Moderation as Agreement About Who Should Rule

Certainly.

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

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

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

Look, then, he said.

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

How so?

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

Most certainly, he said.

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

Why not?

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

It does seem so, he said.

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

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

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

Certainly.

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

True, he said.

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

I do, he said.

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

Absolutely, he said.

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

Very much so, he said.

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

Very much so indeed, he said.

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

In both, I suppose, he said.

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

In what way?

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

Justice: Doing One's Own

I quite agree, he said.

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

Clearly.

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

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

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

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

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

We must indeed, he said.

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

Good news, he said.

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

What sort of thing?

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

How, he said, do you mean that?

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

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

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

We did say that.

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

We have indeed said it.

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

No, but tell me, he said.

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

Yes, that must be so, he said.

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

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

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

Very much so, he said.

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

Quite so.

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

What else?

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

No, but at this.

As being just?

Yes.

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

That is so.

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

Not really, he said.

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

Yes, absolutely.

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

Entirely so.

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

How could it not be?

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

Turning to the Soul: Is It One or Many?

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

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

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

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

Alike, he said.

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

Alike, he said.

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

True, he said.

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

That is altogether necessary, he said.

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

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

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

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

But it will fully satisfy me too, I said.

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

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

Quite so, he said.

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

Certainly not.

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

The Principle of Opposites: Reason and Appetite

So it seems to me too, he said.

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

How?

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

Very well.

Consider, then, what I mean.

Speak on, he said.

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

In no way.

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

Just so.

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

And rightly so, he said.

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

Not me, at any rate, he said.

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

We must do that, he said.

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

Opposites, he said.

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

I would.

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

How could we not?

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

We shall, he said.

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

Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

I do not understand, he said.

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

Certainly.

Greater than the lesser?

Yes.

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

Yes.

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

What else would it be? So he said.

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

Certainly it is.

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

What else?

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

Yes.

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

That is how it is.

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

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

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

I do, he said — of drink, at least.

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

Absolutely.

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

Clearly so.

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

No, it would not.

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

The Spirited Part

Quite so, he said.

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

Indeed, he said, many people, and often.

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

That is my view too, he said.

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

It appears so.

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

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

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

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

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

I too have heard it, he said.

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

It does show that, he said.

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

No, by Zeus, he said.

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

True, he said.

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

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

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

What is that?

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

Quite so, he said.

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

It must be a third, he said.

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

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

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

The Virtues in the Soul, and Justice as Health

Quite so, he said; you are right.

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

That is so.

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

What else?

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

Necessarily.

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

And this too follows of complete necessity.

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

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

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

Yes indeed, he said, we must remember it.

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

Certainly.

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

Quite so, he said.

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

Certainly, he said.

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

That is so.

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

Rightly so, he said.

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

Certainly.

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

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

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

It is quite necessary.

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

It does not seem so to me, he said.

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

What sort of examples?

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

No one would, he said.

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

Free of them.

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

How could he be?

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

To anyone else indeed, he said.

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

This, and nothing else.

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

By Zeus, he said, I do not.

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

Absolutely.

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

So it appears.

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

That is altogether true, Socrates, he said.

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

By Zeus, no indeed, he said.

Shall we say so, then?

Let us say so.

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

Clearly.

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

Just that, he said.

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

How so?

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

In what way? He said.

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

Yes.

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

Necessarily.

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

Yes, it is so.

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

Quite so, he said.

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

So it is.

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

Necessarily.

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

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

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

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

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

I am following, he said — only speak.

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

What do you mean? He said.

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

How many, then?

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

Tell me, he said, what they are.

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

True, he said.

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

No, that is not likely, he said.

Book V

Polemarchus Interrupts: The Community of Women and Children

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

What are these, then? He asked.

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

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

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

You, he said.

Why exactly, I said, is that?

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

And is it not correct, I said, Adeimantus?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do, he said.

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

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

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

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

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

First Wave: The Nature and Education of Women

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

Yes.

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

How? He said.

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

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

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

It is not possible.

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

Yes.

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

Yes.

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

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

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

Very much so, he said.

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

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

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

You are right, he said.

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

I do.

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

Certainly, he said.

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

Very much so, he said.

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

Nothing prevents it, he said.

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

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

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

How could she not differ?

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

Of course.

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

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

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

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

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

Certainly.

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

So it seems, he said.

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

Precisely so.

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

Why is that?

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

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

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

How so?

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

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

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

That would be ridiculous, he said.

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

I do.

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

Certainly.

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

And rightly so, he said.

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

That is only fair.

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

He might well say so.

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

Certainly.

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

No one, he said, will name any others.

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

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

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

Certainly.

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

How could we?

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

Of course.

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

I think there is.

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

These too.

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

Just such a one, indeed.

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

So it appears.

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

Certainly.

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

The same.

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

Certainly.

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

So it seems.

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

It was.

And has it not been agreed that it is possible?

Yes.

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

Clearly.

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

Not a different one.

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

Concerning what?

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

Not at all.

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

You ask a ridiculous question, he said.

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

By far.

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

This too, he said, by far.

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

There is not.

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

How could they not?

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

Just so.

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

Certainly.

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

Second Wave: Wives and Children in Common

Indeed, he said, that is no small wave you are escaping.

You will say it is not a big one, I said, once you see what comes next.

Say it, then, and let me see, he said.

Following on this, I said, and on the earlier ones too, there is, I believe, this law.

What law?

These women, all of them, are to belong in common to all these men, and none is to live privately with any one of them; and the children, in turn, are to be held in common as well, with no parent to know which child is his own, and no child its parent.

This, he said, is far more incredible than the last — both as to whether it is possible and as to whether it is beneficial.

I do not think, I said, that there would be dispute, at least about the benefit — that it is not the greatest good for the women to be held in common and the children in common, if indeed that is possible — but I think the greatest dispute would be about whether it is possible or not.

About both, he said, there would certainly be plenty of dispute.

You are building up quite a case against me, I said — and I had hoped to escape at least one part of it, thinking that if it seemed beneficial to you, all that would remain for me was the question of whether it is possible or not.

But you did not get away with running off, he said — give an account of both.

I must submit to trial, I said. Grant me this much, though : let me have my holiday, the way idle people are in the habit of feasting their minds by themselves, when they walk along alone. For people like that, before working out how what they desire will come about, set that question aside, so as not to wear themselves out deliberating over what is possible and what is not, and, positing that what they want already exists, go on at once to arrange the rest, and delight in running through all they will do once it has happened, making an idle soul idler still. Well, I too am already growing soft, and I want to put off that question — in what way these things are possible — and look into it later; for now, if you will allow me, I shall assume they are possible and consider how the rulers will arrange them once they come about, and how, once carried out, they would be more advantageous than anything else for both the city and the guardians. I shall try to examine these matters with you first, and those others afterward, if indeed you allow it.

Well, I allow it, he said — go ahead and examine it.

I think, then, I said, that if the rulers are to be worthy of that name, and their auxiliaries likewise, the latter will be willing to do what is ordered, and the former will do the ordering — themselves obeying the laws in some matters, and imitating them in others, wherever we leave things to their own discretion.

Likely enough, he said.

You, then, as their lawgiver, I said, will select the women just as you selected the men, and hand them over matched as closely as possible in nature; and since they share houses and common meals, with no one possessing anything of that kind privately, they will be together, and being mingled together both in their exercises and in the rest of their upbringing, they will, I think, be driven by an innate necessity toward union with one another. Or do you not think what I am saying is a matter of necessity?

Not geometrical necessities, he said, but erotic ones, which are likely to be sharper than the others at persuading and drawing along the mass of people.

Very much so, I said. But after this, Glaucon, mating with one another in disorder, or doing anything else of that kind, is neither sanctioned in a city of happy people, nor will the rulers allow it.

No, for it is not just, he said.

Clearly, then, after this we will make the marriages sacred, as far as possible; and the most beneficial marriages would be the sacred ones.

Absolutely.

How, then, will they be most beneficial? Tell me this, Glaucon: I see in your house both hunting dogs and a good many pedigree gamecocks — have you, in Zeus's name, ever paid attention to their mating and breeding?

Paid attention to what? He asked.

In the first place, among these very animals, pedigreed as they are, are not some of them the best, and do they not turn out to be so?

There are.

Do you, then, breed from all of them alike, or are you eager to breed above all from the best?

From the best.

What else? From the youngest, or the oldest, or above all from those in their prime?

From those in their prime.

And if breeding is not done that way, do you think the stock of birds and of dogs will be much worse?

I do, he said.

And what do you think about horses, I said, and the other animals? Is it any different with them?

That would be strange, he said.

Good heavens, I said, my dear friend, how badly we need our rulers to be of the highest quality, if the same really holds for the human race too.

Well, it does hold, he said — but why do you say so?

Because they must, I said, make considerable use of drugs. And even a rather inferior doctor, I suppose, we think good enough for bodies that do not need drugs but are willing to submit to a regimen — but whenever it is necessary to administer drugs as well, we know that a bolder doctor is required.

True — but what are you getting at?

At this, I said: it seems our rulers will need to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit of those they rule. And we said, I believe, that all such things are useful in the guise of a drug.

And rightly so, he said.

It is in marriages and childbearing, then, that this right use seems to arise not least of all.

How so?

Well, I said, from what we have agreed, the best men must mate with the best women as often as possible, and the worst with the worst the opposite way; and the offspring of the former must be reared, and those of the latter not, if the flock is to be of the highest quality — and all this must happen without anyone noticing except the rulers themselves, if the herd of guardians is in turn to be as free from faction as possible.

Quite right, he said.

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.