The Regulation of Births

So then, certain festivals must be established by law, at which we shall bring together the brides and the bridegrooms, and sacrifices, and hymns to be composed by our poets, fitting to the marriages that take place; and we shall put the number of marriages under the control of the rulers, so that they may preserve, as far as possible, the same number of men, having regard to wars and diseases and all such things, and so that our city may become neither too great nor too small, so far as that lies in our power.

Rightly, he said.

Then, I think, some ingenious lots must be devised, so that the base man may blame chance for each pairing rather than the rulers.

Very much so, he said.

And to the good among the young men, surely, whether in war or elsewhere, rewards and prizes must be given, and among them a more liberal license to sleep with the women, so that at the same time, under this pretext, as many of the children as possible may be begotten from such men.

Rightly.

Then also the officials appointed over these matters, receiving the offspring as they are continually born — whether those officials be men or women or both, since the offices, I suppose, are common to women and men alike —

Yes.

Taking the offspring of the good, I think, they will carry them off to the pen, to certain nurses who live apart in a section of the city; but the offspring of the inferior, and any of the others that happens to be born deformed, they will hide away in secrecy and obscurity, as is fitting.

If indeed the race of the guardians is to remain pure, he said.

Then will these same officials also take charge of feeding, bringing the mothers to the pen when their breasts are full, devising every contrivance so that none of them will recognize her own child, and providing other women who have milk, if the mothers themselves are not sufficient, and will they take care that these women nurse only for a moderate time, handing over the wakeful nights and the rest of the labor to wet-nurses and attendants?

You are describing, he said, a great deal of ease in child-bearing for the women of the guardians.

For that is fitting, I said. Let us go through next what we proposed. For we said that the offspring must be born from those in their prime.

True.

Then do you agree that twenty years is the moderate span of prime for a woman, and thirty for a man?

Which years do you mean? He asked.

A woman, I said, is to bear children for the city beginning at twenty and continuing until forty; and a man, once he has passed the sharpest point of his racing prime, is to beget children for the city from then on until the age of fifty-five.

At any rate, he said, for both of them that is the prime of body and of practical wisdom.

So then, whether it is someone older or younger than these ages who takes part in begetting children for the common stock, we shall declare the offense to be neither pious nor just, on the ground that he is fathering for the city a child who, if he escapes notice, will come to be not under the sacrifices nor under the prayers that the priestesses and priests and the whole city will offer at each marriage — that the offspring may always turn out better from the good and more useful from the useful — but in darkness, amid dreadful lack of self-restraint.

Rightly, he said.

And the same law, I said, applies if any of those still capable of begetting children touches one of the women of the proper age without a ruler having brought them together; for we shall say that he is bringing into the city a child that is bastard, unsanctioned, and unholy.

Quite rightly, he said.

And when, I suppose, the women and the men pass beyond the age for begetting children, we shall no doubt release them to be free to have intercourse with whomever they wish, except a daughter and a mother and the children of daughters and those above a mother, and the women likewise except a son and a father and their descendants downward and ascendants upward, and in permitting all this we shall charge them to be careful above all that not one conceived child, should any be conceived, is ever brought to light, and that if one does force its way through, they dispose of it on the understanding that there is to be no rearing for such a child.

That, at least, he said, is reasonably stated; but fathers and daughters, and the others you just mentioned, how will they recognize one another?

Not at all, I said; but from whatever day one of them becomes a bridegroom, then, in the tenth month after that day, or the seventh, whatever offspring are born he will call all of them — the males sons and the females daughters — and they in turn will call him father, and in this way their children's children will be called grandchildren, and those before them in turn will be called grandfathers and grandmothers, and all who are born in that period of time in which their mothers and fathers were begetting children will be called sisters and brothers, so that, as we were just saying, they will not touch one another. But the law will permit brothers and sisters to live together as spouses, if the lot falls that way and the Pythia further sanctions it.

All One Family: Kinship, Unity, and the Guardians' Happiness

Quite right, he said.

This, then, Glaucon, is the community of women and children for your city's guardians — this, and of this kind; but that it follows from the rest of the constitution, and is by far the best, we must next establish from the argument. Or how shall we proceed?

Yes, by Zeus, he said.

Is not this, then, the starting point of our agreement — that we ask ourselves what is the greatest good we can name for the ordering of a city, at which the lawgiver must aim in laying down the laws, and what is the greatest evil, and then examine whether what we have just described fits the footprint of the good and fails to fit that of the evil?

Most of all, he said.

Do we have, then, any greater evil for a city than that which tears it apart and makes it many instead of one? Or a greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one?

We do not.

Then does not a community of pleasure and pain bind a city together, when, as far as possible, all the citizens alike rejoice and grieve over the same things coming to be and passing away?

Certainly, he said.

And is it not a private ownership of such feelings that dissolves it, when some are deeply pained and others greatly pleased at the same experiences befalling the city and those within it?

Why not?

Does this, then, arise from the fact that the citizens do not all utter, together and in the same way, such words as these in the city — mine and not mine? And the same about what belongs to another?

Quite so.

Then is not that city best governed in which the most people say this — mine and not mine — about the same thing in the same way?

Very much so.

And is it not the city that comes closest to being like one human being? For instance, whenever one of our fingers is struck, the whole community stretched throughout the body toward the soul, drawn into a single ordering under its ruling part, perceives this, and the whole feels the pain together with the part that suffers; and so we say that the man's finger hurts — and the same account holds for anything else belonging to the man, both for the pain of a part that suffers and for the pleasure of a part that finds relief?

Yes, the same, he said; and as for what you are asking, it is the best-governed city that dwells nearest to being of that kind.

Then I think, when any one of the citizens suffers anything, whether good or bad, such a city will say above all that the one suffering belongs to itself, and the whole of it will either rejoice together or grieve together.

That is necessary, he said — at least for one that is well governed.

It would be time, then, I said, for us to return to our own city, and examine in it the points on which the argument has agreed, to see whether it possesses them most fully, or some other city more so.

We must indeed, he said.

What then? In other cities too, presumably, there are rulers and a people; and are there also in this one?

There are.

Will all of these address one another as citizens?

How could they not?

But besides citizens, what does the people in the other cities call their rulers?

In most, masters; in the democratically governed ones, this very name, rulers.

And what about the people in our city? Besides citizens, what does it say the rulers are?

Saviors and helpers, he said.

And what do these call the people?

Paymasters and providers of their sustenance.

And what do the rulers in the other cities call their peoples?

Slaves, he said.

And what do the rulers call one another?

Fellow rulers, he said.

And ours?

Fellow guardians.

Can you say, then, of the rulers in the other cities, whether any of them can address one of his fellow rulers as one of his own, and another as a stranger?

Yes, and many.

Then does he not both think of and speak of the one who is his own as belonging to himself, and of the outsider as not belonging to him?

Just so.

And what about your guardians? Is there any of them who could think of or address one of his fellow guardians as a stranger?

Not at all, he said; for whomever he meets, he will think he is meeting either a brother, or a sister, or a father, or a mother, or a son, or a daughter, or the offspring or ancestors of these.

That is excellently said, I said, but tell me this too — will you make it law for them that only the names are their own, or that they must also perform all the actions in accordance with the names, toward their fathers, whatever the law requires concerning fathers, in the way of respect and care and the duty of children to be obedient to their parents, or else it will go worse for him, before both gods and men, on the ground that he is acting neither piously nor justly, if he does anything other than this? Will these be the sayings, or others, that all the citizens will chant straightway into the children's ears, concerning the fathers whom someone points out to them as theirs, and concerning their other kin?

These, he said; for it would be ridiculous if names of kinship were uttered only through the mouth, without deeds to match.

Then in this city, more than in any other, when someone fares well or badly, all will speak in unison the word we mentioned just now — that mine is faring well, or that mine is faring badly.

Very true again, he said.

Then did we not say that, along with this belief and this word, pleasures and pains follow in common?

And we said so rightly.

Then will not our citizens share above all in the very thing they will call mine? And sharing in this, will they not in this way have the greatest community of pain and pleasure?

Very much so.

Is not the cause of this, then, in addition to the rest of our arrangement, the community of women and children among the guardians?

Yes, above all, he said.

But we agreed that this was the greatest good for a city, comparing a well-governed city to a body in how it relates to one of its own parts in respect of pain and pleasure.

And we agreed rightly, he said.

Then the community of children and women among our helpers has been shown to be the cause of the greatest good for the city.

Very much so, he said.

And indeed this agrees with what we said before too; for we said, I believe, that these must have neither private houses, nor land, nor any possession, but that, receiving sustenance from the rest as wages for their guarding, they must all spend it in common, if they are truly to be guardians.

Rightly, he said.

Is it not, then, as I say, that what was said before, together with what is now being said, makes them even more truly guardians, and prevents them from tearing the city apart by calling mine not the same thing but each a different thing — one man dragging off to his own house whatever he can acquire apart from the rest, another into his own, which is a different one, with a different wife and different children, producing pleasures and pains that are private because their objects are private, but rather, by a single belief about what belongs to them, all straining toward the same thing, being as far as possible alike in feeling pain and pleasure together?

Quite so, he said.

What then? Will not lawsuits and accusations against one another virtually vanish from among them, because they possess nothing private except the body, while everything else is held in common? Hence it follows that they will be free from faction, at least over everything that sets men at odds through the possession of money or of children and kin?

It is quite inevitable, he said, that they will be rid of them.

And moreover there could rightly be no lawsuits among them either for violence or for assault; for we shall say, I think, that it is honorable and just for age-mates to defend themselves against age-mates, laying it down as a necessity in the care of their bodies.

Rightly, he said.

For this law has this to be said for it too, I said — if anyone is ever angry at another, by satisfying his anger in that way he would be less likely to go on to greater faction.

Quite so.

The elder, indeed, will be charged with ruling and chastising all the younger.

Clearly.

And moreover, as is likely, a younger person will never attempt to use force against an elder, or to strike him, unless the rulers command it. Nor, I think, will he dishonor him in any other way; for two guardians are sufficient to restrain him — fear and reverence: reverence, which keeps him from laying hands on a parent, and fear, because the others will come to the aid of the one who suffers, some as his sons, others as his brothers, others as his fathers.

Yes, that is how it turns out, he said.

Then in every way, as a result of the laws, will the men live in peace with one another?

A great peace, certainly.

And indeed, with these men not engaged in faction among themselves, there is no danger that the rest of the city will ever be divided, either against them or against itself.

No, indeed not.

As for the very smallest of the evils, from which they would be freed, I hesitate even to mention them, because of their unseemliness — the flattery of the rich by the poor, and the difficulties and pains that men undergo in raising children and making money on account of the necessary sustenance of household servants, at one time borrowing, at another disowning debts, at another procuring funds by any means whatever and depositing them with their wives and servants, handing them over to be managed — and how much, my friend, and what sort of thing they suffer over these matters is plain enough, and ignoble, and not worth speaking of.

Yes, obvious, he said, even to a blind man.

So they will be free from all these things, and they will live a life more blessed than that most blessed life which Olympic victors live.

How so?

Those men are counted happy for only a small part of what belongs to these. For the victory of these men is finer, and their sustenance from the public is more complete. For the victory they win is the preservation of the whole city, and they and their children are crowned with sustenance and everything else that life requires, and they receive prizes from their own city while they live, and when they die they share in a burial worthy of them.

Yes, very fine ones, he said.

Do you remember, then, I said, that earlier some argument — I do not recall whose — rebuked us for not making the guardians happy, since, though it was open to them to have everything the citizens have, they would have nothing? And we, I believe, said that we would consider this later, if it should happen to come up, but that for now we would make the guardians guardians, and the city as happy as we could, rather than looking to one class within it and molding that alone to be happy?

I remember, he said.

What then? Now, does the life of our helpers, since it appears far finer and better than that of the Olympic victors, in any way appear inferior to the life of cobblers, or of other craftsmen, or of farmers?

It does not seem so to me, he said.

But indeed, what I said there it is right to say here too — that if the guardian sets about becoming happy in such a way that he is no longer even a guardian, and a life so moderate and secure, and, as we say, best, will not satisfy him, but a foolish and adolescent opinion about happiness falls upon him and drives him, through his power, to appropriate everything in the city for himself, he will come to know that Hesiod was truly wise in saying that the half is somehow more than the whole.

If he takes me as his counselor, he said, he will stick to this life.

Then do you agree, I said, with the community of the women with the men that we have gone through, concerning education, and children, and the guarding of the other citizens — that whether remaining in the city or going out to war, they must guard together and hunt together like dogs, and share in everything, in every way, as far as possible, and that by doing these things they will do what is best, and not act against the nature of the female in relation to the male, according to which the two of them are naturally fitted to share with one another?

The Guardians at War, and How Greeks Should Treat Greeks

I agree, he said.

Then is it not left, I said, to determine this — whether, just as with the other animals, this community can also come about among human beings, and if so, in what way it is possible?

You have anticipated me, he said, in saying what I was about to raise.

As for the matters of war, I think, I said, it is clear in what manner they will make war.

How so? He asked.

That they will campaign together, and moreover will take with them to the war those of their children who are old enough, so that, like the children of the other craftsmen, they may look on at the things they will have to practice themselves once they are grown; and besides looking on, they will help and serve in everything connected with the war, and wait on their fathers and mothers. Or have you not noticed how it is with the crafts — for instance the children of potters — how for a long time they serve and look on before they lay a hand to the potter's craft themselves?

Very much so.

Should those craftsmen, then, train their children more carefully by experience and observation of what belongs to their work than the guardians train theirs?

That would be ridiculous, he said.

But surely every animal fights with special ferocity when its own offspring are present.

That is so. But there is no small danger, Socrates, that if things go wrong, as often happens in war, they will lose their children along with themselves and leave the rest of the city unable to recover.

What you say is true, I said. But do you think, first of all, that we should arrange things so that they are never in danger at all?

Not at all.

What then? If they must run some risk, should it not be where success will make them better?

Clearly.

But do you think it makes only a small difference, and is not worth the risk, whether or not children who are going to be warriors as men watch the business of war?

No, it makes a difference, in view of what you are saying.

This, then, must be our starting point: to make the children spectators of war, but to contrive safety for them as well, and things will go well; is that not so?

Yes.

Then, I said, in the first place their fathers, as far as human beings can be, will not be ignorant but skilled in judging which campaigns are dangerous and which are not?

That is likely, he said.

So they will take them to some, and be cautious about others.

Rightly so.

And, I said, they will surely put in charge of them not the most inferior commanders, but those competent by experience and age to be both leaders and guides.

That is fitting.

But, we shall say, many things have happened to many people contrary to expectation.

Very much so.

Against such possibilities, my friend, we must give them wings while they are still children, so that, if need be, they can fly away and escape.

What do you mean? He asked.

We must, I said, set them on horses as early as possible, and once they have been taught to ride, take them on horseback to watch, mounted not on spirited or battle-eager horses, but on the swiftest and most manageable ones we can find. For in this way they will get the finest view of their own work, and, should there be need, will make their escape most safely by following their older guides.

You seem to me to be right, he said.

And what, I said, of the business of war? How should the soldiers behave toward one another and toward the enemy? Does what occurs to me seem right, or not?

Tell me, he said, what these are this time.

As for our own men, I said, must not one of them who deserts his post, or throws away his weapons, or does anything of that sort out of cowardice, be made into some kind of craftsman or farmer?

Certainly.

And must not one who is taken alive by the enemy be given as a gift to his captors, to do with their catch whatever they wish?

Quite so.

And as for the one who distinguishes himself and wins honor, do you not think that first, while still on campaign, he should be crowned by each of the young men and boys serving alongside him, one after another? Or not?

I do.

What then? Should he also have his hand clasped?

That too.

But this, I think, I said, you no longer agree with.

What is that?

That he should kiss and be kissed by each of them.

Most of all, he said — and I would add to the law, for as long as they are on this campaign, that no one is allowed to refuse a kiss to anyone who wants to kiss him, so that, if anyone happens to be in erotic love with someone, male or female, he may be more eager to carry off the prize for valor.

Well put, I said. For it has already been said that for the man who is good there will be more marriages ready than for the others, and more frequent choice of such partners than the rest have, so that as many children as possible may come from such a man.

Yes, we did say that, he said.

And indeed, according to Homer too, it is just to honor such men among the young who prove themselves good. For Homer said that Ajax, who had distinguished himself in war, was honored with long cuts of the chine, this being a fitting honor for a man who is in his prime and courageous, one from which, along with the honor, his strength would also increase.

Quite right, he said.

In this, then, I said, we shall follow Homer. For we too, at sacrifices and on all such occasions, will honor the good, in proportion to how good they show themselves, both with hymns and with the things we were just now speaking of, and besides these, with seats of honor and meat and full cups, so that in honoring them we may also train our good men and women.

Very well put, he said.

Very well — of those who die on campaign, whoever dies having won honor, shall we not say, first of all, that he belongs to the golden race?

Most of all.

But shall we not follow Hesiod in saying, whenever any of this race die, that indeed— they turn into holy spirits who dwell upon the earth, good beings, defenders against harm, guardians of speaking mortals?

We shall follow him, then.

So, having inquired of the god how we should lay to rest those who are daimonic and divine, and with what distinction, shall we lay them to rest in just that way he directs?

Why should we not?

And for all time to come, shall we tend and revere their tombs as we would those of daimonic beings? And shall we establish these same customs whenever anyone dies of old age or in some other way, among those judged to have been outstandingly good in life?

That is only just, he said.

What then? How will our soldiers behave toward the enemy?

In what respect?

First, regarding enslavement: does it seem just for Greeks to enslave Greek cities, or should we not permit it to anyone else either, so far as we can, and instead make it a habit to spare the Greek race, out of caution against enslavement at the hands of the barbarians?

Sparing them, he said, is altogether and entirely the better course.

Then should they themselves not own any Greek as a slave, and should they advise the other Greeks to do likewise?

Certainly, he said; in this way they would turn their attention more toward the barbarians, and keep their hands off one another.

What then? Is it right, I said, to strip the dead of anything except their weapons, once they have won the victory? Or does it not give cowards a pretext for not going up against the man still fighting, as though they were doing something necessary when they linger over the corpse, and have not many an army already been destroyed through plunder of this sort?

Very much so.

And does it not seem ignoble and greedy to plunder a corpse, and does it not show a womanish and petty mind to regard the body as the enemy, when the real enemy has flown off and left behind only the thing it fought with? Or do you think those who do this act any differently from dogs, which get angry at the stones thrown at them without touching the one who threw them?

Not in the least, he said.

So must we give up the plundering of corpses and the obstruction of their recovery for burial?

We certainly must give it up, he said, by Zeus.

Nor, surely, will we carry weapons off to dedicate at the temples, especially not weapons taken from Greeks, if we care at all about goodwill toward the rest of the Greeks; rather we will be afraid that bringing such things to a temple from our own kin might be a kind of pollution, unless the god says otherwise.

Quite right, he said.

What of the ravaging of Greek land and the burning of houses? What sort of thing will our soldiers do to the enemy in this regard, in your view?

I would gladly hear you declare your opinion, he said.

Well, I said, it seems to me that they should do neither of these things, but only take away the year's crop. And do you want me to tell you why?

Certainly.

It seems to me that, just as there are two names for these things, war and civil strife, so too there are two realities, resting on two different kinds of conflict. By the two, I mean on one hand what is one's own and akin, and on the other what is foreign and alien. So hostility toward what is one's own is called civil strife, and hostility toward what is foreign is called war.

And what you say, he said, is not at all off the mark.

Consider, then, whether this too is to the point in what I am saying. For I say that the Greek race is, in itself, its own kin and akin to itself, but is foreign and alien to the barbarian race.

Well put, he said.

Then we shall say that when Greeks fight barbarians and barbarians fight Greeks, they are at war and are enemies by nature, and this hostility must be called war; whereas when Greeks do such a thing to Greeks, they are friends by nature, but in such a case Greece is sick and torn by faction, and this sort of hostility must be called civil strife.

For my part, he said, I agree that we should think of it in this way.

Consider then, I said, that in what is now agreed to be civil strife, wherever something of this kind occurs and a city is divided, if each side ravages the other's fields and burns their houses, the strife is regarded as abominable and neither side as loving its own city — for they would never dare to ravage their own nurse and mother — but that the measured course is for the victors to take away the crops of the defeated, and to bear in mind that they will one day be reconciled and will not go on making war forever.

For this way of thinking, he said, is far gentler than the other.

What then? I asked — will not the city you are founding be a Greek city?

It must be, he said.

Then will they not also be good and gentle?

Very much so.

And will they not be lovers of Greece? Will they not regard Greece as their own, and share in the same sacred rites as the other Greeks?

Very much so indeed.

Then will they not regard a quarrel with Greeks, since it is with their own people, as civil strife, and refuse even to give it the name of war?

No, they will not.

And will they carry on their disputes as people who intend to be reconciled?

Certainly.

So they will discipline them with goodwill, punishing them not with a view to enslavement or destruction, since they are correctors, not enemies.

Just so, he said.

So, being Greeks, they will not ravage Greece, nor will they burn down dwellings, nor will they agree that in each city everyone is their enemy — men, women, and children alike — but only ever a few, those responsible for the conflict. And for all these reasons they will be unwilling to ravage their land, since most of them are friends, or to tear down their houses, but will carry the conflict only to the point where those responsible are compelled, by the suffering of those not responsible, to pay the penalty.

For my part, he said, I agree that our citizens should treat their opponents in this way; but toward the barbarians, as the Greeks now treat one another.

Shall we then lay down this law too for our guardians, that they neither ravage the land nor burn down houses?

Is Such a City Possible? The Third Wave

Let us take that as agreed, he said, and grant that both these points and what came before are sound.

But it seems to me, Socrates, that if anyone lets you talk on like this, you will never get back to the point you pushed aside before saying all this — whether this constitution can come about at all, and in what way it can; since, if it did come about, everything would indeed be good for the city in which it came about, and I will say myself the things you leave out: that they would fight the enemy best by abandoning one another the least, recognizing one another and calling each other by these names — brothers, fathers, sons; and if the women also campaigned together, whether stationed in the same rank or posted behind, both to frighten the enemy and in case there should ever be need of help, I know that in this way too they would be altogether unconquerable; and I see, besides, how many good things are left out that they would have at home. But — taking it that I grant all this would be so, and countless other things besides, if this constitution came about — say no more about it; instead, let us now try to persuade ourselves of this very thing, that it is possible, and in what way it is possible, and let the rest go.

You have made a sudden raid on my argument, I said, and you show no mercy to a man who is dragging his feet. For perhaps you do not know that, having barely escaped the first two waves, you are now bringing on me the greatest and harshest of the triple wave; once you have seen and heard it, you will fully forgive me, understanding that I was right to hesitate and to be afraid of stating and attempting to examine so paradoxical a claim.

The more you say such things, he said, the less you will be let off by us from saying how this constitution can come to be. So speak, and do not waste time.

Well then, I said, first of all we must remember this — that it was in seeking what justice is, and injustice, that we came to this point.

We must; but what of that? He said.

Nothing; but if we find what justice itself is like, shall we also require the just man to differ from it in no way, but to be in every respect such as justice is? Or shall we be content if he is as close to it as possible and shares in it more than others do?

That way, he said — we shall be content.

It was for the sake of a pattern, then, I said, that we were seeking justice itself, what it is, and the perfectly just man, if such a one could come to be, and what he would be like if he did, and injustice too, in turn, and the most unjust man — so that, looking to them and seeing how they appear to us with respect to happiness and its opposite, we would be forced to agree, about ourselves as well, that whoever is most like them will have a fate most like theirs — not for the sake of proving that these things can actually come about.

That is true, he said.

Do you think, then, that a painter is any less good who, having painted a pattern of what the most beautiful man would be like, and having rendered everything in the picture adequately, is unable to prove that such a man could actually exist?

No, by Zeus, not I, he said.

What then? Were we not also, we say, making a pattern in speech of a good city?

Certainly.

Do you think, then, that we are speaking any less well on this account, if we cannot prove that it is possible to found a city in the way we described?

Certainly not, he said.

That, then, I said, is how the truth stands; but if we must also be eager to prove, for your sake, above all how and in what respect it would be most possible, then agree with me again, for the sake of such a proof, on the same points.

What points?

Is it possible for anything to be done exactly as it is described in speech, or is it the nature of action to touch truth less than speech does, even if someone does not think so? But do you agree that this is so, or not?

I agree, he said.

Do not, then, compel me to show that the very things we went through in speech ⟨would⟩ have to come about in every respect in deed as well; but if we are able to find how a city could be governed as closely as possible to what has been described, let us say that we have discovered that these things you require can come about. Or will you not be content to get this much? I, for one, would be content.

So would I, he said.

Next, then, it seems, let us try to seek out and demonstrate what it is that is now being done badly in cities and keeps them from being governed in this way, and what smallest change, if it took place, would bring a city around to this manner of constitution — best of all a single change, failing that two, and failing that, the fewest in number and the smallest in power.

Certainly, he said.

With a single change, then, I said, we do seem to me to be able to show that it could be transformed — not, however, a small or easy one, but a possible one.

What change? He said.

I am now, I said, at the very point that we compared to the greatest wave. It shall be said, in any case, even if it is likely to drown me, quite literally, in laughter breaking over me like a wave, and in disrepute. But consider what I am about to say.

Speak, he said.

Unless, I said, either philosophers rule as kings in our cities, or those who are now called kings and rulers take up philosophy, genuinely and fully, so that political power and philosophy coincide in the very same place, while the many natures that now travel separately toward the one or the other are of necessity shut out, there will be no end to troubles for our cities, dear Glaucon, nor, I think, for the human race either — nor will this constitution we have now gone through in speech ever grow up as far as it can and see the light of day. But this is what has long made me hesitate to say it, seeing how far it will run against common opinion; for it is hard to see that no other city could be happy, neither in private life nor in public.

And he said: Socrates, you have thrown out a saying and a claim of such a kind that, once you have said it, you must expect that a great many people, and not undistinguished ones, will now rush at you just like that — as if, throwing off their cloaks and stripping naked, they had snatched up whatever weapon each man happened to have and were running flat out to do something extraordinary; and if you do not ward them off with argument and make your escape, you will truly pay the penalty of being laughed at.

So it is you, I said, who are responsible for this?

And quite right of me too, he said. But I will surely not abandon you — I will defend you with what means I have; and what I have is goodwill and encouragement, and perhaps I could answer you more fittingly than someone else would. But since you have such a helper, try to show those who doubt that it is as you say.

We must try, I said, since you are offering me so great an alliance. So it seems necessary to me, if we are somehow going to escape those you speak of, to mark out, with respect to the philosophers themselves, whom we mean when we venture to say that they must rule, so that once this is made clear, one can defend the claim, showing that it belongs by nature to some to take hold of philosophy and to lead in the city, while it belongs to the rest not to take hold of it, but to follow the one who leads.

Who Counts as a Philosopher

It would be time, he said, to define it.

Come then, follow me this way, if we can somehow explain it adequately.

Lead on, he said.

Then will I need to remind you, I said, or do you remember that when we say someone loves something, he must be shown, if the claim is to be made correctly, not loving part of it and not caring for another part, but cherishing it whole?

It seems, he said, that I do need reminding, for I do not quite follow.

It would suit someone else, Glaucon, I said, to say what you are saying, but it does not suit a man given to erotic love to forget that all those in their bloom sting and stir the lover of boys and the erotic man in some way or other, seeming to them worth attention and embrace. Or do you not all behave this way toward the beautiful? One, because he is snub-nosed, is called charming and praised by you, another's hooked nose you say is kingly, the one in between you say has the most measured look, dark ones you find manly to see, pale ones you call children of the gods, and as for honey-pale, do you think that name too is anyone's invention but a lover's, coining a pet-name and finding the sallowness easy to bear, if it belongs to one in bloom? And in a word you all fabricate every excuse and let loose every phrase, so as to let none of those in flower slip away.

If you want to use me as your example, he said, in saying that lovers behave this way, I grant it for the sake of the argument.

What about this? I said, do you not see wine-lovers doing these same things? Welcoming every kind of wine, on any pretext at all?

Very much so.

And surely you see, I think, that lovers of honor, if they cannot be generals, become captains of a regiment, and if they cannot be honored by the great and the distinguished, are content to be honored by the small and the trivial, since what they desire is honor as such.

Quite so.

Tell me this, then, yes or no: whenever we say someone has an appetite for something, shall we say he desires the whole of that kind, or part of it and not another part?

The whole, he said.

Then shall we not say that the philosopher too desires wisdom — not part of it and not another part, but the whole of it?

True.

So we shall not call someone who is squeamish about learning, especially while young and not yet able to give an account of what is useful and what is not, a lover of learning or a philosopher, just as we do not say that someone squeamish about food is hungry or desires food, and call him not a lover of food but someone with a poor appetite for it.

And we shall be right to say so.

But the one who readily wants to taste every kind of learning, who goes to studying gladly and is insatiable for it, him we shall rightly call a philosopher, shall we not?

And Glaucon said, then you will end up with a great many strange people of this kind. For all the lovers of sights seem to me to be like this in their delight at learning by observation, and the lovers of hearing are among the strangest of all to count as philosophers, men who would not willingly go near a discussion or that kind of pastime, but who, as if they had hired out their ears to listen, run around to every chorus at the Dionysia, missing none, neither in the cities nor in the villages. Then shall we call all of these, and others who are eager learners of such things, along with the devotees of petty crafts, philosophers?

Not at all, I said, but similar to philosophers.

And the genuine ones, he said, whom do you mean?

The lovers of the sight of truth, I said.

That much is right, he said, but what exactly do you mean by it?

Not easily, I said, could I put it to anyone else, but I think you will agree with me on the following.

What is that?

Since the beautiful is opposite to the ugly, they are two.

How could they not be?

Then since they are two, is each of them also one?

That too.

And concerning the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and all the forms as well, the same account holds: each is itself one, but because they appear everywhere in combination with actions, with bodies, and with one another, each of them appears to be many.

You are right, he said.

This, then, I said, is how I draw the division: on one side those you were just now calling lovers of sights, lovers of crafts, and practical men, and on the other, separately, those we are actually discussing, whom alone one could rightly call philosophers.

How, he said, do you mean?

The lovers of hearing and the lovers of sights, I said, embrace beautiful sounds, colors, and shapes, and everything crafted out of such things, but their minds are incapable of seeing and embracing the nature of the beautiful itself.

Yes, that is certainly how it is, he said.

But those who are able to go to the beautiful itself and see it in itself, would they not be rare?

Very rare indeed.

So the one who believes in beautiful things but neither believes in the beautiful itself nor, if someone leads him toward knowledge of it, is able to follow, does he seem to you to be living in a dream or awake? Consider it. Is not this just what dreaming is, whether asleep or awake, taking what is merely like a thing to be not like it but the very thing it resembles?

I, at any rate, he said, would say that such a person is dreaming.

But what of this? The one who, in contrast to this, believes there is something beautiful itself and is able to see both it and the things that share in it, and who believes neither that the things sharing in it are it, nor that it is the things sharing in it, does this person, in turn, seem to you to be living awake or in a dream?

Knowledge, Opinion, and the Dreamers

Very much so, he said, wide awake.

Then should we not rightly say that the thought of this one, since he knows, is knowledge, and that of the other, since he opines, is opinion?

Certainly.

What then, if this man is angry with us — the one we say opines but does not know — and disputes that what we say is true? Shall we have anything to comfort him with and persuade him gently, concealing that he is not well?

We must indeed, he said.

Come now, consider what we shall say to him. Or would you rather we inquire of him in this way, telling him that if he knows something we do not grudge it him at all, but would gladly see him knowing something. But tell us this: does the one who knows know something or nothing? So answer me on his behalf.

I will answer, he said, that he knows something.

Something that is, or something that is not?

Something that is; for how could a thing that is not be known at all?

Do we then have this adequately — even if we should look at it from many sides — that what completely is, is completely knowable, and what in no way is, is in every way unknowable?

Most adequately.

Well then; if something is such as both to be and not to be, would it not lie between what purely is and what in turn in no way is?

Between them.

Then knowledge was set over what is, and ignorance of necessity over what is not, while over this thing between, something between ignorance and knowledge must be sought, if indeed anything of that kind happens to exist?

Certainly.

Do we then say that opinion is something?

How could we not?

A different power from knowledge, or the same one?

A different one.

Opinion, then, is set over one thing, and knowledge over another, each according to its own power.

So it is.

Then is knowledge by nature set over what is, to know what is, as it stands? — Or rather, it seems to me, we should first distinguish it this way.

How so?

We shall say that powers are a certain kind among the things that are, by which we ourselves are able to do what we are able to do, and everything else too is able to do whatever it is able to do — I mean, for instance, that sight and hearing are among the powers — if indeed you follow the kind of thing I mean to say.

But I do follow it, he said.

Listen then to what appears to me about them. For in the case of a power, I see neither any color nor shape nor anything of that sort, such as I see in many other things, by looking to which I distinguish for myself, in some cases, that this is one thing and that another; but in the case of a power I look only to this — what it is set over and what it accomplishes — and it is by this that I have called each of them a power, and the one that is set over the same thing and accomplishes the same thing I call the same power, while the one that is set over a different thing and accomplishes a different thing I call a different power. And you? How do you do it?

Just so, he said.

Come here again then, I said, my good man. Do you say that knowledge itself is some kind of power, or under what kind do you place it?

Under that, he said, the strongest of all powers.

And opinion — shall we assign it to a power, or to some other kind?

In no way, he said; for that by which we are able to opine is nothing other than opinion.

But yet a little while ago you agreed that knowledge and opinion are not the same.

How could anyone with any sense, he said, take what is infallible to be the same as what is not infallible?

Well said, I replied, and it is clear that opinion is agreed by us to be different from knowledge.

Different.

Each of them, then, being a different power, is by nature set over something different?

Necessarily.

Knowledge, surely, is set over what is — to know what is, as it stands?

Yes.

And opinion, we say, is to opine?

Yes.

Does it opine the very same thing that knowledge knows? And will the same thing be both knowable and opinable? Or is that impossible?

Impossible, he said, from what we have agreed; if indeed a different power is by nature set over a different thing, and both are powers, opinion and knowledge, and each is different, as we say, then from these it is not possible for the knowable and the opinable to be the same.

Then if what is, is knowable, would not the opinable be something other than what is?

Something other.

Does it, then, opine what is not? Or is it impossible even to opine what is not? Consider it. Does not the one who opines direct his opinion toward something? Or is it possible, in turn, to opine, yet to opine nothing?

Impossible.

But the one who opines opines some one thing?

Yes.

But surely what is not would most correctly be called not some one thing, but nothing?

Certainly.

And to what is not, did we not of necessity assign ignorance, and to what is, knowledge?

Correctly, he said.

Then it opines neither what is nor what is not?

No, indeed.

Then opinion would be neither ignorance nor knowledge?

It would seem not.

Is it, then, outside these, exceeding either knowledge in clarity or ignorance in obscurity?

Neither.

But does opinion, I said, appear to you darker than knowledge, but brighter than ignorance?

Yes, and much so, he said.

And does it lie within both of them?

Yes.

Opinion, then, would be between the two of them.

Quite so.

Did we not say earlier that, if something should appear to be, as it were, at once both being and not being, such a thing would lie between what purely is and what altogether is not, and that neither knowledge nor ignorance would be set over it, but rather what appears between ignorance and knowledge?

Correctly.

And now has not something appeared between these two, which indeed we call opinion?

It has appeared.

It would remain for us, then, it seems, to find that thing which partakes of both — of being and of not being — and which could not correctly be called purely either, so that, if it appears, we may justly call it opinable, assigning the extremes to the extremes and what is between to what is between. Or is it not so?

So it is.

These things, then, being laid down, let that good fellow speak and answer me, I shall say — the one who believes that there is no beautiful itself, nor any form of beauty itself always existing the same in the same way, but who holds that there are many beautiful things — that lover of sights who in no way tolerates it if anyone says that the beautiful is one, and the just, and the rest in the same way. For of these many beautiful things, my good man, we shall say, is there one that will not appear ugly? And of the just things, one that will not appear unjust? And of the holy things, one that will not appear unholy?

No, he said, but it is necessary that these things appear in some way both beautiful and ugly, and likewise for all the others you ask about.

And what of the many things that are double? Do they appear any less half than double?

Not at all.

And with great and small, light and heavy — will the things we call by these names be addressed by them any more than by their opposites?

No, he said, but each will always have a share of both.

Is each of the many things, then, any more what someone might say it is than it is not?

It resembles, he said, those double-meaning riddles at feasts, and the children's riddle about the eunuch — concerning his throw at the bat, with what and on what they hint he struck it — for these things too have a double meaning, and it is not possible to conceive firmly of any of them as either being or not being, nor as both, nor as neither.

Do you have, then, I said, any use to make of them, or any better place to put them than the space between being and not being? For surely they will appear neither darker than what is not, so as to be more not-being, nor brighter than what is, so as to be more being.

Most true, he said.

We have found, then, it seems, that the many conventions of the many, concerning the beautiful and the rest, roll about somewhere between what is not and what purely is.

We have found it.

And we agreed beforehand that, if any such thing should appear, it must be called opinable, not knowable — this wanderer between the two, caught by the power between.

We have agreed.

Then those who look upon the many beautiful things, but do not see the beautiful itself, nor are able to follow another who leads them to it, and who see the many just things, but not the just itself, and so with everything else — these, we shall say, opine everything, but know nothing of what they opine.

Necessarily, he said.

And what, in turn, of those who look upon each thing itself, and upon what is always the same in the same way? Do they not know, rather than opine?

This too is necessary.

Shall we not say, then, that these embrace and love the things over which there is knowledge, and those others the things over which there is opinion? Or do we not remember that we said these latter love and gaze upon beautiful sounds and colors and things of that sort, but cannot bear to accept that the beautiful itself is anything at all?

We remember.

Shall we not, then, be doing something out of tune if we call them lovers of opinion rather than philosophers? And will they be very angry with us, if we speak in this way?

Not if they are persuaded by me, he said; for it is not right to be angry at the truth.

Then those who embrace each thing itself that is must be called philosophers, and not lovers of opinion?

By all means.

Book VI

The Philosopher's Nature, and Why Such Men Should Rule

The philosophers, then, Glaucon, I said, and those who are not — only after going through a discussion of some length have we managed, with some difficulty, to bring to light who each of the two are.

Perhaps, he said, it is not easy to do briefly.

It does not seem so, I said — for my part, at least, it still seems to me that the matter would come out better if we needed to speak of this alone, without having to go through the many things still remaining, on our way to seeing how the life of the just man differs from that of the unjust.

What then, he asked, comes next for us?

What else, I said, than what follows? Since the philosophers are those capable of grasping what is always the same in the same respects, while those who cannot, but instead wander among things many and various, holding to them in every sort of way, are not philosophers, which of the two, then, must be the leaders of a city?

How then should we put it, he asked, to state the matter reasonably?

Whichever of the two, I said, prove capable of guarding the laws and pursuits of cities — these we should establish as guardians.

Rightly, he said.

And is this clear, I said — whether one ought to set a blind guardian or a keen-sighted one to watch over anything at all?

And how, he said, is that not clear?

Do they seem, then, to differ at all from the blind — those who are really deprived of the knowledge of each thing that is, who have no clear pattern in their soul, and who cannot look off, as painters do, to what is most true, and, by always referring back to it and studying it as exactly as they can, lay down in that way the customs here as well, about what is fine and just and good, if they need laying down, and guard and preserve those already laid down?

No, by Zeus, he said, not by much.

Shall we then set these up as guardians rather than those who have come to know each thing that is, and who fall short of them in nothing in point of experience, nor lag behind in any other part of virtue?

It would surely be absurd, he said, to choose others, if indeed they are not lacking in the rest — for they would be ahead in this very thing, which is just about the greatest of all.

Then should we not say this — in what way the same men will be able to have both those qualities and these?

Certainly.

Well then, as we were saying when we began this discussion, we must first come to understand their nature thoroughly — and I think, if we agree sufficiently about that, we shall also agree both that the same men are capable of having these qualities, and that none but these ought to be the leaders of cities.

How so?

Let this much be agreed among us about the natures of philosophers — that they always love that kind of learning which reveals to them something of that being which always is and is not driven to wander by becoming and destruction.

Let it be agreed.

And moreover, I said, that they love the whole of it, and give up no part of it willingly, whether smaller or greater, more honored or less honored — just as we went through before in the case of the lovers of honor and those given to erotic love.

You are right, he said.

Consider this next, then — whether those who are to be as we described must also have, in addition to this, something further in their nature.

What sort?

Truthfulness — never willingly to admit falsehood in any way, but to hate it, and to cherish truth.

That is likely, he said.

It is not merely likely, my friend, but wholly necessary — that anyone whose nature is erotically drawn to something should cherish everything akin and related to the beloved.

Rightly, he said.

Could you find anything more akin to wisdom than truth?

How could I? So he said.

Is it then possible for the same nature to be both philosophic and a lover of falsehood?

Not at all.

Then the one who is truly a lover of learning must, from earliest youth, strive after all truth as much as possible.

Absolutely.

But surely, when someone's desires incline strongly toward one thing, we know that in him they are the weaker toward everything else — like a stream channelled off in that direction.

Of course.

So in the man whose desires have flowed toward learning and everything of that sort, they would be concerned, I think, with the pleasure of the soul itself by itself, and would forsake those that come through the body — if he is a philosopher not in pretense but in truth.

That is a great necessity.

Such a man is moderate, moreover, and by no means fond of money — for the ends for which money is pursued at such great expense are ends it befits someone other than him to be in earnest about.

So it is.

And surely this too must be considered, whenever you are about to judge a nature as philosophic or not.

What is that?

Take care it does not escape you that it has a share of illiberality — for pettiness, I think, is the thing most opposed to a soul that is always to reach out for the whole and the all, both divine and human.

Most true, he said.

Then do you think that a mind possessed of magnificence and the contemplation of all time and all being could regard human life as something great?

Impossible, he said.

Then will not such a man also consider death nothing terrible?

Least of all.

A cowardly and illiberal nature, then, it seems, could have no share in true philosophy.

I do not think so.

What then? Could a man who is orderly, not fond of money, not illiberal, not boastful, and not cowardly, ever become hard to deal with or unjust?

He could not.

And this too you will examine, when you are considering whether a soul is philosophic or not, right from the time it is young — whether it is just and gentle, or hard to get on with and savage.

Certainly.

Nor, I think, will you leave this out either.

What is that?

Whether he learns easily or with difficulty. Or do you expect that anyone would ever come to love a thing well enough when the doing of it is painful to him and, for all his labor, he gets little done?

That could not happen.

And what if he were unable to retain anything he learned, being full of forgetfulness? Could he possibly be anything but empty of knowledge?

How could he?

Laboring, then, to no purpose, do you not think he will be forced in the end to hate both himself and that sort of activity?

How could he not?

Then let us never admit a forgetful soul among those adequately philosophic, but let us require that it have a good memory.

By all means.

But surely we would say that a nature which is unmusical and ungainly draws toward nothing else but disproportion.

Of course.

And do you think truth is akin to disproportion, or to proportion?

To proportion.

Then, besides the other qualities, let us look for a mind that is by nature proportioned and graceful, one whose native disposition will make it easy to lead toward the form of each thing that is.

How could it not?

What then? Do we seem to you, in any way, to have gone through things that are not necessary, or that fail to follow from one another, for a soul that is to have an adequate and complete share of what is?

Most necessary, he said.

Is there then any way you could find fault with such a pursuit, which no one could ever pursue adequately unless he were by nature possessed of a good memory, ease in learning, magnificence, grace, and were a friend and kinsman of truth, justice, courage, and moderation?

Not even Momus, he said, could find fault with that.

Well then, I said, once such men are brought to completion by education and age, would you not entrust the city to them alone?

Adeimantus Objects: The Ship of State

And Adeimantus said, Socrates, no one could argue against what you say here. But in truth this is what happens each time to those who hear what you are now saying: through inexperience in asking and answering, they think that at each question they are led on a little by the argument, and that when the small steps are gathered together at the end of the discussion, a great error comes to light, contrary to what was said at first; and just as those unskilled at checkers are shut in by the skilled players and have no move left to make, so they too, in the end, are shut in and have nothing to say, defeated by this other kind of game, played not with counters but with words; and yet the truth is no more on that side for all this. I say this with an eye to the present case. For now someone might say that in argument he cannot contradict you at each separate point as it is asked, but that in fact he sees that those who set out for philosophy and do not, having taken it up for the sake of an education, drop it while still young, but linger at it longer, become for the most part quite odd, not to say thoroughly wicked, while even those who seem the most decent are nevertheless affected in just this way by the very pursuit you praise, and become useless to their cities.

And I, hearing this, said, Do you think, then, that those who say this are lying?

I do not know, he said, but I would gladly hear what you think.

Then you may hear that to me they seem to be speaking the truth.

How then, he said, can it be right to say that cities will not cease from evils until philosophers rule in them — the very men we agree are useless to them?

You are asking, I said, a question that needs an answer given through an image.

And you, he said, are not in the habit, I suppose, of speaking in images.

Very well, I said; are you mocking me, after landing me in an argument so hard to prove? Listen, then, to the image, so that you may see all the more how clumsily I make my comparisons. For so harsh is the treatment the most decent men have suffered at the hands of their cities, that no single other thing has suffered the like, but one must gather it together out of many things, making a comparison and speaking in their defense, just as painters do who mix together goat-stags and other such creatures in their paintings. For imagine something of this sort happening, whether concerning many ships or one: a shipowner who surpasses everyone on the ship in size and strength, but who is somewhat deaf and likewise sees only a little, and whose knowledge of seafaring is much the same; and sailors quarreling with one another over the steering, each thinking that he ought to steer, though he has never learned the craft, nor can point to a teacher of his own, nor to a time when he learned it; who, besides, claim that it cannot even be taught, and are ready to cut to pieces anyone who says it can; while they themselves are forever crowding around the shipowner himself, begging him and doing everything so that he will hand the helm over to them; and sometimes, when they fail to persuade him and others succeed instead, they either kill the others or throw them off the ship, and having bound the noble shipowner with mandrake, or with drink, or by some other means, they rule the ship, making use of what is aboard, and drinking and feasting they sail just as such men are likely to; and besides this they praise as a real seaman, a skilled pilot, a master of the ways of a ship, whoever is clever at lending a hand in getting them control, whether by persuading or by forcing the shipowner, while they blame as useless whoever is not of this sort, and have no notion at all of the true pilot — that he must of necessity attend to the year, the seasons, the sky, the stars, the winds, and everything that belongs to his craft, if he is truly to be fit to command a ship, while as for how he is to steer whether or not some wish it, they do not think one can acquire the craft and the practice of that at the same time as the pilot's craft. With such things happening aboard ships, do you not think that the man who is truly fit to pilot would in fact be called a stargazer, a babbler, and useless to them, by those sailing in ships equipped in this way?

Very much so, said Adeimantus.

I do not think, I said, that you need the image gone over point by point to see that it is like the disposition of cities toward true philosophers, but that you understand what I mean.

Very much so, he said.

First, then, take that man who wonders that philosophers are not honored in cities: teach him the image, and try to persuade him that it would be far more astonishing if they were.

I will teach him, he said.

And tell him also that you speak the truth, that the most decent of those engaged in philosophy are useless to the many; but bid him blame, for this uselessness, those who fail to make use of them, and not the decent men themselves. For it is not in the nature of things that a pilot should beg the sailors to be ruled by him, nor that the wise should go to the doors of the rich; whoever put it so cleverly was lying, and the truth stands thus by nature: whether a rich man or a poor man falls ill, it is necessary for him to go to the doors of physicians, and for everyone who needs to be ruled to go to the doors of the man able to rule, and not for the ruler — the one who is genuinely of some use — to beg the ruled to submit to his rule. But you will not go wrong in likening the political rulers of today to the sailors we were just describing, and those whom they call useless and sky-babblers to the true pilots.

Quite right, he said.

For these reasons, then, and among such people, it is not easy for the best pursuit to win a good reputation from those who pursue the opposite; but by far the greatest and strongest slander falls upon philosophy because of those who claim to pursue such things — the very men you say the accuser of philosophy has in mind, when he says that most of those who go in for it are thoroughly wicked, and the most decent of them useless, and I admitted that you spoke the truth. Was that not so?

How Philosophic Natures Are Corrupted

Yes.

Have we not, then, gone through the cause of the uselessness of the decent?

Very much so.

Do you want us to go through, next, the necessity behind the wickedness of the many, and to try — if we can — to show that philosophy is not responsible for this either?

By all means.

Let us listen, then, and speak, recalling the point at which we went through the nature — what sort a man who is to be noble and good must of necessity be born with. And leading the way for him, if you recall, was truth first of all, which he had to pursue wholly and in every way, or else, being an impostor, have no part whatever in true philosophy.

Yes, that was how it was said.

Now, is not this one point sharply contrary to what is currently believed about him?

Very much so, he said.

Then shall we not be making a reasonable defense in saying that the one who is truly a lover of learning is by nature driven to strive toward what is, and would not linger over the many particular things that are merely believed to be, but would press on and not grow dull nor abandon his erotic love until he had laid hold of the nature of each thing itself with the part of the soul fit to grasp such a thing — and it is the kindred part that is fit for it — and, having drawn near to it and mingled with what truly is, having begotten intellect and truth, he would know and would truly live and be nourished, and only thus would his travail cease, but not before?

As reasonable as could be, he said.

What then? Will he have any part in loving falsehood, or, quite the opposite, in hating it?

Hating it, he said.

With truth leading, then, I do not suppose we would ever say that a chorus of evils follows in her train.

How could it?

But instead a sound and just character, followed also by moderation.

Correct, he said.

And indeed, what need is there to force myself back to the beginning and marshal the rest of the philosophic nature's chorus all over again? For you remember, I suppose, that courage, magnificence, quickness to learn, and memory turned out to belong to these natures; and with you taking us up on the point that, while everyone would be compelled to agree with what we say, still, if he let the arguments go and looked instead at the actual men the argument is about, he would say he sees some of them useless and most of them bad with every kind of badness — examining the cause of this slander, we have now come to just this point, why ever it is that the many are bad, and it is for this reason that we have again taken up the nature of true philosophers and defined it of necessity.

That is so, he said.

We must look, then, I said, at the ways this nature is corrupted — how it is destroyed in most who have it, while some small part escapes, the ones people call not wicked, exactly, but useless — and after that, in turn, at the natures that imitate it and install themselves in its pursuit: what sorts of souls they are that arrive at a pursuit for which they are unworthy and which is beyond them, and that, striking false notes in many ways, have fastened upon philosophy, everywhere and among all men, the reputation you speak of.

And which corruptions, he said, do you mean?

I will try, I said, to go through them for you, if I am able. Now this much, I think, everyone will grant us: that such a nature, possessing all the qualities we prescribed just now, if it is to become a philosopher in the full sense, is born among men only seldom, and only in a few cases. Or do you not think so?

Indeed I do.

Consider, then, in the case of these few, how many and how great are the ways of ruin.

What are they?

The most astonishing thing to hear of all is that each single one of the qualities we praised in that nature destroys the soul that possesses it, and tears it away from philosophy. I mean courage, moderation, and everything we went through.

Strange to hear, he said.

And besides these, I said, all the things called good also corrupt it and tear it away — beauty, wealth, bodily strength, powerful connections of kin in the city, and everything akin to these; for you grasp the type of thing I mean.

I do, he said; and I would gladly learn more precisely what you mean.

Grasp the matter correctly as a whole, then, I said, and it will appear quite clear to you, and what was said earlier about them will no longer seem strange.

How, then, he said, do you bid me proceed?

Concerning any seed, I said, or any growing thing, whether one of those in the earth or one of the animals, we know this — that when a thing fails to meet with the nourishment proper to it, or with its right season, or its right place, then the more vigorous it is, the more it falls short of what befits it; for I suppose what is bad stands more opposed to what is good than to what is not good.

How could it not?

It stands to reason, then, I think, that the best nature, when it lights on nurture more foreign to it, comes off worse than a poor one does.

It does.

Well then, Adeimantus, I said, shall we not say the same of souls — that those of the best natural gifts, meeting with bad upbringing, become exceptionally bad? Or do you suppose that great wrongdoing and sheer, unmixed wickedness arise from a poor nature rather than from a vigorous one ruined by its nurture, and that a feeble nature will ever be the cause of anything great, whether for good or for ill?

No, he said, but rather as you describe it.

The Great Beast: The Crowd as Educator

Now the nature of the philosopher that we laid down, if it happens, I think, to meet with the learning that suits it, must of necessity grow to arrive at every virtue; but if it is sown and reared in unsuitable soil and tended there, it must arrive, in turn, at every opposite, unless some god comes to its aid. Or do you too suppose, as most people do, that certain young men are corrupted by sophists, and that private sophists corrupt them to any degree worth mentioning, and not rather that the very men who say this are themselves the greatest sophists of all, and educate most completely, turning out young and old, men and women, into just the sort of people they want?

When, exactly? So he asked.

Whenever, I said, great numbers of people sit crowded together in assemblies, law courts, theaters, army camps, or some other public gathering of the multitude, and with a great deal of noise find fault with some of what is said or done, and praise other parts of it, both to excess, shouting and clapping, and, besides them, the very rocks and the place they are in echo back and double the din of blame and praise. In such a situation, as the saying goes, what heart do you think a young man has? Or what private education [would] hold out in him, one that will not be swamped by blame and praise of that sort and go off, borne along on the current wherever it may carry it, so that he calls the same things fine and shameful as they do, pursues the same things as they do, and becomes such a person himself?

Quite inevitably, Socrates, he said.

And yet, I said, we have not yet mentioned the greatest necessity.

What sort? So he said.

The one these educators and sophists apply in deed, when they fail to persuade with words. Or do you not know that they punish whoever is not persuaded with loss of civic rights, fines, and death?

Very much so indeed, he said.

So what other sophist, or what private arguments running counter to these, do you think will prevail?

None, I think, he said.

No indeed, I said, and even to attempt it is great folly. For no character schooled toward virtue apart from the education these men give is coming to be, has come to be, or ever will come to be — no human one, at any rate, my friend; the divine, though, let us except from the argument, as the old saying goes — for you must know well that in such a condition of constitutions, whenever anything is preserved and turns out as it should, you will not be wrong to say that it was a god's portion that preserved it.

Nor do I think otherwise, he said.

Then let this be your view as well, I said, in addition to what we have said.

What sort of thing?

Each of the hired private individuals — the ones these men call sophists and regard as rivals in their craft — teaches nothing but these very opinions of the many, the ones they hold whenever they are gathered together, and calls this wisdom; it is just as if someone were studying the moods and appetites of a great, strong beast being reared — how to approach it and how to handle it, when it is fiercest or gentlest and from what causes, and the sounds it is accustomed to make in each case, and what sounds, spoken by another, tame it or make it savage — and, having learned all this by living with it over a long time, were to call it wisdom, and, having put it together as a craft, were to turn to teaching it, knowing nothing in truth about which of these opinions and appetites is fine or shameful, or good or bad, or just or unjust, but were to apply all these names according to the opinions of the great creature, calling the things it delights in good and the things that vex it bad, having no other account of them, but calling the necessary things just and fine, without ever having seen, or being able to show anyone else, how far the necessary differs in truth from the good. A man like that, by Zeus, would he not seem to you an absurd educator?

He does, he said.

Does he seem to you, then, to differ at all from this man — the one who counts it wisdom to have made out the temper and the pleasures of the many and motley crowd when they come together, whether in painting, or in music, or indeed in politics? For whenever someone associates with these people, displaying his poetry or some other piece of craftsmanship, or a service to the city, and makes the many his masters over and above what is necessary, it is what they call the Diomedean necessity that compels him to do whatever they praise; but as for these things being also good and fine in truth, have you ever yet heard one of them give an account of that which was not laughable?

I think not, he said, and I don't expect I ever shall.

So, having taken all this to heart, recall that other point — the beautiful itself and not the many beautiful things, or each thing itself and not the many particular things: is there any way a multitude will put up with it, or think that such a thing is?

Not in the least, he said.

So it is impossible, I said, for a multitude to be philosophic.

Impossible.

And so those who philosophize must necessarily be blamed by them.

Necessarily.

And by these private individuals too, all those who, associating with the crowd, desire to please it.

Clearly.

Given all this, then, what salvation do you see for a philosophic nature, such that it remains in its pursuit and comes through to its end? Consider it from what came before. For we have agreed that ease in learning, memory, courage, and magnificence belong to this nature.

Yes.

So won't such a person, right from childhood, be first in everything, especially if his body too grows to match his soul?

Why wouldn't he be? So he said.

I think, then, that when he grows older, his relatives and fellow citizens will want to make use of him for their own affairs.

Of course.

So they will grovel before him, begging and honoring him, staking their claim in advance on the power that is going to be his and flattering it before it comes.

That's certainly how it tends to happen, he said.

So what do you think, I said, such a person will do in circumstances like these, especially if he happens to belong to a great city, and in it to be rich and well-born, and on top of that good-looking and tall? Won't he be filled with impossible hope, believing that he will be capable of managing the affairs of both Greeks and barbarians, and on the strength of this exalt himself, puffed up with pretension and an empty conceit devoid of intellect?

Very much so, he said.

Now if someone quietly approaches a person disposed like this and tells him the truth — that he has no intellect in him, though he needs it, and that it cannot be acquired unless one serves as a slave to acquiring it — do you think it easy for him to listen, surrounded by so many evils?

Far from it, he said.

But if, then, I said, because of his good nature and his kinship with such arguments, he perceives something of this and bends and is drawn toward philosophy, what do we think those people will do — the ones who believe they are losing the use of him and his companionship? Will they not do every deed and say every word, both about him, so that he won't be persuaded, and toward the one persuading him, so that he won't be able to succeed, plotting against him privately and bringing him into public contests?

Quite inevitably, he said.

Is there any way, then, that such a person will philosophize?

Not at all.

So do you see, I said, that we were not wrong to say that the very parts of a philosophic nature themselves, when they fall into bad rearing, are in a way responsible for its falling away from its pursuit, along with the so-called goods — wealth and all such equipment?

No indeed, he said, but it was said rightly.

This, then, my good man, I said, is the ruin and corruption, so great and of such a kind, that befalls the best nature for the best pursuit — a nature that is rare enough on its own, as we say. And indeed it is from these men that those who work the greatest evils on cities, and on private people, arise — and also those who work the greatest goods, whenever they happen to be swept in that direction instead; but a small nature never accomplishes anything great, for a private person or for a city.

Very true, he said.

Unworthy Suitors of Philosophy

These men, then, falling away in this manner — the very men to whom she belongs most — leave philosophy deserted and unwed, and themselves live a life neither fitting nor true, while she, like an orphan bereft of her kin, is invaded by others unworthy of her, who disgrace her and fasten reproaches on her, the very reproaches you yourself say the revilers bring, that of those who keep her company some are worth nothing, and most of them deserve a great many ills.

Yes indeed, he said, that is exactly what is said.

With good reason, I said. For other little men, seeing this ground growing empty, yet full of fine names and pretensions, gladly leap out of their crafts into philosophy — just as men who escape from prison flee into a temple — those, that is, who happen to be the cleverest at their own petty craft. For all the same, even with philosophy in such a state, her prestige remains grander than that of the other crafts, and it is this that many men reach for — men stunted in their natures, who, just as their bodies have been maimed by their crafts and their trades, so too have had their souls broken and battered by their menial labor — or is that not inevitable?

Very much so, he said.

Do you think, then, I said, that it is any different to see them from seeing some bald little smith who has come into money — lately freed from his fetters, washed at the baths, wearing a brand-new cloak, got up like a bridegroom, about to marry his master's daughter because of his master's poverty and want of friends?

It is not at all different, he said.

What sort of things, then, are such men likely to beget? Not bastard and paltry ones?

Quite inevitable.

What then? When men unworthy of education draw near to her and consort with her unworthily, what sort of thoughts and opinions shall we say they beget? Is it not, in truth, fitting to call them sophistries, containing nothing genuine, and touching nothing [worthy] of true practical wisdom?

Absolutely, he said.

A very small remnant, then, I said, Adeimantus, is left of those who keep company with philosophy as she deserves — perhaps some noble and well-bred character, overtaken by exile, who for lack of corrupters has stayed true to his nature and remained with her; or when a great soul is born in a small city and, thinking the city's affairs beneath it, looks past them; and here and there some naturally gifted man might come to her from another craft, having rightly come to despise it. And there might also be the bridle of our friend Theages, one fit to hold a man back; for in Theages's case everything else stands ready for his falling away from philosophy, but the poor health of his body, barring him from political life, holds him fast. As for my own case — the divine sign — it is not worth mentioning; for it has come to perhaps one other person, or to no one at all, among those before me. And those who have come to belong to this small number, and have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and who have, moreover, seen well enough the madness of the many, and that, one might almost say, no one does anything sound concerning the business of cities, nor is there any ally with whom a man might go to the aid of justice and come through alive, but rather, like a man who has fallen among wild beasts, neither willing to share in their wrongdoing nor able, alone, to hold out against all their savagery, he would perish before he could do any good to his city or his friends, and so prove useless to himself and to others — taking all this into account by reasoning, he keeps quiet and attends to his own affairs, as one who, in a storm of dust and hail driven before the wind, steps aside behind a wall, and, seeing the others filled with lawlessness, is content if somehow he himself can remain pure of injustice and unholy deeds, both living out his life here and, when his release from it comes, departing with fair hope, gracious and kindly.

What City Would Suit the Philosopher

And yet, he said, it would be no small thing he had accomplished when he departed.

Nor the greatest, I said, if he has not found a fitting constitution — for in one that fits, he himself will grow more and, along with his own concerns, will preserve those of the community as well.

As for philosophy, then — why it has incurred slander, and that it has incurred it unjustly — I think that has been adequately stated, unless you yourself still have something more to say.

But, he said, I have nothing more to say about this — yet which of the constitutions now current do you say is fitting for it?

Not any whatsoever, I said, but this is exactly what I charge: that none of the constitutions now existing is worthy of a philosophic nature — and that is why it is twisted and altered, just as foreign seed sown in another soil tends, once overpowered, to fade into the native growth, so too this kind, as things stand now, does not hold to its own power but falls away into an alien character; but if it should obtain the best constitution, just as it is itself the best, then it will show that this nature was in truth divine, while the rest — both of natures and of pursuits — are merely human. It is plain, then, that after this you will ask what this constitution is.

You have guessed wrong, he said, for that is not what I meant, but whether this is the constitution we went through in founding our city, or a different one.

In other respects, I said, it is this one; but this very point was made even then — that there would always need to be present in the city something that holds the same account of the constitution that you, the lawgiver, held when you laid down the laws.

It was indeed said, he replied.

But it was not made sufficiently clear, I said, from fear of the very things which you, by taking hold of them, have shown to make its demonstration long and difficult — since what is left is not the easiest thing in the world to go through either.

What sort of thing?

In what way a city that takes up philosophy will not be destroyed. For all great things are indeed precarious, and, as the saying goes, fine things are truly difficult.

But all the same, he said, let the proof be brought to completion, once this point has been made clear.

It is not unwillingness, I said, but, if anything, inability that will stand in the way — and since you are here, you will at least see my eagerness. Observe, even now, how eagerly and how recklessly I am about to say that a city must take up this pursuit in the opposite way from how it does now.

How?

Now, I said, those who even take it up — being young men, just out of childhood, in the interval between household management and money-making — come close to its hardest part and then break off, these being the ones counted the most philosophic — and by hardest I mean the part concerning arguments — while afterward, if, when others pursue it, they are invited and are willing to become listeners, they think it a great thing, supposing that it ought to be practiced only as a side matter; and toward old age, except for a few, they are extinguished far more thoroughly than the Heraclitean sun, in that they never kindle again.

But how ought it to be? So he asked.

Just the opposite: while they are still lads and boys they should take up an education and a philosophy suited to their years, and take very good care of their bodies during the time when these are sprouting and growing toward manhood, thereby acquiring a servant for philosophy; and as their age advances, when the soul begins to come to its maturity, they should intensify its exercises; and when their strength gives out and they are past political and military service, then at last they should be turned loose to graze and do nothing else except as a side matter — those, that is, who mean to live happily and, when they have died, to crown the life they have lived with the portion that befits it there.

You truly seem to me, he said, to speak eagerly at any rate, Socrates; I think, however, that most of those listening will resist all the more eagerly, and will not be persuaded in the least, beginning with Thrasymachus.

Do not set me at odds with Thrasymachus, I said, now that we have just become friends — not that we were enemies before. For we will not relax our effort in the least, until we either persuade both him and the others, or achieve something of use for that life to come, whenever, being born again, they happen upon such arguments.

You have named a short time indeed, he said.

For no time at all, I said — that is, compared with all time. However, it is no wonder that most people do not believe what is said, for they have never yet seen the thing now described actually occur, but rather have seen only such sayings as are deliberately made to resemble one another, and not, as now, coinciding by sheer chance. But a man made equal to virtue and, so far as possible, fully assimilated to it in both deed and word, holding power in some other such city, they have never yet seen — neither one such man nor several. Or do you think they have?

Persuading the Many: The Painter of Constitutions

Not in the least.

Nor again, my dear fellow, have they become adequate listeners to noble, free discourse — of the kind that strains after truth by every means for the sake of knowing it — while merely saluting from a distance whatever is clever and contentious and aims at nothing beyond reputation and rivalry, whether in the courts or in private company.

Not of these either, he said.

It was for just this reason, I said — foreseeing it even then — that we spoke as we did, however much we feared to, compelled by the truth: that neither a city nor a constitution, nor a man either, will ever become perfect until some necessity of chance compels these few philosophers — who are not wicked, though now called useless — whether they wish it or not, to take care of a city, and the city to be obedient to them, or until, upon the sons of those now holding power or kingship, or upon those men themselves, a true erotic love of true philosophy falls from some divine inspiration. Now that either one of these things, or both, should happen is impossible — for that, I say, no one has any argument. For in that case we should justly be laughed at for saying things no better than wishful prayers. Or is that not so?

So it is.

If, then, it is a necessity that men supreme in philosophy should take charge of a city — whether that has already happened in the boundless time now past, or is even now the case in some barbarian place, far off and beyond our view, or will come to be hereafter — on this point we are ready to contend by argument: that the constitution we have described has come to be, and is, and will indeed come to be, whenever this Muse becomes mistress of a city. For it is not impossible for it to come to be, nor are we saying impossible things — though that it is difficult is something we too admit.

So it seems to me too, he said.

But will you say, I said, that the many, for their part, do not think so?

Perhaps, he said.

My dear fellow, I said, do not accuse the many so harshly. They will have quite a different opinion, if, instead of contending for victory, you show them — in a spirit of reassurance, clearing away the slander against the love of learning — which men you mean by philosophers, and if you distinguish, just as you did a moment ago, their nature and their pursuit, so that they do not suppose you mean the men they have in mind. Or, even if they should view it that way [and you will say they would take on a different opinion and answer differently], do you suppose that anyone who is himself free of envy and gentle would be harsh toward one who is not harsh, or envious of one who is not envious? For I will say it before you do: I think a nature so harsh as that arises in only a few people, not in the multitude.

I too, of course, share that belief, he said.

Then do you also agree with this: that those responsible for the many being harshly disposed toward philosophy are the outsiders who have burst in where they do not belong, reviling one another, behaving contentiously, and always making their arguments about persons — doing what is least fitting for philosophy?

Very much so, he said.

For surely, Adeimantus, a man whose mind is truly fixed on the things that are has no leisure to look down at human business, to quarrel with people and be filled with envy and ill will; instead, looking at and contemplating things that are ordered and always constant, that neither wrong one another nor are wronged by one another, but are all in order and according to reason, he imitates them and assimilates himself to them as much as he can. Or do you think there is any way that a man who keeps admiring company with something will fail to imitate it?

Impossible, he said.

Then, keeping company with what is divine and orderly, the philosopher becomes orderly and divine, so far as is possible for a man — though slander is plentiful in every quarter.

Yes, altogether so.

Now if some necessity should come upon him, I said, to practice putting what he sees there into human characters — both privately and publicly — and not merely to shape himself alone, do you think he will turn out to be a poor craftsman of moderation and justice and popular virtue as a whole?

Least of all, he said.

But if the many should come to perceive that what we say about him is true, will they then be harsh with the philosophers, and disbelieve us when we say that a city could never be happy in any other way, unless it were painted by those painters who use the divine pattern?

They will not be harsh, he said, if indeed they perceive it. But what manner of sketching do you mean?

Taking the city and the characters of men, I said, as if they were a tablet, they would first wipe it clean — which is not at all an easy thing to do; but in any case you know that they would immediately differ from everyone else on this very point: that they would be unwilling to lay a hand on either a private person or a city, or to write laws, until they had either received it clean or made it clean themselves.

And rightly so, he said.

Then after this, do you think they would sketch in outline the form of the constitution?

What else?

Then, I think, as they filled in the work, they would glance frequently in each direction — toward what is by nature just and fine and moderate, and all such things, and again toward that other image they were producing in men, blending and mixing from human ways of life the very likeness of a man, taking their measure from that quality which Homer too, when it arises in men, called godlike and god-resembling.

Rightly so, he said.

And I think they would rub out one part and paint in another, until they had made human characters as dear to the gods as could possibly be.

It would certainly be the most beautiful painting, he said.

Are we then, I said, in some way persuading those men whom you said were coming at us up in arms, that the painter of constitutions we were praising to them at the time — the one because of whom they grew angry with us, since we were handing cities over to him — is a painter of just this kind, and are they, now that they hear this, growing somewhat gentler?

Yes, much gentler, he said, if they are in their right minds.

For how indeed will they have grounds to dispute it? Will they dispute that philosophers are lovers of what is and of truth?

That would be absurd, he said.

Or will they dispute that their nature — the one we went through — is akin to the best?

Not that either.

What then? Will such a nature, if it meets with the practices proper to it, not become perfectly good and philosophic, if any nature ever will? Or will he rather say it is those men, the ones we ruled out?

Surely not.

Will they then still grow savage when we say that, until the philosophic kind becomes master of a city, there will be no rest from evils for either the city or the citizens, nor will the constitution we have been telling as a tale in speech ever reach its completion in deed?

Perhaps less so, he said.

Do you want us, then, I said, to say not that they have become less harsh, but that they have become altogether gentle and are persuaded, so that, if nothing else, they may at least agree out of shame?

Certainly, he said.

Let these men, then, I said, be taken as persuaded of this — but will anyone contend, on this next point, that the offspring of kings or of potentates could not turn out to be philosophic in their natures?

Not a single person, he said.

But can anyone say that, once such men have come to be, there is a great necessity for them to be corrupted? That it is difficult for them to be preserved, we too agree — but is there anyone who would dispute that, in all time, out of all such men, not a single one could ever be preserved?

How could there be?

But surely, I said, one man, if he proves sufficient and has a city obedient to him, could accomplish everything that is now disbelieved.

For one is enough, he said.

For surely, I said, when a ruler establishes the laws and practices we have gone through, it is not, I take it, impossible for the citizens to be willing to carry them out.

Not in the slightest.

But then, is it anything to marvel at, or anything impossible, that what seems right to us should seem right to others as well?

The Greatest Study, and What the Good Is Not

I do not think so myself, he said.

And yet, as I think, we discussed sufficiently before this that our proposals are the best, if indeed they can be realized.

Yes, sufficiently so.

Now then, it seems, this is how matters stand for us regarding our legislation: what we propose is best, if it could come to be, but difficult to bring about — not impossible, however.

So it does, he said.

Then, since this has at last, with difficulty, reached its conclusion, must we not now say what remains after it — in what way, and out of what studies and practices, the saviors of the constitution will be found among us, and at what age each will take up each of these?

We must indeed say it, he said.

It was no cleverness on my part, I said, that made me pass over earlier the difficulty of the possession of women, and child-bearing, and the establishment of the rulers — I knew how invidious the wholly true arrangement is, and how hard to bring about; for now, nonetheless, the need to go through it has come. And the matters of the women and children have now been settled, but the matter of the rulers must be taken up again as if from the beginning. We said, if you remember, that they must be shown to be lovers of their city, tested in pleasures and pains, and must be seen not casting out this conviction in toils, nor in fears, nor in any other change of fortune — or else the one unable to hold to it must be rejected, while the one who comes through everywhere unspoiled, like gold tested in fire, must be set up as a ruler, and must be given honors and prizes, both in life and after death. Such, more or less, were the things said, while the argument slipped sideways and veiled itself, afraid to stir what now lies before us.

What you say is most true, he said — I do remember.

Yes, my friend, I said, I shrank from saying what has now been dared — but let this much now be dared: that our most exact guardians must be established as philosophers.

So let it be said, he said.

Understand, then, how naturally there will be few such men for you — for the nature we described as needing to belong to them rarely wants its parts to grow together in the same person; for the most part it grows up scattered.

How, he said, do you mean?

You know that quick learners, men of good memory, keen-witted, sharp, and whatever else goes along with these, are not apt to be born at once both vigorous and magnificent in mind, of the sort willing to live in an orderly way, with quiet and steadiness; rather, such quick men are carried by their sharpness wherever they happen to go, and all their steadiness deserts them.

What you say is true, he said.

Now these steady characters in turn, the ones not easily changed, which one would rather rely on as trustworthy, and which in war are not easily moved by fears, do the same thing again with respect to learning — they are sluggish and slow to learn, as if benumbed, and they are filled with sleep and yawning whenever there is need to work hard at anything of that sort.

That is so, he said.

But we say that a man must have a good and fine share of both — or else he must be given no share, either of the most exact education, or of honor, or of rule.

Rightly so, he said.

Then do you not think this will be rare?

How could it not?

He must be tested, then, in the toils and fears and pleasures we spoke of before, and further — this we now say, what we passed over then — he must be exercised in many studies too, while we watch whether that nature will be able to bear even the greatest studies, or whether it will play the coward, as those who play the coward in other things do.

It is indeed fitting, he said, to look at it this way. But which studies do you call the greatest?

You remember, I suppose, I said, that when we had distinguished three kinds of soul, we worked out, concerning justice and moderation and courage and wisdom, what each one is.

If I did not remember, he said, I would rightly deserve not to hear what remains.

And do you remember, too, what was said about them beforehand?

What was that?

We said, I believe, that to see them in the finest way there was another, longer road, by going round which they would become plain — though it was possible to attach to them proofs consistent with what had been said before. And you said that was enough, and so what was said then fell short, as it seemed to me, of exactness; but whether it was satisfactory to you, you yourselves would be the ones to say.

But to me, at least, he said, it seemed adequate — and indeed it seemed so to the others too.

But, my friend, I said, a measure of such things that falls short of what is by anything at all is not really adequate — for nothing incomplete is the measure of anything. But sometimes some people think that things are already good enough, and that there is no need to inquire further.

Yes indeed, he said, many people feel this way, out of laziness.

But this is a feeling, I said, that a guardian of the city and its laws needs least of all.

So it would seem, he said.

The longer road, then, my friend, I said, such a man must travel, and he must labor no less in learning than in physical training — or else, as we just said, he will never reach the end of the greatest and most fitting study.

What, he said, are these not the greatest things — is there something greater still than justice and the other things we discussed?

Something greater, I said — and of these very things it is not an outline that we must look at, as we do now; rather, we must not pass over the most finished working of them out. Or is it not absurd that, over other matters of little worth, we strain ourselves to do everything so that they will be as exact and as pure as possible, while for the greatest matters we do not think that the greatest exactness is due as well?

Very much so, he said, [the thought is a worthy one] — but as for this greatest study you speak of, and what it concerns, do you think, he said, that anyone would let you off without asking what it is?

Hardly, I said — but do ask, you too. At any rate you have heard it not just once or twice — but now either you do not recognize it, or you mean to make trouble for me by picking a quarrel with it. And I think it is rather this — since you have often heard that the form of the good is the greatest study, the one by whose further use just things, and everything else too, become useful and beneficial. And now you know well enough that this is what I am about to say, and, further, that we do not know it adequately; but if we do not know it, then, however well we might know everything else without it, you know that it does us no good at all — just as it would do no good to possess anything at all without the good. Or do you think there is any advantage in possessing every possession there is, if it is not a good one? Or in understanding everything else without the good, while understanding nothing that is fine and good?

No, by Zeus, not I, he said.

But surely you also know this much: that to the many the good seems to be pleasure, while to the more sophisticated, it is practical wisdom.

How could I not?

And you know too, my friend, that those who hold this view are unable to say which practical wisdom they mean, but in the end are forced to say it is the practical wisdom of the good.

Yes indeed, he said, and ridiculously so.

How could it not be, I said, when, after reproaching us for not knowing the good, they turn around and speak to us as though we did know it? For they say it is the practical wisdom of the good, as if we in turn understood what they mean whenever they utter the word good.

That is very true, he said.

But what about those who define the good as pleasure? Are they perhaps any less full of confusion than the others? Or are these people too not forced to admit that there are bad pleasures?

Very much so.

It follows, I think, that they end up admitting that the same things are both good and bad. Isn't that so?

Of course.

So is it not clear that there are great and many disputes about it?

How could there not be?

But what of this? Is it not clear that, with things just and fine, many would choose the things that merely seem so, even ⟨if⟩ they are not, and would nonetheless practice, and possess, and be thought to have them; but with good things, it is no longer enough for anyone to possess what merely seems good — instead they seek what really is good, and here, at last, everyone already disdains mere opinion?

Very much so, he said.

That which every soul pursues, and for the sake of which it does everything, divining that it is something real, yet at a loss, unable to grasp well enough what it actually is, or to make use of the sort of stable belief about it that it has about other things, and because of this missing whatever benefit there was in those other things as well — about something so important and so great, shall we then say that even those best men in the city, to whom we shall entrust everything, must be left in the dark?

Least of all, he said.

I think, at any rate, I said, that just things and fine things, so long as it is not known in what way they are good, will have got themselves no very valuable guardian in the man who does not know this — and I divine that no one will know them adequately before he knows that.

Yes, you divine rightly, he said.

Then will our constitution be perfectly ordered, if such a guardian oversees it — one who has knowledge of these things?

The Sun, Offspring of the Good

Necessarily, he said. But you yourself, Socrates, do you say that the good is knowledge, or pleasure, or something else besides these?

You there, my good man, I said, it has for a long time now been obvious that what satisfies other people about these matters would not satisfy you.

For it does not seem right to me either, Socrates, he said, that someone who has worked at these questions for so long should be able to report what others hold, but not what he holds himself.

And what of that? I said — do you think it right to speak as if one knew about things one does not know?

Not at all as one who knows, he said — but as one who supposes, wishing to say what he believes.

And what of that? I said — have you not noticed that opinions without knowledge are all ugly? The best of them are blind — or do men who hold something true but have no intellect strike you as any different from blind men who take the right road?

Not at all, he said.

Do you want, then, to look at ugly things, blind and crooked, when it's possible to hear bright and beautiful ones from others?

In the name of Zeus, Socrates, said Glaucon, do not stop now, just when you seem to be at the end. For it will satisfy us if you go through the good the same way you went through justice and moderation and the rest.

It will certainly satisfy me too, my friend, I said — but I'm afraid I won't be able to, and in my eagerness I'll make a fool of myself and provoke laughter. But, my blessed friends, let us for now leave aside just what the good itself is — for it seems to me more than the present impulse can reach, even to arrive at what I now think about it — but I am willing to speak about what appears to be the offspring of the good and most like it, if that is agreeable to you; if not, we shall let it go.

Well, speak, he said — you can pay back the account of the father another time.

I would wish, I said, to be able to pay it back myself, and for you to receive it in full, rather than, as now, only the interest. But receive, then, this interest and offspring of the good itself. Be careful, though, that I don't somehow deceive you without meaning to, paying out a counterfeit account of the interest.

We will be careful, he said, as far as we can — just speak.

Only once I've come to an agreement with you, I said, and reminded you of what was said before, and of what has already been said many times on other occasions.

What sort of things? So he asked.

There are many beautiful things, I said, and many good things, and we say that each set of them is so, and we distinguish them by an account.

We do indeed say that.

And also the beautiful itself and the good itself — and in the same way, concerning everything we then posited as many, we turn back and, positing a single form for each on the assumption that it is one, address each as what it is.

That is so.

And we say that the many are seen but not thought, while the forms, in turn, are thought but not seen.

Absolutely.

With what part of ourselves, then, do we see the things that are seen?

With sight, he said.

And is it not, I said, by hearing that we hear the things that are heard, and by the other senses all the things that are perceptible?

Of course.

Have you noticed, then, I said, how the craftsman of the senses made the power of seeing and being seen by far the most costly of all?

Not really, he said.

Well, consider it this way. Is there anything else, of a different kind, that hearing and voice need in addition, so that the one may hear and the other be heard — which, if it isn't present as a third thing, the one won't hear and the other won't be heard?

Of nothing, he said.

And I think, I said, that many of the other senses too — not to say none of them — need nothing of this kind. Or can you name one?

I certainly cannot, he said.

But don't you realize that sight and the visible do need something?

How so?

Sight being present in the eyes, I said, and the one who has it trying to use it, and color being present in the objects — unless a third kind of thing, whose nature is specifically fitted for this very purpose, is also present — you know that sight will see nothing, and the colors will remain invisible.

And what, he said, is this thing you mean?

What you call light, I said.

What you say is true, he said.

It is in no small measure, then, that the sense of seeing and the power of being seen have been yoked together by a more honored yoke than the other pairings, if indeed light is not without honor.

But indeed, he said, it's far from being without honor.

Which of the gods in heaven, then, can you point to as responsible for this, whose light lets our sight see in the best way, and the things seen be seen?

The very one you would name, he said, and everyone else too — for clearly you're asking about the sun.

Is sight, then, related by nature to this god in the following way?

How do you mean?

Sight itself is not the sun, nor is that in which it comes to be — what we call the eye.

No, indeed not.

But I think it is the most sunlike of the organs concerned with the senses.

By far.

And doesn't it possess the power it has as something dispensed from the sun, like an inflow?

Certainly.

Then is it not also true of the sun, that it is not sight, but, being the cause of sight, is seen by this very sight?

That is so, he said.

Say, then, I said, that this is what I mean by the offspring of the good, which the good begot as its analogue: what the good itself is, in the intelligible region, in relation to intellect and the things thought, this same thing is, in the visible region, in relation to sight and the things seen.

How do you mean? Go through it for me still further, he said.

Eyes, I said — you know that when someone turns them no longer toward things whose colors the light of day covers, but toward things lit by the gleams of night, they grow dim and seem nearly blind, as if clear sight were not present in them?

Very much so, he said.

But when, I think, they turn toward things the sun shines on, they see clearly, and the same eyes plainly have sight present in them.

Of course.

In just this way, then, think of the soul too: when it fixes itself on that which is illuminated by truth and what is, it apprehends and knows it and appears to possess intellect; but when it fixes on that which is mixed with darkness — that which comes to be and passes away — it forms opinion and grows dim, shifting its opinions up and down, and again resembles something without intellect.

So it does resemble that.

Say, then, that this thing — which supplies truth to the things known, and renders to the knower his power — is the form of the good; and conceive of it as the cause of knowledge and of truth, and as itself something known; and, beautiful though both of these are, knowledge and truth, you will judge rightly in holding that it is other than they, and still more beautiful than they; and as for knowledge and truth: just as there it was right to think light and sight sunlike, but not right to hold either to be the sun, so here too it is right to think both of these goodlike, but not right to hold either of them to be the good — rather, the condition of the good must be honored still more highly.

You are describing an inconceivable beauty, he said, if it provides knowledge and truth, and yet is itself beyond these in beauty — for surely you don't mean that it is pleasure.

Hush, I said — rather, go on examining its image still further in this way.

How do you mean?

You will say, I think, that the sun provides the things that are seen not only with the power to be seen, but also with their becoming and growth and nourishment, though it is not itself becoming.

How could it not?

Say, then, likewise, that for the things known, not only is their being known granted by the good, but their existence and their being are added to them by it as well, though the good itself is not being — rather, it stands still beyond being, surpassing it in seniority and power.

And Glaucon, quite comically, said, by Apollo, what a supernatural extravagance.

You are to blame, I said, for forcing me to say what I think about it.

And do not stop at all, he said — if nothing else, at least go through the likeness to the sun again, in case you are leaving something out.

Well, I said, I'm certainly leaving out a great deal.

Then don't leave out even a small part, he said.

I think, I said, that I'll leave out a great deal — but still, as much as is possible for now, I won't willingly leave anything out.

Please don't, he said.

The Divided Line

Understand, then, I said, as we are saying, that there are two of them, and that the one rules over the kind and region of the intelligible, while the other, in turn, over the visible — I avoid saying the heaven, so that I may not seem to you to be quibbling about the name. But in any case, do you grasp these as two kinds, visible and intelligible?

I have them.

So then, take a line cut into two unequal segments, and cut each of the two segments again by the same ratio — the segment of the visible kind and that of the intelligible — and you will have them, in respect of clarity and obscurity relative to one another, so that in the visible the one segment is images — and by images I mean, first of all, shadows, then reflections in water and in whatever is close-grained, smooth, and bright, and everything of that sort — if you follow.

But I do follow.

Now set down the other segment as that which this resembles: the living things around us, the whole class of what grows, and the whole class of what is manufactured.

I set it down, he said.

Would you also be willing to say, I said, that it has been divided with respect to truth and untruth, so that as the opinable is to the knowable, so the likeness is to that which it resembles?

I would indeed, he said, very much so.

Now consider, in turn, how the intelligible must be divided.

How?

In this way — in the one part of it the soul, using as images the things imitated before, is compelled to inquire from hypotheses, proceeding not toward a first principle but toward a conclusion, while in the other part, in turn — the part that goes toward an unhypothesized first principle — it goes from a hypothesis, and without the images the other part uses, makes its way by means of the forms themselves, through themselves.

What you are saying, he said, I did not follow well enough.

But let me try again, I said; for once I have said certain things first, you will understand more easily. For I think you know that those who occupy themselves with geometry, calculation, and such things posit the odd and the even, the figures, the three kinds of angles, and other things akin to these in each branch, treating them as known — having made these into hypotheses, they no longer think it worthwhile to give any account of them, either to themselves or to others, on the ground that they are evident to everyone — and starting from these, going through the remaining steps, they arrive, consistently, at that very thing toward which they set out to inquire.

Quite so, he said — that much I know.

And also that they make further use of visible shapes and construct their arguments about them, thinking not about these but about those things which they resemble — making their arguments for the sake of the square itself and its diagonal, not for the sake of this one which they draw — and so with everything else in the same way: these very things which they mold and draw, of which there are also shadows and images in water, they now use, in turn, as images, while seeking to see those things themselves which one could not see otherwise than by understanding.

That is true, he said.

This, then, is what I called the intelligible kind — that the soul is compelled to use hypotheses in its inquiry into it, not proceeding toward a first principle, on the ground that it is unable to step above the hypotheses, but using as images those very things which are copied by the things below, and which, set beside those, are regarded and honored as being clear and evident.

I understand, he said, that you mean what falls under geometry and its sister crafts.

Now understand that by the other segment of the intelligible I mean this: that which argument itself takes hold of by the power of dialectic, treating its hypotheses not as first principles but truly as hypotheses — as footholds and springboards — so that, going as far as the unhypothesized, to the first principle of the whole, and having grasped it, and then again holding on to the things that hang from it, it thus descends to a conclusion, making no use whatsoever of anything perceptible, but of the forms themselves, through themselves, into themselves, and ends in forms.

I understand, he said — not fully, for you seem to me to be describing quite a task — but that you wish to mark off as clearer what is studied by the knowledge of dialectic concerning being and the intelligible, than what is studied by the so-called crafts, for which hypotheses are first principles, and those who study them are compelled to view them by understanding rather than by the senses; yet because they do not ascend to a first principle in their examination, but proceed from hypotheses, they seem to you not to possess intellect about these things, even though they are intelligible together with a first principle. And you seem to me to call the condition of geometers and such people understanding, but not intellect, treating understanding as something between opinion and intellect.

You have grasped it most adequately, I said. And for me, take these four states arising in the soul corresponding to the four segments — reason for the topmost, understanding for the second, and assign belief to the third and imagination to the last — and arrange them in proportion, considering that just as the things they are set over share in truth, so these states share in clarity.

I understand, he said, and I agree, and I arrange them as you say.

Book VII

The Cave

After this, I said, compare our nature — in respect of education and its lack — to a condition like the following. Picture people in a dwelling underground, shaped like a cave, with its entrance open toward the light and running the length of the whole cave; people who have lived there since childhood, chained by the legs and by the neck, so that they stay in place and see only what is straight in front of them, unable to turn their heads around in a circle because of the chain; with light reaching them from a fire burning above and far off behind them; and between the fire and the prisoners, a path running along above, and alongside this path, picture a low wall built up, like the screens showmen set up in front of the audience, above which they display their marvels.

I see, he said.

Now picture people carrying alongside this wall all sorts of objects that project above it, and statues of men and figures of other animals worked in stone and wood and every kind of material, and, as you would expect, some of the carriers talking and others silent.

You are describing a strange image, he said, and strange prisoners.

Like us, I said; for in the first place, do you think such people would have seen anything of themselves or of one another besides the shadows the fire throws on the wall of the cave facing them?

How could they, he said, if they were compelled to hold their heads motionless throughout their lives?

And what about the things carried past? Isn't it the same with them?

What else?

If, then, they were able to talk with one another, don't you think they would take whatever they saw to be the real things?

Necessarily.

And what if the prison also had an echo coming from the wall facing them? Do you think that, whenever one of those passing by spoke, they would take what was speaking to be anything but the shadow passing by?

No, by Zeus, not I, he said.

Then surely, I said, such people would take nothing to be true except the shadows of the manufactured objects.

Quite necessarily, he said.

Consider, then, I said, what their release and cure from both the chains and their folly would be like, if something of this sort were to happen to them by nature: whenever one of them was released and compelled suddenly to stand up, turn his neck, walk, and look up toward the light, and in doing all this felt pain, and because of the glare was unable to make out clearly the things whose shadows he had until then been seeing, what do you think he would say, if someone told him that before he had been seeing nothing but nonsense, but now, being nearer to what is and turned toward things more fully real, he was seeing more correctly, and, further, if that person, pointing to each of the things passing by, were to compel him by questioning to say what it is? Don't you think he would be at a loss, and consider what he formerly saw more true than what is now being shown to him?

Far more so, he said.

And then, if someone compelled him to look directly at the light itself, wouldn't his eyes hurt, and wouldn't he flee, turning away toward the things he is able to see clearly, and consider these to be really clearer than what is being shown to him?

So it is, he said.

And if, I said, someone dragged him away from there by force, up the rough, steep ascent, and did not let him go before hauling him out into the light of the sun, wouldn't he suffer pain and resent being dragged, and when he came to the light, wouldn't he find his eyes so full of glare that he could not see even one of the things now said to be true?

No, he said — not suddenly, at least.

He would need time to grow accustomed, I imagine, if he is going to see the things above. And first he would most easily make out shadows, and after that the reflections of people and of other things in water, and later the things themselves; and from these he would more easily gaze, by night, at the things in the sky and at the sky itself, looking at the light of the stars and the moon, than by day at the sun and the sun's light.

How could he not?

Last of all, I think, he would be able to look upon the sun — not its images in water or in some place not its own, but the sun itself, by itself, in its own region — and see what it is like.

Necessarily, he said.

And after this he would go on to reason that this is the one that provides the seasons and the years, and governs everything in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all the things they used to see.

Clearly, he said, that is what he would come to after those earlier stages.

Well then? Don't you think that, recalling his first dwelling, and the wisdom there, and his former fellow prisoners, he would count himself fortunate for the change and pity them?

Very much so.

And if there were honors and praises among them at that time, from one another, and prizes for the one who saw most sharply the things passing by, and who best remembered which of them were accustomed to pass earlier, which later , and which together, and who from these was most able to divine what was about to come, do you think he would be desirous of such things and envy those among them who were honored and held power, or would he rather have felt what Homer describes, and want badly to work the soil as a hired hand to another man, one with no land of his own, and to endure anything whatsoever, rather than hold those opinions and live in that way?

Yes, he said, I think he would accept enduring anything at all, rather than live in that way.

And consider this too, I said. If such a person went back down and sat again in the same seat, wouldn't he have his eyes full of darkness, coming suddenly from the sun?

Certainly, he said.

And if he had to compete again in judging those shadows against the men who had been prisoners all along, while his eyes were still dim, before they had settled — and the time needed to grow accustomed were not at all short — wouldn't he become a laughingstock, and wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes ruined, and that it isn't even worth trying to go up? And the one who tried to release them and lead them up — if they could somehow get their hands on him and kill him — wouldn't they kill him?

Indeed they would, he said.

Reading the Cave: The Turning of the Soul

This image, then, I said, dear Glaucon, must be attached, the whole of it, to what was said before — likening the region revealed through sight to the dwelling of the prison, and the light of the fire within it to the power of the sun; and if you take the upward ascent and the viewing of what is above as the soul's journey up into the intelligible place, you will not be wide of my own expectation, at any rate, since that is what you are eager to hear. God, I suppose, knows whether it happens to be true. What appears to me, at any rate, appears like this: in the realm of the knowable, the form of the good is seen last, and only with difficulty, but once seen, one must conclude that it is, for all things, the cause of everything right and beautiful — in the visible realm giving birth to light and to the lord of light, and being itself sovereign in the intelligible realm, providing truth and intellect — and that whoever intends to act sensibly, whether in private or in public, must see it.

I think so too, he said, so far as I am able.

Come, then, I said, join me in believing this too, and do not be surprised that those who have reached that point are unwilling to engage in human affairs, but their souls are always eager to spend their time above — for that is reasonable, I suppose, if indeed this too holds according to the image we described before.

That is reasonable, he said.

But what about this? Do you think it at all surprising, I said, if someone who has come from divine contemplations to human evils behaves awkwardly and looks quite ridiculous, still dim-sighted, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to the darkness around him is forced to contend in the courts, or somewhere else, about the shadows of justice, or about the statues of which they are the shadows, and to dispute about how these things are understood by people who have never yet seen justice itself?

Not at all surprising, he said.

But anyone with intellect, I said, would remember that disturbances of the eyes are of two kinds and come from two causes — when they pass from light into darkness, and from darkness into light. And if he thought that the same things happen to the soul too, then whenever he saw a soul disturbed and unable to see something clearly, he would not laugh unthinkingly, but would consider whether, coming from a brighter life, it has been darkened through unfamiliarity, or whether, coming from greater ignorance into a brighter place, it has been filled with a dazzling glare — and so he would count the one happy for its condition and its life, and pity the other, and if he wanted to laugh at it, his laughter would be less absurd than laughter at the soul that has come down from above, out of the light.

You put that very reasonably, he said.

We must, then, I said, think something like this about these matters, if this is true: that education is not what it is claimed to be by those who profess to teach it. They say, I suppose, that although knowledge is not present in the soul, they put it in — as if putting sight into blind eyes.

So they do say, he said.

But the present argument, I said, indicates that this power is already present in each person's soul, and also the instrument by which each person comes to understand — just as, if the eye could not turn from darkness toward brightness except together with the whole body, so too it must be turned around, together with the whole soul, away from becoming, until it becomes able to bear looking at being, and at the brightest part of being; and this, we say, is the good. Isn't that so?

Yes.

Of this, then, I said, there would be a craft — the craft of this turning around, of how it will be turned most easily and most effectively — not a craft of implanting sight in it, but one that, since it already has sight but is not turned the right way and is not looking where it should, contrives to bring this about.

So it seems, he said.

The other things called virtues of the soul, then, do look to be close to those of the body—for in truth they are not present beforehand, but are later implanted by habits and exercises—but the virtue of thought, it seems, turns out to be something more divine than anything else, and it never loses its power, but through the turning around becomes useful and beneficial, or, again, useless and harmful. Or have you not noticed yet, concerning people said to be wicked but clever, how keenly their little soul sees, and how sharply it makes out the things it has turned toward, since its sight is not poor at all, but is forced to serve vice — so that the sharper it sees, the more evils it works?

Certainly, he said.

This, however, I said — this element of such a nature — if it were hammered at from childhood and so cut free of the leaden weights, akin to becoming, which grow onto it through eating and pleasures and gluttonies of that kind and turn the soul's vision downward — if, released from these, it were turned around toward the things that are true, then this same faculty in these same people would see those things most sharply, just as it now sees the things it is turned toward.