement would be well placed; for among sensible people and friends, to speak the truth about the greatest and dearest matters, when one knows it, is safe and emboldening, whereas to make one's arguments while doubting and still searching, which is indeed what I am doing, is fearful and precarious — not that I fear incurring laughter, for that at least would be childish — but that, having slipped from the truth, I may drag down not only myself but my friends along with me, and come to grief in the very matters where one ought least of all to slip. But I bow down to Adrasteia, Glaucon, on account of what I am about to say; for I believe it a lesser wrong to become, unwillingly, the killer of someone than to become a deceiver about fine and good and just customs. So it is better to run this risk among enemies than among friends, and that is why you do well to encourage me.

And Glaucon, laughing, said, But Socrates, if we come to any harm from the argument, we acquit you, as one acquitted of murder, and declare you clean and no deceiver of us. So take courage and speak.

Well, but even so, I said, the one who is acquitted there is also counted clean, as the law says — and presumably, if there, then here too.

Speak, then, he said, on that account at least.

Then I must now say, I said, in reverse order, what perhaps ought to have been said then in its proper place; but perhaps it would be right to do it this way — once the drama of the men has been played out fully, to go through in turn that of the women, especially since you challenge me to it.

First Wave: The Nature and Education of Women

For people who are by nature and by education such as we have described, there is, in my opinion, no other correct possession and use of children and women than the one that follows the same impulse with which we first set out; and we undertook, I believe, in our discussion, to establish the men as guardians of a herd.

Yes.

Let us follow along, then, assigning a similar breeding and rearing, and let us consider whether that is fitting for us or not.

How? He said.

Like this. Do we think the females of the guardian dogs should join in guarding whatever the males guard, and hunt together with them, and do everything else in common, or should the females stay at home indoors as incapable, because of bearing and rearing the puppies, while the males labor and have all the care of the flocks?

Everything in common, he said, except that we treat the females as weaker and the males as stronger.

Is it possible, then, I said, to use some animal for the same tasks, if you do not give it the same rearing and education?

It is not possible.

If, then, we are going to use the women for the same tasks as the men, we must also teach them the same things.

Yes.

Now to the men, at least, music and gymnastic were given.

Yes.

Then these two crafts, and the things that concern war, must be given to the women as well, and used in the same way.

That is likely, from what you say, he said.

Perhaps, I said, measured against custom, much of what is now being said would appear ridiculous, if it is to be carried out as it is being described.

Very much so, he said.

What, I said, do you see as the most ridiculous of these things? Or is it clear that it is the women exercising naked in the wrestling schools with the men, not only the young ones, but even the older ones already, just like the old men in the gymnasiums, when, wrinkled and not pleasant to look at, they nonetheless love their exercise?

By Zeus, he said; it would indeed appear ridiculous, at least as things now stand.

Then, I said, since we have set out to speak, we must not fear the jibes of the wits — however many and of whatever kind they would make about such a change taking place, both concerning the gymnasiums and concerning music, and not least concerning the bearing of arms and the riding of horses.

You are right, he said.

But since we have begun to speak, we must go forward to the rough part of the law, begging these people not to do their own work but to be serious, and reminding them that it is not long since it seemed shameful and ridiculous to the Greeks, as it still does to most of the barbarians now, for men to be seen naked, and that when the Cretans first began the practice of gymnasiums, and then the Spartans, it was open to the wits of that time to make comedy of all these things. Or do you not think so?

I do.

But when, I believe, it appeared to those who practiced it that stripping was better than covering up all such things, then what looked ridiculous to the eyes faded away before what reason showed to be best; and this showed too that a man is foolish who thinks anything ridiculous other than the bad, and who, trying to raise a laugh, fixes his eyes on some sight as ridiculous other than that of the foolish and the bad, and who is in earnest about the beautiful with a target set up for himself other than that of the good.

Certainly, he said.

Must we not, then, first come to agreement about this concerning them, whether it is possible or not, and allow a dispute to anyone, playful or serious, who wishes to dispute it: whether the female human nature is capable of sharing with the male sex in all its works, or in none at all, or in some but not others, and to which of these the business of war belongs? Would not someone who began most finely in this way also, in all likelihood, end most finely?

Very much so, he said.

Do you want us, then, I said, to argue against ourselves on behalf of the other side, so that the case for that position is not besieged with no one to defend it?

Nothing prevents it, he said.

Let us then say on their behalf: Socrates and Glaucon, there is no need for others to dispute against you; for you yourselves, at the beginning of the founding of the city you were settling, agreed that each single person must do the one work that is his own according to nature.

We did agree, I believe; how could we not?

Is there any way, then, that a woman does not differ very greatly from a man in nature?

How could she not differ?

Then is it not fitting to assign a different work to each of the two, the work that accords with his or her own nature?

Of course.

How, then, are you not now making a mistake and contradicting yourselves, when you claim, in turn, that the men and the women must do the same things, though they have natures set apart as widely as can be? Will you have anything to say in your defense against this, my remarkable friend?

Offhand, he said, it is not at all easy; but I will need you, and I do need you now, to interpret the argument on our behalf, whatever it is.

These, Glaucon, I said, and many other such things, are what I long foresaw and feared, and why I hesitated to touch the law concerning the possession and rearing of women and children.

No, by Zeus, he said; for it does not seem an easy matter.

No, it is not, I said. But the matter stands like this: whether one falls into a small swimming pool or into the middle of the largest sea, one swims none the less.

Certainly.

Then we too must swim and try to save ourselves out of the argument, hoping either for some dolphin to take us up or for some other rescue against all odds.

So it seems, he said.

Come then, I said, let us see if we can find the way out somehow. For we agree that a different nature must pursue a different occupation, and that the nature of woman and of man is different; yet we now say that natures which are different must pursue the same occupations. Is this the charge brought against us?

Precisely so.

Truly noble, Glaucon, I said, is the power of the craft of contradiction.

Why is that?

Because, I said, it seems to me that many fall into it even unwillingly, and think they are not disputing for victory but conversing, owing to their inability to examine what is said by dividing it according to forms, so that they chase after the contradiction of what was said by going on the word alone, using contentiousness rather than dialectic with one another.

That does indeed happen to many people, he said; but surely this does not apply to us at present, does it?

It certainly does, I said; at any rate we run the risk of touching on contradiction unwillingly.

How so?

The point that a nature which is ⟨not⟩ the same must not receive the same occupations we have pursued quite bravely and contentiously, going by the mere word, but we have not examined at all what form of the other and the same nature we were then defining, or to what it was directed, when we assigned different occupations to a different nature but the same occupations to the same.

No, indeed, he said, we did not examine it.

So then, I said, it is open to us, it seems, to ask ourselves whether the bald and the long-haired have the same nature and not the opposite, and, once we agree that it is the opposite, then, if the bald are cobblers, not to allow the long-haired to be, and if the long-haired are, not to allow the others.

That would be ridiculous, he said.

Is it ridiculous, I said, for any reason other than that at that time we were not setting down the same and the different nature in every sense, but were keeping in view only that form of difference and likeness which bears on the occupations themselves? For example, we said that a medical man and a medical woman, [being] such in soul, have the same nature; or do you not think so?

I do.

But a medical man and a carpenter, a different one?

Certainly.

Then, I said, if the class of men and the class of women appear to differ with respect to some craft or other occupation, we shall say that this must be assigned to each accordingly; but if they appear to differ only in this respect, that the female bears young while the male begets, we shall say that it has not yet been shown any the more that a woman differs from a man with respect to what we are speaking of, and we shall still suppose that our guardians and their women must pursue the same occupations.

And rightly so, he said.

Then after this do we not require the one who argues the opposite to teach us this very thing: for what craft, or what occupation among those concerned with the founding of a city, the nature of a woman and of a man is not the same but different?

That is only fair.

Perhaps, then, just as you yourself said a little earlier, someone else too might say that it is not easy to answer adequately on the spot, but that it is not at all difficult after due consideration.

He might well say so.

Do you want us, then, to ask the one who makes such objections to follow along with us, in case we can somehow show him that there is no occupation belonging to a woman in particular with regard to the management of a city?

Certainly.

Come then, we shall say to him, answer: did you not mean, when you spoke this way, that one person is well suited to something and another poorly suited, in that the one learns something easily, the other with difficulty? And that the one, from brief instruction, is highly inventive in what he learned, while the other, even after much instruction and practice, cannot even retain what he learned? And that in the one the body adequately serves the mind, while in the other it works against it? Are there any marks other than these by which you defined the person well suited for each pursuit and the one not suited?

No one, he said, will name any others.

Do you know, then, of any practice among human beings in which the class of men does not have all these advantages over the class of women? Or should we go on at length, speaking of weaving, and of the care of cakes and boiled dishes, in which the female class is thought to amount to something, and in which it is most ridiculous of all when it is bested?

You speak the truth, he said, that the one class is, so to speak, far outdone by the other in nearly everything. Many women, however, are better than many men at many things; but on the whole it is as you say.

There is, then, my friend, no occupation of those who manage a city that belongs to a woman because she is a woman, nor to a man because he is a man, but the natures are alike scattered among both creatures, and by nature a woman shares in all occupations, and a man in all, though in all of them a woman is weaker than a man.

Certainly.

Shall we, then, assign everything to men, and nothing to women?

How could we?

But there is, I believe, as we shall say, a woman skilled in medicine, and one who is not, and one skilled in music, and one unmusical by nature.

Of course.

[And] is there not also one skilled in gymnastic, and one skilled in war, while another is unwarlike and does not love exercise?

I think there is.

What about this? One who loves wisdom, and one who hates it? And one who is spirited, while another lacks spirit?

These too.

There is, then, also a woman fit to be a guardian, and one who is not. Or was it not just such a nature that we selected also for the men who are to be guardians?

Just such a one, indeed.

The nature of woman and of man, then, is the same with regard to guarding the city, except in so far as the one is weaker and the other stronger.

So it appears.

Then such women must be selected to live with such men and to guard alongside them, since they are capable and akin to them in nature.

Certainly.

And must not the same occupations be assigned to the same natures?

The same.

We have come round, then, back to our earlier position, and we agree that it is not against nature to assign music and gymnastic to the women of the guardians.

Certainly.

We were not, then, legislating anything impossible or like a mere wish, since we were laying down the law according to nature; rather, it is what is now done contrary to this that happens, it seems, more against nature.

So it seems.

Now was not our inquiry whether what we were saying was possible and best?

It was.

And has it not been agreed that it is possible?

Yes.

And must it not now, after this, be agreed that it is best?

Clearly.

Then, at least with a view to a woman's becoming fit to be a guardian, we shall not have one education making men for us and a different one making women, especially since it takes up the same nature to begin with?

Not a different one.

What, then, is your opinion concerning something of this sort?

Concerning what?

Whether you suppose, in your own mind, that one man is better and another worse; or do you consider them all alike?

Not at all.

In the city we were founding, then, do you think our guardians, having received the education we described, will have turned out better men, or the cobblers, trained in the cobbler's craft?

You ask a ridiculous question, he said.

I understand, I said. What of this? Are these not the best of all the other citizens?

By far.

What of this? Will these women not be the best of all the women?

This too, he said, by far.

Is there anything better for a city than for the best possible women and men to come to be in it?

There is not.

And will not music and gymnastic, when present as we have described, bring this about?

How could they not?

Then we were laying down not only a possible law for the city, but also the best one.

Just so.

The women of the guardians, then, must strip, since they will clothe themselves in virtue instead of garments, and must share in war and in the rest of the guarding of the city, and must do nothing else; but of these very duties the lighter parts must be given to the women rather than to the men, on account of the weakness of their sex. But the man who laughs at naked women exercising for the sake of what is best, plucking an unripe fruit of laughable wisdom, himself knows nothing, it seems, either of what he is laughing at or of what he is doing; for this is most finely said, and always will be: that the beneficial is beautiful, and the harmful is shameful.

Certainly.

Shall we say, then, that in speaking of the law concerning women we have escaped one wave, as it were, so that we are not completely swamped in laying down that our guardians, men and women alike, must pursue everything in common, but that the argument somehow agrees with itself that what it prescribes is both possible and beneficial?