CONTENTS

Book I. Of Wealth, Justice, Moderation, and their Opposites
Book II. The Individual, the State, and Education
Book III. The Arts in Education
Book IV. Wealth, Poverty, and Virtue
Book V. On Matrimony and Philosophy
Book VI. The Philosophy of Government
Book VII. On Shadows and Realities in Education
Book VIII. Four Forms of Government
Book IX. On Wrong or Right Government, and the Pleasures of Each
Book X. The Recompense of Life



BOOK I: OF WEALTH, JUSTICE, MODERATION, AND THEIR OPPOSITES

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE

Socrates, who is the narrator
Cephalus.
Glaucon.
Thrasymachus.
Adeimantus.
Cleitophon.
Polemarchus.


I WENT down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer
up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would
celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the
inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had
finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and
at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a dis-
tance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait
for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: "Polemarchus desires
you to wait."

I turned round, and asked him where his master was.

"There he is," said the youth, "coming after you, if you will only wait."

"Certainly we will," said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him
Adeimantus, Glaucon's brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who had been
at the procession.

SOCRATES - POLEMARCHUS - GLAUCON - ADEIMANTUS

Polemarchus said to me "I perceive, Socrates, that you and our companion are already on
your way to the city."

"You are not far wrong." I said.

"But do you see" he rejoined "how many we are?"

"Of course."

"And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to remain where you are."

"May there not be the alternative," I said, "that we may persuade you to let us go?"

"But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you?" he said.

"Certainly not." replied Glaucon.

"Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured."

Adeimantus added "Has no one told you of the torch-race on horseback in honour of the god-
dess which will take place in the evening?"

"With horses!" I replied "That is a novelty. Will horsemen carry torches and pass them one
to another during the race?"

"Yes" said Polemarchus "and not only so, but a festival will be celebrated at night, which
you certainly ought to see. Let us rise soon after supper and see this festival; there will
be a gathering of young men, and we will have a good talk. Stay then, and do not be perverse."

Glaucon said "I suppose, since you insist, that we must."

"Very good." I replied.

Accordingly we went with Polemarchus to his house; and there we found his brothers Lysias and
Euthydemus, and with them Thrasymachus the Chalcedonian, Charmantides the Paeanian, and Clei-
tophon the son of Aristonymus. There too was Cephalus the father of Polemarchus, whom I had
not seen for a long time, and I thought him very much aged. He was seated on a cushioned chair,
and had a garland on his head, for he had been sacrificing in the court; and there were some
other chairs in the room arranged in a semicircle, upon which we sat down by him. He saluted
me eagerly, and then he said:--

"You don't come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought: If I were still able to go and see
you I would not ask you to come to me. But at my age I can hardly get to the city, and there-
fore you should come more often to the Piraeus. For let me tell you, that the more the plea-
sures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation. Do
not then deny my request, but make our house your resort and keep company with these young
men; we are old friends, and you will be quite at home with us."

I replied "There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with
aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go,
and of whom I ought to enquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.
And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which
the poets call the 'threshold of old age'--Is life harder towards the end, or what report do
you give of it?"

"I will tell you, Socrates" he said "what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we
are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says; and at our meetings the tale of my acquain-
tance commonly is--I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled a-
way: there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life. Some com-
plain of the slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of how
many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame
that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too being old, and every
other old man, would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of
others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the
question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles,--are you still the man you were? Peace, he
replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped
from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem
as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great
sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we
are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates,
that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same
cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and
happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite dispos-
ition youth and age are equally a burden."

I listened in admiration, and wanting to draw him out, that he might go on "Yes, Cephalus" I
said "but I rather suspect that people in general are not convinced by you when you speak
thus; they think that old age sits lightly upon you, not because of your happy disposition,
but because you are rich, and wealth is well known to be a great comforter."

"You are right" he replied "they are not convinced: and there is something in what they say;
not, however, so much as they imagine. I might answer them as Themistocles answered the Seri-
phian who was abusing him and saying that he was famous, not for his own merits but because
he was an Athenian: 'If you had been a native of my country or I of yours, neither of us would
have been famous.' And to those who are not rich and are impatient of old age, the same reply
may be made; for to the good poor man old age cannot be a light burden, nor can a bad rich
man ever have peace with himself."

"May I ask, Cephalus, whether your fortune was for the most part inherited or acquired by
you?"

"Acquired! Socrates; do you want to know how much I acquired? In the art of making money I
have been midway between my father and grandfather: for my grandfather, whose name I bear,
doubled and trebled the value of his patrimony, that which he inherited being much what I
possess now; but my father Lysanias reduced the property below what it is at present: and I
shall be satisfied if I leave to these my sons not less but a little more than I received."

"That was why I asked you the question" I replied "because I see that you are indifferent
about money, which is a characteristic rather of those who have inherited their fortunes than
of those who have acquired them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a
creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents
for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is
common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about no-
thing but the praises of wealth.

That is true, he said.

Yes, that is very true, but may I ask another question?--What do you consider to be the
greatest blessing which you have reaped from your wealth?

One, he said, of which I could not expect easily to convince others. For let me tell you,
Socrates, that when a man thinks himself to be near death, fears and cares enter into his
mind which he never had before; the tales of a world below and the punishment which is ex-
acted there of deeds done here were once a laughing matter to him, but now he is tormented
with the thought that they may be true: either from the weakness of age, or because he is
now drawing nearer to that other place, he has a clearer view of these things; suspicions
and alarms crowd thickly upon him, and he begins to reflect and consider what wrongs he has
done to others. And when he finds that the sum of his transgressions is great he will many
a time like a child start up in his sleep for fear, and he is filled with dark forebodings.
But to him who is conscious of no sin, sweet hope, as Pindar charmingly says, is the kind
nurse of his age:

“Hope,” he says, “cherishes the soul of him who lives in justice and holiness, and is
the nurse of his age and the companion of his journey hope which is mightiest to sway the
restless soul of man.”

How admirable are his words! And the great blessing of riches, I do not say to every man,
but to a good man, is, that he has had no occasion to deceive or to defraud others, either
intentionally or unintentionally; and when he departs to the world below he is not in any
apprehension about offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes to men. Now to this
peace of mind the possession of wealth greatly contributes; and therefore I say, that, set-
ting one thing against another, of the many advantages which wealth has to give, to a man
of sense this is in my opinion the greatest.

Well said, Cephalus, I replied; but as concerning justice, what is it?--to speak the truth
and to pay your debts--no more than this? And even to this are there not exceptions? Sup-
pose that a friend when in his right mind has deposited arms with me and he asks for them
when he is not in his right mind, ought I to give them back to him? No one would say that
I ought or that I should be right in doing so, any more than they would say that I ought
always to speak the truth to one who is in his condition.

You are quite right, he replied.

But then, I said, speaking the truth and paying your debts is not a correct definition of
justice.

Quite correct, Socrates, if Simonides is to be believed, said Polemarchus, interposing.

I fear, said Cephalus, that I must go now, for I have to look after the sacrifices, and I
hand over the argument to Polemarchus and the company.

Is not Polemarchus your heir? I said.

To be sure, he answered, and went away laughing to the sacrifices.

Tell me then, O thou heir of the argument, what did Simonides say, and according to you,
truly say, about justice?

He said that the repayment of a debt is just, and in saying so he appears to me to be right.

I shall be sorry to doubt the word of such a wise and inspired man, but his meaning, though
probably clear to you, is the reverse of clear to me. For he certainly does not mean, as we
were just now saying, that I ought to return a deposit of arms or of anything else to one
who asks for it when he is not in his right senses; and yet a deposit cannot be denied to
be a debt.

True.

Then when the person who asks me is not in his right mind I am by no means to make the re-
turn?

Certainly not.

When Simonides said that the repayment of a debt was justice, he did not mean to include
that case?

Certainly not; for he thinks that a friend ought always to do good to a friend, and never
evil.

You mean that the return of a deposit of gold which is to the injury of the receiver, if
the two parties are friends, is not the repayment of a debt--that is what you would imagine
him to say?

Yes.

And are enemies also to receive what we owe to them?

To be sure, he said, they are to receive what we owe them; and an enemy, as I take it, owes
to an enemy that which is due or proper to him that is to say, evil.

Simonides, then, after the manner of poets, would seem to have spoken darkly of the nature
of justice; for he really meant to say that justice is the giving to each man what is pro-
per to him, and this he termed a debt.

That must have been his meaning, he said.

By heaven! I replied; and if we asked him what due or proper thing is given by medicine,
and to whom, what answer do you think that he would make to us?

He would surely reply that medicine gives drugs and meat and drink to human bodies.

And what due or proper thing is given by cookery, and to what?

Seasoning to food.

And what is that which justice gives, and to whom?

If, Socrates, we are to be guided at all by the analogy of the preceding instances, then
justice is the art which gives good to friends and evil to enemies.

That is his meaning, then?

I think so.

And who is best able to do good to his friends and evil to his enemies in time of sickness?

The physician.

Or when they are on a voyage, amid the perils of the sea?

The pilot.

And in what sort of actions or with a view to what result is the just man most able to do
harm to his enemy and good to his friend?

In going to war against the one and in making alliances with the other.

But when a man is well, my dear Polemarchus, there is no need of a physician?

No.

And he who is not on a voyage has no need of a pilot?

No.

Then in time of peace justice will be of no use?

I am very far from thinking so.

You think that justice may be of use in peace as well as in war?

Yes.

Like husbandry for the acquisition of corn?

Yes.

Or like shoemaking for the acquisition of shoes--that is what you mean?

Yes.

And what similar use or power of acquisition has justice in time of peace?

In contracts, Socrates, justice is of use.

And by contracts you mean partnerships?

Exactly.

But is the just man or the skilful player a more useful and better partner at a game of
draughts?

The skilful player.

And in the laying of bricks and stones is the just man a more useful or better partner than
the builder?

Quite the reverse.

Then in what sort of partnership is the just man a better partner than the harp-player, as in
playing the harp the harp-player is certainly a better partner than the just man?

In a money partnership.

Yes, Polemarchus, but surely not in the use of money; for you do not want a just man to be
your counsellor in the purchase or sale of a horse; a man who is knowing about horses would
be better for that, would he not?

Certainly.

And when you want to buy a ship, the shipwright or the pilot would be better?

True.

Then what is that joint use of silver or gold in which the just man is to be preferred?

When you want a deposit to be kept safely.

You mean when money is not wanted, but allowed to lie?

Precisely.

That is to say, justice is useful when money is useless?

That is the inference.

And when you want to keep a pruning-hook safe, then justice is useful to the individual and
to the State; but when you want to use it, then the art of the vine-dresser?

Clearly.

And when you want to keep a shield or a lyre, and not to use them, you would say that justice
is useful; but when you want to use them, then the art of the soldier or of the musician?

Certainly.

And so of all other things--justice is useful when they are useless, and useless when they are
useful?

That is the inference.

Then justice is not good for much. But let us consider this further point: Is not he who can
best strike a blow in a boxing match or in any kind of fighting best able to ward off a blow?

Certainly.

And he who is most skilful in preventing or escaping from a disease is best able to create
one?

True.

And he is the best guard of a camp who is best able to steal a march upon the enemy?

Certainly.

Then he who is a good keeper of anything is also a good thief?

That, I suppose, is to be inferred.

Then if the just man is good at keeping money, he is good at stealing it.

That is implied in the argument.

Then after all, the just man has turned out to be a thief. And this is a lesson which I suspect
you must have learnt out of Homer; for he, speaking of Autolycus, the maternal grandfather of
Odysseus, who is a favorite of his, affirms that

“He was excellent above all men in theft and perjury.”

And so, you and Homer and Simonides are agreed that justice is an art of theft; to be practised,
however, “for the good of friends and for the harm of enemies”--that was what you were saying?

No, certainly not that, though I do not now know what I did say; but I still stand by the latter
words.

Well, there is another question: By friends and enemies do we mean those who are so really, or
only in seeming?

Surely, he said, a man may be expected to love those whom he thinks good, and to hate those whom
he thinks evil.

Yes, but do not persons often err about good and evil: many who are not good seem to be so, and
conversely?

That is true.

Then to them the good will be enemies and the evil will be their friends?

True.

And in that case they will be right in doing good to the evil and evil to the good?

Clearly.

But the good are just and would not do an injustice?

True.

Then according to your argument it is just to injure those who do no wrong?

Nay, Socrates; the doctrine is immoral.

Then I suppose that we ought to do good to the just and harm to the unjust?

I like that better.

But see the consequence: Many a man who is ignorant of human nature has friends who are bad
friends, and in that case he ought to do harm to them; and he has good enemies whom he ought to
benefit; but, if so, we shall be saying the very opposite of that which we affirmed to be the
meaning of Simonides.

Very true, he said; and I think that we had better correct an error into which we seem to have
fallen in the use of the words “friend” and “enemy.”

What was the error, Polemarchus? I asked.

We assumed that he is a friend who seems to be or who is thought good.

And how is the error to be corrected?

We should rather say that he is a friend who is, as well as seems, good; and that he who seems
only and is not good, only seems to be and is not a friend; and of an enemy the same may be
said.

You would argue that the good are our friends and the bad our enemies?

Yes.

And instead of saying simply as we did at first, that it is just to do good to our friends and
harm to our enemies, we should further say: It is just to do good to our friends when they are
good, and harm to our enemies when they are evil?

Yes, that appears to me to be the truth.

But ought the just to injure anyone at all?

Undoubtedly he ought to injure those who are both wicked and his enemies.

When horses are injured, are they improved or deteriorated?

The latter.

Deteriorated, that is to say, in the good qualities of horses, not of dogs?

Yes, of horses.

And dogs are deteriorated in the good qualities of dogs, and not of horses?

Of course.

And will not men who are injured be deteriorated in that which is the proper virtue of man?

Certainly.

And that human virtue is justice?

To be sure.

Then men who are injured are of necessity made unjust?

That is the result.

But can the musician by his art make men unmusical?

Certainly not.

Or the horseman by his art make them bad horsemen?

Impossible.

And can the just by justice make men unjust, or speaking generally, can the good by virtue make
them bad?

Assuredly not.

Any more than heat can produce cold?

It cannot.

Or drought moisture?

Clearly not.

Nor can the good harm anyone?

Impossible.

And the just is the good?

Certainly.

Then to injure a friend or anyone else is not the act of a just man, but of the opposite, who is
the unjust?

I think that what you say is quite true, Socrates.

Then if a man says that justice consists in the repayment of debts, and that good is the debt
which a just man owes to his friends, and evil the debt which he owes to his enemies--to say this
is not wise; for it is not true, if, as has been clearly shown, the injuring of another can be in
no case just.

I agree with you, said Polemarchus.

Then you and I are prepared to take up arms against anyone who attributes such a saying to Sim-
onides or Bias or Pittacus, or any other wise man or seer?

I am quite ready to do battle at your side, he said.

Shall I tell you whose I believe the saying to be?

Whose?

I believe that Periander or Perdiccas or Xerxes or Ismenias the Theban, or some other rich and
mighty man, who had a great opinion of his own power, was the first to say that justice is “do-
ing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.”

Most true, he said.

Yes, I said; but if this definition of justice also breaks down, what other can be offered?

Several times in the course of the discussion Thrasymachus had made an attempt to get the argument
into his own hands, and had been put down by the rest of the company, who wanted to hear the end.
But when Polemarchus and I had done speaking and there was a pause, he could no longer hold his
peace; and, gathering himself up, he came at us like a wild beast, seeking to devour us. We were
quite panic-stricken at the sight of him.

He roared out to the whole company: What folly, Socrates, has taken possession of you all? And
why, sillybillies, do you knock under to one another? I say that if you want really to know what
justice is, you should not only ask but answer, and you should not seek honor to yourself from
the refutation of an opponent, but have your own answer; for there is many a one who can ask and
cannot answer. And now I will not have you say that justice is duty or advantage or profit or
gain or interest, for this sort of nonsense will not do for me; I must have clearness and accuracy.

I was panic-stricken at his words, and could not look at him without trembling. Indeed I believe
that if I had not fixed my eye upon him, I should have been struck dumb: but when I saw his fury
rising, I looked at him first, and was therefore able to reply to him.

Thrasymachus, I said, with a quiver, don’t be hard upon us. Polemarchus and I may have been guil-
ty of a little mistake in the argument, but I can assure you that the error was not intentional.
If we were seeking for a piece of gold, you would not imagine that we were “knocking under to one
another,” and so losing our chance of finding it. And why, when we are seeking for justice, a
thing more precious than many pieces of gold, do you say that we are weakly yielding to one another
and not doing our utmost to get at the truth? Nay, my good friend, we are most willing and anxious
to do so, but the fact is that we cannot. And if so, you people who know all things should pity us
and not be angry with us.

How characteristic of Socrates! he replied, with a bitter laugh; that’s your ironical style! Did
I not foresee--have I not already told you, that whatever he was asked he would refuse to answer,
and try irony or any other shuffle, in order that he might avoid answering?

You are a philosopher, Thrasymachus, I replied, and well know that if you ask a person what num-
bers make up twelve, taking care to prohibit him whom you ask from answering twice six, or three
times four, or six times two, or four times three, “for this sort of nonsense will not do for me”
--then obviously, if that is your way of putting the question, no one can answer you. But suppose
that he were to retort: “Thrasymachus, what do you mean? If one of these numbers which you inter-
dict be the true answer to the question, am I falsely to say some other number which is not the
right one? is that your meaning?”--How would you answer him?

Just as if the two cases were at all alike! he said.

Why should they not be? I replied; and even if they are not, but only appear to be so to the per-
son who is asked, ought he not to say what he thinks, whether you and I forbid him or not?

I presume then that you are going to make one of the interdicted answers?

I dare say that I may, notwithstanding the danger, if upon reflection I approve of any of them.

But what if I give you an answer about justice other and better, he said, than any of these? What
do you deserve to have done to you?

Done to me!--as becomes the ignorant, I must learn from the wise--that is what I deserve to have
done to me.

What, and no payment! A pleasant notion!

I will pay when I have the money, I replied.

But you have, Socrates, said Glaucon: and you, Thrasymachus, need be under no anxiety about money,
for we will all make a contribution for Socrates.

Yes, he replied, and then Socrates will do as he always does--refuse to answer himself, but take
and pull to pieces the answer of someone else.

Why, my good friend, I said, how can anyone answer who knows, and says that he knows, just nothing;
and who, even if he has some faint notions of his own, is told by a man of authority not to utter
them? The natural thing is, that the speaker should be someone like yourself who professes to know
and can tell what he knows. Will you then kindly answer, for the edification of the company and
of myself?

Glaucon and the rest of the company joined in my request, and Thrasymachus, as anyone might see,
was in reality eager to speak; for he thought that he had an excellent answer, and would distin-
guish himself. But at first he affected to insist on my answering; at length he consented to be-
gin. Behold, he said, the wisdom of Socrates; he refuses to teach himself, and goes about learn-
ing of others, to whom he never even says, Thank you.

That I learn of others, I replied, is quite true; but that I am ungrateful I wholly deny. Money
I have none, and therefore I pay in praise, which is all I have; and how ready I am to praise
anyone who appears to me to speak well you will very soon find out when you answer; for I expect
that you will answer well.

Listen, then, he said; I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.
And now why do you not praise me? But of course you won’t.

Let me first understand you, I replied. Justice, as you say, is the interest of the stronger.
What, Thrasymachus, is the meaning of this? You cannot mean to say that because Polydamas, the
pancratiast, is stronger than we are, and finds the eating of beef conducive to his bodily
strength, that to eat beef is therefore equally for our good who are weaker than he is, and right
and just for us?

That’s abominable of you, Socrates; you take the words in the sense which is most damaging to
the argument.

Not at all, my good sir, I said; I am trying to understand them; and I wish that you would be a
little clearer.

Well, he said, have you never heard that forms of government differ--there are tyrannies, and
there are democracies, and there are aristocracies?

Yes, I know.

And the government is the ruling power in each State?

Certainly.

And the different forms of government make laws democratical, aristocratical, tyrannical, with a
view to their several interests; and these laws, which are made by them for their own interests,
are the justice which they deliver to their subjects, and him who transgresses them they punish
as a breaker of the law, and unjust. And that is what I mean when I say that in all States there
is the same principle of justice, which is the interest of the government; and as the government
must be supposed to have power, the only reasonable conclusion is that everywhere there is one
principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.

Now I understand you, I said; and whether you are right or not I will try to discover. But let
me remark that in defining justice you have yourself used the word “interest,” which you for-
bade me to use. It is true, however, that in your definition the words “of the stronger” are
added.

A small addition, you must allow, he said.

Great or small, never mind about that: we must first inquire whether what you are saying is the
truth. Now we are both agreed that justice is interest of some sort, but you go on to say “of
the stronger;” about this addition I am not so sure, and must therefore consider further.

Proceed.

I will; and first tell me, Do you admit that it is just for subjects to obey their rulers?

I do.

But are the rulers of States absolutely infallible, or are they sometimes liable to err?

To be sure, he replied, they are liable to err.

Then in making their laws they may sometimes make them rightly, and sometimes not?

True.

When they make them rightly, they make them agreeably to their interest; when they are mistaken,
contrary to their interest; you admit that?

Yes.

And the laws which they make must be obeyed by their subjects--and that is what you call justice?

Doubtless.

Then justice, according to your argument, is not only obedience to the interest of the stronger,
but the reverse?

What is that you are saying? he asked.

I am only repeating what you are saying, I believe. But let us consider: Have we not admitted
that the rulers may be mistaken about their own interest in what they command, and also that to
obey them is justice? Has not that been admitted?

Yes.

Then you must also have acknowledged justice not to be for the interest of the stronger, when
the rulers unintentionally command things to be done which are to their own injury. For if, as
you say, justice is the obedience which the subject renders to their commands, in that case, O
wisest of men, is there any escape from the conclusion that the weaker are commanded to do, not
what is for the interest, but what is for the injury of the stronger?

Nothing can be clearer, Socrates, said Polemarchus.

Yes, said Cleitophon, interposing, if you are allowed to be his witness.

But there is no need of any witness, said Polemarchus, for Thrasymachus himself acknowledges
that rulers may sometime command what is not for their own interest, and that for subjects to
obey them is justice.

Yes, Polemarchus--Thrasymachus said that for subjects to do what was commanded by their rulers
is just.

Yes, Cleitophon, but he also said that justice is the interest of the stronger, and, while ad-
mitting both these propositions, he further acknowledged that the stronger may command the weak-
er who are his subjects to do what is not for his own interest; whence follows that justice is
the injury quite as much as the interest of the stronger.

But, said Cleitophon, he meant by the interest of the stronger what the stronger thought to be
his interest--this was what the weaker had to do; and this was affirmed by him to be justice.

Those were not his words, rejoined Polemarchus.

Never mind, I replied, if he now says that they are, let us accept his statement. Tell me, Thra-
symachus, I said, did you mean by justice what the stronger thought to be his interest, whether
really so or not?

Certainly not, he said. Do you suppose that I call him who is mistaken the stronger at the time
when he is mistaken?

Yes, I said, my impression was that you did so, when you admitted that the ruler was not infall-
ible, but might be sometimes mistaken.

You argue like an informer, Socrates. Do you mean, for example, that he who is mistaken about the
sick is a physician in that he is mistaken? or that he who errs in arithmetic or grammar is an
arithmetician or grammarian at the time when he is making the mistake, in respect of the mistake?
True, we say that the physician or arithmetician or grammarian has made a mistake, but this is
only a way of speaking; for the fact is that neither the grammarian nor any other person of skill
ever makes a mistake in so far as he is what his name implies; they none of them err unless their
skill fails them, and then they cease to be skilled artists. No artist or sage or ruler errs at
the time when he is what his name implies; though he is commonly said to err, and I adopted the
common mode of speaking. But to be perfectly accurate, since you are such a lover of accuracy, we
should say that the ruler, in so far as he is a ruler, is unerring, and, being unerring, always
commands that which is for his own interest; and the subject is required to execute his commands;
and therefore, as I said at first and now repeat, justice is the interest of the stronger.

Indeed, Thrasymachus, and do I really appear to you to argue like an informer?

Certainly, he replied.

And do you suppose that I ask these questions with any design of injuring you in the argument?

Nay, he replied, “suppose” is not the word--I know it; but you will be found out, and by sheer
force of argument you will never prevail.

I shall not make the attempt, my dear man; but to avoid any misunderstanding occurring between us
in future, let me ask, in what sense do you speak of a ruler or stronger whose interest, as you
were saying, he being the superior, it is just that the inferior should execute--is he a ruler in
the popular or in the strict sense of the term?

In the strictest of all senses, he said. And now cheat and play the informer if you can; I ask no
quarter at your hands. But you never will be able, never.

And do you imagine, I said, that I am such a madman as to try and cheat Thrasymachus? I might as
well shave a lion.

Why, he said, you made the attempt a minute ago, and you failed.

Enough, I said, of these civilities. It will be better that I should ask you a question: Is the
physician, taken in that strict sense of which you are speaking, a healer of the sick or a maker
of money? And remember that I am now speaking of the true physician.

A healer of the sick, he replied.

And the pilot--that is to say, the true pilot--is he a captain of sailors or a mere sailor?

A captain of sailors.

The circumstance that he sails in the ship is not to be taken into account; neither is he to be
called a sailor; the name pilot by which he is distinguished has nothing to do with sailing, but
is significant of his skill and of his authority over the sailors.

Very true, he said.

Now, I said, every art has an interest?

Certainly.

For which the art has to consider and provide?

Yes, that is the aim of art.

And the interest of any art is the perfection of it--this and nothing else?

What do you mean?

I mean what I may illustrate negatively by the example of the body. Suppose you were to ask me
whether the body is self-sufficing or has wants, I should reply: Certainly the body has wants;
for the body may be ill and require to be cured, and has therefore interests to which the art
of medicine ministers; and this is the origin and intention of medicine, as you will acknowledge.
Am I not right?

Quite right, he replied.

But is the art of medicine or any other art faulty or deficient in any quality in the same way
that the eye may be deficient in sight or the ear fail of hearing, and therefore requires another
art to provide for the interests of seeing and hearing--has art in itself, I say, any similar
liability to fault or defect, and does every art require another supplementary art to provide
for its interests, and that another and another without end? Or have the arts to look only after
their own interests? Or have they no need either of themselves or of another?--having no faults
or defects, they have no need to correct them, either by the exercise of their own art or of any
other; they have only to consider the interest of their subject-matter. For every art remains
pure and faultless while remaining true--that is to say, while perfect and unimpaired. Take the
words in your precise sense, and tell me whether I am not right.

Yes, clearly.

Then medicine does not consider the interest of medicine, but the interest of the body?

True, he said.

Nor does the art of horsemanship consider the interests of the art of horsemanship, but the in-
terests of the horse; neither do any other arts care for themselves, for they have no needs;
they care only for that which is the subject of their art?

True, he said.

But surely, Thrasymachus, the arts are the superiors and rulers of their own subjects?

To this he assented with a good deal of reluctance.

Then, I said, no science or art considers or enjoins the interest of the stronger or superior,
but only the interest of the subject and weaker?

He made an attempt to contest this proposition also, but finally acquiesced.

Then, I continued, no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers his own good in what
he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the
human body as a subject, and is not a mere money-maker; that has been admitted?

Yes.

And the pilot likewise, in the strict sense of the term, is a ruler of sailors, and not a mere
sailor?

That has been admitted.

And such a pilot and ruler will provide and prescribe for the interest of the sailor who is un-
der him, and not for his own or the ruler’s interest?

He gave a reluctant “Yes.”

Then, I said, Thrasymachus, there is no one in any rule who, in so far as he is a ruler, consi-
ders or enjoins what is for his own interest, but always what is for the interest of his subject
or suitable to his art; to that he looks, and that alone he considers in everything which he
says and does.

When we had got to this point in the argument, and everyone saw that the definition of justice
had been completely upset, Thrasymachus, instead of replying to me, said, Tell me, Socrates, have
you got a nurse?

Why do you ask such a question, I said, when you ought rather to be answering?

Because she leaves you to snivel, and never wipes your nose: she has not even taught you to know
the shepherd from the sheep.

What makes you say that? I replied.

Because you fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens or tends the sheep or oxen with a view
to their own good and not to the good of himself or his master; and you further imagine that the
rulers of States, if they are true rulers, never think of their subjects as sheep, and that they
are not studying their own advantage day and night. Oh, no; and so entirely astray are you in
your ideas about the just and unjust as not even to know that justice and the just are in reality
another’s good; that is to say, the interest of the ruler and stronger, and the loss of the sub-
ject and servant; and injustice the opposite; for the unjust is lord over the truly simple and
just: he is the stronger, and his subjects do what is for his interest, and minister to his hap-
piness, which is very far from being their own. Consider further, most foolish Socrates, that the
just is always a loser in comparison with the unjust. First of all, in private contracts: where-
ver the unjust is the partner of the just you will find that, when the partnership is dissolved,
the unjust man has always more and the just less. Secondly, in their dealings with the State:
when there is an income-tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount
of income; and when there is anything to be received the one gains nothing and the other much.
Observe also what happens when they take an office; there is the just man neglecting his affairs
and perhaps suffering other losses, and getting nothing out of the public, because he is just;
moreover he is hated by his friends and acquaintance for refusing to serve them in unlawful
ways. But all this is reversed in the case of the unjust man. I am speaking, as before, of in-
justice on a large scale in which the advantage of the unjust is most apparent; and my meaning
will be most clearly seen if we turn to that highest form of injustice in which the criminal
is the happiest of men, and the sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most mis-
erable--that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away the property of others, not
little by little but wholesale; comprehending in one, things sacred as well as profane, private
and public; for which acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating any one of them singly,
he would be punished and incur great disgrace--they who do such wrong in particular cases are
called robbers of temples, and man-stealers and burglars and swindlers and thieves. But when a
man besides taking away the money of the citizens has made slaves of them, then, instead of
these names of reproach, he is termed happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by all
who hear of his having achieved the consummation of injustice. For mankind censure injustice,
fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it. And
thus, as I have shown, Socrates, injustice, when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and
freedom and mastery than justice; and, as I said at first, justice is the interest of the strong-
er, whereas injustice is a man’s own profit and interest.

Thrasymachus, when he had thus spoken, having, like a bath-man, deluged our ears with his words,
had a mind to go away. But the company would not let him; they insisted that he should remain
and defend his position; and I myself added my own humble request that he would not leave us.
Thrasymachus, I said to him, excellent man, how suggestive are your remarks! And are you going
to run away before you have fairly taught or learned whether they are true or not? Is the attempt
to determine the way of man’s life so small a matter in your eyes to determine how life may be
passed by each one of us to the greatest advantage?

And do I differ from you, he said, as to the importance of the inquiry?

You appear rather, I replied, to have no care or thought about us, Thrasymachus--whether we live
better or worse from not knowing what you say you know, is to you a matter of indifference. Pri-
thee, friend, do not keep your knowledge to yourself; we are a large party; and any benefit
which you confer upon us will be amply rewarded. For my own part I openly declare that I am
not convinced, and that I do not believe injustice to be more gainful than justice, even if
uncontrolled and allowed to have free play. For, granting that there may be an unjust man who
is able to commit injustice either by fraud or force, still this does not convince me of the
superior advantage of injustice, and there may be others who are in the same predicament with
myself. Perhaps we may be wrong; if so, you in your wisdom should convince us that we are mis-
taken in preferring justice to injustice.

And how am I to convince you, he said, if you are not already convinced by what I have just
said; what more can I do for you? Would you have me put the proof bodily into your souls?

Heaven forbid! I said; I would only ask you to be consistent; or, if you change, change openly
and let there be no deception. For I must remark, Thrasymachus, if you will recall what was
previously said, that although you began by defining the true physician in an exact sense, you
did not observe a like exactness when speaking of the shepherd; you thought that the shepherd
as a shepherd tends the sheep not with a view to their own good, but like a mere diner or ban-
queter with a view to the pleasures of the table; or, again, as a trader for sale in the market,
and not as a shepherd. Yet surely the art of the shepherd is concerned only with the good of
his subjects; he has only to provide the best for them, since the perfection of the art is al-
ready insured whenever all the requirements of it are satisfied. And that was what I was say-
ing just now about the ruler. I conceived that the art of the ruler, considered as a ruler,
whether in a State or in private life, could only regard the good of his flock or subjects;
whereas you seem to think that the rulers in States, that is to say, the true rulers, like
being in authority.

Think! Nay, I am sure of it.

Then why in the case of lesser offices do men never take them willingly without payment, un-
less under the idea that they govern for the advantage not of themselves but of others? Let
me ask you a question: Are not the several arts different, by reason of their each having a
separate function? And, my dear illustrious friend, do say what you think, that we may make
a little progress.

Yes, that is the difference, he replied.

And each art gives us a particular good and not merely a general one--medicine, for example,
gives us health; navigation, safety at sea, and so on?

Yes, he said.

And the art of payment has the special function of giving pay: but we do not confuse this with
other arts, any more than the art of the pilot is to be confused with the art of medicine, be-
cause the health of the pilot may be improved by a sea voyage. You would not be inclined to
say, would you? that navigation is the art of medicine, at least if we are to adopt your exact
se of language?

Certainly not.

Or because a man is in good health when he receives pay you would not say that the art of pay-
ment is medicine?

I should not.

Nor would you say that medicine is the art of receiving pay because a man takes fees when he
is engaged in healing?

Certainly not.

And we have admitted, I said, that the good of each art is specially confined to the art?

Yes.

Then, if there be any good which all artists have in common, that is to be attributed to some-
thing of which they all have the common use?

True, he replied.

And when the artist is benefited by receiving pay the advantage is gained by an additional use
of the art of pay, which is not the art professed by him?

He gave a reluctant assent to this.

Then the pay is not derived by the several artists from their respective arts. But the truth
is, that while the art of medicine gives health, and the art of the builder builds a house, an-
other art attends them which is the art of pay. The various arts may be doing their own busi-
ness and benefiting that over which they preside, but would the artist receive any benefit
from his art unless he were paid as well?

I suppose not.

But does he therefore confer no benefit when he works for nothing?

Certainly, he confers a benefit.

Then now, Thrasymachus, there is no longer any doubt that neither arts nor governments provide
for their own interests; but, as we were before saying, they rule and provide for the interests
of their subjects who are the weaker and not the stronger--to their good they attend and not
to the good of the superior. And this is the reason, my dear Thrasymachus, why, as I was just
now saying, no one is willing to govern; because no one likes to take in hand the reformation
of evils which are not his concern, without remuneration. For, in the execution of his work,
and in giving his orders to another, the true artist does not regard his own interest, but al-
ways that of his subjects; and therefore in order that rulers may be willing to rule, they must
be paid in one of three modes of payment, money, or honor, or a penalty for refusing.

What do you mean, Socrates? said Glaucon. The first two modes of payment are intelligible e-
nough, but what the penalty is I do not understand, or how a penalty can be a payment.

You mean that you do not understand the nature of this payment which to the best men is the
great inducement to rule? Of course you know that ambition and avarice are held to be, as in-
deed they are, a disgrace?

Very true.

And for this reason, I said, money and honor have no attraction for them; good men do not wish
to be openly demanding payment for governing and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secret-
ly helping themselves out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being am-
bitious they do not care about honor. Wherefore necessity must be laid upon them, and they must
be induced to serve from the fear of punishment. And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the
forwardness to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed dishonorable.
Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by
one who is worse than himself. And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the good to take
office, not because they would, but because they cannot help--not under the idea that they are
going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves, but as a necessity, and because they are not
able to commit the task of ruling to anyone who is better than themselves, or indeed as good.
For there is reason to think that if a city were composed entirely of good men, then to avoid
office would be as much an object of contention as to obtain office is at present; then we
should have plain proof that the true ruler is not meant by nature to regard his own interest,
but that of his subjects; and everyone who knew this would choose rather to receive a benefit
from another than to have the trouble of conferring one. So far am I from agreeing with Thras-
ymachus that justice is the interest of the stronger. This latter question need not be further
discussed at present; but when Thrasymachus says that the life of the unjust is more advan-
tageous than that of the just, his new statement appears to me to be of a far more serious
character. Which of us has spoken truly? And which sort of life, Glaucon, do you prefer?

I for my part deem the life of the just to be the more advantageous, he answered.

Did you hear all the advantages of the unjust which Thrasymachus was rehearsing?

Yes, I heard him, he replied, but he has not convinced me.

Then shall we try to find some way of convincing him, if we can, that he is saying what is not
true?

Most certainly, he replied.

If, I said, he makes a set speech and we make another recounting all the advantages of being
just, and he answers and we rejoin, there must be a numbering and measuring of the goods which
are claimed on either side, and in the end we shall want judges to decide; but if we proceed
in our inquiry as we lately did, by making admissions to one another, we shall unite the of-
fices of judge and advocate in our own persons.

Very good, he said.

And which method do I understand you to prefer? I said.

That which you propose.

Well, then, Thrasymachus, I said, suppose you begin at the beginning and answer me. You say
that perfect injustice is more gainful than perfect justice?

Yes, that is what I say, and I have given you my reasons.

And what is your view about them? Would you call one of them virtue and the other vice?

Certainly.

I suppose that you would call justice virtue and injustice vice?

What a charming notion! So likely too, seeing that I affirm injustice to be profitable and
justice not.

What else then would you say?

The opposite, he replied.

And would you call justice vice?

No, I would rather say sublime simplicity.

Then would you call injustice malignity?

No; I would rather say discretion.

And do the unjust appear to you to be wise and good?

Yes, he said; at any rate those of them who are able to be perfectly unjust, and who have the
power of subduing States and nations; but perhaps you imagine me to be talking of cut-purses.
Even this profession, if undetected, has advantages, though they are not to be compared with
those of which I was just now speaking.

I do not think that I misapprehend your meaning, Thrasymachus, I replied; but still I cannot
hear without amazement that you class injustice with wisdom and virtue, and justice with the
opposite.

Certainly I do so class them.

Now, I said, you are on more substantial and almost unanswerable ground; for if the injustice
which you were maintaining to be profitable had been admitted by you as by others to be vice
and deformity, an answer might have been given to you on received principles; but now I per-
ceive that you will call injustice honorable and strong, and to the unjust you will attribute
all the qualities which were attributed by us before to the just, seeing that you do not hes-
itate to rank injustice with wisdom and virtue.

You have guessed most infallibly, he replied.

Then I certainly ought not to shrink from going through with the argument so long as I have
reason to think that you, Thrasymachus, are speaking your real mind; for I do believe that
you are now in earnest and are not amusing yourself at our expense.

I may be in earnest or not, but what is that to you?--to refute the argument is your business.

Very true, I said; that is what I have to do: But will you be so good as answer yet one more
question? Does the just man try to gain any advantage over the just?

Far otherwise; if he did he would not be the simple amusing creature which he is.

And would he try to go beyond just action?

He would not.

And how would he regard the attempt to gain an advantage over the unjust; would that be con-
sidered by him as just or unjust?

He would think it just, and would try to gain the advantage; but he would not be able.

Whether he would or would not be able, I said, is not to the point. My question is only whe-
ther the just man, while refusing to have more than another just man, would wish and claim
to have more than the unjust?

Yes, he would.

And what of the unjust--does he claim to have more than the just man and to do more than is
just?

Of course, he said, for he claims to have more than all men.

And the unjust man will strive and struggle to obtain more than the just man or action, in or-
der that he may have more than all?

True.

We may put the matter thus, I said--the just does not desire more than his like, but more than
his unlike, whereas the unjust desires more than both his like and his unlike?

Nothing, he said, can be better than that statement.

And the unjust is good and wise, and the just is neither?

Good again, he said.

And is not the unjust like the wise and good, and the just, unlike them?

Of course, he said, he who is of a certain nature, is like those who are of a certain nature;
he who is not, not.

Each of them, I said, is such as his like is?

Certainly, he replied.

Very good, Thrasymachus, I said; and now to take the case of the arts: you would admit that one
man is a musician and another not a musician?

Yes.

And which is wise and which is foolish?

Clearly the musician is wise, and he who is not a musician is foolish.

And he is good in as far as he is wise, and bad in as far as he is foolish?

Yes.

And you would say the same sort of thing of the physician?

Yes.

And do you think, my excellent friend, that a musician when he adjusts the lyre would desire or
claim to exceed or go beyond a musician in the tightening and loosening the strings?

I do not think that he would.

But he would claim to exceed the non-musician?

Of course.

And what would you say of the physician? In prescribing meats and drinks would he wish to go be-
yond another physician or beyond the practice of medicine?

He would not.

But he would wish to go beyond the non-physician?

Yes.

And about knowledge and ignorance in general; see whether you think that any man who has know-
ledge ever would wish to have the choice of saying or doing more than another man who has know-
ledge. Would he not rather say or do the same as his like in the same case?

That, I suppose, can hardly be denied.

And what of the ignorant? would he not desire to have more than either the knowing or the igno-
rant?

I dare say.

And the knowing is wise?

Yes.

And the wise is good?

True.

Then the wise and good will not desire to gain more than his like, but more than his unlike and
opposite?

I suppose so.

Whereas the bad and ignorant will desire to gain more than both?

Yes.

But did we not say, Thrasymachus, that the unjust goes beyond both his like and unlike? Were not
these your words?

They were.

And you also said that the just will not go beyond his like, but his unlike?

Yes.

Then the just is like the wise and good, and the unjust like the evil and ignorant?

That is the inference.

And each of them is such as his like is?

That was admitted.

Then the just has turned out to be wise and good, and the unjust evil and ignorant.

Thrasymachus made all these admissions, not fluently, as I repeat them, but with extreme reluc-
tance; it was a hot summer’s day, and the perspiration poured from him in torrents; and then I
saw what I had never seen before, Thrasymachus blushing. As we were now agreed that justice was
virtue and wisdom, and injustice vice and ignorance, I proceeded to another point:

Well, I said, Thrasymachus, that matter is now settled; but were we not also saying that injus-
tice had strength--do you remember?

Yes, I remember, he said, but do not suppose that I approve of what you are saying or have no
answer; if, however, I were to answer, you would be quite certain to accuse me of haranguing;
therefore either permit me to have my say out, or if you would rather ask, do so, and I will
answer “Very good,” as they say to story-telling old women, and will nod “Yes” and “No.”

Certainly not, I said, if contrary to your real opinion.

Yes, he said, I will, to please you, since you will not let me speak. What else would you have?

Nothing in the world, I said; and if you are so disposed I will ask and you shall answer.

Proceed.

Then I will repeat the question which I asked before, in order that our examination of the rela-
tive nature of justice and injustice may be carried on regularly. A statement was made that in-
justice is stronger and more powerful than justice, but now justice, having been identified with
wisdom and virtue, is easily shown to be stronger than injustice, if injustice is ignorance;
this can no longer be questioned by anyone. But I want to view the matter, Thrasymachus, in a
different way: You would not deny that a State may be unjust and may be unjustly attempting to
enslave other States, or may have already enslaved them, and may be holding many of them in sub-
jection?

True, he replied; and I will add that the best and most perfectly unjust State will be most like-
ly to do so.

I know, I said, that such was your position; but what I would further consider is, whether this
power which is possessed by the superior State can exist or be exercised without justice or only
with justice.

If you are right in your view, and justice is wisdom, then only with justice; but if I am right,
then without justice.

I am delighted, Thrasymachus, to see you not only nodding assent and dissent, but making answers
which are quite excellent.

That is out of civility to you, he replied.

You are very kind, I said; and would you have the goodness also to inform me, whether you think
that a State, or an army, or a band of robbers and thieves, or any other gang of evildoers could
act at all if they injured one another?

No, indeed, he said, they could not.

But if they abstained from injuring one another, then they might act together better?

Yes.

And this is because injustice creates divisions and hatreds and fighting, and justice imparts har-
mony and friendship; is not that true, Thrasymachus?

I agree, he said, because I do not wish to quarrel with you.

How good of you, I said; but I should like to know also whether injustice, having this tendency to
arouse hatred, wherever existing, among slaves or among freemen, will not make them hate one ano-
ther and set them at variance and render them incapable of common action?

Certainly.

And even if injustice be found in two only, will they not quarrel and fight, and become enemies to
one another and to the just?

They will.

And suppose injustice abiding in a single person, would your wisdom say that she loses or that she
retains her natural power?

Let us assume that she retains her power.

Yet is not the power which injustice exercises of such a nature that wherever she takes up her a-
bode, whether in a city, in an army, in a family, or in any other body, that body is, to begin with,
rendered incapable of united action by reason of sedition and distraction? and does it not become
its own enemy and at variance with all that opposes it, and with the just? Is not this the case?

Yes, certainly.

And is not injustice equally fatal when existing in a single person--in the first place rendering
him incapable of action because he is not at unity with himself, and in the second place making him
an enemy to himself and the just? Is not that true, Thrasymachus?

Yes.

And, O my friend, I said, surely the gods are just?

Granted that they are.

But, if so, the unjust will be the enemy of the gods, and the just will be their friends?

Feast away in triumph, and take your fill of the argument; I will not oppose you, lest I should
displease the company.

Well, then, proceed with your answers, and let me have the remainder of my repast. For we have al-
ready shown that the just are clearly wiser and better and abler than the unjust, and that the un-
just are incapable of common action; nay, more, that to speak as we did of men who are evil acting
at any time vigorously together, is not strictly true, for, if they had been perfectly evil, they
would have laid hands upon one another; but it is evident that there must have been some remnant
of justice in them, which enabled them to combine; if there had not been they would have injured
one another as well as their victims; they were but half-villains in their enterprises; for had
they been whole villains, and utterly unjust, they would have been utterly incapable of action.
That, as I believe, is the truth of the matter, and not what you said at first. But whether the
just have a better and happier life than the unjust is a further question which we also proposed
to consider. I think that they have, and for the reasons which I have given; but still I should
like to examine further, for no light matter is at stake, nothing less than the rule of human
life.

Proceed.

I will proceed by asking a question: Would you not say that a horse has some end?

I should.

And the end or use of a horse or of anything would be that which could not be accomplished, or
not so well accomplished, by any other thing?

I do not understand, he said.

Let me explain: Can you see, except with the eye?

Certainly not.

Or hear, except with the ear?

No.

These, then, may be truly said to be the ends of these organs?

They may.

But you can cut off a vine-branch with a dagger or with a chisel, and in many other ways?

Of course.

And yet not so well as with a pruning-hook made for the purpose?

True.

May we not say that this is the end of a pruning-hook?

We may.

Then now I think you will have no difficulty in understanding my meaning when I asked the ques-
tion whether the end of anything would be that which could not be accomplished, or not so well
accomplished, by any other thing?

I understand your meaning, he said, and assent.

And that to which an end is appointed has also an excellence? Need I ask again whether the eye
has an end?

It has.

And has not the eye an excellence?

Yes.

And the ear has an end and an excellence also?

True.

And the same is true of all other things; they have each of them an end and a special excel-
lence?

That is so.

Well, and can the eyes fulfil their end if they are wanting in their own proper excellence
and have a defect instead?

How can they, he said, if they are blind and cannot see?

You mean to say, if they have lost their proper excellence, which is sight; but I have not ar-
rived at that point yet. I would rather ask the question more generally, and only inquire
whether the things which fulfil their ends fulfil them by their own proper excellence, and
fail of fulfilling them by their own defect?

Certainly, he replied.

I might say the same of the ears; when deprived of their own proper excellence they cannot
fulfil their end?

True.

And the same observation will apply to all other things?

I agree.

Well; and has not the soul an end which nothing else can fulfil? for example, to superintend
and command and deliberate and the like. Are not these functions proper to the soul, and can
they rightly be assigned to any other?

To no other.

And is not life to be reckoned among the ends of the soul?

Assuredly, he said.

And has not the soul an excellence also?

Yes.

And can she or can she not fulfil her own ends when deprived of that excellence?

She cannot.

Then an evil soul must necessarily be an evil ruler and superintendent, and the good soul a
good ruler?

Yes, necessarily.

And we have admitted that justice is the excellence of the soul, and injustice the defect of
the soul?

That has been admitted.

Then the just soul and the just man will live well, and the unjust man will live ill?

That is what your argument proves.

And he who lives well is blessed and happy, and he who lives ill the reverse of happy?

Certainly.

Then the just is happy, and the unjust miserable?

So be it.

But happiness, and not misery, is profitable?

Of course.

Then, my blessed Thrasymachus, injustice can never be more profitable than justice.

Let this, Socrates, he said, be your entertainment at the Bendidea.

For which I am indebted to you, I said, now that you have grown gentle toward me and have
left off scolding. Nevertheless, I have not been well entertained; but that was my own fault
and not yours. As an epicure snatches a taste of every dish which is successively brought to
table, he not having allowed himself time to enjoy the one before, so have I gone from one
subject to another without having discovered what I sought at first, the nature of justice.
I left that inquiry and turned away to consider whether justice is virtue and wisdom, or evil
and folly; and when there arose a further question about the comparative advantages of just-
ice and injustice, I could not refrain from passing on to that. And the result of the whole
discussion has been that I know nothing at all. For I know not what justice is, and therefore
I am not likely to know whether it is or is not a virtue, nor can I say whether the just man
is happy or unhappy.



BOOK II: THE INDIVIDUAL, THE STATE, AND EDUCATION



When I had said this I supposed that I was done with the subject, but it all
turned out to be only a prelude. For Glaucon, who is always an intrepid,
enterprising spirit in everything, would not on this occasion acquiesce in
Thrasymachus' abandonment of his case, but said, Socrates, is it your desire to
seem to have persuaded us or really to persuade us that it is without exception
better to be just than unjust?

Really, I said, if the choice rested with me.

Well, then, you are not doing what you wish. For tell me, do you agree that there
is a kind of good which we would choose to possess, not from desire for its
aftereffects, but welcoming it for its own sake? As, for example, joy and such
pleasures as are harmless and nothing results from them afterward save to have
and to hold the enjoyment.

I recognize that kind, said I.

And again a kind that we love both for its own sake and for its consequences,
such as understanding, sight, and health? For these I presume we welcome for
both reasons.

Yes, I said.

And can you discern a third form of good under which fall exercise and being
healed when sick and the art of healing and the making of money generally? For
of them we would say that they are laborious and painful yet beneficial, and for
their own sake we would not accept them, but only for the rewards and other
benefits that accrue from them.

Why yes, I said, I must admit this third class also. But what of it?

In which of these classes do you place justice? he said.

In my opinion, I said, it belongs in the fairest class, that which a man who is
to be happy must love both for its own sake and for the results.

Yet the multitude, he said, do not think so, but that it belongs to the toilsome
class of things that must be practiced for the sake of rewards and repute due to
opinion but that in itself is to be shunned as an affliction.

I am aware, said I, that that is the general opinion and Thrasymachus has for
some time been disparaging it as such and praising injustice. But I, it seems,
am somewhat slow to learn.

Come now, he said, hear what I too have to say and see if you agree with me.
For Thrasymachus seems to me to have given up to you too soon, as if he were
a serpent that you had charmed, but I am not yet satisfied with the proof that
has been offered about justice and injustice. For what I desire is to hear what
each of them is and what potency and effect each has in and of itself dwelling
in the soul, but to dismiss their rewards and consequences. This, then, is what
I propose to do, with your concurrence. I will renew the argument of Thrasy-
machus and will first state what men say is the nature and origin of justice, sec-
ondly, that all who practice it do so reluctantly, regarding it as something necessary
and not as a good, and thirdly, that they have plausible grounds for thus acting,
since forsooth the life of the unjust man is far better than that of the just man--
as they say, though I, Socrates, don't believe it. Yet I am disconcerted when my
ears are dinned by the arguments of Thrasymachus and innumerable others. But
the case for justice, to prove that it is better than injustice, I have never yet
heard stated by any as I desire to hear it. What I desire is to hear an encomium
on justice in and by itself. And I think I am most likely to get that from you. For
which reason I will lay myself out in praise of the life of injustice, and in so
speaking will give you an example of the manner in which I desire to hear from
you in turn the dispraise of injustice and the praise of justice. Consider whether
my proposal pleases you.

Nothing could please me more, said I, for on what subject would a man of sense
rather delight to hold and hear discourse again and again?

That is excellent, he said, and now listen to what I said would be the first
topic--the nature and origin of justice.

By nature, they say, to commit injustice is a good and to suffer it is an evil,
but that the excess of evil in being wronged is greater than the excess of good
in doing wrong, so that when men do wrong and are wronged by one another
and taste of both, those who lack the power to avoid the one and take the other
determine that it is for their profit to make a compact with one another neither
to commit nor to suffer injustice, and that this is the beginning of legislation
and of covenants between men, and that they name the commandment of the law
the covenants between men, and that they name the commandment of the law the
lawful and the just, and that this is the genesis and essential nature of justice--
a compromise between the best, which is to do wrong with immunity, and the
worst, which is to be wronged and be impotent to get one's revenge. Justice,
they tell us, being midway between the two, is accepted and approved, not as a
real good, but as a thing honored in the lack of vigor to do injustice, since
anyone who had the power to do it and was in reality 'a man' would never make
a compact with anybody neither to wrong nor to be wronged, for he would be mad.
The nature, then, of justice is this and such as this, Socrates, and such are
the conditions in which it originates, according to the theory.

But as for the second point, that those who practice it do so unwillingly and
from want of power to commit injustice, we shall be most likely to apprehend that
if we entertain some such supposition as this in thought--if we grant to both
the just and the unjust license and power to do whatever they please, and then
accompany them in imagination and see whither desire will conduct them. We
should then catch the just man in the very act of resorting to the same conduct
as the unjust man because of the self-advantage which every creature by its na-
ture pursues as a good, while by the convention of law it is forcibly diverted
to paying honor to 'equality.' The license that I mean would be most nearly such
as would result from supposing them to have the power which men say once came
to the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian. They relate that he was a shepherd in the
service of the ruler at that time of Lydia, and that after a great deluge of rain
and an earthquake the ground opened and a chasm appeared in the place where he
was pasturing, and they say that he saw and wondered and went down into the
chasm. And the story goes that he beheld other marvels there and a hollow bronze
horse with little doors, and that he peeped in and saw a corpse within, as it
seemed, of more than mortal stature, and that there was nothing else but a gold
ring on its hand, which he took off, and so went forth. And when the shepherds
held their customary assembly to make their monthly report to the king about the
flocks, he also attended, wearing the ring. So as he sat there it chanced that
he turned the collet of the ring toward himself, toward the inner part of his
hand, and when this took place they say that he became invisible to those who
sat by him and they spoke of him as absent, and that he was amazed, and again
fumbling with the ring turned the collet outward and so became visible. On
noting this he experimented with the ring to see if it possessed this virtue,
and he found the result to be that when he turned the collet inward he became
invisible,and when outward visible, and becoming aware of this, he immediately
managed things so that he became one of the messengers who went up to the king,
and on coming there he seduced the king's wife and with her aid set upon the
king and slew him and possessed his kingdom.

If now there should be two such rings, and the just man should put on one and
the unjust the other, no one could be found, it would seem, of such adamantine
temper as to persevere in justice and endure to refrain his hands from the
possessions of others and not touch them, though he might with impunity take
what he wished even from the market place, and enter into houses and lie with
whom he pleased, and slay and loose from bonds whomsoever he would, and in
all other things conduct himself among mankind as tin-equal of a god. And in
so acting he would do no differently from the other man. but both would pursue
the same course. And yet this is a great proof, one might argue, that no one
is just of his own will but only from constraint, in the belief that justice
is not his personal good, inasmuch as every man, when he supposes himself to
have the power to do wrong, does wrong. For that there is far more profit for
him personally in injustice than in justice is what every man believes, and
believes truly, as the proponent of this theory will maintain. For if anyone
who had got such a license within his grasp should refuse to do any wrong or
lay his hands on others' possessions, he would be regarded as most pitiable
and a great fool by all who took note of it, though they would praise him be-
fore one another's faces, deceiving one another because of their fear of suf-
fering injustice. So much for this point.

But to come now to the decision between our two kinds of life, if we separate
the most completely just and the most completely unjust man, we shall be able
to decide rightly, but if not, not. How, then, is this separation to be made?
Thus. We must subtract nothing of his injustice from the unjust man or of
his justice from the just, but assume the perfection of each in his own mode of
conduct. In the first place, the unjust man must act as clever craftsmen do. A-
bilities and possibilities in his art and attempts the one and lets the others
go, and then, too, if he does happen to trip, he is equal to correcting his error.
Similarly, the unjust man who attempts injustice rightly must be supposed to
escape detection if he is to be altogether unjust, and we must regard the man who
is caught as a bungler. For the height of injustice is to seem just without being
so. To the perfectly unjust man, then, we must assign perfect injustice and
withhold nothing of it, but we must allow him, while committing the greatest
wrongs, to have secured for himself the greatest reputation for justice, and if
he does happen to trip, we must concede to him the power to correct his mistakes
by his ability to speak persuasively if any of his misdeeds come to light, and
when force is needed, to employ force by reason of his manly spirit and vigor
and his provision of friends and money. And when we have set up an unjust man
of this character, our theory must set the just man at his side--a simple and
noble man, who, in the phrase of Aeschylus, does not wish to seem but to be
good. Then we must deprive him of the seeming. For if he is going to be
thought just he will have honors and gifts because of that esteem. We cannot be
sure in that case whether he is just for justice' sake or for the sake of the
gifts and the honors. So we must strip him bare of everything but justice and
make his state the opposite of his imagined counterpart. Though doing no wrong
he must have the repute of the greatest injustice, so that he may be put to the
test as regards justice through not softening because of ill repute and the con-
sequences thereof. But let him hold on his course unchangeable even unto death,
seeming all his life to be unjust though being just, so that, both men attaining
to the limit, the one of injustice, the other of justice, we may pass judgment
which of the two is the happier.

Bless me, my dear Glaucon, said I. How strenuously you polish off each of your
two men for the competition for the prize as if it were a statue!

To the best of my ability, he replied, and if such is the nature of the two, it
becomes an easy matter, I fancy, to unfold the tale of the sort of life that a-
waits each. We must tell it, then, and even if my language is somewhat rude and
brutal, you must not suppose, Socrates, that it is I who speak thus, but those who
commend injustice above justice. What they will say is this, that such being his
disposition the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, the
branding iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will
be crucified, and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what
we ought to desire. And the saying of Aeschylus was, it seems, far more
correctly applicable to the unjust man. For it is literally true, they will say,
that the unjust man, as pursuing what clings closely to reality, to truth, and not
regulating his life by opinion, desires not to seem but to be unjust.

Exploiting the deep furrows of his wit
from which there grows the fruit of counsels shrewd,

first office and rule in the state because of his reputation for justice, then a
wife from any family he chooses, and the giving of his children in marriage to
whomsoever he pleases, dealings and partnerships with whom he will, and in all
these transactions advantage and profit for himself because he has no squeamish-
ness about committing injustice. And so they say that if he enters into lawsuits,
public or private, he wins and gets the better of his opponents, and, getting the
better, is rich and benefits his friends and harms his enemies, and he performs
sacrifices and dedicates votive offerings to the gods adequately and magnificent-
ly, and he serves and pays court to men whom he favors and to the gods far better
than the just man, so that he may reasonably expect the favor of heaven also to
fall rather to him than to the just. So much better they say, Socrates, is the
life that is prepared for the unjust man from gods and men than that which awaits
the just.

When Glaucon had thus spoken, I had a mind to make some reply thereto,
but his brother Adimantus said, You surely don't suppose, Socrates,
that the statement of the case is complete?

Why, what else? I said.

The very most essential point, said he, has not been mentioned.

Then, said I, the proverb has it, 'Let a brother help a man'--and so. if Glaucon
omits any word or deed, do you come to his aid. Though for my part what he has
already said is quite enough to overthrow me and incapacitate me for coming to
the rescue of justice.

Nonsense, he said, but listen to this further point. We must set forth the rea-
soning and the language of the opposite party, of those who commend justice
and dispraise injustice, if what I conceive to be Glaucon's meaning is to be made
more clear. Fathers, when they address exhortations to their sons, and all those
who have others in their charge, urge the necessity of being just, not by praising
justice itself, but the good repute with mankind that accrues from it, the object
that they hold before us being that by seeming to be just the man may get from
the reputation office and alliances and all the good things that Glaucon just now
enumerated as coming to the unjust man from his good name. But those people
draw out still further this topic of reputation. For, throwing in good standing with
the gods, they have no lack of blessings to describe, which they affirm the gods
give to pious men, even as the worthy Hesiod and Homer declare--the one that
the gods make the oaks bear for the just

Acorns on topmost branches and swarms of bees on their mid-trunks,

and he tells how the

Flocks of the fleece-bearing sheep are laden and weighted with soft wool,

and of many other blessings akin to these, and similarly the other poet,

Even as when a good king, who rules in the fear of the high gods,
Upholds justice and right, and the black earth yields him her foison,
Barley and wheat, and his trees are laden and weighted with fair fruits,
Increase comes to his flocks and the ocean is teeming with fishes.

And Musaeus and his son have a more excellent song than these of the blessings
that the gods bestow on the righteous. For they conduct them to the house of
Hades in their tale and arrange a symposium of the saints, where, reclined on
couches and crowned with wreaths,they entertain the time henceforth with wine,
as if the fairest meed of virtue were an everlasting drunk. And others extend
still further the rewards of virtue from the gods. For they say that the chil-
dren's children of the pious and oath-keeping man and his race thereafter never
fail. Such and suchlike are their praises of justice. But the impious and the
unjust they bury in mud in the house of Hades and compel them to fetch water
in a sieve, and, while they still live, they bring them into evil repute, and
all the sufferings that Glaucon enumeratedas befalling just men who are thought
to be unjust, these they recite about the unjust, but they have nothing else
to say. Such is the praise and the censure of the just and of the unjust.

Consider further, Socrates, another kind of language about justice and injus-
tice employed by both laymen and poets. All with one accord reiterate that
soberness and righteousness are fair and honorable, to be sure, but unpleasant
and laborious, while licentiousness and injustice are pleasant and easy to win
and are only in opinion and by convention disgraceful. They say that injustice
pays better than justice, for the most part, and they do not scruple to felici-
tate bad men who are rich or have other kinds of power and to do them honor in
public and private, and to dishonor and disregard those who are in any way weak
or poor, even while admitting that they are better men than the others. But the
strangest of all these speeches are the things they say about the gods and vir-
tue--how it is that the gods themselves assign to many good men misfortunes and
an evil life, but to their opposites a contrary lot, and begging priests and
soothsayers go to rich men's doors and make them believe that they by means of
sacrifices and incantations have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods
that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals any misdeed of a man or his
ancestors, and that if a man wishes to harm an enemy, at slight cost he will be
enabled to injure just and unjust alike, since they are masters of spells and
enchantments that constrain the gods to serve their end. And for all these say-
ings they cite the poets as witnesses, with regard to the ease and plentifulness
of vice, quoting,

Evildoing in plenty a man shall find for the seeking.
Smooth is the way, and it lies near at hand and is easy to enter,
But on the pathway of virtue the gods put sweat from the first
step,

and a certain long and uphill road. And others cite Homer as a witness to the
beguiling of gods by men, since he too said,

The gods themselves are moved by prayers,
And men by sacrifice and soothing vows,
And incense and libation turn their wills
Praying, whene'er they have sinned and made transgression.

And they produce a bushel of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, the offspring of the
Moon and of the Muses, as they affirm, and these books they use in their ritual,
and make not only ordinary men but states believe that there really are remis-
sions of sins and purifications for deeds of injustice, by means of sacrifice
and pleasant sport for the living, and that there are also special rites for the
defunct, which they call functions, that deliver us from evils in that other
world, while terrible things await those who have neglected to sacrifice.

What, Socrates, do we suppose is the effect of all such sayings about the esteem
in which men and gods hold virtue and vice upon the souls that hear them, the
souls of young men who are quick-witted and capable of flitting, as it were, from
one expression of opinion to another and inferring from them all the character
and the path whereby a man would lead the best life? Such a youth would most
likely put to himself the question Pindar asks, 'Is it by justice or by crooked
deceit that I the higher tower shall scale and so live my life out in fenced and
guarded security?' The consequences of my being just are, unless I likewise seem
so, not assets, they say, but liabilities, labor, and total loss, but if I am un-
just and have procured myself a reputation for justice, a godlike life is promised.
Then since it is 'the seeming,' as the wise men show me, that 'masters the reality'
and is lord of happiness, to this I must devote myself without reserve. For a front
and a show I must draw about myself a shadow outline of virtue, but trail behind me
the fox of the most sage Archilochus, shifty and bent on gain. Nay, 'tis objected,
it is not easy for a wrongdoer always to lie hid. Neither is any other big thing
facile, we shall reply. But all the same if we expect to be happy, we must pursue
the path to which the footprints of our arguments point. For with a view to lying
hid we will organize societies and political clubs, and there are teachers of caj-
olery who impart the arts of the popular assembly and the courtroom, so that, part-
ly by persuasion, partly by force, we shall contrive to overreach with impunity.
But against the gods, it may be said, neither secrecy nor force can avail. Well,
if there are no gods, or they do not concern themselves with the doings of men,
neither need we concern ourselves with eluding their observation. If they do exist
and pay heed, we know and hear of them only from such discourses and from the
poets who have described their pedigrees. But these same authorities tell us that
the gods are capable of being persuaded and swerved from their course by 'sacri-
fice and soothing vows' and dedications. We must believe them in both or neither.
And if we are to believe them, the thing to do is to commit injustice and offer
sacrifice from the fruits of our wrongdoing. For if we are just, we shall, it
is true, be unscathed by the gods, but we shall be putting away from us the pro-
fits of injustice, but if we are unjust, we shall win those profits, and, by the
importunity of our prayers, when we transgress and sin we shall persuade them and
escape scot free. Yes, it will be objected, but we shall be brought to judgment
in the world below for our unjust deeds here, we or our children's children. Nay,
my dear sir, our calculating friend will say, here again the rites for the dead
have much efficacy, and the absolving divinities, as the greatest cities declare,
and the sons of gods, who became the poetsand prophets of the gods, and who
reveal that this is the truth.

On what further ground, then, could we prefer justice to supreme injustice? If we
combine this with a counterfeit decorum, we shall prosper to our heart's desire,
with gods and men, in life and death, as the words of the multitude and of men
of the highest authority declare. In consequence, then, of all that has been said,
what possibility is there, Socrates, that any man who has the power of any re-
sources of mind, money, body, or family should consent to honor justice and
not rather laugh when he hears her praised? In sooth, if anyone is able to show
the falsity of these arguments, and has come to know with sufficient assurance
that justice is best, he feels much indulgence for the unjust, and is not angry
with them, but is aware that except a man by inborn divinity of his nature dis-
dains injustice, or, having won to knowledge, refrains from it, no one else is
willingly just, but that it is from lack of manly spirit or from old age or some
other weakness that men dispraise injustice, lacking the power to practice it.
The fact is patent. For no sooner does such a one come into the power than he
works injustice to the extent of his ability.

And the sole cause of all this is the fact that was the starting point of this
entire plea of my friend here and of myself to you, Socrates, pointing out how
strange it is that of all you self-styled advocates of justice, from the heroes
of old whose discourses survive to the men of the present day, not one has ever
censured injustice or commended justice otherwise than in respect of the repute,
the honors, and the gifts that accrue from each. But what each one of them is in
itself, by its own inherent force, when it is within the soul of the possessor and
escapes the eyes of both gods and men, no one has ever adequately set forth in
poetry or prose--the proof that the one is the greatest of all evils that the soul
contains within itself, while justice is the greatest good. For if you had all spoken
in this way from the beginning and from our youth up had sought to convince us,
we should not now be guarding against one another's injustice, but each would
be his own best guardian, for fear lest by working injustice he should dwell in
communion with the greatest of evils.

This, Socrates, and perhaps even more than this, Thrasymachus and haply ano-
ther might say in pleas for and against justice and injustice, inverting their true
potencies, as I believe, grossly. But I--for I have no reason to hide anything
from you--am laying myself out to the utmost on the theory, because I wish to
hear its refutation from you. Do not merely show us by argument that justice is
superior to injustice, but make clear to us what each in and of itself does to
its possessor, whereby the one is evil and the other good. But do away with the
repute of both, as Glaucon urged. For, unless you take away from either the true
repute and attach to each the false we shall say that it is not justice that you
are praising but the semblance, nor injustice that you censure, but the seeming,
and that you really are exhorting us to be unjust but conceal it, and that you
are at one with Thrasymachus in the opinion that justice is the other man's
good, the advantage of the stronger, and that injustice is advantageous and pro-
fitable to oneself but disadvantageous to the inferior. Since, then, you have
admitted that justice belongs to the class of those highest goods which are des-
irable both for their consequences and still morefor their own sake, as sight,
hearing, intelligence, yes and health too, and all other goods that are product-
ive by their very nature and not by opinion, this is what I would have you praise
about justice--the benefit which it and the harm which injustice inherently works
upon its possessor. But the rewards and the honors that depend on opinion, leave
to others to praise. For while I would listen to others who thus commended justice
and disparaged injustice, bestowing their praise and their blame on the reputation
and the rewards of either, I could not accept that sort of thing from you unless
you say I must, because you have passed your entire life in the consideration of
this very matter. Do not, then, I repeat, merely prove to us in argument the sup-
eriority of justice to injustice, but show us what it is that each inherently does
to its possessor--whether he does or does not escape the eyes of gods and men--
whereby the one is good and the other evil.

While I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adimantus, I was especially
pleased by their words on this occasion, and said, It was excellently spoken
of you, sons of the man we know, in the beginning of the elegy which the admirer
of Glaucon wrote when you distinguished yourselves in the battle of Megara--'Sons
of Ariston, whose race from a glorious sire is godlike.' This, my friends, I think,
was well said. For there must indeed be a touch of the godlike in your disposition
if you are not convinced that injustice is preferable to justice though you can
plead its case in such fashion. And I believe that you are really not convinced. I
infer this from your general character, since from your words alone I should have
distrusted you. But the more I trust you the more I am at a loss what to make of
the matter. I do not know how I can come to the rescue. For I doubt my ability
for the reason that you have not accepted the arguments whereby I thought I proved
against Thrasymachus that justice is better than injustice. Nor yet again do I know
how I can refuse to come to the rescue. For I fear lest it be actually impious to
stand idly by when justice is reviled and be fainthearted and not defend her so long
as one has breath and can utter his voice. The best thing, then, is to aid her as
best I can.

Glaucon, then, and the rest besought me by all means to come to the rescue and
not to drop the argument but to pursue to the end the investigation as to the
nature of each and the truth about their respective advantages. I said then as I
thought, The inquiry we are undertaking is no easy one but calls for keen vision,
as it seems to me. So, since we are not clever persons. I think we should employ
the method of search that we should use if we, with not very keen vision, were
bidden to read small letters from a distance, and then someone had observed that
these same letters exist elsewhere larger and on a larger surface. We should have
accounted it a godsend, I fancy, to be allowed to read those letters first, and
then examine the smaller, if they are the same.

Quite so, said Adimantus, but what analogy to this do you detect in the inquiry
about justice?

I will tell you, I said. There is a justice of one man, we say, and, I suppose,
also of an entire city?

Assuredly, said he.

Is not the city larger than the man?

It is larger, he said.

Then, perhaps, there would be more justice in the larger object, and more easy
to apprehend. If it please you, then, let us first look for its quality in states,
and then only examine it also in the individual, looking for the likeness of the
greater in the form of the less.

I think that is a good suggestion, he said.

If, then, said I, our argument should observe the origin of a state, we should see
also the origin of justice and injustice in it?

It may be, said he.

And if this is done, we may expect to find more easily what we are seeking?

Much more.

Shall we try it. then, and go through with it? I fancy it is no slight task. Reflect,
then.

We have reflected, said Adimantus. Proceed and don't refuse.

The origin of the city, then, said I, in my opinion, is to be found in the fact
that we do not severally suffice for our own needs, but each of us lacks many
things. Do you think any other principle establishes the state?

No other, said he.

As a result of this, then, one man calling in another for one service and
another for another, we, being in need of many things, gather many into one
place of abode as associates and helpers, and to this dwelling together we give
the name city or state, do we not?

By all means.

And between one man and another there is an interchange of giving, if it so
happens, and taking, because each supposes this to be better for himself.

Certainly.

Come, then, let us create a city from the beginning, in our theory. Its real creator,
as it appears, will be our needs.

Obviously.

Now the first and chief of our needs is the provision of food for existence and life.

Assuredly.

The second is housing and the third is raiment and that sort of thing.

That is so.

Tell me, then, said I, how our city will suffice for the provision of all these
things. Will there not be a farmer for one, and a builder, and then again a
weaver? And shall we add thereto a cobbler and some other purveyor for the
needs of the body?

Certainly.

The indispensable minimum of a city, then, would consist of four or five men.

Apparently.

What of this, then? Shall each of these contribute his work for the common use
of all? I mean, shall the farmer, who is one, provide food for four and spend
fourfold time and toil on the production of food and share it with the others, or
shall he take no thought for them and provide a fourth portion of the food for
himself alone in a quarter of the time and employ the other three-quarters, the
one in the provision of a house, the other of a garment, the other of shoes, and
not have the bother of associating with other people, but, himself for himself,
mind his own affairs?

And Adimantus said, But, perhaps, Socrates, the former way is easier.

It would not, by Zeus, be at all strange, said I, for now that you have mentioned
it, it occurs to me myself that, to begin with, our several natures are not all
alike but different. One man is naturally fitted for one task, and another for
another. Don't you think so?

I do.

Again, would one man do better working at many tasks or one at one?

One at one, he said.

And, furthermore, this, I fancy, is obvious--that if one lets slip the right season,
the favorable moment in any task, the work is spoiled.

Obvious.

That, I take it, is because the business will not wait upon the leisure of the
workman, but the workman must attend to it as his main affair, and not as a bywork.

He must indeed.

The result, then, is that more things are produced, and better and more easily
when one man performs one task according to his nature, at the right moment,
and at leisure from other occupations.

By all means.

Then, Adimantus, we need more than four citizens for the provision of the things
we have mentioned. For the farmer, it appears, will not make his own plow if it
is to be a good one, nor his hoe, nor his other agricultural implements, nor will
the builder, who also needs many, and similarly the weaver and cobbler.

True.

Carpenters, then, and smiths and many similar craftsmen, associating themselves
with our hamlet, will enlarge it considerably.

Certainly.

Yet it still wouldn't be very large even if we should add to them neatherds and
shepherds and other herders, so that the farmers might have cattle for plowing,
and the builders oxen to use with the farmers for transportation, and the
weavers and cobblers hides and fleeces for their use.

It wouldn't be a small city, either, if it had all these.

But further, said I, it is practically impossible to establish the city in a region
where it will not need imports.

It is.

There will be a further need, then, of those who will bring in from some other
city what it requires.

There will.

And again, if our servitor goes forth empty-handed, not taking with him any
of the things needed by those from whom they procure what they themselves
require, he will come back with empty hands, will he not?

I think so.

Then their home production must not merely suffice for themselves but in
quality and quantity meet the needs of those of whom they have need.

It must.

So our city will require more farmers and other craftsmen.

Yes, more.

And also of other ministrants who are to export and import the merchandise.
These are traders, are they not?

Yes.

We shall also need traders, then.

Assuredly.

And if the trading is carried on by sea, we shall need quite a number of others
who are expert in maritime business.

Quite a number.

But again, within the city itself how will they share with one another the products
of their labor? This was the very purpose of our association and establishment of a
state.

Obviously, he said, by buying and selling.

A market place, then, and money as a token for the purpose of exchange will be
the result of this.

By all means.

If, then, the farmer or any other craftsman taking his products to the market place
does not arrive at the same time with those who desire to exchange with him, is he
to sit idle in the market place and lose time from his own work?

By no means, he said, but there are men who see this need and appoint themselves for
this service--in well conducted cities they are generally those who are weakest in
body and those who are useless for any other task. They must wait there in the agora
and exchange money for goods with those who wish to sell, and goods for money with
as many as desire to buy.

This need, then, said I, creates the class of shopkeepers in our city. Or is not
'shopkeepers' the name we give to those who, planted in the agora, serve us in
buying and selling, while we call those who roam from city to city merchants?

Certainly.

And there are, furthermore, I believe, other servitors who in the things of the mind
are not altogether worthy of our fellowship, but whose strength of body is sufficient
for toil; so they, selling the use of this strength and calling the price wages, are
designated, I believe, 'wage earners,' are they not?

Certainly.

Wage earners, then, it seems, are the complement that helps to fill up the state.

I think so.

Has our city, then, Adimantus, reached its full growth, and is it complete?

Perhaps.

Where, then, can justice and injustice be found in it? And along with which of the
constituents that we have considered do they come into the state?

I cannot conceive, Socrates, he said, unless it be in some need that those very
constituents have of one another.

Perhaps that is a good suggestion, said I. We must examine it and not hold back.

First of all, then, let us consider what will be the manner of life of men thus
provided. Will they not make bread and wine and garments and shoes? And they
will build themselves houses and carry on their work in summer for the most
part unclad and unshod and in winter clothed and shod sufficiently. And for
their nourishment they will provide meal from their barley and flour from their
wheat, and kneading and cooking these they will serve noble cakes and loaves
on some arrangement of reeds or clean leaves. And, reclined on rustic beds
strewed with bryony and myrtle, they will feast with their children, drinking of
their wine thereto, garlanded and singing hymns to the gods in pleasant fellowship,
not begetting offspring beyond their means lest they fall into poverty or war.

Here Glaucon broke in, No relishes apparently, he said, for the men you describe
as feasting.

True, said I, I forgot that they will also have relishes--salt, of course, and olives
and cheese, and onions and greens, the sort of things they boil in the country, they
will boil up together. But for dessert we will serve them figs and chick-peas and
beans, and they will toast myrtle berries and acorns before the fire, washing them
down with moderate potations. And so, living in peace and health, they will probably
die in old age and hand on a like life to their off-spring.

And he said, If you were founding a city of pigs, Socrates, what other fodder than
this would you provide?

Why, what would you have, Glaucon? said I.

What is customary, he replied. They must recline on couches, I presume, if they
are not to be uncomfortable, and dine from tables and have dishes and sweetmeats
such as are now in use.

Good, said I. I understand. It is not merely the origin of a city, it seems, that
we are considering but the origin of a luxurious city. Perhaps that isn't such a
bad suggestion, either. For by observation of such a city it may be we could dis-
cern the origin of justice and injustice in states. The true state I believe to be
the one we have described--the healthy state, as it were. But if it is your plea-
sure that we contemplate also a fevered state, there is nothing to hinder. For
there are some, it appears, who will not be contented with this sort of fare or
with this way of life, but couches will have to be added thereto and tables and
other furniture, yes, and relishes and myrrh and incense and girls and cakes--all
sorts of all of them. And the requirements we first mentioned, houses and garments
and shoes, will no longer be confined to necessities, but we must set painting to
work and embroidery, and procure gold and ivory and similar adornments, must we not?

Yes, he said.

Then shall we not have to enlarge the city again? For that healthy state is no
longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk and fill it up with a
multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for
example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators, many of them occupied
with figures and colors and many with music--the poets and their assistants,
rhapsodists, actors, chorus dancers, contractors--and the manufacturers of all
kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women's adornment. And
so we shall also want more servitors. Don'tyou think that we shall need tutors,
nurses wet and dry, beauty-shop ladies, barbers, and yet again cooks and chefs?
And we shall have need, further, of swineherds; there were none of these
creatures in our former city, for we had no need of them, but in this city there
will be this further need. And we shall also require other cattle in great numbers
if they are to be eaten, shall we not?

Yes.

Doctors, too, are something whose services we shall be much more likely to require
if we live thus than as before?

Much.

And the territory. I presume, that was then sufficient to feed the then population,
from being adequate will become too small. Is that so or not?

It is.

Then we shall have to cut out a cantle of our neighbor's land if we are to have
enough for pasture and plowing, and they in turn of ours if they too abandon
themselves to the unlimited acquisition of wealth, disregarding the limit set by
our necessary wants.

Inevitably, Socrates.

We shall go to war as the next step, Glaucon--or what will happen?

What you say, he said.

And we are not yet to speak, said I, of any evil or good effect of war, but only
to affirm that we have further discovered the origin of war, namely, from those
things from which the greatest disasters, public and private, come to states when
they come.

Certainly.

Then, my friend, we must still further enlarge our city by no small
increment, but by a whole army, that will march forth and fight it out with
assailants in defense of all our wealth and the luxuries we have just described.

How so? he said. Are the citizens themselves not sufficient for that?

Not if you, said I, and we all were right in the admission we made when we were
molding our city. We surely agreed, if you remember, that it is impossible for
one man to do the work of many arts well.

True, he said.

Well, then, said I, don't you think that the business of fighting is an art and a
profession?

It is indeed, he said.

Should our concern be greater, then, for the cobbler's art than for the art of war?

By no means.

Can we suppose, then, that while we were at pains to prevent the cobbler from
attempting to be at the same time a farmer, a weaver, or a builder instead of just
a cobbler, to the end that we might have the cobbler's business well done, and
similarly assigned to each and every one man one occupation, for which he was
fit and naturally adapted and at which he was to work all his days, at leisure
from other pursuits and not letting slip the right moments for doing the work
well, and that yet we are in doubt whether the right accomplishment of the
business of war is not of supreme moment? Is it so easy that a man who is cul-
tivating the soil will be at the same time a soldier and one who is practicing
cobbling or any other trade, though no man in the world could make himself a
competent expert at draughts or the dice who did not practice that and nothing
else from childhood but treated it as an occasional business? And are we to
believe that a man who takes in hand a shield or any other instrument of war
springs up on that very day a competent combatant in heavy armor or in any o-
ther form of warfare--though no other tool will make a man be an artist or an
athlete by his taking it in hand, nor will it be of any service to those who
have neither acquired the science of it nor sufficiently practiced themselves
in its use?

Great indeed, he said, would be the value of tools in that case!

Then, said I, in the same degree that the task of our guardians is the greatest of
all, it would require more leisure than any other business and the greatest science
and training.

I think so, said he.

Does it not also require a nature adapted to that very pursuit?

Of course.

It becomes our task, then, it seems, if we are able, to select which and what kind
of natures are suited for the guardianship of a state.

Yes, ours.

Upon my word, said I, it is no light task that we have taken upon ourselves. But
we must not faint so far as our strength allows.

No, we mustn't.

Do you think, said I, that there is any difference between the nature of a well-bred
hound for this watchdog's work and that of a well-born lad?

What point have you in mind?

I mean that each of them must be keen of perception, quick in pursuit of what it
has apprehended, and strong too if it has to fight it out with its captive.

Why, yes, said he, there is need of all these qualities.

And it must, further, be brave if it is to fight well.

Of course.

And will a creature be ready to be brave that is not high-spirited, whether horse
or dog or anything else? Have you never observed what an irresistible and
invincible thing is spirit, the presence of which makes every soul in the face of
everything fearless and unconquerable?

I have.

The physical qualities of the guardian, then, are obvious.

Yes.

And also those of his soul, namely that he must be of high spirit.

Yes, this too.

How then, Glaucon, said I, will they escape being savage to one another and to
the other citizens if this is to be their nature?

Not easily, by Zeus, said he.

And yet we must have them gentle to their friends and harsh to their enemies;
otherwise they will not await their destruction at the hands of others, but will be
first themselves in bringing it about.

True, he said.

What, then, are we to do? said I. Where shall we discover a disposition that is at
once gentle and great-spirited? For there appears to be an opposition between the
spirited type and the gentle nature.

There does.

But yet if one lacks either of these qualities, a good guardian he never can be.
But these requirements resemble impossibilities, and so the result is that a good
guardian is impossible.

It seems likely, he said.

And I was at a standstill, and after reconsidering what we had been saying, I
said, We deserve to be at a loss, my friend, for we have lost sight of the
comparison that we set before ourselves.

What do you mean?

We failed to note that there are after all such natures as we thought impossible,
endowed with these opposite qualities.

Where?

It may be observed in other animals, but especially in that which we likened to
the guardian. You surely have observed in well-bred hounds that their natural
disposition is to be most gentle to their familiars and those whom they recognize,
but the contrary to those whom they do not know.

I am aware of that.

The thing is possible, then, said I, and it is not an unnatural requirement that we
are looking for in our guardian.

It seems not.

And does it seem to you that our guardian-to-be will also need, in addition to the
being high-spirited, the further quality of having the love of wisdom in his
nature?

How so? he said. I don't apprehend your meaning.

This too, said I, is something that you will discover in dogs and which is worth our
wonder in the creature.

What?

That the sight of an unknown person angers him before he has suffered any
injury, but an acquaintance he will fawn upon though he has never received any
kindness from him. Have you never marveled at that?

I never paid any attention to the matter before now, but that he acts in some such
way is obvious.

But surely that is an exquisite trait of his nature and one that shows a true love
of wisdom.

In what respect, pray?

In respect, said I, that he distinguishes a friendly from a hostile aspect by nothing
save his apprehension of the one and his failure to recognize the other. How, I ask
you, can the love of learning be denied to a creature whose criterion of the friendly
and the alien is intelligence and ignorance?

It certainly cannot, he said.

But you will admit, said I, that the love of learning and the love of wisdom are
the same?

The same, he said.

Then may we not confidently lay it down, in the case of man too, that if he is to
be in some sort gentle to friends and familiars he must be by nature a lover of
wisdom and of learning?

Let us so assume, he replied.

The love of wisdom, then, and high spirit and quickness and strength will be
combined for us in the nature of him who is to be a good and true guardian of the
state.

By all means, he said.

Such, then, I said, would be the basis of his character. But the rearing of these
men and their education, how shall we manage that? And will the consideration
of this topic advance us in any way toward discerning what is the object of our
entire inquiry--the origin of justice and injustice in a state--our aim must be to
omit nothing of a sufficient discussion, and yet not to draw it out to tiresome
length?

And Glaucon's brother replied, Certainly, I expect that this inquiry will bring us
nearer to that end.

Certainly, then, my dear Adimantus, said I, we must not abandon it even if it
prove to be rather long.

No, we must not.

Come, then, just as if we were telling stories or fables and had ample leisure, let
us educate these men in our discourse.

So we must.

What, then, is our education? Or is it hard to find a better than that which long
time has discovered--which is, I suppose, gymnastics for the body, and for the
soul, music?

It is.

And shall we not begin education in music earlier than in gymnastics?

Of course.

And under music you include tales, do you not?

I do.

And tales are of two species, the one true and the other false?

Yes.

And education must make use of both, but first of the false?

I don't understand your meaning.

Don't you understand, I said, that we begin by telling children fables, and the
fable is, taken as a whole, false, but there is truth in it also? And we make use of
fable with children before gymnastics.

That is so.

That, then, is what I meant by saying that we must take up music before
gymnastics.

You were right, he said.

Do you not know, then, that the beginning in every task is the chief thing,
especially for any creature that is young and tender? For it is then that it is best
molded and takes the impression that one wishes to stamp upon it.

Quite so.

Shall we, then, thus lightly suffer our children to listen to any chance stories
fashioned by any chance teachers and so to take into their minds opinions for the
most part contrary to those that we shall think it desirable for them to hold when
they are grown up?

By no manner of means will we allow it.

We must begin, then, it seems, by a censorship over our story-makers, and
what they do well we must pass and what not, reject. And the stories on the
accepted list we will induce nurses and mothers to tell to the children and so
shape their souls by these stories far rather than their bodies by their hands. But
most of the stories they now tell we must reject.

What sort of stories? he said.

The example of the greater stories, I said, will show us the lesser also. For surely
the pattern must be the same, and the greater and the less must have a like
tendency. Don't you think so?

I do, he said, but I don't apprehend which you mean by the greater, either.

Those, I said, that Hesiod and Homer and the other poets related to us. These,
methinks, composed false stories which they told and still tell to mankind.

Of what sort? he said. And with what in them do you find fault?

With that, I said, which one ought first and chiefly to blame, especially if the lie
is not a pretty one.

What is that?

When anyone images badly in his speech the true nature of gods and heroes, like
a painter whose portraits bear no resemblance to his models.

It is certainly right to condemn things like that, he said, but just what do we mean
and what particular things?

There is, first of all, I said, the greatest lie about the things of greatest concern-
ment, which was no pretty invention of him who told how Uranus did what Hesiod
says he did to Cronus, and how Cronus in turn took his revenge, and then there
are the doings and sufferings of Cronus at the hands of his son. Even if they were
true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young
persons. But the best way would be to bury them in silence, and if there were some
necessity for relating them, only a very small audience should be admitted under
pledge of secrecy and after sacrificing, not a pig, but some huge and unprocurable
victim, to the end that as few as possible should have heard these tales.

Why, yes, said he, such stories are hard sayings.

Yes, and they are not to be told, Adimantus, in our city, nor is it to be said in
the hearing of a young man that in doing the utmost wrong he would do nothing
to surprise anybody, nor again in punishing his father's wrongdoings to the limit,
but would only be following the example of the first and greatest of the gods.

No, by heaven, said he, I do not myself think that they are fit to be told.

Neither must we admit at all, said I, that gods war with gods and plot against one
another and contend--for it is not true either--if we wish our future guardians to
deem nothing more shameful than lightly to fall out with one another. Still less
must we make battles of gods and giants the subject for them of stories and
embroideries, and other enmities many and manifold of gods and heroes toward
their kith and kin. But if there is any likelihood of our persuading them that no
citizen ever quarreled with his fellow citizen and that the very idea of it is an
impiety, that is the sort of thing that ought rather to be said by their elders, men
and women, to children from the beginning and as they grow older, and we
must compel the poets to keep close to this in their compositions. But Hera's
fetterings by her son and the hurling out of heaven of Hephaestus by his father
when he was trying to save his mother from a beating, and the battles of the gods
in Homer's verse are things that we must not admit into our city either wrought
in allegory or without allegory. For the young are not able to distinguish what is
and what is not allegory, but whatever opinions are taken into the mind at that
age are wont to prove indelible and unalterable. For which reason, maybe, we
should do our utmost that the first stories that they hear should be so composed
as to bring the fairest lessons of virtue to their ears.

Yes, that is reasonable, he said, but if again someone should ask us to be specific
and say what these compositions may be and what are the tales, what could we
name?

And I replied, Adimantus, we are not poets, you and I at present, but founders of
a state. And to founders it pertains to know the patterns on which poets must
compose their fables and from which their poems must not be allowed to deviate,
but the founders are not required themselves to compose fables.

Right, he said, but this very thing--the patterns or norms of right speech about
the gods--what would they be?

Something like this, I said. The true quality of God we must always surely
attribute to him whether we compose in epic, melic, or tragic verse.

We must.

And is not God of course good in reality and always to be spoken of as such?

Certainly.

But further, no good thing is harmful, is it?

I think not.

Can what is not harmful harm?

By no means.

Can that which does not harm do any evil?

Not that either.

But that which does no evil would not be cause of any evil either?

How could it?

Once more, is the good beneficent?

Yes.

It is the cause, then, of welfare?

Yes.

Then the good is not the cause of all things, but of things that are well it is the
cause--of things that are ill it is blameless.

Entirely so, he said.

Neither, then, could God, said I, since he is good, be, as the multitude say, the
cause of all things, but for mankind he is the cause of few things, but of many
things not the cause. For good things are far fewer with us than evil, and for the
good we must assume no other cause than God, but the cause of evil we must
look for in other things and not in God.

What you say seems to me most true, he replied.

Then, said I, we must not accept from Homer or any other poet the folly of such
error as this about the gods, when he says,

Two urns stand on the floor of the palace of Zeus and are filled with
Dooms he allots, one of blessings, the other of gifts that are evil.
And to whomsoever Zeus gives of both commingled
Now upon evil he chances and now again good is his portion.
But the man for whom he does not blend the lots, but to whom he gives unmixed
evil--
Hunger devouring drives him, a wanderer over the wide world.

Nor will we tolerate the saying that

Zeus is dispenser alike of good and of evil to mortals.

But as to the violation of the oaths and the truce by Pandarus, if anyone affirms
it to have been brought about by the action of Athena and Zeus, we will not approve,
nor that the strife and contention of the gods were the doing of Themis and Zeus,
nor again must we permit our youth to hear what Aeschylus says.

A god implants the guilty cause in men
When he would utterly destroy a house.

But if any poets compose a 'Sorrows of Niobe,' the poem that contains these
iambics, or a tale of the Pelopidae or of Troy, or anything else of the kind, we
must either forbid them to say that these woes are the work of God, or they must
devise some such interpretation as we now require, and must declare that what
God did was righteous and good, and they were benefited by their chastisement.
But that they were miserable who paid the penalty, and that the doer of this was
God, is a thing that the poet must not be suffered to say. If on the other hand
he should say that for needing chastisement the wicked were miserable and that
in paying the penalty they were benefited by God, that we must allow. But as to
saying that God, who is good, becomes the cause of evil to anyone, we must con-
tend in every way that neither should anyone assert this in his own city if it is to
be well governed, nor anyone hear it, neither younger nor older, neither telling a
story in meter or without meter, for neither would the saying of such things, if
they are said, be holy, nor would they be profitable to us orconcordant with them-
selves.

I cast my vote with yours for this law, he said, and am well pleased with it.

This, then, said I, will be one of the laws and patterns concerning the gods to
which speakers and poets will be required to conform, that God is not the cause
of all things, but only of the good.

And an entirely satisfactory one, he said.

And what of this, the second? Do you think that God is a wizard and capable
of manifesting himself by design, now in one aspect, now in another, at one time
himself changing and altering his shape in many transformations and at another
deceiving us and causing us to believe such things about him, or that he is simple
and less likely than anything else to depart from his own form?

I cannot say offhand, he replied.

But what of this? If anything went out from its own form, would it not be
displaced and changed, either by itself or by something else?

Necessarily.

Is it not true that to be altered and moved by something else happens least to
things that are in the best condition, as, for example, a body by food and drink
and toil, and plants by the heat of the sun and winds and similar influences--is it
not true that the healthiest and strongest is least altered?

Certainly.

And is it not the soul that is bravest and most intelligent that would be least
disturbed and altered by any external affection?

Yes.

And, again, it is surely true of all composite implements, edifices, and habiliments,
by parity of reasoning, that those which are made and in good condition are least
liable to be changed by time and other influences.

That is so.

It is universally true, then, that that which is in the best state by nature or art or
both admits least alteration by something else.

So it seems.

But God, surely, and everything that belongs to God, is in every way in the best
possible state.

Of course.

From this point of view, then, it would be least of all likely that there would be
many forms in God.

Least indeed.

But would he transform and alter himself?

Obviously, he said, if he is altered.

Then does he change himself for the better and to something fairer, or for the
worse and to something uglier than himself?

It must necessarily, said he, be for the worse if he is changed. For we surely will
not say that God is deficient in either beauty or excellence.

Most rightly spoken, said I. And if that were his condition, do you think, Adimantus,
that any one god or man would of his own will worsen himself in any way?

Impossible, he replied.

It is impossible then, said I, even for a god to wish to alter himself, but, as it
appears, each of them, being the fairest and best possible, abides forever simply
in his own form.

An absolutely necessary conclusion to my thinking.

No poet then, I said, my good friend, must be allowed to tell us that The gods, in
the likeness of strangers, many disguises assume as they visit the cities of
mortals. Nor must anyone tell falsehoods about Proteus and Thetis, nor in any
tragedy or in other poems bring in Hera disguised as a priestess collecting alms
for the life-giving sons of Inachus, the Argive stream. And many similar
falsehoods they must not tell. Nor again must mothers under the influence of
such poets terrify their children with harmful tales, how there are certain gods
whose apparitions haunt the night in the likeness of many strangers from all
manner of lands, lest while they speak evil of the gods they at the same time
make cowards of the children.

They must not, he said.

But, said I, may we suppose that while the gods themselves are incapable of
change they cause us to fancy that they appear in many shapes deceiving and
practicing magic upon us?

Perhaps, said he.

Consider, said I. Would a god wish to deceive, or lie, by presenting in either
word or action what is only appearance?

I don't know, said he.

Don't you know, said I, that the veritable lie, if the expression is permissible, is a
thing that all gods and men abhor?

What do you mean? he said.

This, said I, that falsehood in the most vital part of themselves, and about their
most vital concerns, is something that no one willingly accepts, but it is there
above all that everyone fears it.

I don't understand yet either.

That is because you suspect me of some grand meaning, I said, but what I
mean is, that deception in the soul about realities, to have been deceived and to
be blindly ignorant and to have and hold the falsehood there, is what all men
would least of all accept, and it is in that case that they loathe it most of all.
Quite so, he said.

But surely it would be most wholly right, as I was just now saying, to describe
this as in very truth falsehood--ignorance namely in the soul of the man
deceived. For the falsehood in words is a copy of the affection in the soul, an
afterrising image of it and not an altogether unmixed falsehood. Is not that so?

By all means.

Essential falsehood, then, is hated not only by gods but by men.

I agree.

But what of the falsehood in words--when and for whom is it serviceable so as
not to merit abhorrence? Will it not be against enemies? And when any of those
whom we call friends owing to madness or folly attempts to do some wrong,
does it not then become useful to avert the evil -as a medicine? And also in the
fables of which we were just now speaking, owing to our ignorance of the truth
about antiquity, we liken the false to the true as far as we may and so make it
edifying.

We most certainly do, he said.

Tell me, then, on which of these grounds falsehood would be serviceable to God.
Would he because of his ignorance of antiquity make false likenesses of it?

An absurd supposition, that, he said.

Then there is no lying poet in God.

I think not.

Well then, would it be through fear of his enemies that he would lie?

Far from it.

Would it be because of the folly or madness of his friends?

Nay, no fool or madman is a friend of God.

Then there is no motive for God to deceive.

None.

So from every point of view the divine and the divinity arc free from falsehood.

By all means.

Then God is altogether simple and true in deed and word, and neither changes
himself nor deceives others by visions or words or the sending of signs in
waking or in dreams.

I myself think so, he said, when I hear you say it.

You concur then, I said, in this as our second norm or canon for speech and
poetry about the gods--that neither are they wizards in shape shifting nor do
they mislead us by falsehoods in words or deed?

I concur.

Then, though there are many other things that we praise in Homer, this we
will not applaud, the sending of the dream by Zeus to Agamemnon, nor shall
we approve of Aeschylus when his Thetis avers that Apollo, singing at her
wedding, 'foretold the happy fortunes of her issue,'

Their days prolonged, from pain and sickness free,
And rounding out the tale of heaven's blessings,
Raised the proud paean, making glad my heart.
And I believed that Phoebus' mouth divine,
Filled with the breath of prophecy, could not lie.
But he himself, the singer, himself who sat
At meat with us, himself who promised all,
Is now himself the slayer of my son.

When anyone says that sort of thing about the gods, we shall be wroth with him,
we will refuse him a chorus. Neither will we allow teachers to use him for the
education of the young if our guardians are to be god-fearing men and godlike
in so far as that is possible for humanity.

By all means, he said, I accept these norms and would use them as canons and
laws.



BOOK III. THE ARTS IN EDUCATION



Concerning the gods then, said I, this is the sort of thing that we must allow
or not allow them to hear from childhood up, if they are to honor the gods and
their fathers and mothers, and not to hold their friendship with one another
in light esteem.

That was our view and I believe it right.

What then of this? If they are to be brave, must we not extend our prescrip-
tion to include also the sayings that will make them least likely to fear death?
Or do you suppose that anyone could ever become brave who had that dread in
his heart?

No indeed, I do not, he replied.

And again, if he believes in the reality of the underworld and its terrors,
do you think that any man will be fearless of death and in battle will pre-
fer death to defeat and slavery?

By no means.

Then it seems we must exercise supervision also, in the matter of such tales
as these, over those who undertake to supply them and request them not to
dispraise in this undiscriminating fashion the life in Hades but rather praise
it, since what they now tell us is neither true nor edifying to men who are
destined to be warriors.

Yes, we must, he said.

Then, said I, beginning with this verse we will expunge everything of the same
kind,

Liefer were I in the fields up above to be serf to another
Tiller of some poor plot which yields him a scanty subsistence,
Than to be ruler and king over all the dead who have perished,

and this,

Lest unto men and immortals the homes of the dead be uncovered
Horrible, noisome, dank, that the gods too hold in abhorrence,

and,

Ah me! So it is true that e'en in the dwellings of Hades
Spirit there is and wraith, but within there is no understanding,

and this [of Tiresias],

Sole to have wisdom and wit, but the others are shadowy phantoms,

and,

Forth from his limbs unwilling his spirit flitted to Hades,
Wailing its doom and its lustihood lost and the May of its manhood,

and,

Under the earth like a vapor vanished the gibbering soul,

and,

Even as bats in the hollow of some mysterious grotto
Fly with a rlittermouse shriek when one of them falls from the cluster,
Whereby they hold to the rock and are clinging the one to the other,
Flitted their gibbering ghosts.

We will beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we cancel those
and all similar passages, not that they are not poetic and pleasing to most
hearers, but because the more poetic they are the less are they suited to
the ears of boys and men who are destined to be free and to be more afraid
of slavery than of death.

By all means.

Then we must further taboo in these matters the entire vocabulary of terror
and fear, Cocytus named of lamentation loud, abhorred Styx, the flood of
deadly hate, the people of the infernal pit and of the charnel house, and
all other terms of this type, whose very names send a shudder through all
the hearers every year. And they may be excellent for other purposes, but
we are in fear for our guardians lest the habit of such thrills make them
more sensitive and soft than we would have them.

And we are right in so fearing.

We must remove those things then?

Yes.

And the opposite type to them is what we must require in speech and inverse?

Obviously.

And shall we also do away with the wailings and lamentations of men of repute?

That necessarily follows, he said, from the other.

Consider, said I, whether we shall be right in thus getting rid of them or not.
What we affirm is that a good man will not think that for a good man, whose
friend he also is, death is a terrible thing.

Yes, we say that.

Then it would not be for his friend's sake as if he had suffered something
dreadful that he would make lament.

Certainly not.

But we also say this, that such a one is most of all men sufficient unto him-
self for a good life and is distinguished from other men in having least need
of anybody else.

True, he replied.

Least of all then to him is it a terrible thing to lose son or brother or his
wealth or anything of the sort.

Least of all.

Then he makes the least lament and bears it most moderately when any such
misfortune overtakes him.

Certainly.

Then we should be right in doing away with the lamentations of men of note
and in attributing them to women, and not to the most worthy of them either,
and to inferior men, in order that those whom we say we are breeding for the
guardianship of the land may disdain to act like these.

We should be right, said he.

Again then we shall request Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles,
the son of a goddess, as, lying now on his side, and then again on his back, and
again on his face,' and then rising up and 'drifting distraught on the shore of
the waste unharvested ocean,' nor as clutching with both hands the sooty dust
and strewing it over his head, nor as weeping and lamenting in the measure
and manner attributed to him by the poet, nor yet Priam, near kinsman of the
gods, making supplication and rolling in the dung, 'calling aloud unto each, by
name to each man appealing.' And yet more than this shall we beg of them at
least not to describe the gods as lamenting and crying, 'Ah, woe is me, woeful
mother who bore to my sorrow the bravest,' and if they will so picture the
gods, at least not to have the effrontery to present so unlikely a likeness of
the supreme god as to make him say,

Out on it, dear to my heart is the man whose pursuit around Troy town
I must behold with my eyes while my spirit is grieving within me,

and,

Ah, woe is me! Of all men to me is Sarpedon the dearest,
Fated to fall by the hands of Patroclus, Menoetius' offspring.

For if, dear Adimantus, our young men should seriously incline to listen to such
tales and not laugh at them as unworthy utterances, still less likely would any
man be to think such conduct unworthy of himself and to rebuke himself if it
occurred to him to do or say anything of that kind, but without shame or restraint
full many a dirge for trifles would he chant and many a lament.

You say most truly, he replied.

But that must not be, as our reasoning but now showed us, in which we must put
our trust until someone convinces us with a better reason.

No, it must not be.

Again, they must not be prone to laughter. For ordinarily when one abandons
himself to violent laughter his condition provokes a violent reaction.

I think so, he said.

Then if anyone represents men of worth as overpowered by laughter we must not
accept it, much less if gods.

Much indeed, he replied.

Then we must not accept from Homer such sayings as these either about the
gods.

Quenchless then was the laughter that rose from the blessed immortals
When they beheld Hephaestus officiouslv puffing and panting.

We must not accept them on your view.

If it pleases you to call it mine, he said. At any rate we must not accept them.

But further we must surely prize truth most highly. For if we were right in what
we were just saying and falsehood is in very deed useless to gods, but to men
useful as a remedy or form of medicine, it is obvious that such a thing must be
assigned to physicians, and laymen should have nothing to do with it.

Obviously, he replied.

The rulers then of the city may, if anybody, fitly lie on account of enemies or
citizens for the benefit of the state; no others may have anything to do with it.
But for a layman to lie to rulers of that kind we shall affirm to be as great a sin,
nay a greater, than it is for a patient not to tell his physician or an athlete his
trainer the truth about his bodily condition, or for a man to deceive the pilot
about the ship and the sailors as to the real condition of himself or a fellow
sailor, and how they fare.

Most true, he replied.

If then the ruler catches anybody else in the city lying, any of the craftsmen,
'whether a prophet or healer of sickness or joiner of timbers/ he will chastise
him for introducing a practice as subversive and destructive of a state as it is of a
ship.

He will, he said, if deed follows upon word.

Again, will our lads not need the virtue of self-control?

Of course.

And for the multitude are not the main points of self-control these--to be
obedient to their rulers and themselves to be rulers over the bodily appetites and
pleasures of food, drink, and the rest?

I think so.

Then, I take it, we will think well said such sayings as that of Homer's Diomedes,

Friend, sit down and be silent and hark to the word of my bidding,

and what follows.

Breathing high spirit the Greeks marched silently fearing their captains,

and all similar passages.

Yes, well said.

But what of this sort of thing,

Heavy with wine, with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a fleet deer,

and the lines that follow? Are these well--and other impertinences in prose
or verse of private citizens to their rulers?

They are not well.

They certainly are not suitable for youth to hear for the inculcation of self-
control. But if from another point of view they yield some pleasure we must not
be surprised, or what is your view of it?

This, he said.

Again, to represent the wisest man as saying that this seems to him the fairest
thing in the world,

When the bounteous tables are standing
Laden with bread and with meat and the cupbearer ladles the sweet wine
Out of the mixer and bears it and empties it into the beakers,

do you think the hearing of that sort of thing will conduce to a young man's
temperance or self-control? Or this?

Hunger is the most piteous death that a mortal may suffer.

Or to hear how Zeus lightly forgot all the designs which he devised, awake while
the other gods and men slept, because of the excitement of his passions, and
was so overcome by the sight of Hera that he is not even willing to go to their
chamber, but wants to lie with her there on the ground and says that he is
possessed by a fiercer desire than when they first consorted with one another,
'deceiving their dear parents'? Nor will it profit them to hear of Hephaestus'
fettering of Ares and Aphrodite for a like motive.

No, by Zeus, he said, I don't think it will.

But any words or deeds of endurance in the face of all odds attributed to
famous men are suitable for our youth to see represented and to hear, such as,

He smote his breast and chided thus his heart,
Endure, my heart, for worse hast thou endured.

By all means, he said.

It is certain that we cannot allow our men to be accepters of bribes or greedy for
gain.

By no means.

Then they must not chant, 'Gifts move the gods and gifts persuade dread kings.'
Nor should we approve Achilles' attendant Phoenix as speaking fairly when he
counseled him if he received gifts for it to defend the Achaeans, but without gifts
not to lay aside his wrath. Nor shall we think it proper nor admit that Achilles
himself was so greedy as to accept gifts from Agamemnon and again to give up a
dead body after receiving payment but otherwise to refuse.

It is not right, he said, to commend such conduct.

But, for Homer's sake, said I, I hesitate to say that it is positively impious to
affirm such things of Achilles and to believe them when told by others, or again
to believe that he said to Apollo,

Me thou hast balked, far-darter, the most pernicious of all gods,
Mightily would I requite thee if only my hands had the power,

and how he was disobedient to the river, who was a god, and was ready to
fight with him, and again that he said of the locks of his hair, consecrated to the
other river, Spercheus,

This let me give to take with him my hair to the hero, Patroclus,

who was a dead body. And that he did so we must not believe. And again the
trailings of Hector's body round the grave of Patroclus and the slaughter of
the living captives upon his pyre, all these we will affirm to be lies, nor will we
suffer our youth to believe that Achilles, the son of a goddess and of Peleus, the
most chaste of men, grandson of Zeus, and himself bred under the care of the
most sage Chiron, was of so perturbed a spirit as to be affected with two
contradictory maladies, the greed that becomes no free man and at the same time
overweening arrogance toward gods and men.

You are right, he said.

Neither, then, said I, must we believe this, or suffer it to be said, that Theseus,
the son of Poseidon, and Pirithous, the son of Zeus, attempted such dreadful
rapes, nor that any other child of a god or hero would have brought himself to
accomplish the terrible and impious deeds that they now falsely relate of them.
But we must constrain the poets either to deny that these are their deeds or that
they are the children of gods, but not to make both statements or attempt to
persuade our youth that the gods are the begetters of evil, and that heroes are no
better than men. For, as we were saying, such utterances are both impious and
false. For we proved, I take it, that for evil to arise from gods is an impossibility.

Certainly.

And they are furthermore harmful to those that hear them. For every man will be
very lenient with his own misdeeds if he is convinced that such are and were the
actions of

The near-sown seed of gods,
Close kin to Zeus, for whom on Ida's top
Ancestral altars flame to highest heaven,
Nor in their lifeblood fails the fire divine.

For which cause we must put down such fables, lest they breed in our youth
great laxity in turpitude.

Most assuredly.

What type of discourse remains for our definition of our prescriptions and
proscriptions? We have declared the right way of speaking about gods and
daemons and heroes and that other world?

We have.

Speech, then, about men would be the remainder.

Obviously.

It is impossible for us, my friend, to place this here.

Why?

Because I presume we are going to say that so it is that both poets and writers
of prose speak wrongly about men in matters of greatest moment, saying that
there are many examples of men who, though unjust, are happy, and of just men
who are wretched, and that there is profit in injustice if it be concealed, and that
justice is the other man's good and your own loss, and I presume that we shall
forbid them to say this sort of thing and command them to sing and fable the
opposite. Don't you think so?

Nay, I well know it, he said.

Then, if you admit that I am right, I will say that you have conceded the original
point of our inquiry?

Rightly apprehended, he said.

Then, as regards men, that speech must be of this kind, that is a point that we
will agree upon when we have discovered the nature of justice and the proof that
it is profitable to its possessor whether he does or does not appear to be just.

Most true, he replied.

So this concludes the topic of tales. That of diction, I take it, is to be considered
next. So we shall have completely examined both the matter and the manner of
speech.

And Adimantus said, I don't understand what you mean by this.

Well, said I, we must have you understand. Perhaps you will be more likely to
apprehend it thus. Is not everything that is said by fabulists or poets a narration
of past, present, or future things?

What else could it be? he said.

Do not they proceed either by pure narration or by a narrative that is effected
through imitation, or by both?

This too, he said, I still need to have made plainer.

I seem to be a ridiculous and obscure teacher, I said. So, like men who are
unable to express themselves I won't try to speak in wholes and universals but
will separate off a particular part and by the example of that try to show you my
meaning. Tell me, do you know the first lines of the Iliad in which the poet
says that Chryses implored Agamemnon to release his daughter, and that the
king was angry and that Chryses, failing of his request, imprecated curses on
the Achaeans in his prayers to the god?

You know then that as far as these verses,

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　And prayed unto all the Achaeans.
Chiefly to Atreus's sons, twin leaders who marshaled the people,

the poet himself is the speaker and does not even attempt to suggest to us that
anyone but himself is speaking. But what follows he delivers as if he were himself
Chryses and tries as far as may be to make us feel that not Homer is the speaker,
but the priest, an old man. And in this manner he has carried on nearly all the rest
of his narration about affairs in Ilium, all that happened in Ithaca, and the entire
Odyssey.

Quite so, he said.

Now, it is narration, is it not, both when he presents the several speeches and the
matter between the speeches?

Of course.

But when he delivers a speech as if he were someone else, shall we not say that he
then assimilates thereby his own diction as far as possible to that of the person whom
he announces as about to speak?

We shall, obviously.

And is not likening oneself to another in speech or bodily bearing an imitation of
him to whom one likens oneself?

Surely.

In such case then, it appears, he and the other poets effect their narration through
imitation.

Certainly.

But if the poet should conceal himself nowhere, then his entire poetizing and
narration would have been accomplished without imitation. And lest you may
say again that you don't understand, I will explain to you how this would be
done. If Homer, after telling us that Chryses came with the ransom of his
daughter and as a suppliant of the Achaeans but chiefly of the kings, had gone on
speaking not as if made or being Chryses but still as Homer, you are aware that
it would not be imitation but narration, pure and simple. It would have been
somewhat in this wise. I will state it without meter for I am not a poet. The priest
came and prayed that to them the gods should grant to take Troy and come
safely home, but that they should accept the ransom and release his daughter,
out of reverence for the god, and when he had thus spoken the others were of
reverent mind and approved, but Agamemnon was angry and bade him depart
and not come again lest the scepter and the fillets of the god should not avail
him. And ere his daughter should be released, he said, she would grow old in
Argos with himself, and he ordered him to be off and not vex him if he wished
to get home safe. And the old man on hearing this was frightened and departed
in silence, and having gone apart from the camp he prayed at length to Apollo,
invoking the appellations of the god, and reminding him of and asking requital for
any of his gifts that had found favor whether in the building of temples or the
sacrifice of victims. In return for these things he prayed that the Achaeans should
suffer for his tears by the god's shafts.

It is in this way, my dear fellow, I said, that without imitation simple narration
results.

I understand, he said.

Understand then, said I, that the opposite of this arises when one removes the
words of the poet between and leaves the alternation of speeches.

This too I understand, he said. It is what happens in tragedy.

You have conceived me most rightly, I said, and now I think I can make plain to
you what I was unable to before, that there is one kind of poetry and tale telling
which works wholly through imitation, as you remarked, tragedy and comedy,
and another which employs the recital of the poet himself, best exemplified, I
presume, in the dithyramb, and there is again that which employs both, in epic
poetry and in many other places, if you apprehend me.

I understand now, he said, what you then meant.

Recall then also the preceding statement that we were done with the 'what' of
speech and still had to consider the 'how.'

I remember.

What I meant then was just this, that we must reach a decision whether we are
to suffer our poets to narrate as imitators or in part as imitators and in part not,
and what sort of things in each case, or not allow them to imitate at all.

I divine, he said, that you are considering whether we shall admit tragedy and
comedy into our city or not.

Perhaps, said I, and perhaps even more than that. For I certainly do not yet know
myself, but whithersoever the wind, as it were, of the argument blows, there lies
our course.

Well said, he replied.

This then, Adimantus, is the point we must keep in view. Do we wish our
guardians to be good mimics or not? Or is this also a consequence of what we
said before, that each one could practice well only one pursuit and not many, but
if he attempted the latter, dabbling in many things, he would fail of distinction
in all?

Of course it is.

And does not the same rule hold for imitation, that the same man is not able to
imitate many things well as he can one?

No, he is not.

Still less, then, will he be able to combine the practice of any worthy pursuit
with the imitation of many things and the quality of a mimic, since, unless I mis-
take, the same men cannot practice well at once even the two forms of imitation
that appear most nearly akin, as the writing of tragedy and comedy. Did you not
just now call these two imitations?

I did, and you are right in saying that the same men are not able to succeed in
both.

Nor yet to be at once good rhapsodists and actors?

True.

But neither can the same men be actors for tragedies and comedies--and all
these are imitations, are they not?

Yes, imitations.

And to still smaller coinage than this, in my opinion, Adimantus, proceeds the
fractioning of human faculty, so as to be incapable of imitating many things or
of doing the things themselves of which the imitations are likenesses.

Most true, he replied.

If, then, we are to maintain our original principle, that our guardians, released
from all other crafts, are to be expert craftsmen of civic liberty, and pursue
nothing else that does not conduce to this, it would not be fitting for these to
do nor yet to imitate anything else. But if they imitate they should from child-
hood up imitate what is appropriate to them--men, that is, who are brave, sober,
pious, free, and all things of that kind--but things unbecoming the free man they
should neither do nor be clever at imitating, nor yet any other shameful thing,
lest from the imitation they imbibe the reality. Or have you not observed that
imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and
second nature in the body, the speech, and the thought?

Yes, indeed, said he.

We will not then allow our charges, whom we expect to prove good men, being
men, to play the parts of women and imitate a woman young or old wrangling
with her husband, defying heaven, loudly boasting, fortunate in her own conceit,
or involved in misfortune and possessed by grief and lamentation--still less a
woman that is sick, in love, or in labor.

Most certainly not, he replied.

Nor may they imitate slaves, female and male, doing the offices of slaves.

No, not that either.

Nor yet, as it seems, bad men who are cowards and who do the opposite of the
things we just now spoke of, reviling and lampooning one another, speaking foul
words in their cups or when sober and in other ways sinning against themselves
and others in word and deed after the fashion of such men. And I take it they
must not form the habit of likening themselves to madmen either in words nor
yet in deeds. For while knowledge they must have both of mad and bad men and
women, they must do and imitate nothing of this kind.

Most true, he said.

What of this? I said. Are they to imitate smiths and other craftsmen or the row-
ers of triremes and those who call the time to them or other things connected
therewith?

How could they, he said, since it will be forbidden them even to pay any
attention to such things?

Well, then, neighing horses and lowing bulls, and the noise of rivers and the roar
of the sea and the thunder and everything of that kind--will they imitate these?

Nay, they have been forbidden, he said, to be mad or liken themselves to madmen.

If, then, I understand your meaning, said I, there is a form of diction and
narrative in which the really good and true man would narrate anything that he
had to say, and another form unlike this to which the man of the opposite birth
and breeding would cleave and in which he would tell his story.

What are these forms? he said.

A man of the right sort, I think, when he comes in the course of his narrative
to some word or act of a good man will be willing to impersonate the other in
reporting it, and will feel no shame at that kind of mimicry, by preference
imitating the good man when he acts steadfastly and sensibly, and less and
more reluctantly when he is upset by sickness or love or drunkenness or any
other mishap. But when he comes to someone unworthy of himself, he will not
wish to liken himself in earnest to one who is inferior, except in the few cases
where he is doing something good, but will be embarrassed both because he is
unpracticed in the mimicry of such characters, and also because he shrinks in
distaste from molding and fitting himself to the types of baser things. His mind
disdains them, unless it be for jest.

Naturally, he said.

Then the narrative that he will employ will be of the kind that we just now
illustrated by the verses of Homer, and his diction will be one that partakes of
both, of imitation and simple narration, but there will be a small portion of
imitation in a long discourse--or is there nothing in what I say?

Yes, indeed, he said, that is the type and pattern of such a speaker.

Then, said I, the other kind of speaker, the more debased he is the less will
he shrink from imitating anything and everything. He will think nothing unworthy
of himself, so that he will attempt, seriously and in the presence of many, to
imitate all things, including those we just now mentioned--claps of thunder, and
the noise of wind and hail and axles and pulleys, and the notes of trumpets and
flutes and Panpipes, and the sounds of all instruments, and the cries of dogs,
sheep, and birds--and so his style will depend wholly on imitation in voice and
gesture, or will contain but a little of pure narration

That too follows of necessity, he said.

These, then, said I, were the two types of diction of which I was speaking.

There are those two, he replied.

Now does not one of the two involve slight variations, and if we assign a
suitable pitch and rhythm to the diction, is not the result that the right
speaker speaks almost on the same note and in one cadence--for the changes
are slight--and similarly in a rhythm of nearly the same kind?

Quite so.

But what of the other type? Does it not require the opposite, every kind of pitch
and all rhythms, if it too is to have appropriate expression, since it involves man-
ifold forms of variation?

Emphatically so.

And do all poets and speakers hit upon one type or the other of diction or some
blend which they combine of both?

They must, he said.

What, then, said I, are we to do? Shall we admit all of these into the city, or one
of the unmixed types, or the mixed type?

If my vote prevails, he said, the unmixed imitator of the good.

Nay, but the mixed type also is pleasing, Adimantus, and far most pleasing to
boys and their tutors and the great mob is the opposite of your choice.

Most pleasing it is.

But perhaps, said I, you would affirm it to be ill suited to our polity, because
there is no twofold or manifold man among us, since every man does one thing.

It is not suited.

And is this not the reason why such a city is the only one in which we shall find
the cobbler a cobbler and not a pilot in addition to his cobbling, and the farmer a
farmer and not a judge added to his farming, and the soldier a soldier and not a
money-maker in addition to his soldiery, and so of all the rest?

True, he said.

If a man, then, it seems, who was capable by his cunning of assuming every kind
of shape and imitating all things should arrive in our city, bringing with himself the
poems which he wished to exhibit, we should fall down and worship him as a holy
and wondrous and delightful creature, but should say to him that there is no man
of that kind among us in our city, nor is it lawful for such a man to arise among
us, and we should send him away to another city, after pouring myrrh down over
his head and crowning him with fillets of wool, but we ourselves, for our souls'
good, should continue to employ the more austere and less delightful poet and
taleteller, who would imitate the diction of the good man and would tell his tale
in the patterns which we prescribed in the beginning, when we set out to educate
our soldiers.

We certainly should do that if it rested with us.

And now, my friend, said I, we may say that we have completely finished the part
of music that concerns speeches and tales. For we have set forth what is to be
said and how it is to be said.

I think so too, he replied.

After this, then, said I, comes the manner of song and tunes?

Obviously.

And having gone thus far, could not everybody discover what we must say of
their character in order to conform to what has already been said?

I am afraid that 'everybody' does not include me, laughed Glaucon. I cannot
sufficiently divine offhand what we ought to say, though I have a suspicion.

You certainly, I presume, said I, have a sufficient understanding of this--that
the song is composed of three things, the words, the tune, and the rhythm?

Yes, said he, that much.

And so far as it is words, it surely in no manner differs from words not sung in
the requirement of conformity to the patterns and manner that we have prescribed?

True, he said.

And again, the music and the rhythm must follow the speech.

Of course.

But we said we did not require dirges and lamentations in words.

We do not.

What, then, are the dirgelike modes of music? Tell me, for you are a musician.

The mixed Lydian, he said, and the tense or higher Lydian, and similar modes.

These, then, said I, we must do away with. For they are useless even to women
who are to make the best of themselves, let alone to men.

Assuredly.

But again, drunkenness is a thing most unbefitting guardians, and so is softness
and sloth.

Yes.

What, then, are the soft and convivial modes?

There are certain Ionian and also Lydian modes that are called lax. Will you
make any use of them for warriors?

None at all, he said, but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the
Phrygian.

I don't know the musical modes, I said, but leave us that mode that would
fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is engaged
in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed, either
meeting wounds or death or having fallen into some other mishap, in all these
conditions confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes.
And another for such a man engaged in works of peace, not enforced but vol-
untary, either trying to persuade somebody of something and imploring him
--whether it be a god, through prayer, or a man, by teaching and admonition?
or contrariwise yielding himself to another who is petitioning or teaching him
or trying to change his opinions, and in consequence faring according to his
wish, and not bearing himself arrogantly, but in all this acting modestly and
moderately and acquiescing in the outcome. Leave us these two modes--the
enforced and the voluntary--that will best imitate the utterances of men failing
or succeeding, the temperate, the brave--leave us these.

Well, said he, you are asking me to leave none other than those I just spoke of.

Then, said I, we shall not need in our songs and airs instruments of many strings
or whose compass includes all the harmonies.

Not in my opinion, said he.

Then we shall not maintain makers of triangles and harps and all other many-
stringed and polyharmonic instruments.

Apparently not.

Well, will you admit to the city flute makers and flute players? Or is not the flute
the most 'many-stringed' of instruments and do not the panharmonics themselves
imitate it?

Clearly, he said.

You have left, said I, the lyre and the cithara. These are useful in the city,
and in the fields the shepherds would have a little piccolo to pipe on.

So our argument indicates, he said,

We are not innovating, my friend, in preferring Apollo and the instruments of
Apollo to Marsyas and his instruments.

No, by heaven! he said. I think not.

And by the dog, said I, we have all unawares purged the city which a little while
ago we said was luxurious.

In that we show our good sense, he said.

Come then, let us complete the purification. For upon harmonies would follow the
consideration of rhythms; we must not pursue complexity nor great variety in the
basic movements, but must serve what are the rhythms of a life that is or-
derly and brave, and after observing them require the foot and the air to con-
form to that kind of man's speech and not the speech to the foot and the tune.
What those rhythms would be, it is for you to tell us as you did the musical
modes.

Nay, in faith, he said, I cannot tell. For that there are some three forms from
which the feet are combined, just as there are four in the notes of the voice
whence come all harmonies, is a thing that I have observed and could tell. But
which are imitations of which sort of life, I am unable to say.

Well, said I, on this point we will take counsel with Damon, too, as to which
are the feet appropriate to illiberality, and insolence or madness or other evils,
and what rhythms we must leave for their opposites. And I believe I have heard
him obscurely speaking of a foot that he called the enoplios, a composite foot,
and a dactyl and a heroic foot, which he arranged, I know not how, to be equal
up and down in the interchange of long and short, and unless I am mistaken he
used the term iambic, and there was another foot that he called the trochaic,
and he added the quantities long and short. And in some of these, I believe, he
censured and commended the tempo of the foot no less than the rhythm itself, or
else some combination of the two, I can't say. But, as I said, let this matter be
postponed for Damon's consideration. For to determine the truth of these would
require no little discourse. Do you think otherwise?

No, by heaven, I do not.

But this you are able to determine--that seemliness and unseemliness are
attendant upon the good rhythm and the bad.

Of course.

And, further, that good rhythm and bad rhythm accompany, the one fair diction,
assimilating itself thereto, and the other the opposite, and so of the apt And
the unapt, if, as we were just now saving, the rhythm and harmony follow the
words and not the words these.

They certainly must follow the speech, he said.

And what of the manner of the diction, and the speech? said I. Do they not
follow and conform to the disposition of the soul?

Of course.

And all the rest to the diction?

Yes.

Good speech, then, good accord, and good grace, and good rhythm wait upon a good-
ness of heart, but the truly good and fair disposition of the character and the mind.

By all means, he said.

And must not our youth pursue these everywhere if they are to do what it is truly
theirs to do?

They must indeed.

And there is surely much of these qualities in painting and in all similar
craftsmanship--weaving is full of them and embroidery and architecture and
likewise the manufacture of household furnishings and thereto the natural
bodies of animals and plants as well. For in all these there is grace or grace-
lessness. And gracelessness and evil rhythm and disharmony are akin to evil
speaking and the evil temper, but the opposites are the symbols and the kin
of the opposites, the sober and good disposition.

Entirely so, he said.

Is it, then, only the poets that we must supervise and compel to embody in
their poems the semblance of the good character or else not write poetry among
us, or must we keep watch over the other craftsmen, and forbid them to rep-
resent the evil disposition, the licentious, the illiberal, the graceless, either
in the likeness of living creatures or in buildings or in any other product
of their art, on penalty, if unable to obey, of being forbidden to practice their
art among us, that our guardians may not be bred among symbols of evil, as it were
in a pasturage of poisonous herbs, lest grazing freely and cropping from many
such day by day they little by little and all unawares accumulate and build up a
huge mass of evil in their own souls. But we must look for those craftsmen who
by the happy gift of nature are capable of following the trail of true beauty and
grace, that our young men, dwelling as it were in a salubrious region, may
receive benefit from all things about them, whence the influence that emanates
from works of beauty may waft itself to eye or ear like a breeze that brings from
wholesome places health, and so from earliest childhood insensibly guide them
to likeness, to friendship, to harmony with beautiful reason.

Yes, he said, that would be far the best education for them.

And is it not for this reason, Glaucon, said I, that education in music is
most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their
way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them
and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary?
And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made
or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated
in music, and so, feeling distaste rightly, he would praise beautiful things
and take delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth
and become himself beautiful and good. The ugly he would rightly disapprove
of and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but
when reason came the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her wel-
come, for by this affinity he would know her.

I certainly think, he said, that such is the cause of education in music.

It is, then, said I, as it was when we learned our letters and felt that we knew
them sufficiently only when the separate letters did not elude us, appearing as
few elements in all the combinations that convey them, and when we did not dis-
regard them in small things or great and think it unnecessary to recognize them,
but were eager to distinguish them everywhere, in the belief that we should never
be literate and letter-perfect till we could do this.

True.

And is it not also true that if there are any likenesses of letters reflected in
water or mirrors, we shall never know them until we know the originals, but such
knowledge belongs to the same art and discipline?

By all means.

Then, by heaven, am I not right in saying that by the same token we shall never
be true musicians, either--neither we nor the guardians that we have undertaken
to educate--until we are able to recognize the forms of soberness, courage, lib-
erality, and high-mindedness, and all their kindred and their opposites, too, in
all the combinations that contain and convey them, and to apprehend them and their
images wherever found, disregarding them neither in trifles nor in great things,
but believing the knowledge of them to belong to the same art and discipline?

The conclusion is inevitable, he said.

Then, said I, when there is a coincidence of a beautiful disposition in the soul
and corresponding and harmonious beauties of the same type in the bodily form
--is not this the fairest spectacle for one who is capable of its contemplation?

Far the fairest.

And surely the fairest is the most lovable.

Of course.

The true musician, then, would love by preference persons of this sort, but if
there were disharmony he would not love this.

No, he said, not if there was a defect in the soul, but if it were in the body he
would bear with it and still be willing to bestow his love,

I understand, I said, that you have or have had favorites of this sort and I grant
your distinction. But tell me this--can there be any communion between sober-
ness and extravagant pleasure?

How could there be, he said, since such pleasure puts a man beside himself no
less than pain?

Or between it and virtue generally?

By no means.

But is there between pleasure and insolence and license?

Most assuredly.

Do you know of greater or keener pleasure than that associated with Aphrodite?

I don't, he said, nor yet of any more insane.

But is not the right love a sober and harmonious love of the orderly and the
beautiful?

It is indeed, said he.

Then nothing of madness, nothing akin to license, must be allowed to come nigh
the right love?

No.

Then this kind of pleasure may not come nigh, nor may lover and beloved who
rightly love and are loved have anything to do with it?

No, by heaven, Socrates, he said, it must not come nigh them.

Thus, then, as it seems, you will lay down the law in the city that we are found-
ing, that the lover may kiss and pass the time with and touch the beloved as
a father would a son, for honorable ends, if he persuade him. But otherwise he
must so associate with the objects of his care that there should never be any
suspicion of anything further, on penalty of being stigmatized for want of taste
and true musical culture.

Even so, he said.

Do you not agree, then, that our discourse on music has come to an end? It has
certainly made a fitting end, for surely the end and consummation of culture is
the love of the beautiful.

I concur, he said.

After music our youth are to be educated by gymnastics?

Certainly,

In this too they must be carefully trained from boyhood through life, and the way
of it is this, I believe, but consider it yourself too. For I, for my part, do not believe
that a sound body by its excellence makes the soul good, but on the contrary that
a good soul by its virtue renders the body the best that is possible. What is your
opinion?

I think so too.

Then if we should sufficiently train the mind and turn over to it the minutiae of
the care of the body, and content ourselves with merely indicating the norms or
patterns, not to make a long story of it, we should be acting rightly?

By all means.

From intoxication we said that they must abstain. For a guardian is surely the
last person in the world to whom it is allowable to get drunk and not know where
on earth he is.

Yes, he said, it would be absurd that a guardian should need a guard.

What next about their food? These men are athletes in the greatest of contests,
are they not?

Yes.

Is, then, the bodily habit of the athletes we see about us suitable for such?

Perhaps.

Nay, said I, that is a drowsy habit and precarious for health. Don't you observe
that they sleep away their lives, and that if they depart ever so little from their
prescribed regimen these athletes are liable to great and violent diseases?

I do.

Then, said I, we need some more ingenious form of training for our athletes of
war, since these must be as it were sleepless hounds, and have the keenest
possible perceptions of sight and hearing, and in their campaigns undergo many
changes in their drinking water, their food, and in exposure to the heat of the
sun and to storms, without disturbance of their health.

I think so.

Would not, then, the best gymnastics be akin to the music that we were just now
describing?

What do you mean?

It would be a simple and flexible gymnastic training, and especially so in the
training for war.

In what way?

One could learn that, said I, even from Homer. For you are aware that in the
banqueting of the heroes on campaign he does not feast them on fish, though
they are at the seaside on the Hellespont, nor on boiled meat, but only on roast,
which is what soldiers could most easily procure. For everywhere, one may say,
it is of easier provision to use the bare fire than to convey pots and pans along.

Indeed it is.

Neither, as I believe, does Homer ever make mention of sweetmeats. Is not that
something which all men in training understand? that if one is to keep his body
in good condition he must abstain from such things altogether?

They are right, he said, in that they know it and do abstain.

Then, my friend, if you think this is the right way, you apparently do not approve
of a Syracusan table and the Sicilian variety of dishes.

I think not.

You would frown, then, on a little Corinthian maid as the chere amie of men
who were to keep themselves fit?

Most certainly.

And also on the seeming delights of Attic pastry?

Inevitably.

In general, I take it, if we likened that kind of food and regimen to music and
song expressed in the panharmonic mode and in every variety of rhythm it would
be a fair comparison.

Quite so.

And there variety engendered licentiousness, did it not, but here disease, while
simplicity in music begets sobriety in the souls, and in gymnastic training it
begets health in bodies?

Most true, he said.

And when licentiousness and disease multiply in a city, are not many courts
of law and dispensaries opened? And the arts of chicane and medicine give them-
selves airs when even free men in great numbers take them very seriously.

How can they help it? he said.

Will you be able to find a surer proof of an evil and shameful state of education
in a city than the necessity of first-rate physicians and judges, not only for the
base and mechanical, but for those who claim to have been bred in the fashion
of free men? Do you not think it disgraceful and a notable mark of bad breeding
to have to make use of a justice imported from others, who thus become your
masters and judges, from lack of such qualities in yourself?

The most shameful thing in the world.

Is it? said I. Or is this still more shameful--when a man not only wears out the
better part of his days in the courts of law as defendant or accuser, but from
the lack of all true sense of values is led to plume himself on this very thing,
as being a smart fellow to 'put over' an unjust act and cunningly to try every
dodge and practice, every evasion, and wriggle out of every hold in defeating
justice, and that too for trifles and worthless things, because he does not know
how much nobler and better it is to arrange his life so as to have no need of a
nodding juryman?

That is, said he, still more shameful than the other.

And to require medicine, said I, not merely for wounds or the incidence of
some seasonal maladies, but, because of sloth and such a regimen as we
described, to fill one's body up with winds and humors like a marsh and compel
the ingenious sons of Asclepius to invent for diseases such names as fluxes and
flatulences--don't you think that disgraceful?

Those surely are, he said, newfangled and monstrous strange names of diseases.

There was nothing of the kind, I fancy, said I, in the days of Asclepius. I
infer this from the fact that at Troy his sons did not find fault with the
damsel who gave to the wounded Eurypylus to drink a posset of Pramnian wine
plentifully sprinkled with barley and gratings of cheese, inflammatory in-
gredients of a surety, nor did they censure Patroclus, who was in charge of
the case.

It was indeed, said he, a strange potion for a man in that condition.

Not so strange, said I, if you reflect that the former Asclepiads made no use of
our modern coddling medication of diseases before the time of Herodicus. But
Herodicus was a trainer and became a valetudinarian, and blended gymnastics
and medicine, for the torment first and chiefly of himself and then of many
successors.

How so? he said.

By lingering out his death, said I. For living in perpetual observance of his
malady, which was incurable, he was not able to effect a cure, but lived through
his days unfit for the business of life, suffering the tortures of the damned if
he departed a whit from his fixed regimen. And struggling against death, by
reason of his science he won the prize of a doting old age.

A noble prize indeed for his science, he said.

The appropriate one, said I, for a man who did not know that it was not from
ignorance or inacquaintance with this type of medicine that Asclepius did not
discover it to his descendants, but because he knew that for all well-governed
peoples there is a work assigned to each man in the city which he must perform,
and no one has leisure to be sick and doctor himself all his days. And this we
absurdly enough perceive in the case of a craftsman, but don't see in the case
of the rich and so-called fortunate.

How so? he said.

A carpenter, said I, when he is sick expects his physician to give him a drug
which will operate as an emetic on the disease, or to get rid of it by purging or
the use of cautery or the knife. But if anyone prescribes for him a long course
of treatment with swathings about the head and their accompaniments, he hastily
says that he has no leisure to be sick, and that such a life of preoccupation with
his illness and neglect of the work that lies before him isn't worth living. And
thereupon he bids farewell to that kind of physician, enters upon his customary
way of life, regains his health, and lives attending to his affairs--or, if his body
is not equal to the strain, he dies and is freed from all his troubles.

For such a man, he said, that appears to be the right use of medicine.

And is not the reason, I said, that he had a task and that life wasn't worth
acceptance on condition of not doing his work?

Obviously, he said.

But the rich man, we say, has no such appointed task, the necessity of abstaining
from which renders life intolerable.

I haven't heard of any.

Why, haven't you heard that saying of Phocylides, that after a man has made his
pile' he ought to practice virtue?

Before, too, I fancy, he said.

Let us not quarrel with him on that point, I said, but inform ourselves whether
this virtue is something for the rich man to practice, and life is intolerable
if he does not, or whether we are to suppose that while valetudinarianism is a
hindrance to single-minded attention to carpentry and the other arts, it is no
obstacle to the fulfillment of Phocylides' exhortation.

Yes, indeed, he said, this excessive care for the body that goes beyond simple
gymnastics is about the greatest of all obstacles.

For it is troublesome in household affairs and military service and sedentary
offices in the city. And, chief of all, it puts difficulties in the way of any
kind of instruction, thinking, or private meditation--forever imagining head-
aches and dizziness and attributing their origin to philosophy. So that where-
ver this kind of virtue is practiced and tested it is in every way a hindrance.
For it makes the man always fancy himself sick and never cease from anguishing
about his body.

Naturally, he said.

Then shall we not say that it was because Asclepius knew this, that for those
who were by nature and course of life sound of body but had some localized
disease, that for such, I say, and for this habit he revealed the art of medicine,
and, driving out their disease by drugs and surgery, prescribed for them their
customary regimen in order not to interfere with their civic duties, but that, when
bodies were diseased inwardly and throughout, he did not attempt by diet and by
gradual evacuations and infusions to prolong a wretched existence for the man
and have him beget in all likelihood similar wretched offspring? But if a man
was incapable of living in the established round and order of life, he did not
think it worth while to treat him, since such a fellow is of no use either to
himself or to the state.

A most politic Asclepius you're telling us of, he said.

Obviously, said I, that was his character. And his sons too, don't you see that
at Troy they proved themselves good fighting men and practiced medicine as I
described it? Don't you remember that in the case of Menelaus too. from the
wound that Pandarus inflicted 'they sucked the blood, and soothing simples
sprinkled'? But what he was to eat or drink thereafter they no more prescribed
than for Eurypylus, taking it for granted that the remedies sufficed to heal men
who before their wounds were healthy and temperate in diet even if they did hap-
pen for the nonce to drink a posset. But they thought that the life of a man con-
stitutionally sickly and intemperate was of no use to himself or others, and that
the art of medicine should not be for such nor should they be given treatment
even if they were richer than Midas.

Very ingenious fellows, he said, you make out these sons of Asclepius to be.

Tis fitting, said I, and yet in disregard of our principles the tragedians and
Pindar affirm that Asclepius, though he was the son of Apollo, was bribed by
gold to heal a man already at the point of death, and that for this cause he
was struck by the lightning. But we in accordance with the aforesaid prin-
ciples refuse to believe both statements. If he was the son of a god he was
not avaricious, we will insist, and if he was greedy of gain he was not the
son of a god.

That much, said he, is most certainly true.

But what have you to say to this, Socrates? Must we not have good physi-
cians in our city? And they would be the most likely to be good who had
treated the greatest number of healthy and diseased men, and so good judges
would be those who had associated with all sorts and conditions of men.

Most assuredly I want them good, I said, but do you know whom I regard as
such?

I'll know if you tell, he said.

Well, I will try, said I. You, however, have put unlike cases in one question.

How so? said he.

Physicians, it is true, I said, would prove most skilled if, from childhood up,
in addition to learning the principles of the art they had familiarized them-
selves with the greatest possible number of the most sickly bodies, and if they
themselves had suffered all diseases and were not of very healthy constitution.
For you see they do not treat the body by the body. If they did, it would not be
allowable for their bodies to be or to have been in evil condition. But they treat
the body with the mind--and it is not competent for a mind that is or has been
evil to treat anything well.

Right, he said.

But a judge, mark you, my friend, rules soul with soul and it is not allowable
for a soul to have been bred from youth up among evil souls and to have grown
familiar with them, and itself to have run the gauntlet of every kind of wrong-
doing and injustice so as quickly to infer from itself the misdeeds of others
as it might diseases in the body, but it must have been inexperienced in evil
natures and uncontaminated by them while young, if it is to be truly fair and
good and judge soundly of justice. For which cause the better sort seem to be
simple-minded in youth and are easily deceived by the wicked, since they do
not have within themselves patterns answering to the affections of the bad.

That is indeed their experience, he said.

Therefore it is, said I, that the good judge must not be a youth but an old man, a
late learner of the nature of injustice, one who has not become aware of it as a
property in his own soul, but one who has through the long years trained himself
to understand it as an alien thing in alien souls, and to discern how great an evil
it is by the instrument of mere knowledge and not by experience of his own.

That at any rate, he said, appears to be the noblest kind of judge.

And what is more, a good one, I said, which was the gist of your question. For
he who has a good soul is good. But that cunning fellow quick to suspect evil,
and who has himself done many unjust acts and who thinks himself a smart trick-
ster, when he associates with his like does appear to be clever, being on his
guard and fixing his eyes on the patterns within himself. But when the time
comes for him to mingle with the good and his eiders, then on the contrary he
appears stupid. He is unseasonably distrustful and he cannot recognized a
sound character because he has no such pattern in himself. But since he more
often meets with the bad than the good, he seems to himself and to others to
be rather wise than foolish

That is quite true, he said.

Well then, said I, such a one must not be our ideal of the good and wise judge
but the former. For while badness could never come to know both virtue and it-
self, native virtue through education will at last acquire the science of both it-
self and badness. This one, then, as I think, is the man who proves to be
wise and not the bad man.

And I concur, he said.

Then will you not establish by law in your city such an art of medicine as we
have described in conjunction with this kind of justice? And these arts will care
for the bodies and souls of such of your citizens as are truly wellborn, but
those who are not, such as are defective in body, they will suffer to die, and
those who are evil-natured and incurable in soul they will themselves put to
death.

This certainly, he said, has been shown to be the best thing for the sufferers
themselves and for the state.

And so your youths, said I, employing that simple music which we said engen-
dered sobriety will, it is clear, guard themselves against falling into the need
of the justice of the courtroom.

Yes, he said.

And will not our musician, pursuing the same trail in his use of gymnastics,
if he please, get to have no need of medicine save when indispensable?

I think so.

And even the exercises and toils of gymnastics he will undertake with a view to
the spirited part of his nature to arouse that rather than for mere strength, unlike
ordinary athletes, who treat diet and exercise only as a means to muscle.

Nothing could be truer, he said.

Then may we not say, Glaucon, said I, that those who established an education
in music and gymnastics had not the purpose in view that some attribute to them
in so instituting, namely to treat the body by one and the soul by the other?

But what? he said.

It seems likely, I said, that they ordained both chiefly for the soul's sake.

How so?

Have you not observed, said I, the effect on the disposition of the mind itself of
lifelong devotion to gymnastics with total neglect of music? Or the disposition of
those of the opposite habit?

In what respect do you mean? he said.

In respect of savagery and hardness or, on the other hand, of softness and gentle-
ness?

I have observed, he said, that the devotees of unmitigated gymnasties turn out
more brutal than they should be and those of music softer than is good for them.

And surely, said I, this savagery is a quality derived from the high-spirited element
in our nature, which, if rightly trained, becomes brave, but if overstrained, would
naturally become hard and harsh.

I think so. he said.

And again, is not the gentleness a quality which the philosophical nature would
yield? This if relaxed too far would be softer than is desirable but if rightly
trained gentle and orderly?

That is so.

But our requirement, we say, is that the guardians should possess both natures.

It is.

And must they not be harmoniously adjusted to one another?

Of course.

And the soul of the man thus attuned is sober and brave?

Certainly.

And that of the ill-adjusted is cowardly and rude?

It surely is.

Now when a man abandons himself to music, to play upon him and pour into his
soul as it were through the funnel of his ears those sweet, soft, and dirgelike airs
of which we were just now speaking, and gives his entire time to the warblings and
blandishments of song, the first result is that the principle of high spirit, if he
had it, is softened like iron and is made useful instead of useless and brittle.
But when he continues the practice without remission and is spellbound, the effect
begins to be that he melts and liquefies till he completely dissolves away his
spirit, cuts out as it were the very sinews of his soul and makes of himself a
'feeble warrior.'

Assuredly, he said.

And if, said I, he has to begin with a spiritless nature he reaches this result
quickly, but if a high-spirited, by weakening the spirit he makes it unstable,
quickly irritated by slight stimuli, and as quickly quelled. The outcome is that
such men are choleric and irascible instead of high-spirited, and are peevish and
discontented.

Precisely so.

On the other hand, if a man toils hard at gymnastics and eats right lustily and
holds no truck with music and philosophy, does he not at first get very fit and
full of pride and high spirit and become more brave and bold than he was?

He does indeed.

But what if he does nothing but this and has no contact with the Muse in any
way? Is not the result that even if there was some principle of the love of
knowledge in his soul, since it tastes of no instruction nor of any inquiry and
does not participate in any discussion or any other form of culture, it becomes
feeble, deaf, and blind, because it is not aroused or fed nor are its perceptions
purified and quickened?

That is so, he said.

And so such a man, I take it, becomes a misologist and a stranger
to the Muses. He no longer makes any use of persuasion by speech but
achieves all his ends like a beast by violence and savagery, and in his
brute ignorance and ineptitude lives a life of disharmony and gracelessness.

That is entirely true, he said.

For these two, then, it seems there are two arts which I would say some god gave
to mankind, music and gymnastics for the service of the high-spirited principle
and the love of knowledge in them--not for the soul and the body except inciden-
tally, but for the harmonious adjustment of these two principles by the proper
degree of tension and relaxation of each.

Yes, so it appears, he said.

Then he who best blends gymnastics with music and applies them most suitably
to the soul is the man whom we should most rightly pronounce to be the most
perfect and harmonious musician, far rather than the one who brings the strings
into unison with one another.

That seems likely, Socrates, he said.

And shall we not also need in our city, Glaucon, a permanent overseer of this
kind if its constitution is to be preserved?

We most certainly shall.

Such would be the outlines of their education and breeding. For why should one
recite the list of the dances of such citizens, their hunts and chases with hounds,
their athletic contests and races? It is pretty plain that they must conform to
these principles and there is no longer any difficulty in discovering them.

There is, it may be, no difficulty, he said.

Very well, said I. What, then, have we next to determine? Is it not which ones
among them shall be the rulers and the ruled?

Certainly.

That the rulers must be the elder and the ruled the younger is obvious.

It is.

And that the rulers must be their best?

This too.

And do not the best of the farmers prove the best farmers?

Yes.

And in this case, since we want them to be the best of the guardians, must they
not be the best guardians, the most regardful of the state?

Yes.

They must then to begin with be intelligent in such matters and capable, and
furthermore careful of the interests of the state?

That is so.

But one would be most likely to be careful of that which he loved.

Necessarily.

And again, one would be most likely to love that whose interests he supposed to
coincide with his own, and thought that when it prospered he too would prosper
and if not, the contrary.

So it is, he said.

Then we must pick out from the other guardians such men as to our observation
appear most inclined through the entire course of their lives to be zealous to do
what they think for the interest of the state, and who would be least likely to
consent to do the opposite.

That would be a suitable choice, he said.

I think, then, we shall have to observe them at every period of life, to see if
they are conservators and guardians of this conviction in their minds and never
by sorcery nor by force can be brought to expel from their souls unawares this
conviction that they must do what is best for the state.

What do you mean by the 'expelling'? he said.

I will tell you, said I. It seems to me that the exit of a belief from the mind
is either voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary is the departure of the false belief
from one who learns better, involuntary that of every true belief.

The voluntary, he said, I understand, but I need instruction about the involuntary.

How now, said I, don't you agree with me in thinking that men are unwillingly
deprived of good things but willingly of evil? Or is it not an evil to be deceived
in respect of the truth and a good to possess truth? And don't you think that to
opine the things that are is to possess the truth?

Why, yes, said he, you are right, and I agree that men are unwillingly deprived
of true opinions.

And doesn't this happen to them by theft, by the spells of sorcery, or by force?

I don't understand now either, he said.

I must be talking in high tragic style, I said. By those who have their opinions
stolen from them I mean those who are overpersuaded and those who forget,
because in the one case time, in the other argument strips them unawares of their
beliefs. Now I presume you understand, do you not?

Yes.

Well then, by those who are constrained or forced I mean those whom some pain
or suffering compels to change their minds.

That too I understand and you are right.

And the victims of sorcery I am sure you too would say an they who alter their
opinions under the spell of pleasure or terrified by some fear.

Yes, he said, everything that deceives appears to cast a spell upon the mind.

Well then, as I was just saying, we must look for those who are the best guard-
ians of the indwelling conviction that what they have to do is what they at
any time believe to be best for the state. Then we must observe them from
childhood up and propose for them tasks which one would be most likely to
forget this principle or be deceived, and he whose memory is sure and who
cannot be beguiled we must accept and the other kind we must cross off from
our list. Is not that so?

Yes.

And again we must subject them to toils and pains and competitions in which we
have to watch for the same traits.

Right, he said.

Then, said I, must we not institute a third kind of competitive test with regard to
sorcery and observe them in that? Just as men conduct colts to noises and uproar
to see if they are liable to take fright, so we must bring these lads while young
into fears and again pass them into pleasures, testing them much more carefully
than men do gold in the fire, to see if the man remains immune to such witch-
craft and preserves his composure throughout, a good guardian of himself and
the culture which he has received, maintaining the true rhythm and harmony
of his being in all those conditions, and the character that would make him most
useful to himself and to the state. And he who as boy, lad, and man endures the
test and issues from it un-spoiled we must establish as ruler over our city
and its guardian, and bestow rewards upon him in life, and in death the allotment
of the supreme honors of burial rites and other memorials. But the man of the
other type we must reject. Such, said I, appears to me, Glaucon, the general
notion of our selection and appointment of rulers and guardians as sketched in
outline, but not drawn out in detail.

I too, he said, think much the same.

Then would it not truly be most proper to designate these as guardians in the
full sense of the word, watchers against foemen without and friends within, so
that the latter shall not wish and the former shall not be able to work harm, but to
name those youths whom we were calling guardians just now helpers and aids
for the decrees of the rulers?

I think so, he replied.

How, then, said I, might we contrive one of those opportune falsehoods of which
we were just now speaking, so as by one noble lie to persuade if possible the
rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?

What kind of a fiction do you mean? said he.

Nothing unprecedented, said I, but a sort of Phoenician tale, something that has
happened ere now in many parts of the world, as the poets aver and have induced
men to believe, but that has not happened and perhaps would not be likely to
happen in our day and demanding no little persuasion to make it believable.

You act like one who shrinks from telling his thought, he said.

You will think that I have right good reason for shrinking when I have told, I
said.

Say on, said he, and don't be afraid.

Very well, I will. And yet I hardly know how to find the audacity or the words
to speak and undertake to persuade first the rulers themselves and the soldiers
and then the rest of the city that in good sooth all our training and educating of
them were things that they imagined and that happened to them as it were in a
dream, but that in reality at that time they were down within the earth being
molded and fostered themselves while their weapons and the rest of their
equipment were being fashioned. And when they were quite finished the earth as
being their mother delivered them, and now as if their land were their mother
and their nurse they ought to take thought for her and defend her against any
attack and regard the other citizens as their brothers and children of the selfsame
earth.

It is not for nothing, he said, that you were so bashful about coming out with
your lie.

It was quite natural that I should be, I said, but all the same hear the rest of
the story. While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet
God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled gold in their
generation, for which reason they are the most precious--but in the helpers
silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen. And as you are
all akin, though for the most part you will breed after your kinds, it may some-
times happen that a golden father would beget a silver son and that a golden
offspring would come from a silver sire and that the rest would in like manner be
born of one another. So that the first and chief injunction that the god lays upon
the rulers is that of nothing else are they to be such careful guardians and so
intently observant as of the intermixture of these metals in the souls of their
offspring, and if sons are born to them with an infusion of brass or iron they
shall by no means give way to pity in their treatment of them, but shall assign
to each the status due to his nature and thrust them out among the artisans or
the farmers. And again, if from these there are born sons with unexpected gold
or silver in their composition they shall honor such and bid them go up higher,
some to the office of guardian, some to the assistantship, alleging that there is
an oracle that the state shall then be overthrown when the man of iron or brass
is its guardian. Do you see any way of getting them to believe this tale?

No, not these themselves, he said, but do their sons and successors and the rest
of mankind who come alter.

Well, said I, even that would have a good effect in making them more inclined to
care for the state and one another. For I think I apprehend your meaning. And
this shall fall out as tradition guides. But let us arm these sons of earth and
conduct them under the leadership of their rulers. And when they have arrived
they must look out for the fairest site in the city for their encampment, a pos-
ition from which they could best hold down rebellion against the laws from within
and repel aggression from without as of a wolf against the fold. And after they
have encamped and sacrificed to the proper gods they must make their lairs,
must they not?

Yes, he said.

And these must be of a character to keep out the cold in winter and be sufficient
in summer?

Of course. For I presume you are speaking of their houses.

Yes, said I, the houses of soldiers, not of money-makers.

What distinction do you intend by that? he said.

I will try to tell you, I said. It is surely the most monstrous and shameful thing
in the world for shepherds to breed the dogs who are to help them with their flocks
in such wise and of such a nature that from indiscipline or hunger or some other
evil condition the dogs themselves shall attack the sheep and injure them and be
likened to wolves instead of dogs.

A terrible thing, indeed, he said,

Must we not then guard by every means in our power against our helpers' treat-
ing the citizens in any such way and, because they are the stronger, converting
themselves from benign assistants into savage masters?

We must, he said.

And would they not have been provided with the chief safeguard if their
education has really been a good one?

But it surely has, he said.

That, said I, dear Glaucon, we may not properly affirm, but what we were just
now saying we may, that they must have the right education, whatever it is, if
they are to have what will do most to make them gentle to one another and to
their charges.

That is right, he said.

In addition, moreover, to such an education a thoughtful man would affirm that
their houses and the possessions provided for them ought to be such as not to
interfere with the best performance of their own work as guardians and not
to incite them to wrong the other citizens.

He will rightly affirm that.

Consider then, said I, whether, if that is to be their character. their hab-
itations and ways of life must not be something after this fashion. In the
first place, none must possess any private property save the indispensable.
Secondly, none must have any habitation or treasure house which is not o-
pen for all to enter at will. Their food, in such quantities as are needful
for athletes of war sober and brave, they must receive as an agreed stipend
from the other citizens as the wages of their guardianship, so measured that there
shall be neither superfluity at the end of the year nor any lack. And resorting to
a common mess like soldiers on campaign they will live together. Gold and silver,
we will tell them, they have of the divine quality from the gods always in their
souls, and they have no need of the metal of men nor does holiness suffer them
to mingle and contaminate that heavenly possession with the acquisition of
mortal gold, since many impious deeds have been done about the coin of the
multitude, while that which dwells within them is unsullied. But for these only
of all the dwellers in the city it is not lawful to handle gold and silver and to
touch them nor yet to come under the same roof with them, nor to hang them as
ornaments on their limbs nor to drink from silver and gold. So living they would
save themselves and save their city. But whenever they shall acquire for
themselves land of their own and houses and coin, they will be householders and
farmers instead of guardians, and will be transformed from the helpers of their
fellow citizens to their enemies and masters, and so in hating and being hated,
plotting and being plotted against, they will pass their days fearing far more and
rather the townsmen within than the foemen without--and then even then laying
the course of near shipwreck for themselves and the state. For all these reasons,
said I, let us declare that such must be the provision for our guardians in lodging
and other respects and so legislate. Shall we not?

By all means, said Glaucon.



BOOK IV: WEALTH, POVERTY, AND VIRTUE



And Adimantus broke in and said, What will be your defense, Socrates, if
anyone objects that you are not making these men very happy, and that through
their own fault? For the city really belongs to them and yet they get no
enjoyment out of it as ordinary men do by owning lands and building fine big
houses and providing them with suitable furniture and winning the favor of the
gods by private sacrifices and entertaining guests and enjoying too those
possessions which you just now spoke of, gold and silver and all that is
customary for those who are expecting to be happy-But they seem, one might
say, to be established in idleness in the city, exactly like hired mercenaries, with
nothing to do but keep guard.

Yes, said I, and what is more, they serve for board wages and do not even
receive pay in addition to their food as others do, so that they will not even be
able to take a journey on their own account, if they wish to, or make presents
to their mistresses, or spend money in other directions according to their desires
like the men who are thought to be happy. These and many similar counts of the
indictment you are omitting.

Well, said he, assume these counts too. What then will be our apology you ask?

Yes.

By following the same path I think we shall find what to reply. For we shall say
that while it would not surprise us if these men thus living prove to be the most
happy, yet the object on which we fixed our eyes in the establishment of our
state was not the exceptional happiness of any one class but the greatest possible
happiness of the city as a whole. For we thought that in a state so constituted we
should be most likely to discover justice as we should injustice in the worst-
governed state, and that when we had made these out we could pass judgment
on the issue of our long inquiry. Our first task then, we take it, is to mold the
model of a happy state--we are not isolating a small class in it and postulating
their happiness, but that of the city as a whole. But the opposite type of state
we will consider presently. It is as if we were coloring a statue and someone
approached and censured us, saying that we did not apply the most beautiful
pigments to the most beautiful parts of the image, since the eyes, which are the
most beautiful part, have not been painted with purple but with black. We
should think it a reasonable justification to reply, Don't expect us, quaint friend,
to paint the eyes so fine that they will not be like eyes at all, nor the other
parts, but observe whether by assigning what is proper to each we render the whole
beautiful. And so in the present case you must not require us to attach to the
guardians a happiness that will make them anything but guardians. For in like
manner we could clothe the farmers in robes of state and deck them with gold
and bid them cultivate the soil at their pleasure, and we could make the potters
recline on couches from left to right before the fire drinking toasts and feasting
with their wheel alongside to potter with when they are so disposed, and we can
make all the others happy in the same fashion, so that thus the entire city may
be happy. But urge us not to this, since, if we yield, the farmer will not be a
farmer nor the potter a potter, nor will any other of the types that constitute a
state keep its form. However, for the others it matters less. For cobblers who
deteriorate and are spoiled and pretend to be the workmen that they are not are
no great danger to a state. But guardians of laws and of the city who are not what
they pretend to be, but only seem, destroy utterly, I would have you note, the
entire state, and on the other hand, they alone are decisive of its good
government and happiness. If then we are forming true guardians and keepers of
our liberties, men least likely to harm the commonwealth, but the proponent of
the other ideal is thinking of farmers and 'happy' feasters as it were in a festival
and not in a civic community, he would have something else in mind than a
state. Consider, then, whether our aim in establishing the guardians is the
greatest possible happiness among them or whether that is something we must
look to see develop in the city as a whole, but these helpers and guardians are to
be constrained and persuaded to do what will make them the best craftsmen in
their own work, and similarly all the rest. And so, as the entire city develops and
is ordered well, each class is to be left to the share of happiness that its nature
comports.

Well, he said, I think you are right.

And will you then, I said, also think me reasonable in another point akin to this?

What pray?

Consider whether these are the causes that corrupt other craftsmen too so as
positively to spoil them.

What causes?

Wealth and poverty, said I.

How so?

Thus! Do you think a potter who grew rich would any longer be willing to give
his mind to his craft?

By no means, said he.

But will he become more idle and negligent than he was?

Far more.

Then he becomes a worse potter?

Far worse too.

And yet again, if from poverty he is unable to provide himself with tools and
other requirements of his art, the work that he turns out will be worse, and he
will also make inferior workmen of his sons or any others whom he teaches.

Of course.

From both causes, then, poverty and wealth, the products of the arts deteriorate,
and so do the artisans?

So it appears.

Here, then, is a second group of things, it seems, that our guardians must guard
against and do all in their power to keep from slipping into the city without their
knowledge.

What are they?

Wealth and poverty, said I, since the one brings luxury, idleness, and innovation,
and the other illiberality and the evil of bad workmanship in addition to innovation.

Assuredly, he said. Yet here is a point for your consideration, Socrates-how
our city, possessing no wealth, will be able to wage war, especially if compelled
to fight a large and wealthy state.

Obviously, said I, it would be rather difficult to fight one such, but easier to fight
two.

What did you mean by that? he said.

Tell me first, I said, whether, if they have to fight, they will not be fighting as
athletes of war against men of wealth?

Yes, that is true, he said.

Answer me then, Adimantus. Do you not think that one boxer perfectly trained
in the art could easily fight two fat rich men who knew nothing of it?

Not at the same time perhaps, said he.

Not even, said I, if he were allowed to retreat and then turn and strike the one
who came up first, and if he repeated the procedure many times under a burning
and stifling sun? Would not such a fighter down even a number of such opponents?

Doubtless, he said, it wouldn't be surprising if he did.

Well, don't you think that the rich have more of the skill and practice of boxing
than of the art of war?

I do, he said.

It will be easy, then, for our athletes in all probability to fight with double and
triple their number.

I shall have to concede the point, he said, for I believe you are right.

Well then, if they send an embassy to the other city and say what is in fact true,
'We make no use of gold and silver nor is it lawful for us, but it is for you; do
then join us in the war and keep the spoils of the enemy'--do you suppose any
who heard such a proposal would choose to fight against hard and wiry hounds
rather than with the aid of the hounds against fat and tender sheep?

I think not. Yet consider whether the accumulation of all the wealth of other
cities in one does not involve danger for the state that has no wealth.

What happy innocence, said I, to suppose that you can properly use the name
city of any other than the one we are constructing.

Why, what should we say? he said.

A greater predication, said I, must be applied to the others. For they are each one
of them many cities, not a city, as it goes in the game. There are two at the least
at enmity with one another, the city of the rich and the city of the poor, and
in each of these there are many. If you deal with them as one you will altogether
miss the mark, but if you treat them as a multiplicity by offering to the one
faction the property, the power, the very persons of the other, you will continue
always to have few enemies and many allies. And so long as your city is governed
soberly in the order just laid down, it will be the greatest of cities. I do
not mean greatest in repute, but in reality, even though it have only a thousand
defenders. For a city of this size that is really one you will not easily discover
either among Greeks or barbarians--but of those that seem so you will find many
and many times the size of this. Or do you think otherwise?

No, indeed I don't, said he.

Would not this, then, be the best rule and measure for our governors of the
proper size of the city and of the territory that they should mark off for a city of
that size and seek no more?

What is the measure?

I think, said I, that they should let it grow so long as in its growth it consents to
remain a unity, but no further.

Excellent, he said.

Then is not this still another injunction that we should lay upon our guardians, to
keep guard in every way that the city shall not be too small, nor great only in
seeming, but that it shall be a sufficient city and one?

That behest will perhaps be an easy one for them, he said.

And still easier, haply, I said, is this that we mentioned before when we said that
if a degenerate offspring was born to the guardians he must be sent away to the
other classes, and likewise if a superior to the others he must be enrolled among
the guardians, and the purport of all this was that the other citizens too must be
sent to the task for which their natures were fitted, one man to one work, in order
that each of them fulfilling his own function may be not many men, but one, and
so the entire city may come to be not a multiplicity but a unity.

Why yes, he said, this is even more trifling than that.

These are not, my good Adimantus, as one might suppose, numerous and
difficult injunctions that we are imposing upon them, but they are all easy,
provided they guard, as the saying is, the one great thing--or instead of great
let us call it sufficient.

What is that? he said.

Their education and nurture, I replied. For if a right education makes of them
reasonable men they will easily discover everything of this kind--and other
principles that we now pass over, as that the possession of wives and marriage,
and the procreation of children and all that sort of thing should be made as
far as possible the proverbial goods of friends that are common.

Yes, that would be the best way, he said.

And, moreover, said I, the state, if it once starts well, proceeds as it were in a
cycle of growth. I mean that a sound nurture and education if kept up create
good natures in the state, and sound natures in turn receiving an education of this
sort develop into better men than their predecessors both for other purposes and
for the production of offspring, as among animals also.

It is probable, he said.

To put it briefly, then, said I, it is to this that the overseers of our state must
cleave and be watchful against its insensible corruption. They must throughout
be watchful against innovations in music and gymnastics counter to the established
order, and to the best of their power guard against them, fearing when anyone
says that that song is most regarded among men 'which hovers newest on the sing-
er's lips,' lest haply it be supposed that the poet means not new songs but a
new way of song and is commending this. But we must not praise that sort of thing
nor conceive it to be the poet's meaning. For a change to a new type of music is
something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music
are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social
conventions, as Damon affirms and as I am convinced.

Set me too down in the number of the convinced, said Adimantus. It is here,
then, I said, in music, as it seems, that our guardians must build their guard-
house and post of watch.

It is certain, he said, that this is the kind of lawlessness that easily insinuates
itself unobserved.

Yes, said I, because it is supposed to be only a form of play and to work no
harm.

Nor does it work any, he said, except that by gradual infiltration it softly
overflows upon the characters and pursuits of men and from these issues forth
grown greater to attack their business dealings, and from these relations it
proceeds against the laws and the constitution with wanton license, Socrates,
till finally it overthrows all things public and private.

Well, said I, are these things so?

I think so, he said.

Then, as we were saying in the beginning, our youth must join in a more law-
abiding play, since, if play grows lawless and the children likewise, it is
impossible that they should grow up to be men of serious temper and lawful
spirit.

Of course, he said.

And so we may reason that when children in their earliest play are imbued with
the spirit of law and order through their music, the opposite of the former
supposition happens--this spirit waits upon them in all things and fosters their
growth, and restores and sets up again whatever was overthrown in the other
type of state.

True indeed, he said.

Then such men rediscover for themselves those seemingly trifling conventions
which their predecessors abolished altogether.

Of what sort?

Such things as the becoming silence of the young in the presence of their elders,
the giving place to them and rising up before them, and dutiful service of parents,
and the cut of the hair and the garments and the fashion of the footgear, and in
general the deportment of the body and everything of the kind. Don't you think so?

I do.

Yet to enact them into laws would, I think, be silly. For such laws are not obeyed
nor would they last, being enacted only in words and on paper.

How could they?

At any rate, Adimantus, I said, the direction of the education from whence one
starts is likely to determine the quality of what follows. Does not like ever
summon like?

Surely.

And the final outcome, I presume, we would say is one complete and vigorous
product of good or the reverse.

Of course, said he.

For my part, then, I said, for these reasons I would not go on to try to legislate on
such matters.

With good reason, said he.

But what, in heaven's name, said I, about business matters, the deals that men
make with one another in the agora--and, if you please, contracts with workmen
and actions for foul language and assault, the filing of declarations, the impan-
eling of juries, the payment and exaction of any dues that may be needful in
markets or harbors and in general market, police, or harbor regulations and the
like? can we bring ourselves to legislate about these?

Nay, 'twould not be fitting, he said, to dictate to good and honorable men. For
most of the enactments that are needed about these things they will easily, I
presume, discover.

Yes, my friend, provided God grants them the preservation of the principles of
law that we have already discussed.

Failing that, said he, they will pass their lives multiplying such petty laws and
amending them in the expectation of attaining what is best.

You mean, said I, that the life of such citizens will resemble that of men who are
sick, yet from intemperance are unwilling to abandon their unwholesome regimen.

By all means.

And truly, said I, these latter go on in a most charming fashion. For with all
their doctoring they accomplish nothing except to complicate and augment their
maladies. And they are always hoping that someone will recommend a panacea
that will restore their health.

A perfect description, he said, of the state of such invalids.

And isn't this a charming trait in them, that they hate most in all the world him
who tells them the truth, that until a man stops drinking and gorging and wenching
and idling, neither drugs nor cautery nor the knife, no, nor spells nor periapts
nor anything of that kind will be of any avail?

Not altogether charming, he said, for there is no grace or charm in being angry
with him who speaks well.

You do not seem to be an admirer of such people, said I.

No, by heaven, I am not.

Neither then, if an entire city, as we were just now saying, acts in this way,
will it have your approval, or don't you think that the way of such invalids is
precisely that of those cities which being badly governed forewarn their citizens
not to meddle with the general constitution of the state, denouncing death to who-
soever attempts that--while whoever most agreeably serves them governed as they
are and who curries favor with them by fawning upon them and anticipating their
desires and by his cleverness in gratifying them, him they will account the good
man, the man wise in worthwhile things, the man they will delight to honor?

Yes, he said, I think their conduct is identical, and I don't approve it in the very
least,

And what again of those who are willing and eager to serve such states? Don't
you admire their valiance and lighthearted irresponsibility?

I do, he said, except those who are actually deluded and suppose themselves to
be in truth statesmen because they are praised by the many.

What do you mean? Can't you make allowances for the men? Do you think it possible
for a man who does not know how to measure when a multitude of others equally ig-
norant assure him that he is four cubits tall not to suppose this to be the fact
about himself?

Why no, he said, I don't think that.

Then don't be harsh with them. For surely such fellows are the most charming
spectacle in the world when they enact and amend such laws as we just now
described and are perpetually expecting to find a way of putting an end to frauds
in business and in the other matters of which I was speaking because they can't
see that they are in very truth trying to cut off a Hydra's head. Indeed, he
said, that is exactly what they are doing.

I, then, said I, should not have supposed that the true lawgiver ought to work out
matters of that kind in the laws and the constitution of either an ill-governed or a
well-governed state--in the one because they are useless and accomplish
nothing, in the other because some of them anybody could discover and others
will result spontaneously from the pursuits already described, What part of
legislation, then, he said, is still left for us?

And I replied, For us nothing, but for the Apollo of Delphi, the chief, the fairest,
and the first of enactments.

What are they? he said.

The founding of temples, and sacrifices, and other forms of worship of gods,
daemons, and heroes, and likewise the burial of the dead and the services we
must render to the dwellers in the world beyond to keep them gracious. For of
such matters we neither know anything nor in the founding of our city if we are
wise shall we entrust them to any other or make use of any other interpreter
than the god of our fathers. For this god surely is in such matters for all mankind
the interpreter of the religion of their fathers who from his seat in the middle
and at the very navel of the earth delivers his interpretation.

Excellently said, he replied, and that is what we must do.

At last, then, son of Ariston, said I, your city may be considered as established.
The next thing is to procure a sufficient light somewhere and to look yourself,
and call in the aid of your brother and of Polemarchus and the rest, if we may in
any wise discover where justice and injustice should be in it, wherein they differ
from one another, and which of the two he must have who is to be happy, alike
whether his condition is known or not known to all gods and men.

Nonsense, said Glaucon, you promised that you would carry on the search
yourself, admitting that it would be impious for you not to come to the aid of
justice by every means in your power.

A true reminder, I said, and I must do so, but you also must lend a hand.

Well, he said, we will.

I expect then, said I, that we shall find it in this way. I think our city, if it has
been rightly founded, is good in the full sense of the word.

Necessarily, he said.

Clearly, then, it will be wise, brave, sober, and just.

Clearly.

Then if we find any of these qualities in it, the remainder will be that which we
have not found?

Surely.

Take the case of any four other things. If we were looking for any one of them
in anything and recognized the object of our search first, that would have been
enough for us, but if we had recognized the other three first, that in itself would
have made known to us the thing we were seeking. For plainly there was nothing
left for it to be but the remainder.

Right, he said.

And so, since these are four, we must conduct the search in the same way.

Clearly.

And, moreover, the first thing that I think I clearly see therein is the wisdom, and
there is something odd about that, it appears.

What? said he.

Wise in very deed I think the city that we have described is, for it is well counseled,
is it not?

Yes.

And surely this very thing, good counsel, is a form of wisdom. For it is not by
ignorance but by knowledge that men counsel well.

Obviously.

But there are many and manifold knowledges or sciences in the city.

Of course.

Is it then owing to the science of her carpenters that a city is to be called wise
and well advised?

By no means for that, but rather mistress of the arts of building.

Then a city is not to be styled wise because of the deliberations of the science of
wooden utensils for their best production?

No, I grant you.

Is it, then, because of that of brass implements or any other of that kind?

None whatsoever, he said.

Nor yet because of the science of the production of crops from the soil, but the
name it takes from that is agricultural.

I think so.

Then, said I, is there any science in the city just founded by us residing in any of
its citizens which does not take counsel about some particular thing in the city
but about the city as a whole and the betterment of its relations with itself and
other states?

Why, yes, there is.

What is it, said I, and in whom is it found?

It is the science of guardianship or government and it is to be found in those
rulers to whom we just now gave the name of guardians in the full sense of the
word.

And what term then do you apply to the city because of this knowledge?

Well-advised, he said, and truly wise.

Which class, then, said I, do you suppose will be the more numerous in our city,
the smiths or these true guardians?

The smiths, by far, he said.

And would not these rulers be the smallest of all the groups of those who possess
special knowledge and receive distinctive appellations?

By far.

Then it is by virtue of its smallest class and minutest part of itself, and the
wisdom that resides therein, in the part which takes the lead and rules, that a city
established on principles of nature would be wise as a whole. And as it appears
these are by nature the fewest, the class to which it pertains to partake of
the knowledge which alone of all forms of knowledge deserves the name of
wisdom.

Most true, he said.

This one of our four, then, we have, I know not how, discovered, the thing itself
and its place in the state.

I certainly think, said he, that it has been discovered sufficiently.

But again there is no difficulty in seeing bravery itself and the part of the city in
which it resides for which the city is called brave.

How so?

Who, said I, in calling a city cowardly or brave would fix his eyes on any other
part of it than that which defends it and wages war in its behalf?

No one at all, he said.

For the reason, I take it, said I, that the cowardice or the bravery of the other
inhabitants does not determine for it the one quality or the other.

It does not.

Bravery too, then, belongs to a city by virtue of a part of itself owing to its
possession in that part of a quality that under all conditions will preserve the
conviction that things to be feared are precisely those which and such as the
lawgiver inculcated in their education. Is not that what you call bravery?

I don't altogether understand what you said, he replied, but say it again.

A kind of conservation, I said, is what I mean by bravery.

What sort of a conservation?

The conservation of the conviction which the law has created by education about
fearful things--what and what sort of things are to be feared. And by the phrase
'under all conditions' I mean that the brave man preserves it both in pain and
pleasures and in desires and fears and does not expel it from his soul. And I may
illustrate it by a similitude if you please.

I do.

You are aware that dyers when they wish to dye wool so as to hold the purple
hue begin by selecting from the many colors there be the one nature of the white
and then give it a careful preparatory treatment so that it will take the hue in the
best way, and after the treatment, then and then only, dip it in the dye. And
things that are dyed by this process become fast-colored and washing either with
or without lyes cannot take away the sheen of their hues. But otherwise you
know what happens to them, whether anyone dips other colors or even these
without the preparatory treatment.

I know, he said, that they present a ridiculous and washed-out appearance.

By this analogy, then, said I, you must conceive what we too to the best of our
ability were doing when we selected our soldiers and educated them in music
and exercises of the body. The sole aim of our contrivance was that they
should be convinced and receive our laws like a dye as it were, so that their
belief and faith might be fast-colored about both the things that are to be feared
and all other things because of the fitness of their nature and nurture, and that so
their dyes might not be washed out by those lyes that have such dread power to
scour our faiths away, pleasure more potent than any detergent or abstergent to
accomplish this, and pain and fear, and desire more sure than any lye. This power
in the soul, then, this unfailing conservation of right and lawful belief about things
to be and not to be feared is what I call and would assume to be courage, unless
you have something different to say.

No, nothing, said he, for I presume that you consider mere right opinion about
the same matters not produced by education, that which may manifest itself in a
beast or a slave, to have little or nothing to do with law and that you would call it
by another name than courage.

That is most true, said I.

Well then, he said, I accept this as bravery.

Do so, said I, and you will be right, with the reservation that it is the courage
of a citizen. Some other time, if it please you, we will discuss it more fully. At
present we were not seeking this but justice, and for the purpose of that inquiry
I believe we have done enough.

You are quite right, he said.

Two things still remain, said I, to make out in our city, soberness and the object
of the whole inquiry, justice.

Quite so.

If there were only some way to discover justice so that we need not further
concern ourselves about soberness.

Well, I, for my part, he said, neither know of any such way nor would I wish
justice to be discovered first if that means that we are not to go on to the
consideration of soberness.

But if you desire to please me, consider this before that. It would certainly be
very wrong of me not to desire it, said I.

Go on with the inquiry then, he said.

I must go on, I replied, and viewed from here it bears more likeness to a kind of
concord and harmony than the other virtues did.

How so?

Soberness is a kind of beautiful order and a continence of certain pleasures and
appetites, as they say, using the phrase "master of himself" I know not how, and
there are other similar expressions that as it were point us to the same trail. Is
that not so?

Most certainly.

Now the phrase "master of himself" is an absurdity, is it not? For he who is
master of himself would also be subject to himself, and he who is subject to
himself would be master. For the same person is spoken of in all these
expressions.

Of course.

But, said I, the intended meaning of this way of speaking appears to me to be
that the soul of a man within him has a better part and a worse part, and the
expression self-mastery means the control of the worse by the naturally better
part. It is, at any rate, a term of praise. But when, because of bad breeding or
some association, the better part, which is the smaller, is dominated by the
multitude of the worse. I think that our speech censures this as a reproach,
and calls the man in this plight unself-controlled and licentious.

That seems likely, he said.

Turn your eyes now upon our new city, said I, and you will find one of these
conditions existent in it. For you will say that it is justly spoken of as master
of itself if that in which the superior rules the inferior is to be called sober
and self-mastered.

I do turn my eyes upon it, he said, and it is as you say.

And again, the mob of motley appetites and pleasures and pains one would find
chiefly in children and women and slaves and in the base rabble of those who
are free men in name.

By all means.

But the simple and moderate appetites which with the aid of reason and right
opinion are guided by consideration you will find in few and those the best born
and best educated.

True, he said.

And do you not find this too in your city and a domination there of the desires
in the multitude and the rabble by the desires and the wisdom that dwell in the
minority of the better sort?

I do, he said.

If, then, there is any city that deserves to be described as master of its pleasures
and desires and self-mastered, this one merits that designation.

Most assuredly, he said.

And is it not also to be called sober in all these respects?

Indeed it is, he said.

And yet again, if there is any city in which the rulers and the ruled are of one
mind as to who ought to rule, that condition will be found in this. Don't you
think so?

I most emphatically do, he said.

In which class of the citizens, then, will you say that the virtue of soberness has
its seat when this is their condition? In the rulers or in the ruled?

In both, I suppose, he said.

Do you see then, said I, that our intuition was not a bad one just now that
discerned a likeness between soberness and a kind of harmony?

Why so?

Because its operation is unlike that of courage and wisdom, which residing in
separate parts respectively made the city, the one wise and the other brave. That
is not the way of soberness, but it extends literally through the entire gamut
throughout, bringing about the unison in the same chant of the strongest, the
weakest, and the intermediate, whether in wisdom or, if you please, in strength,
or for that matter in numbers, wealth, or any similar criterion. So that we should
be quite right in affirming this unanimity to be soberness, the concord of the
naturally superior and inferior as to which ought to rule in both the state and the
individual.

I entirely concur, he said.

Very well, said I, we have made out these three forms in our city to the best of
our present judgment. What can be the remaining form that would give the city
still another virtue? For it is obvious that the remainder is justice.

Obvious.

Now then, Glaucon, is the time for us like huntsmen to surround the covert and
keep close watch that justice may not slip through and get away from us and van-
ish from our sight. It plainly must be somewhere hereabout. Keep your eyes open
then and do your best to descry it. You may see it before I do and point it out
to me.

Would that I could, he said, but I think rather that if you find in me one who can
follow you and discern what you point out to him you will be making a very fair
use of me.

Pray for success then, said I, and follow along with me.

That I will do, only lead on, he said.

And truly, said I, it appears to be an inaccessible place, lying in deep shadows.
It certainly is a dark covert, not easy to beat up. But all the same, on we must
go.

Yes, on.

And I caught view and gave a halloo and said, Glaucon, I think we have found
its trail and I don't believe it will get away from us.

I am glad to hear that, said he.

Truly, said I, we were slackers indeed.

How so?

Why, all the time, bless your heart, the thing apparently was tumbling about our
feet from the start and yet we couldn't see it, but were most ludicrous, like
people who sometimes hunt for what they hold in their hands. So we did not turn
our eyes upon it, but looked off into the distance, which was perhaps the reason
it escaped us.

What do you mean? he said.

This, I replied, that it seems to me that though we were speaking of it and
hearing about it all the time we did not understand ourselves or realize that we
were speaking of it in a sense.

That is a tedious prologue, he said, for an eager listener. Listen then, said I,
and learn if there is anything in what I say.

For what we laid down in the beginning as a universal requirement when we were
founding our city, this I think, or some form of this, is justice. And what we
did lay down, and often said, if you recall, was that each one man must perform
one social service in the state for which his nature was best adapted.

Yes, we said that.

And again, that to do one's own business and not to be a busybody is justice is a
saying that we have heard from many and have very often repeated ourselves.

We have.

This, then, I said, my friend, if taken in a certain sense appears to be justice,
this principle of doing one's own business. Do you know whence I infer this?

No, but tell me, he said.

I think that this is the remaining virtue in the state after our consideration of
soberness, courage, and intelligence, a quality which made it possible for them
all to grow up in the body politic and which when they have sprung up preserves
them as long as it is present. And I hardly need to remind you that we said that
justice would be the residue after we had found the other three.

That is an unavoidable conclusion, he said.

But moreover, said I, if we were required to decide what it is whose indwelling
presence will contribute most to making our city good, it would be a difficult
decision whether it was the unanimity of rulers and ruled or the conservation in
the minds of the soldiers of the convictions produced by law as to what things
are or are not to be feared, or the watchful intelligence that resides in the
guardians, or whether this is the chief cause of its goodness, the principle
embodied in child, woman, slave, free, artisan, ruler, and ruled, that each per-
formed his one task as one man and was not a versatile busybody.

Hard to decide indeed, he said.

A thing, then, that in its contribution to the excellence of a state vies with and
rivals its wisdom, its soberness, its bravery, is this principle of everyone in it
doing his own task.
.
It is indeed, he said.

And is not justice the name you would have to give to the principle that rivals
these as conducting to the virtue of a state?

By all means.

Consider it in this wise too, if so you will be convinced. Will you not assign the
conduct of lawsuits in your state to the rulers?

Of course.

Will not this be the chief aim of their decisions, that no one shall have what
belongs to others or be deprived of his own?

Nothing else but this.

On the assumption that this is just?

Yes.

From this point of view too, then, the having and doing of one's own and
what belongs to oneself would admittedly be justice.

That is so.

Consider now whether you agree with me. A carpenter undertaking to do the
work of a cobbler or a cobbler of a carpenter or their interchange of one
another's tools or honors or even the attempt of the same man to do both--
the confounding of all other functions would not, think you, greatly injure
a state, would it?

Not much, he said.

But when, I fancy, one who is by nature an artisan or some kind of moneymaker
tempted and incited by wealth or command of votes or bodily strength or some
similar advantage tries to enter into the class of the soldiers or one of the
soldiers into the class of counselors and guardians, for which he is not fitted,
and these interchange their tools and their honors or when the same man undertakes
all these functions at once, then, I take it, you too believe that this kind of
substitution and meddlesomeness is the ruin of a state.

By all means.

The interference with one another's business, then, of three existent classes, and
the substitution of the one for the other, is the greatest injury to a state and
would most rightly be designated as the thing which chiefly works it harm.

Precisely so.

And the thing that works the greatest harm to one's own state, will you not
pronounce to be injustice?

Of course.

This, then, is injustice. Again, let us put it in this way. The proper function-
ing of the money-makers, the helpers, and the guardians, each doing his own work
in the state, being the reverse of that just described, would be justice and would
render the city just,

I think the case is thus and no otherwise, said he.

Let us not yet affirm it quite fixedly, I said, but if this form, when applied to
the individual man, is accepted there also as a definition of justice, we will
then concede the point--for what else will there be to say? But if not, then we
will look for something else. But now let us work out the inquiry in which we
supposed that, if we found some larger thing that contained justice and viewed
it there, we should more easily discover its nature in the individual man. And we
agreed that this larger thing is the city, and so we constructed the best city
in our power, well knowing that in the good city it would of course be found. What,
then, we thought we saw there we must refer back to the individual and, if it is
confirmed, all will be well. But if something different manifests itself in the
individual, we will return again to the state and test it there and it may be
that, by examining them side by side and rubbing them against one another, as it
were from the fire sticks we may cause the spark of justice to flash forth, and
when it is thus revealed confirm it in our own minds.

Well, he said, that seems a sound method and that is what we must do.

Then, said I, if you call a thing by the same name whether it is big or little,
is it unlike in the way in which it is called the same or like?

Like, he said.

Then a just man too will not differ at all from a just city in respect of the
very form of justice, but will be like it.

Yes, like.

But now the city was thought to be just because three natural kinds existing in
it performed each its own function, and again it was sober, brave, and wise
because of certain other affections and habits of these three kinds.

True, he said.

Then, my friend, we shall thus expect the individual also to have these same
forms in his soul, and by reason of identical affections of these with those in
the city to receive properly the same appellations.

Inevitable, he said.

Goodness gracious, said I, here is another trifling inquiry into which we have
plunged, the question whether the soul really contains these three forms in itself
or not.

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

Apparently, said I, and let me tell you, Glaucon, that in my opinion we shall
never apprehend this matter accurately from such methods as we are now
employing in discussion. For there is another longer and harder way that
conducts to this. Yet we may perhaps discuss it on the level of our previous
statements and inquiries.

May we not acquiesce in that? he said. I for my part should be quite satisfied
with that for the present.

And I surely should be more than satisfied, I replied.

Don't you weary then, he said, but go on with the inquiry.

Is it not, then, said I, impossible for us to avoid admitting this much, that the
same forms and qualities are to be found in each one of us that are in the state?
They could not get there from any other source. It would be absurd to suppose
that the element of high spirit was not derived in states from the private citizens
who are reputed to have this quality, as the populations of the Thracian and
Scythian lands and generally of northern regions, or the quality of love of
knowledge, which would chiefly be attributed to the region where we dwell, or
the love of money which we might say is not least likely to be found in
Phoenicians and the population of Egypt.

One certainly might, he replied.

This is the fact then, said I, and there is no difficulty in recognizing it.

Certainly not.

But the matter begins to be difficult when you ask whether we do all these things
with the same thing or whether there are three things and we do one thing with one
and one with another learn with one part of ourselves, feel anger with another,
and with yet a third desire the pleasures of nutrition and generation and their
kind, or whether it is with the entire soul that we function in each case when
we once begin. That is what is really hard to determine properly.

I think so too, he said.

Let us then attempt to define the boundary and decide whether they are identical
with one another in this way.

How?

It is obvious that the same thing will never do or suffer opposites
in the same respect in relation to the same thing and at the same time.
So that if ever we find these contradictions in the functions of the
mind we shall know that it was not the same thing functioning but a
plurality.

Very well.

Consider, then, what I am saying.

Say on, he replied.

Is it possible for the same thing at the same time in the same respect to be at
rest and in motion?

By no means.

Let us have our understanding still more precise, lest as we proceed we become
involved in dispute. If anyone should say of a man standing still but moving his
hands and head that the same man is at the same time at rest and in motion we
should not, I take it, regard that as the right way of expressing it, but rather
that a part of him is at rest and a part in motion. Is not that so?

It is.

Then if the disputant should carry the jest still further with the subtlety that
tops at any rate stand still as a whole at the same time that they are in motion
when with the peg fixed in one point they revolve, and that the same is true of
any other case of circular motion about the same spot--we should reject the
statement on the ground that the repose and the movement in such cases were
not in relation to the same parts of the objects. But we would say that there was a
straight line and a circumference in them and that in respect of the straight line
they are standing still since they do not incline to either side, but in respect of
the circumference they move in a circle, but that when as they revolve they incline
the perpendicular to right or left or forward or back, then they are in no wise at
rest.

And that would be right, he said.

No such remarks then will disconcert us or any whit the more make us believe
that it is ever possible for the same thing at the same time in the same
respect and the same relation to suffer, be, or do opposites.

They will not me, I am sure, said he.

All the same, said I, that we may not be forced to examine at tedious length the
entire list of such contentions and convince ourselves that they are false, let us
proceed on the hypothesis that this is so, with the understanding that, if it ever
appear otherwise, everything that results from the assumption shall be invalidated.

That is what we must do, he said.

Will you not then, said I, set down as opposed to one another assent and
dissent, and the endeavor after a thing to the rejection of it, and embracing to
repelling--do not these and all things like these belong to the class of opposite
actions or passions, it will make no difference which?

None, said he, but they are opposites.

What then, said I, of thirst and hunger and the appetites generally, and again
consenting and willing--would you not put them all somewhere in the classes
just described? Will you not say, for example, that the soul of one who desires
either strives for that which he desires or draws toward its embrace what it
wishes to accrue to it, or again, in so far as it wills that anything be presented to
it, nods assent to itself thereon as if someone put the question, striving toward its
attainment?

I would say so, he said.

But what of not-willing and not-consenting nor yet desiring? Shall we not put
these under the soul's rejection and repulsion from itself and generally into the
opposite class from all the former?

Of course.

This being so, shall we say that the desires constitute a class and that the most
conspicuous members of that class are what we call thirst and hunger?

We shall, said he.

Is not the one desire of drink, the other of food?

Yes.

Then in so far as it is thirst, would it be of anything more than that of which we
say it is a desire in the soul? I mean is thirst thirst for hot drink or cold or much
or little or in a word for a draught of any particular quality, or is it the fact that if
heat is attached to the thirst it would further render the desire--a desire of cold,
and if cold of hot? But if owing to the presence of muchness the thirst is much
it would render it a thirst for much and if little for little. But mere thirst will
never be desire of anything else than that of which it is its nature to be, mere
drink, and so hunger of food.

That is so, he said. Each desire in itself is of that thing only of which it is its
nature to be. The epithets belong to the quality--such or such.

Let no one then, said I, disconcert us when off our guard with the objection
that everybody desires not drink but good drink and not food but good food, be-
cause, the argument will run, all men desire good, and so, if thirst is desire,
it would be of good drink or of good whatsoever it is, and so similarly of other
desires.

Why, he said, there perhaps would seem to be something in that objection.

But I need hardly remind you, said I, that of relative terms those that are
somehow qualified are related to a qualified correlate, those that are severally
just themselves to a correlate that is just itself.

I don't understand, he said.

Don't you understand, said I, that the greater is such as to be greater than
something?

Certainly.

Is it not than the less?

Yes.

But the much greater than the much less. Is that not so?

Yes.

And may we add the onetime greater than the onetime less and that which will
be greater than that which will be less?

Surely.

And similarly of the more toward the fewer, and the double toward the half and
of all like cases, and again of the heavier toward the lighter, the swifter toward
the slower, and yet again of the hot toward the cold and all cases of that kind?
does not the same hold?

By all means.

But what of the sciences? Is not the way of it the same? Science, which is just
that, is of knowledge which is just that, or is of whatsoever we must assume the
correlate of science to be. But a particular science of a particular kind is of some
particular thing of a particular kind. I mean something like this. As there was a
science of making a house it differed from other sciences so as to be named
architecture.

Certainly.

Was not this by reason of its being of a certain kind such as no other of all the
rest?

Yes.

And was it not because it was of something of a certain kind that it itself became
a certain kind of science? And similarly of the other arts and sciences?

That is so.

This then, said I, if haply you now understand, is what you must say I then
meant, by the statement that of all things that are such as to be of something,
those that are just themselves only are of things just themselves only, but things
of a certain kind are of things of a kind. And I don't at all mean that they are of
the same kind as the things of which they are, so that we are to suppose that the
science of health and disease is a healthy and diseased science and that of evil
and good, evil and good. I only mean that as science became the science not of just
the thing of which science is but of some particular kind of thing, namely, of
health and disease, the result was that it itself became some kind of science and
this caused it to be no longer called simply science but, with the addition of the
particular kind, medical science.

I understand, he said, and agree that it is so.

To return to thirst, then, said I, will you not class it with the things that are
of something and say that it is what it is in relation to something--and it is, I
presume, thirst?

I will, said he, namely of drink.

Then if the drink is of a certain kind, so is the thirst, but thirst that is just thirst
is neither of much nor little nor good nor bad, nor in a word of any kind, but just
thirst is naturally of just drink only.

By all means.

The soul of the thirsty then, in so far as it thirsts, wishes nothing else than to
drink, and yearns for this and its impulse is toward this.

Obviously.

Then if anything draws it back when thirsty it must be something different in it
from that which thirsts and drives it like a beast to drink. For it cannot be, we
say, that the same thing w|th the same part of itself at the same time acts in
opposite ways about the same thing.

We must admit that it does not.

So I fancy it is not well said of the archer that his hands at the same time thrust
away the bow and draw it nigh, but we should rather say that there is one hand
that puts it away and another that draws it to.

By all means, he said.

Are we to say, then, that some men sometimes though thirsty refuse to drink?

We are indeed, he said, many and often.

What then, said I, should one affirm about them? Is it not that there is a
something in the soul that bids them drink and a something that forbids, a
different something that masters that which bids?

I think so.

And is it not the fact that that which inhibits such actions arises when it arises
from the calculations of reason, but the impulses which draw and drag come
through affections and diseases?

Apparently.

Not unreasonably, said I, shall we claim that they are two and different from one
another, naming that in the soul whereby it reckons and reasons the rational, and
that with which it loves, hungers, thirsts, and feels the flutter and titillation of
other desires, the irrational and appetitive--companion of various repletions and
pleasures.

It would not be unreasonable but quite natural, he said, for us to think this.

These two forms, then, let us assume to have been marked off as actually
existing in the soul. But now the thumos, or principle of high spirit, that with
which we feel anger, is it a third, or would it be identical in nature with one of
these?

Perhaps, he said, with one of these, the appetitive.

But, I said, I once heard a story which I believe, that Leontius the son of
Aglaion, on his way up from the Piraeus under the outer side of the northern
wall, becoming aware of dead bodies that lay at the place of public execution at
the same time felt a desire to see them and a repugnance and aversion, and that
for a time he resisted and veiled his head, but overpowered in despite of all
by his desire, with wide staring eyes he rushed up to the corpses and cried,
There, ye wretches, take your fill of the fine spectacle!

I too, he said, have heard the story.

Yet, surely, this anecdote, I said, signifies that the principle of anger sometimes
fights against desires as an alien thing against an alien.

Yes, it does, he said.

And do we not, said I, on many other occasions observe when his desires
constrain a man contrary to his reason that he reviles himself and is angry
with that within which masters him, and that as it were in a faction of two
parties the high spirit of such a man becomes the ally of his reason? But its
making common cause with the desires against the reason when reason whispers
low, Thou must not--that, I think, is a kind of thing you would not affirm ever
to have perceived in yourself, nor, I fancy, in anybody else either.

No, by heaven, he said.

Again, when a man thinks himself to be in the wrong, is it not true that the
nobler he is the less is he capable of anger though suffering hunger and cold
and whatsoever else at the hands of him whom he believes to be acting justly
therein, and as I say his spirit refuses to be aroused against such a one?

True, he said.

But what about when a man believes himself to be wronged? Does not his spirit in
that case seethe and grow fierce--and also because of his suffering hunger, cold,
and the like--and make itself the ally of what he judges just? And in noble souls
it endures and wins the victory and will not let go until either it achieves its
purpose, or death ends all, or, as a dog is called back by a shepherd, it is called
back by the reason within and calmed.

Your similitude is perfect, he said, and it confirms our former statements that the
helpers are as it were dogs subject to the rulers who are as it were the shepherds
of the city.

You apprehend my meaning excellently, said I. But do you also take note of
this?

Of what?

That what we now think about the spirited element is just the opposite of our
recent surmise. For then we supposed it to be a part of the appetitive, but now,
far from that, we say that, in the factions of the soul, it much rather marshals
itself on the side of the reason.

By all means, he said.

Is it then distinct from this too, or is it a form of the rational, so that there
are not three but two kinds in the soul, the rational and the appetitive? Or just
as in the city there were three existing kinds that composed its structure, the
moneymakers, the helpers, the counselors, so also in the soul does there exist a
third kind, this principle of high spirit, which is the helper of reason by nature
unless it is corrupted by evil nurture?

We have to assume it as a third, he said.

Yes, said I, provided it shall have been shown to be something different from the
rational, as it has been shown to be other than the appetitive.

That is not hard to be shown, he said, for that much one can see in children, that
they are from their very birth chock-full of rage and high spirit, but as for reason,
some of them, to my thinking, never participate in it, and the majority quite
late.

Yes, by heaven, excellently said, I replied, and further, one could see in animals
that what you say is true. And to these instances we may add the testimony of
Homer quoted above, 'He smote his breast and chided thus his heart.' For
there Homer has clearly represented that in us which has reflected about the
better and the worse as rebuking that which feels unreasoning anger as if it
were a distinct and different thing.

You are entirely right, he said.

Through these waters, then, said I, we have with difficulty made our way and we
are fairly agreed that the same kinds equal in number are to be found in the state
and in the soul of each one of us.

That is so.

Then does not the necessity of our former postulate immediately follow, that as
and whereby the state was wise, so and thereby is the individual wise?

Surely.

And so whereby and as the individual is brave, thereby and so is the state
brave, and that both should have all the other constituents of virtue in the same
way?

Necessarily.

Just too, then, Glaucon, I presume we shall say a man is in the same way in
which a city was just.

That too is quite inevitable.

But we surely cannot have forgotten this, that the state was just by rea-
son of each of the three classes found in it fulfilling its own function.

I don't think we have forgotten, he said.

We must remember, then, that each of us also in whom the several parts within
him perform each their own task--he will be a just man and one who minds his
own affair.

We must indeed remember, he said.

Does it not belong to the rational part to rule, being wise and exercising
forethought in behalf of the entire soul, and to the principle of high spirit to
be subject to this and its ally?

Assuredly.

Then is it not, as we said, the blending of music and gymnastics that will render
them concordant, intensifying and fostering the one with fair words and
teachings and relaxing and soothing and making gentle the other by harmony
and rhythm?

Quite so, said he.

And these two, thus reared and having learned and been educated to do their
own work in the true sense of the phrase, will preside over the appetitive part
which is the mass of the soul in each of us and the most insatiate by nature of
wealth. They will keep watch upon it, lest, by being filled and infected with the
so-called pleasures associated with the body and so waxing big and strong, it
may not keep to its own work but may undertake to enslave and rule over the
classes which it is not fitting that it should, and so overturn the entire life of all.

By all means, he said.

Would not these two, then, best keep guard against enemies from without also in
behalf of the entire soul and body, the one taking counsel, the other giving battle,
attending upon the ruler, and by its courage executing the ruler's designs?

That is so.

Brave, too, then, I take it, we call each individual by virtue of this part in him,
when, namely, his high spirit preserves in the midst of pains and pleasures
the rule handed down by the reason as to what is or is not to be feared.

Right, he said.

But wise by that small part that ruled in him and handed down these commands,
by its possession in turn within it of the knowledge of what is beneficial for each
and for the whole, the community composed of the three.

By all means.

And again, was he not sober by reason of the friendship and concord of these
same parts, when, namely, the ruling principle and its two subjects are at one in
the belief that the reason ought to rule, and do not raise faction against it?
The virtue of soberness certainly, said he, is nothing else than this, whether in a
city or an individual.

But surely, now, a man is just by that which and in the way we have so often
described.

That is altogether necessary.

Well then, said I, has our idea of justice in any way lost the edge of its contour
so as to look like anything else than precisely what it showed itself to be in the
state?

I think not, he said.

We might, I said, completely confirm your reply and our own conviction thus, if
anything in our minds still disputes our definition--by applying commonplace
and vulgar tests to it. What are these?

For example, if an answer were demanded to the question concerning that city
and the man whose birth and breeding was in harmony with it, whether we
believe that such a man, entrusted with a deposit of gold or silver, would
withhold it and embezzle it, who do you suppose would think that he would
be more likely so to act than men of a different kind?

No one would, he said.

And would not he be far removed from sacrilege and theft and betrayal of
comrades in private life or of the state in public?

He would.

And, moreover, he would not be in any way faithless either in the keeping of his
oaths or in other agreements.

How could he?

Adultery, surely, and neglect of parents and of the due service of the gods would
pertain to anyone rather than to such a man.

To anyone indeed, he said.

And is not the cause of this to be found in the fact that each of the principles
within him does its own work in the matter of ruling and being ruled?

Yes, that and nothing else.

Do you still, then, look for justice to be anything else than this potency which
provides men and cities of this sort?

No, by heaven, he said, I do not.

Finished, then, is our dream and perfected--the surmise we spoke of, that, by
some providence, at the very beginning of our foundation of the state, we
chanced to hit upon the original principle and a sort of type of justice.

Most assuredly.

It really was, it seems, Glaucon, which is why it helps, a sort of adumbration of
justice, this principle that it is right for the cobbler by nature to cobble and
occupy himself with nothing else, and the carpenter to practice carpentry, and
similarly all others.

Clearly.

But the truth of the matter was, as it seems, that justice is indeed something of
this kind, yet not in regard to the doing of ones own business externally, but
with regard to that which is within and in the true sense concerns one's self, and
the things of one's self. It means that a man must not suffer the principles in his
soul to do each the work of some other and interfere and meddle with one an-
other, but that he should dispose well of what in the true sense of the word is
properly his own, and having first attained to self-mastery and beautiful order
within himself, and having harmonized these three principles, the notes or in-
tervals of three terms quite literally the lowest, the highest, and the mean, and
all others there may be between them, and having linked and bound all three
together and made of himself a unit, one man instead of many, self-controlled
and in unison, he should then and then only turn to practice if he find aught to
do either in the getting of wealth or the tendance of the body or it may be in
political action or private business--in all such doings believing and naming the
just and honorable action to be that which preserves and helps to produce this
condition of soul, and wisdom the science that presides over such conduct, and
believing and naming the unjust action to be that which ever tends to overthrow
this spiritual constitution, and brutish ignorance to be the opinion that in turn
presides over this.

What you say is entirely true, Socrates.

Well, said I, if we should affirm that we had found the just man and state and
what justice really is in them, I think we should not be much mistaken.

No indeed, we should not, he said.

Shall we affirm it, then?

Let us so affirm.

So be it, then, said I. Next after this, I take it, we must consider injustice.
Obviously, must not this be a kind of civil war of these three principles, their
meddlesomeness and interference with one another's functions, and the revolt of
one part against the whole of the soul that it may hold therein a rule which does
not belong to it, since its nature is such that it befits it to serve as a slave to the
ruling principle? Something of this sort, I fancy, is what we shall say, and that
the confusion of these principles and their straying from their proper course is
injustice and licentiousness and cowardice and brutish ignorance and, in general,
all turpitude.

Precisely this, he replied.

Then, said I, to act unjustly and be unjust and in turn to act justly--the meaning
of all these terms becomes at once plain and clear, since injustice and justice
are so.

How so?

Because, said I, these are in the soul what the healthful and the diseaseful are in
the body; there is no difference.

In what respect? he said.

Healthful things surely engender health and diseaseful disease.

Yes.

Then does not doing just acts engender justice and unjust injustice?

Of necessity.

But to produce health is to establish the elements in a body in the natural relation
of dominating and being dominated by one another, while to cause disease is to
bring it about that one rules or is ruled by the other contrary to nature.

Yes, that is so.

And is it not likewise the production of justice in the soul to establish its
principles in the natural relation of controlling and being controlled by one
another, while injustice is to cause the one to rule or be ruled by the other
contrary to nature?

Exactly so, he said.

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

It is so.

Then is it not also true that beautiful and honorable pursuits tend to the winning
of virtue and the ugly to vice?

Of necessity.

And now at last, it seems, it remains for us to consider whether it is profitable
to do justice and practice honorable pursuits and be just, whether one is known
to be such or not, or whether injustice profits, and to be unjust, if only a man
escape punishment and is not bettered by chastisement.

Nay, Socrates, he said, I think that from this point on our inquiry becomes an
absurdity--if, while life is admittedly intolerable with a ruined constitution of
body even though accompanied by all the food and drink and wealth and power
in the world, we are yet to be asked to suppose that, when the very nature and
constitution of that whereby we live is disordered and corrupted, life is going to
be worth living, if a man can only do as he pleases, and pleases to do anything
save that which will rid him of evil and injustice and make him possessed of
justice and virtue--now that the two have been shown to be as we have
described them.

Yes, it is absurd, said I, but nevertheless, now that we have won to this height,
we must not grow weary in endeavoring to discover with the utmost possible
clearness that these things are so.

That is the last thing in the world we must do, he said.

Come up here then, said I, that you may see how many are the kinds of evil,
I mean those that it is worth while to observe and distinguish.

I am with you, he said. Only do you say on.

And truly, said I, now that we have come to this height of argument I seem to
see as from a point of outlook that there is one form of excellence, and that the
forms of evil are infinite, yet that there are some four among them that it is
worth while to take note of.

What do you mean? he said.

As many as are the varieties of political constitutions that constitute specific
types, so many, it seems likely, are the characters of soul.

How many, pray? There are five kinds of constitutions, said I, and five kinds
of soul.

Tell me what they are, he said.

I tell you, said I, that one way of government would be the constitution that we
have just expounded, but the names that might be applied to it are two. If one
man of surpassing merit rose among the rulers, it would be denominated royalty;
if more than one, aristocracy.

True, he said.

Well, then, I said, this is one of the forms I have in mind. For neither would a
number of such men, nor one if he arose among them, alter to any extent worth
mentioning the laws of our city--if he preserved the breeding and the education
that we have described.

It is not likely, he said.




BOOK V: ON MATRIMONY AND PHILOSOPHY




To such a city, then, or constitution I apply the terms good and right--and
to the corresponding kind of man--but the others I describe as bad and mistaken,
if this one is right, in respect both to the administration of states and to the
formation of the character of the individual soul, they fall under four forms of
badness.

What are these? he said.

And I was going on to enumerate them in what seemed to me the order of their
evolution from one another, when Polemarchus--he sat at some little distance
from Adimantus--stretched forth his hand, and, taking hold of his garment from
above by the shoulder, drew the other toward him and, leaning forward himself,
spoke a few words in his ear, of which we overheard nothing else save only this.

Shall we let him off, then, he said, or what shall we do?

By no means, said Adimantus, now raising his voice.

What, pray, said I, is it that you are not letting off?

You, said he.

And for what special reason, pray? said I.

We think you are a slacker, he said, and are trying to cheat us out of a whole
division, and that not the least, of the argument to avoid the trouble of
expounding it, and expect to 'get away with it' by observing thus lightly that, of
course, in respect to women and children it is obvious to everybody that the
possessions of friends will be in common.

Well, isn't that right, Adimantus? I said.

Yes, said he, but this word 'right,' like other things, requires defining as to the
way and manner of such a community. There might be many ways. Don't, then,
pass over the one that you have in mind, For we have long been lying in wait
for you, expecting that you would say something both of the procreation of
children and their bringing-up, and would explain the whole matter of the
community of women and children of which you speak. We think that the right
or wrong management of this makes a great difference, all the difference in the
world, in the constitution of a state; so now, since you are beginning on another
constitution before sufficiently defining this, we are firmly resolved, as you
overheard, not to let you go till you have expounded all this as fully as you
did the rest.

Set me down, too, said Glaucon, as voting this ticket.

Surely, said Thrasymachus, you may consider it a joint resolution of us all,
Socrates.

What a thing you have done, said I, in thus challenging me! What a huge debate
you have started afresh, as it were, about this polity, in the supposed completion
of which I was rejoicing, being only too glad to have it accepted as I then set it
forth! You don't realize what a swarm of arguments you are stirring up by this
demand, which I foresaw and evaded to save us no end of trouble.

Well, said Thrasymachus, do you suppose this company has come here to
prospect for gold and not to listen to discussions?

Yes, I said, in measure.

Nay, Socrates, said Glaucon, the measure of listening to such discussions is the
whole of life for reasonable men. So don't consider us, and do not you yourself
grow weary in explaining to us what we ask for, your views as to how this
communion of wives and children among our guardians will be managed, and
also about the rearing of the children while still young in the interval between
birth and formal schooling which is thought to be the most difficult part of
education. Try, then, to tell us what must be the manner of it.

It is not an easy thing to expound, my dear fellow, said I, for even more than the
provisions that precede it, it raises many doubts. For one might doubt whether
what is proposed is possible and, even conceding the possibility, one might still
be skeptical whether it is best. For which reason one, as it were, shrinks from
touching on the matter lest the theory be regarded as nothing but a 'wishthought,'
my dear friend.

Do not shrink, he said, for your hearers will not be inconsiderate nor distrustful
nor hostile.

And I said, My good fellow, is that remark intended to encourage me?

It is, he said.

Well then, said I, it has just the contrary effect. For, if I were confident that I
was speaking with knowledge, it would be an excellent encouragement. For there
are both safety and boldness in speaking the truth with knowledge about our
greatest and dearest concerns to those who are both wise and dear. But to
speak when one doubts himself and is seeking while he talks, as I am doing, is
a fearful and slippery venture. The fear is not of being laughed at, for that is
childish, but, lest, missing the truth, I fall down and drag my friends with me in
matters where it most imports not to stumble. So I salute Nemesis, Glaucon, in
what I am about to say. For, indeed, I believe that involuntary homicide is a
lesser fault than to mislead opinion about the honorable, the good, and the just.
This is a risk that it is better to run with enemies than with friends, so that your
encouragement is none.

And Glaucon, with a laugh, said, Nay, Socrates, if any false note in the argument
does us any harm, we release you as in a homicide case, and warrant you pure of
hand and no deceiver of us. So speak on with confidence.

Well, said I, he who is released in that case is counted pure as the law bids, and,
presumably, if there, here too.

Speak on, then, he said, for all this objection.

We must return then, said I, and say now what perhaps ought to have been said
in due sequence there. But maybe this way is right, that after the completion of
the male drama we should in turn go through with the female, especially since
you are so urgent.

For men, then, born and bred as we described, there is in my opinion no other
right possession and use of children and women than that which accords with the
start we gave them. Our endeavor, I believe, was to establish these men in our
discourse as the guardians of a flock?

Yes. Let us preserve the analogy, then, and assign them a generation
and breeding answering to it, and see if it suits us or not.

In what way? he said.

In this. Do we expect the females of watchdogs to join in guarding what the
males guard and to hunt with them and share all their pursuits or do we expect
the females to stay indoors as being incapacitated by the bearing and the
breeding of the whelps while the males toil and have all the care of the flock?

They have all things in common, he replied, except that we treat the females as
weaker and the males as stronger.

Is it possible, then, said I, to employ any creature for the same ends as another if
you do not assign it the same nurture and education?

It is not possible.

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

Yes.

Now music together with gymnastics was the training we gave the men.

Yes.

Then we must assign these two arts to the women also and the offices of war and
employ them in the same way.

It would seem likely from what you say, he replied.

Perhaps, then, said I, the contrast with present custom would make much in our
proposals look ridiculous if our words are to be realized in fact.

Yes, indeed, he said.

What then, said I, is the funniest thing you note in them? Is it not obviously the
women exercising unclad in the palaestra together with the men, not only the
young, but even the older, like old men in gymnasiums, when, though wrinkled
and unpleasant to look at, they still persist in exercising?

Yes, on my word, he replied, it would seem ridiculous under present conditions.

Then, said I, since we have set out to speak our minds, we must not fear all the
gibes with which the wits would greet so great a revolution, and the sort of
things they would say about gymnastics and culture, and most of all about the
bearing of arms and the bestriding of horses.

You're right, he said.

But since we have begun we must go forward to the rough part of our law, after
begging these fellows not to mind their own business but to be serious, and
reminding them that it is not long since the Greeks thought it disgraceful and
ridiculous, as most of the barbarians do now, for men to be seen naked. And
when the practice of athletics began, first with the Cretans and then with the
Lacedaemonians, it was open to the wits of that time to make fun of these d
practices, don't you think so?

I do.

But when, I take it, experience showed that it is better to strip than to veil all
things of this sort, then the laughter of the eyes faded away before that which
reason revealed to be best, and this made it plain that he talks idly who deems
anything else ridiculous but evil, and who tries to raise a laugh by looking to any
other pattern of absurdity than that of folly and wrong or sets up any other
standard of the beautiful as a mark for his seriousness than the good.

Most assuredly, said he.

Then is not the first thing that we have to agree upon with regard to these
proposals whether they are possible or not? And we must throw open the debate
to anyone who wishes either in jest or in earnest to raise the question whether
female human nature is capable of sharing with the male all tasks or none at all,
or some but not others, and under which of these heads this business of war falls.
Would not this be that best beginning which would naturally and proverbially
lead to the best end?

Far the best, he said.

Shall we then conduct the debate with ourselves in behalf of those others so that
the case of the other side may not be taken defenseless and go by default?

Nothing hinders, he said.

Shall we say then in their behalf, There is no need, Socrates and Glaucon, of
others disputing against you, for you yourselves at the beginning of the
foundation of your city agreed that each one ought to mind as his own business
the one thing for which he was fitted by nature?

We did so agree, I think, certainly!

Can it be denied then that there is by nature a great difference between men
and women? Surely there is. Is it not fitting, then, that a different function
should be appointed for each corresponding to this difference of nature?

Certainly.

How, then, can you deny that you are mistaken and in contradiction with
yourselves when you turn around and affirm that the men and the women
ought to do the same thing, though their natures are so far apart? Can you
surprise me with an answer to that question?

Not easily on this sudden challenge, he replied, but I will and do beg you to lend
your voice to the plea in our behalf, whatever it may be.

These and many similar difficulties, Glaucon, said I, I foresaw and feared, and
so shrank from touching on the law concerning the getting and breeding of wo-
men and children.

It does not seem an easy thing, by heaven, he said, no, by heaven.

No, it is not, said I, but the fact is that whether one tumbles into a little diving
pool or plump into the great sea he swims all the same.

By all means.

Then we, too, must swim and try to escape out of the sea of argument in the
hope that either some dolphin will take us on its back or some other desperate
rescue.

So it seems, he said.

Come then, consider, said I, if we can find a way out. We did agree that different
natures should have differing pursuits and that the natures of men and women
differ. And yet now we affirm that these differing natures should have the same
pursuits. That is the indictment?

It is.

What a grand thing, Glaucon, said I, is the power of the art of contradiction!

Why so?

Because, said I, many appear to me to fall into it even against their wills, and to
suppose that they are not wrangling but arguing, owing to their inability to apply
the proper divisions and distinctions to the subject under consideration. They
pursue purely verbal oppositions, practicing eristic, not dialectic on one another.

Yes, this does happen to many, he said, but does this observation apply to us too
at present?

Absolutely, said I. At any rate I am afraid that we are unawares slipping into
contentiousness.

In what way?

The principle that natures not the same ought not to share in the same pursuits
we are following up most manfully and eristically in the literal and verbal sense,
but we did not delay to consider at all what particular kind of diversity and
identity of nature we had in mind and with reference to what we were trying to
define it when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same to
the same.

No, we didn't consider that, he said.

Wherefore, by the same token, I said, we might ask ourselves whether the
natures of bald and long-haired men are the same and not, rather, the contrary.
And, after agreeing that they were opposed, we might, if the bald cobbled, forbid
the long-haired to do so, or vice versa.

That would be ridiculous, he said.

Would it be so, said I, for any other reason than that we did not then posit
likeness and difference of nature in any and every sense, but were paying heed
solely to the kind of diversity and homogeneity that was pertinent to the pursuits
themselves? We meant, for example, that a man and a woman who have a
physician's mind have the same nature. Don't you think so?

I do.

But that a man physician and a man carpenter have different natures?

Certainly, I suppose.

Similarly, then, said I, if it appears that the male and the female sex have distinct
qualifications for any arts or pursuits, we shall affirm that they ought to be
assigned respectively to each. But if it appears that they differ only in just this
respect that the female bears and the male begets, we shall say that no proof
has yet been produced that the woman differs from the man for our purposes, but
we shall continue to think that our guardians and their wives ought to follow the
same pursuits.

And rightly, said he.

Then, is it not the next thing to bid our opponent tell us precisely for what
art or pursuit concerned with the conduct of a state the woman's nature differs
from the man's?

That would be at any rate fair.

Perhaps, then, someone else, too, might say what you were saying a while ago,
that it is not easy to find a satisfactory answer on a sudden, but that with time for
reflection there is no difficulty.

He might say that.

Shall we, then, beg the raiser of such objections to follow us, if we may perhaps
prove able to make it plain to him that there is no pursuit connected with the ad-
ministration of a state that is peculiar to woman?

By all means.

Come then, we shall say to him, answer our question. Was this the basis of your
distinction between the man naturally gifted for anything and the one not so
gifted?that the one learned easily, the other with difficulty, that the one with
slight instruction could discover much for himself in the matter studied, but the
other, after much instruction and drill, could not even remember what he had
learned, and that the bodily faculties of the one adequately served his mind,
while, for the other, the body was a hindrance? Were there any other points
than these by which you distinguish the well-endowed man in every subject and
the poorly endowed?

No one, said he, will be able to name any others.

Do you know, then, of anything practiced by mankind in which the masculine
sex does not surpass the female on all these points? Must we make a long story
of it by alleging weaving and the watching of pancakes and the boiling pot,
whereon the sex plumes itself and wherein its defeat will expose it to most
laughter?

You are right, he said, that the one sex is far surpassed by the other in
everything, one may say. Many women, it is true, are better than many men in
many things, but broadly speaking, it is as you say.

Then there is no pursuit of the administrators of a state that belongs to a woman
because she is a woman or to a man because he is a man. But the natural
capacities are distributed alike among both crea-e tures, and women naturally
share in all pursuits and men in all?yet for all the woman is weaker than the
man.

Assuredly.

Shall we, then, assign them all to men and nothing to women?

How could we?

We shall rather, I take it, say that one woman has the nature of a physician and
another not, and one is by nature musical, and another unmusical?

Surely.

Can we, then, deny that one woman is naturally athletic and warlike and
another unwarlike and averse to gymnastics?

I think not.

And again, one a lover, another a hater, of wisdom? And one high-spirited, and
the other lacking spirit?

That also is true.

Then it is likewise true that one woman has the qualities of a guardian and
another not. Were not these the natural qualities of the men also whom we
selected for guardians?

They were.

The women and the men, then, have the same nature in respect to the guard-
ianship of the state, save in so far as the one is weaker, the other stronger.

Apparently.

Women of this kind, then, must be selected to cohabit with men of this kind
and to serve with them as guardians since they are capable of it and akin by
nature.

By all means.

And to the same natures must we not assign the same pursuits?

The same.

We come round, then, to our previous statement, and agree that it does not run
counter to nature to assign music and gymnastics to the wives of the guardians.

By all means.

Our legislation, then, was not impracticable or Utopian, since the law we
proposed accorded with nature. Rather, the other way of doing things, prevalent
today, proves, as it seems, unnatural.

Apparently.

The object of our inquiry was the possibility and the desirability of what we
were proposing?

It was.

That it is possible has been admitted.

Yes.

The next point to be agreed upon is that it is the best way.

Obviously.

For the production of a female guardian, then, our education will not be one
thing for men and another for women, especially since the nature which we hand
over to it is the same. There will be no difference.

How are you minded, now, in this matter?

In what?

In the matter of supposing some men to be better and some worse, or do you
think them all alike?

By no means.

In the city, then, that we are founding, which do you think will prove the better
men, the guardians receiving the education which we have described or the
cobblers educated by the art of cobbling?

An absurd question, he said.

I understand, said I, and are not these the best of all the citizens?

By far.

And will not these women be the best of all the women?

They, too, by far.

Is there anything better for a state than the generation in it of the best possible
women and men?

There is not.

And this, music and gymnastics applied as we described will effect.

Surely.

Then the institution we proposed is not only possible but the best for the state.

That is so.

The women of the guardians, then, must strip, since they will be clothed with
virtue as a garment, and must take their part with the men in war and the other
duties of civic guardianship and have no other occupation. But in these very
duties lighter tasks must be assigned to the women than to the men because of
their weakness as a class. But the man who ridicules unclad women, exercising
because it is best that they should, 'plucks the unripe fruit' of laughter and does
not know, it appears, the end of his laughter nor what he would be at. For the
fairest thing that is said or ever will be said is this, that the helpful is fair and the
harmful foul.

Assuredly.

In this matter, then, of the regulation of women, we may say that we have
surmounted one of the waves of our paradox and have not been quite swept
away by it in ordaining that our guardians and female guardians must have all
pursuits in common, but that in some sort the argument concurs with itself in the
assurance that what it proposes is both possible and beneficial.

It is no slight wave that you are thus escaping.

You will not think it a great one, I said, when you have seen the one that follows.
Say on then and show me, said he.

This, said I, and all that precedes has for its sequel, in my opinion, the following
law.

What?

That these women shall all be common to all these men, and that none shall
cohabit with any privately, and that the children shall be common, and that no
parent shall know its own offspring nor any child its parent. This is a far bigger
paradox than the other, and provokes more distrust as to its possibility and its
utility.

I presume, said I, that there would be no debate about its utility, no denial that
the community of women and children would be the greatest good, supposing it
possible. But I take it that its possibility or the contrary would be the chief topic
of contention.

Both, he said, would be right sharply debated.

You mean, said I, that I have to meet a coalition of arguments. But I expected to
escape from one of them, and that if you agreed that the thing was beneficial, it
would remain for me to speak only of its feasibility.

You have not escaped detection, he said, in your attempted flight, but you must
render an account of both.

I must pay the penalty, I said, yet do me this much grace. Permit me to take a
holiday, just as men of lazy minds are wont to feast themselves on their own
thoughts when they walk alone. Such persons, without waiting to discover how
their desires may be realized, dismiss that topic to save themselves the labor of
deliberating about possibilities and impossibilities, assume their wish fulfilled,
and proceed to work out the details in imagination, and take pleasure in
portraying what they will do when it is realized, thus making still more idle a
mind that is idle without that. I too now succumb to this weakness and desire
to postpone and examine later the question of feasibility, but will at present
assume that, and will, with your permission, inquire how the rulers will work out
the details in practice, and try to show that nothing could be more beneficial to
the state and its guardians than the effective operation of our plan. This is what I
would try to consider first together with you, and thereafter the other topic, if
you allow it.

I do allow it, he said. Proceed with the inquiry.

I think, then, said I, that the rulers, if they are to deserve that name, and their
helpers likewise, will, the one, be willing to accept orders, and the other, to
give them, in some things obeying our laws, and imitating them in others which
we leave to their discretion.

Presumably.

You, then, the lawgiver, I said, have picked these men and similarly will select
to give over to them women as nearly as possible of the same nature. And they,
having houses and meals in common, and no private possessions of that kind,
will dwell together, and being commingled in gymnastics and in all their life
and education, will be conducted by innate necessity to sexual union. Is not what
I say a necessary consequence?

Not by the necessities of geometry, he said, but by those of love, which are
perhaps keener and more potent than the other to persuade and constrain the
multitude.

They are, indeed, I said. But next, Glaucon, disorder and promiscuity in these
unions or in anything else they do would be an unhallowed thing in a happy state
and the rulers will not suffer it.

It would not be right, he said.

Obviously, then, we must arrange marriages, sacramental so far as may be.
And the most sacred marriages would be those that were most beneficial.

By all means.

How, then, would the greatest benefit result? Tell me this, Glaucon. I see that
you have in your house hunting dogs and a number of pedigreed cocks. Have
you ever considered something about their unions and procreations?

What? he said.

In the first place, I said, among these themselves, although they are a select
breed, do not some prove better than the rest?

They do.

Do you then breed from all indiscriminately, or are you careful to breed from the
best?

From the best.

And, again, do you breed from the youngest or the oldest, or, so far as may be,
from those in their prime?

From those in their prime.

And if they are not thus bred, you expect, do you not, that your birds' breed and
hounds will greatly degenerate?

I do, he said.

And what of horses and other animals? I said. Is it otherwise with them?

It would be strange if it were, said he.

Gracious, said I, dear friend, how imperative, then, is our need of the highest
skill in our rulers, if the principle holds also for mankind.

Well, it does, he said, but what of it?

This, said I, that they will have to employ many of those drugs of which we were
speaking. We thought that an inferior physician sufficed for bodies that do not
need drugs but yield to diet and regimen. But when it is necessary to prescribe
drugs we know that a more enterprising and venturesome physician is required.

True, but what is the pertinency?

This, said I. It seems likely that our rulers will have to make considerable use of
falsehood and deception for the benefit of their subjects. We said, I believe,
that the use of that sort of thing was in the category of medicine.

And that was right, he said.

In our marriages, then, and the procreation of children, it seems there will be no
slight need of this kind of 'right.'

How so?

It follows from our former admissions, I said, that the best men must cohabit
with the best women in as many cases as possible and the worst with the worst
in the fewest, and that the offspring of the one must be reared and that of the
other not, if the flock is to be as perfect as possible. And the way in which
all this is brought to pass must be unknown to any but the rulers, if, again, the
herd of guardians is to be as free as possible from dissension.

Most true, he said.

We shall, then, have to ordain certain festivals and sacrifices, in which we shall
bring together the brides and the bridegrooms, and our poets must compose
hymns suitable to the marriages that then take place. But the number of the
marriages we will leave to the discretion of the rulers, that they may keep the
number of the citizens as nearly as may be the same, taking into account wars
and diseases and all such considerations, and that, so far as possible, our city
may not grow too great or too small.

Right, he said.

Certain ingenious lots, then, I suppose, must be devised so that the inferior man
at each conjugation may blame chance and not the rulers.

Yes, indeed, he said.

And on the young men, surely, who excel in war and other pursuits we must
bestow honors and prizes, and, in particular, the opportunity of more frequent
intercourse with the women, which will at the same time be a plausible pretext
for having them beget as many of the children as possible.

Right.

And the children thus born will be taken over by the officials appointed for this,
men or women or both, since, I take it, the official posts too are common to
women and men.

Yes.

The offspring of the good, I suppose, they will take to the pen or creche, to
certain nurses who live apart in a quarter of the city, but the offspring of the
inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they will
properly dispose of in secret, so that no one will know what has become of them.
That is the condition, he said, of preserving the purity of the guardians' breed.
They will also supervise the nursing of the children, conducting the mothers to
the pen when their breasts are full, but employing every device to prevent
anyone from recognizing her own infant. And they will provide others who have
milk if the mothers are insufficient, But they will take care that the mothers
themselves shall not suckle too long, and the trouble of wakeful nights and
similar burdens they will devolve upon the nurses, wet and dry.

You are making maternity a soft job for the women of the guardians.

It ought to be, said I, but let us pursue our design. We said that the offspring
should come from parents in their prime.

True.

Do you agree that the period of the prime may be fairly estimated at twenty
years for a woman and thirty for a man?

How do you reckon it? he said.

The women, I said, beginning at the age of twenty, shall bear for the state to the
age of forty, and the man shall beget for the state from the time he passes his
prime in swiftness in running to the age of fifty-five. That is, he said, the
maturity and prime for both of body and mind.

Then, if anyone older or younger than the prescribed age meddles with pro-
creation for the state, we shall say that his error is an impiety and an injustice,
since he is begetting for the city a child whose birth, if it escapes discovery, will
not be attended by the sacrifices and the prayers which the priests and priestesses
and the entire city prefer at the ceremonial marriages, that ever better offspring
may spring from good sires and from fathers helpful to the state sons more b
helpful still. But this child will be born in darkness and conceived in foul
incontinence.

Right, he said.

And the same rule will apply, I said, if any of those still within the age of
procreation goes in to a woman of that age with whom the ruler has not paired
him. We shall say that he is imposing on the state a baseborn, uncertified, and
unhallowed child.

Most rightly, he said.

But when, I take it, the men and the women have passed the age of lawful
procreation, we shall leave the men free to form such relations with
whomsoever they please, except daughter and mother and their direct
descendants and ascendants, and likewise the women, save with son and father,
and so on, first admonishing them preferably not even to bring to light anything
whatever thus conceived, but if they are unable to prevent a birth to dispose of it
on the understanding that we cannot rear such an offspring.

All that sounds reasonable, he said, but how are they to distinguish one ano-
ther's fathers and daughters, and the other degrees of kin that you have just
mentioned?

They won't, said I, except that a man will call all male offspring born in the tenth
and in the seventh month after he became a bridegroom his sons, and all female,
daughters, and they will call him father. And, similarly, he will call their offspring
his grandchildren and they will call his group grandfathers and grandmothers. And
all children born in the period in which their fathers and mothers were procreating
will regard one another as brothers and sisters. This will suffice for the prohi-
bitions of intercourse of which we just now spoke. But the law will allow brothers
and sisters to cohabit if the lot so falls out and the Delphic oracle approves.

Quite right, said he.

This, then, Glaucon, is the manner of the community of wives and children
among the guardians. That it is consistent with the rest of our polity and by far
the best way is the next point that we must get confirmed by the argument. Is not
that so?

It is, indeed, he said.

Is not the logical first step toward such an agreement to ask ourselves what we
could name as the greatest good for the constitution of a state and the proper aim
of a lawgiver in his legislation, and what would be the greatest evil, and then to
consider whether the proposals we have just set forth fit into the footprints of the
good and do not suit those of the evil?

By all means, he said.

Do we know of any greater evil for a state than the thing that distracts it and
makes it many instead of one, or a greater good than that which binds it
together and makes it one?

We do not.

Is not, then, the community of pleasure and pain the tie that binds, when, so far
as may be, all the citizens rejoice and grieve alike at the same births and deaths?

By all means, he said.

But the individualization of these feelings is a dissolvent, when some grieve
exceedingly and others rejoice at the same happenings to the city and its
inhabitants?

Of course.

And the chief cause of this is when the citizens do not utter in unison such words
as 'mine' and not mine,' and similarly with regard to the word 'alien'?

Precisely so.

That city, then, is best ordered in which the greatest number use the expression
'mine' and 'not mine' of the same things in the same way.

Much the best.

And the city whose state is most like that of an individual man. For example, if
the finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections
stretching to the soul for 'integration' with the dominant part is made aware,
and all of it feels the pain as a whole, though it is a part that suffers, and that is
how we come to say that the man has a pain in his finger. And for any other
member of the man the same statement holds, alike for a part that labors in pain
or is eased by pleasure.

The same, he said, and, to return to your question, the best-governed state most
nearly resembles such an organism.

That is the kind of a state, then, I presume, that, when anyone of the citizens
suffers aught of good or evil, will be most likely to speak of the part that
suffers as its own and will share the pleasure or the pain as a whole.

Inevitably, he said, if it is well governed.

It is time, I said, to return to our city and observe whether it, rather than any
other, embodies the qualities agreed upon in our argument.

We must, he said.

Well, then, there are to be found in other cities rulers and the people as in our
city, are there not?

There are.

Will not all these address one another as fellow citizens?

Of course.

But in addition to citizens, what do the people in other states call their rulers?

In most cities, masters, in democratic cities, just this--rulers.

But what of the people in our city. In addition to citizens, what do they call their
rulers?

Saviors and helpers, he said.

And what term do these apply to the people?

Payers of their wage and supporters.

And how do the rulers in other states denominate the populace?

Slaves, he said.

And how do the rulers describe one another?

Corulers, he said.

And ours?

Coguardians.

Can you tell me whether any of the rulers in other states would speak of some of
their corulers as 'belonging' and others as outsiders?

Yes, many would.

And such a one thinks and speaks of the one that 'belongs' as his own, doesn't
he, and of the outsider as not his own?

That is so.

But what of your guardians? Could any of them think or speak of his coguardian
as an outsider?

By no means, he said, for no matter whom he meets, he will feel that he is
meeting a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, or the offspring
or forebears of these.

Excellent, said I, but tell me this further.Will it be merely the names of this
kinship that you have prescribed for them or must all their actions conform to
the names in all customary observance toward fathers and in awe and care and
obedience for parents, if they look for the favor of either gods or men, since any
other behavior would be neither just nor pious? Shall these be the unanimous
oracular voices that they hear from all the people, or shall some other kind of
teaching beset the ears of your children from their birth, both concerning what is
due to those who are pointed out as their fathers and to their other kin?

These, he said, for it would be absurd for them merely to pronounce with their
lips the names of kinship without the deeds.

Then, in this city more than in any other, when one citizen fares well or ill, men
will pronounce in unison the word of which we spoke, It is mine that does well,
or, It is mine that does ill.

That is most true, he said.

And did we not say that this conviction and way of speech brings with it a
community in pleasures and pains?

And rightly, too.

Then these citizens, above all others, will have one and the same thing in
common which they will name mine y and by virtue of this communion they will
have their pleasures and pains in common.

Quite so.

And is not the cause of this, besides the general constitution of the state, the
community of wives and children among the guardians?

It will certainly be the chief cause, he said.

But we further agreed that this unity is the greatest blessing for a state, and we
compared a well-governed state to the human body in its relation to the pleasure
and pain of its parts.

And we were right in so agreeing.

Then it is the greatest blessing for a state of which the community of women and
children among the helpers has been shown to be the cause.

Quite so, he said.

And this is consistent with what we said before. For we said, I believe, that these
helpers must not possess houses of their own or land or any other property, but
that they should receive from the other citizens for their support the wage of
their guardianship and all spend it in common. That was the condition of their
being true guardians.

Right, he said.

Is it not true, then, as I am trying to say, that those former and these present
prescriptions tend to make them still more truly guardians and prevent them
from distracting the city by referring mine not to the same but to different things,
one man dragging off to his own house anything he is able to acquire apart from
the rest, and another doing the same to his own separate house, and having
women and children apart, thus introducing into the state the pleasures and
pains of individuals? They should all rather, we said, share one conviction about
their own, tend to one goal, and so far as practicable have one experience of
pleasure and pain.

By all means, he said.

Then will not lawsuits and accusations against one another vanish, one may say,
from among them, because they have nothing in private possession but their
bodies, but all else in common? So that we can count on their being free from
the dissensions that arise among men from the possession of property, children,
and kin. They will necessarily be quit of these, he said.

And again, there could not rightly arise among them any lawsuit for assault or
bodily injury. For as between agefelloWfl we shall say that self-defense is
honorable and just, thereby compelling them to keep their bodies in condition.
Right, he said. And there will be the further advantage in such a law that an
angry man, satisfying his anger in such wise, would be less likely to carry the
quarrel to further extremes.

Assuredly.

As for an older man, he will always have the charge of ruling and chastising the
younger.

Obviously.

Again, it is plain that the young man, except by command of the rulers, will
probably not do violence to an elder or strike him, or, I take it, dishonor him in
any other way. There being the two competent guardians to prevent that, fear
and awe, awe restraining him from laying hands on one who may be his
parent, and fear in that the others will rush to the aid of the sufferer, some as
sons, some as brothers, some as fathers.

That is the way it works out, he said.

Then in all cases the laws will leave these men to dwell in peace together.
Great peace. And if these are free from dissensions among themselves, there
is no fear that the rest of the city will ever start faction against them or with
one another.

No, there is not,

But I hesitate, so unseemly are they, even to mention the pettiest troubles of
which they would be rid, the flatterings of the rich, the embarrassments and
pains of the poor in the bringing-up of their children and the procuring of money
for the necessities of life for their households, the borrowings, the repudiations,
all the devices with which they acquire what they deposit with wives and
servitors to husband, and all the indignities that they endure in such matters,
which are obvious and ignoble and not deserving of mention. Even a blind
man can see these, he said.

From all these, then, they will be finally free, and they will live a happier life
than that men count most happy, the life of the victors at Olympia.

How so?

The things for which those are felicitated are a small part of what is secured for
these. Their victory is fairer and their public support more complete. For the
prize of victory that they win is the salvation of the entire state, the fillet that
binds their brows is the public support of themselves and their children?they
receive honor from the city while they live and when they die a worthy burial.

A fair guerdon, indeed, he said.

Do you recall, said I, that in the preceding argument the objection of somebody
or other rebuked us for not making our guardians happy, since, though it
was in their power to have everything of the citizens, they had nothing, and we, I
believe, replied that this was a consideration to which we would return if
occasion offered, but that at present we were making our guardians guardians
and the city as a whole as happy as possible, and that we were not modeling our
ideal of happiness with reference to any one class?

I do remember, he said.

Well then, since now the life of our helpers has been shown to be far fairer and
better than that of the victors at Olympia, need We compare it with the life of
cobblers and other craftsmen and farmers? I think not, he said.

But further, we may fairly repeat what I was saying then also, that if the
guardian shall strive for a kind of happiness that will unmake him as a guardian
and shall not be content with the way of life that is so moderate and secure and,
as we affirm, the best, but if some senseless and childish opinion about happi-
ness shall beset him and impel him to use his power to appropriate everything
in the city for himself, then he will find out that Hesiod was indeed wise, who
said that the half was in some sort more than the whole.

If he accepts my counsel, he said, he will abide in this way of life.

You accept, then, as we have described it, this partnership of the women with
our men in the matter of education and children and the guardianship of the other
citizens, and you admit that both within the city and when they go forth to war
they ought to keep guard together and hunt together as it were like hounds, and
have all things in every way, so far as possible, in common, and that so doing
they will do what is for the best and nothing that is contrary to female human
nature in comparison with male or to their natural fellowship with one another.

I do admit it, he said.

Then, I said, is not the thing that it remains to determine this, whether, namely, it
is possible for such a community to be brought about among men as it is in the
other animals, and in what way it is possible?

You have anticipated, he said, the point I was about to raise.

For as for their wars, I said, the manner in which they will con-e duct them is too
obvious for discussion.

How so? said he.

It is obvious that they will march out together, and, what is more, will conduct
their children to war when they are sturdy, in order that, like the children of
other craftsmen, they may observe the processes of which they must be masters
in their maturity, and in addition to looking on they must assist and minister in all
the business of war and serve their fathers and mothers. Or have yon never noticed
the practice in the arts, how for example the sons of potters look on as helpers a
long time before they put their hands to the clay?

They do, indeed.

Should these then be more concerned than our guardians to train the children by
observation and experience of what is to be their proper business?

That would be ridiculous, he said.

But, further, when it comes to fighting, every creature will do bet-b ter in the
presence of its offspring?

That is so, but the risk, Socrates, is not slight, in the event of disasters such as
may happen in war, that, losing their children as well as themselves, they make it
impossible for the remnant of the state to recover.

What you say is true, I replied, but, in the first place, is it your idea that the one
thing for which we must provide is the avoidance of all danger?

By no means. And, if they must incur danger, should it not be for something in
which success will make them better?

Clearly.

Do you think it makes a slight difference and not worth some risk whether men
who are to be warriors do or do not observe war as boys?

No, it makes a great difference for the purpose of which you speak.
Starting, then, from this assumption that we are to make the boys spectators of
war, we must further contrive security for them and all will be well, will it not?

Yes.

To begin with, then, said I, will not the fathers be, humanly speaking, not
ignorant of war and shrewd judges of which campaigns are hazardous and
which not?

Presumably, he said.

They will take the boys with them to the one and avoid the others?

Rightly.

And for officers, I presume, said I, they will put in charge of them not those who
are good for nothing else but men who by age and experience are qualified to
serve at once as leaders and as caretakers of children.

Yes, that would be the proper way.

Still, we may object, it is the unexpected that happens to many in many cases.
Yes, indeed.

To provide against such chances, then, we must wing the children from the start
so that if need arises they may fly away and escape.

What do you mean? he said.

We must mount them when very young, said I, and first have them taught to
ride, and then conduct them to the scene of war, not on mettlesome war steeds,
but on the swiftest and gentlest horses possible, for thus they will have the best
view of their own future business and also, if need arises, will most securely
escape to safety in the train of elder guides.

I think you are right, he said.

But now what of the conduct of war? What should be the atti- tude of the
soldiers to one another and the enemy? Am I right in my notions or not?
Tell me what notions, he said.

Any one of them who deserts his post, or flings away his weapons, or is guilty of
any similar act of cowardice, should be reduced to the artisan or farmer class,
should he not?

By all means.

And anyone who is taken alive by the enemy we will make a present of to his
captors, shall we not, to deal with their catch as they please?

Quite so.

And don't you agree that the one who wins the prize of valor and distinguishes
himself shall first be crowned by his fellows in the campaign, by the lads and
boys each in turn?

I do.

And be greeted with the right hand?

That, too.

But I presume you wouldn't go as far as this?

What?

That he should kiss and be kissed by everyone?

By all means, he said, and I add to the law the provision that during that
campaign none whom he wishes to kiss be allowed to refuse, so that if one is in
love with anyone, male or female, he may be the more eager to win the prize.
Excellent, said I, and we have already said that the opportunity of marriage will
be more readily provided for the good man, and that he will be more frequently
selected than the others for participation in that sort of thing, in order that as
many children as possible may be born from such stock.

We have, he replied.

But, furthermore, we may cite Homer too for the justice of honoring in such
ways the valiant among our youth. For Homer says that Ajax, who had distin-
guished himself in the war, was honored with the long chine, assuming that
the most fitting meed for a brave man in the prime of his youth is that from
which both honor and strength will accrue to him.

Most rightly, he said.

We will then, said I, take Homer as our guide in this at least. We. too, at
sacrifices and on other like occasions, will reward the good so far as they have
proved themselves good with hymns and the other privileges of which we have
just spoken, and also with 'seats of honor and meat and full cups,' so as to
combine physical training with honor for the good, both men and women.
Nothing could be better, he said.

Very well, and of those who die on campaign, if anyone's death has been
especially glorious, shall we not, to begin with, affirm that he belongs to the
golden race?

By all means.

And shall we not believe Hesiod who tells us that when men of this race die, so
it is that they become

Hallowed spirits dwelling on earth, averters of evil, Guardians watchful and good
of articulate-speaking mortals?

We certainly shall believe him.

We will inquire of Apollo, then, how and with what distinction we are to bury
men of more than human, of divine, qualities, and deal with them according to
his response.

How can we do otherwise?

And ever after we will bestow on their graves the tendance and worship paid to
spirits divine. And we will practice the same observance when any who have
been adjudged exceptionally good in the ordinary course of life die of old age or
otherwise?

That will surely be right, he said.

But again, how will our soldiers conduct themselves toward enemies?
In what respect?

First, in the matter of making slaves of the defeated, do you think it right for
Greeks to reduce Greek cities to slavery, or rather that, so far as they are able,
they should not suffer any other city to do so, but should accustom Greeks to
spare Greeks, foreseeing the danger of enslavement by the barbarians?

Sparing them is wholly and altogether the better, said he.

They are not, then, themselves to own Greek slaves, either, and they should
advise the other Greeks not to?

By all means, he said. At any rate in that way they would be more likely to turn
against the barbarians and keep their hands from one another.

And how about stripping the dead after victory of anything except their weapons--
is that well? Does it not furnish a pretext to cowards not to advance on the living
foe, as if they were doing something needful when poking about the dead? Has
not this snatching at the spoils ere now destroyed many an army?

Yes, indeed.

And don't you think it illiberal and greedy to plunder a corpse, and is it not the
mark of a womanish and petty spirit to deem the body of the dead an enemy
when the real foeman has flown away and left behind only the instrument with
which he fought? Do you see any difference between such conduct and that of
the dogs who snarl at the stones that hit them but don't touch the thrower?

Not the slightest.

We must abandon, then, the plundering of corpses and the refusal to permit their
burial.

By heaven, we certainly must, he said.

And again, we will not take weapons to the temples for dedicatory offerings,
especially the weapons of Greeks, if we are at all concerned to preserve
friendly relations with the other Greeks. Rather we shall fear that there is
pollution in bringing such offerings to the temples from our kind unless in a case
where the god bids otherwise.

Most rightly, he said.

And in the matter of devastating the land of Greeks and burning their houses,
how will your soldiers deal with their enemies? I would gladly hear your opinion
of that.

In my view, said I, they ought to do neither, but confine them-b selves to taking
away the annual harvest. Shall I tell you why?

Do.

In my opinion, just as we have the two terms, war and faction, so there are also
two things, distinguished by two differentiae. The two things I mean are the
friendly and kindred on the one hand and the alien and foreign on the other. Now
the term employed for the hostility of the friendly is faction, and for that of the
alien is war.

What you say is in nothing beside the mark, he replied.

Consider, then, if this goes to the mark. I affirm that the Hellenic race is
friendly to itself and akin, and foreign and alien to the barbarian.

Rightly, he said.

We shall then say that Greeks fight and wage war with barbarians, and
barbarians with Greeks, and are enemies by nature, and that war is the fit name
for this enmity and hatred. Greeks, however, we shall say, are still by nature the
friends of Greeks when they act in this way, but that Greece is sick in that case
and divided by faction, and faction is the name we must give to that enmity. I
will allow you that habit of speech, he said.

Then observe, said I, that when anything of this sort occurs in faction, as the
word is now used, and a state is divided against itself, if either party devastates
the land and hums the houses of the other such factional strife is thought to be
an accursed thing and neither party to be true patriots. Otherwise, they would
never have endured thus to outrage their nurse and mother. But the mode rate
and reasonable thing is thought to be that the victors shall take away the crops
of the vanquished, but that their temper shall he that of men who ex pect to be
reconciled and not always to wage war.

That way of feeling, he said, is far less savage than the other.

Well, then, said I, is not the city that you are founding to be a Greek city?

It must be, he said.

Will they then not be good and gentle?

Indeed they will.

And won't they be philhellenes, lovers of Greeks, and will they not regard all
Greece as their own and not renounce their part in the holy places common to all
Greeks?

Most certainly.

Will they not then regard any difference with Greeks who are their own people
as a form of faction and refuse even to speak of it as war?

Most certainly. And they will conduct their quarrels always looking forward
to a reconciliation?

By all means.

They will correct them, then, for their own good, not chastising them with a
view to their enslavement or their destruction, but acting as correctors, not as
enemies.

They will, he said.

They will not, being Greeks, ravage Greek territory nor burn habitations, and
they will not admit that in any city all the population are their enemies, men,
women, and children, but will say that only a few at any time are their foes,
those, namely, who are to blame for the quarrel. And on all these considerations
they will not be willing to lay waste the soil, since the majority are their friends,
nor to destroy the houses, but will carry the conflict only to the point of com-
pelling the guilty to do justice by the pressure of the suffering of the innocent.

I, he said, agree that our citizens ought to deal with their Greek opponents on
this wise, while treating barbarians as Greeks now treat Greeks.

Shall we lay down this law also, then, for our guardians, that they are not to lay
waste the land or burn the houses?

Let us so decree, he said, and assume that this and our preceding prescriptions
are right. But I fear, Socrates, that, if you are allowed to go on in this fashion,
you will never get to speak of the matter you put aside in order to say all this,
namely, the possibility of such a

polity coming into existence, and the way in which it could be brought to pass. I
too am ready to admit that if it could be realized everything would be lovely for
the state that had it, and I will add what you passed by, that they would also be
most successful in war because they would be least likely to desert one another,
knowing and address-d ing each other by the names of brothers, fathers, sons.
And if the females should also join in their campaigns, whether in the ranks or
marshaled behind to intimidate the enemy, or as reserves in case of need, I
recognize that all this too would make them irresistible. And at home, also, I
observe all the benefits that you omit to mention. But, taking it for granted that I
concede these and countless other advantages, consequent on the realization of
this polity, don't labor that point further, but let us at once proceed to try to
convince ourselves of just this, that it is possible and how it is possible,
dismissing everything else.

This is a sudden assault, indeed, said I, that you have made on my theory,
without any regard for my natural hesitation. Perhaps you don't realize that when
I have hardly escaped the first two waves, you are now rolling up against me the
'great third wave' of paradox, the worst of all. When you have seen and heard
that, you will be very ready to be lenient, recognizing that I had good reason
after all for shrinking and fearing to enter upon the discussion of so paradoxical
a notion.

The more such excuses you offer, he said, the less you will be released by us
from telling in what way the realization of this polity is possible. Speak on,
then, and do not put us off.

The first thing to recall, then, I said, is that it was the inquiry into the nature of
justice and injustice that brought us to this pass.

Yes, but what of it? he said.

Oh, nothing, I replied, only this. If we do discover what justice is, are we to
demand that the just man shall differ from it in no respect, but shall conform in
every way to the ideal? Or will it suffice us if he approximate to it as nearly as
possible and partake of it more than others?

That will content us, he said.

A pattern, then, said I, was what we wanted when we were inquiring into the
nature of ideal justice and asking what would be the character of the perfectly
just man, supposing him to exist, and, likewise, in regard to injustice and the
completely unjust man. We wished to fix our eyes upon them as types and
models, so that whatever we discerned in them of happiness or the reverse would
necessarily apply to ourselves in the sense that whosoever is likest them will
have the allotment most like to theirs. Our purpose was not to demonstrate the
possibility of the realization of these ideals. In that, he said, you speak truly.
Do you think, then, that he would be any the less a good painter, who, after
portraying a pattern of the ideally beautiful man and omitting no touch required
for the perfection of the picture, should not be able to prove that it is actually
possible for such a man to exist?

Not I, by Zeus, he said.

Then were not we, as we say, trying to create in words the pattern of a good
state?

Certainly.

Do you think, then, that our words are any the less well spoken if we find
ourselves unable to prove that it is possible for a state to be governed in
accordance with our words?

Of course not, he said.

That, then, said I, is the truth of the matter. But if, to please you, we must do our
best to show how most probably and in what respect these things would be most
nearly realized, again, with a view to such a demonstration, grant me the same
point.

What? Is it possible for anything to be realized in deed as it is spoken in
word, or is it the nature of things that action should partake of exact truth less
than speech, even if some deny it? Do you admit it or not?

I do, he said.
Then don't insist, said I, that I must exhibit as realized in action precisely what
we expounded in words. But if we can discover how a state might be constituted
most nearly answering to our description, you must say that we have discovered
that possibility of realization which you demanded. Will you not be content if
you get this? I for my part would.
And I too, he said.
Next, it seems, we must try to discover and point out what it is that is now badly
managed in our cities, and that prevents them from being so governed, and what
is the smallest change that would bring a state to this manner of government,
preferably a change in one thing, if not, then in two, and, failing that, the fewest
possible in number and the slightest in potency. By all means, he said.
There is one change, then, said I, which I think that we can show would bring
about the desired transformation. It is not a slight or an easy thing but it is
possible.
What is that? said he.
I am on the very verge, said I, of what we likened to the greatest wave of
paradox. But say it I will, even if, to keep the figure, it is likely to wash us away
on billows of laughter and scorn. Listen.
I am all attention, he said.
Unless, said I, either philosophers become kings in our states or
d those whom we now call our kings and rulers take to the pursuit of
d those whom we now call our kings and rulers take to the pursuit of
philosophy seriously and adequately, and there is a conjunction of
these two things, political power and philosophical intelligence, while
the motley horde of the natures who at present pursue either apart from the other
are compulsorily excluded, there can be no cessation of troubles, dear Glaucon,
for our states, nor, I fancy, for the human race either. Nor, until this happens,
will this constitution which we have been expounding in theory ever be put into
practice within the limits of possibility and see the light of the sun. But this is the
thing that has made me so long shrink from speaking out, because I saw that it
would be a very paradoxical saying. For it is not easy to see that there is no other
way of happiness either for private or public life.
Whereupon he said, Socrates, after hurling at us such an utterance and statement
as that, you must expect to be attacked by a great multitude of our men of light
and leading, who forthwith will, so to speak, cast off their garments and strip
and, snatching the first weapon that comes to hand, rush at you with might
and main, prepared to do dreadful deeds. And if you don't find words to defend
yourself against them, and escape their assault, then to be scorned and flouted
will in very truth be the penalty you will have to pay.
And isn't it you, said I, that have brought this upon me and are to blame?
And a good thing, too, said he, but I won't let you down, and will defend you
with what I can. I can do so with my good will and my encouragement, and
perhaps I might answer your questions more suitably than another. So, with such
an aid to back you, try to make it plain to the doubters that the truth is as you
say.
I must try, I replied, since you proffer so strong an alliance. I think it requisite,
then, if we are to escape the assailants you speak of, that we should define for
them whom we mean by the philosophers, who we dare to say ought to be our
rulers. When these are clearly discriminated it will be possible to defend
ourselves by showing that to them by their very nature belong the study of
philosophy and political leadership, while it befits the other sort to let
philosophy alone and to follow their leader.
It is high time, he said, to produce your definition.
Come, then, follow me on this line, if we may in some fashion or other explain
Come, then, follow me on this line, if we may in some fashion or other explain
our meaning.
Proceed, he said.
Must I remind you, then, said I, or do you remember, that when we affirm that a
man is a lover of something, it must be apparent that he is fond of all of it? It
will not do to say that some of it he likes and some does not.
I think you will have to remind me, he said, for I don't appre-d hend at all.
That reply, Glaucon, said I, befitted another rather than you. It does not become
a lover to forget that all adolescents in some sort sting and stir the amorous lover
of youth and appear to him deserving of his attention and desirable. Is not that
your 'reaction' to the
PLATO: COLLECTED DIALOGUES
fair? One, because his nose is tiptilted, you will praise as piquant, the beak of
another you pronounce right royal, the intermediate type you say strikes the
harmonious mean, the swarthy are of manly aspect, the white are children of the
gods divinely fair, and as for honey-hued, do you suppose the very word is
anything but the euphemistic invention of some lover who can feel no distaste
for sallowncss when it accompanies the blooming time of youth? And, in short,
there is no pretext you do not allege and there is nothing you shrink from
saying to justify you in not rejecting any who are in the bloom of their prime.
If it is your pleasure, he said, to take me as your example of this trait in lovers, I
admit it for the sake of the argument.
Again, said I, do you not observe the same thing in the lovers of wine? They
welcome every wine on any pretext.
They do, indeed.
And so I take it you have observed that men who are covetous
of honor, if they can't get themselves elected generals, are captains of
b a company. And if they can't be honored by great men and dignitaries,
are satisfied with honor from little men and nobodies. But honor they
are satisfied with honor from little men and nobodies. But honor they
desire and must have.
Yes, indeed.
Admit, then, or reject my proposition. When we say a man is keen about
something, shall we say that he has an appetite for the whole class or that he
desires only a part and a part not?
The whole, he said.
Then the lover of wisdom, too, we shall affirm, desires all wisdom, not a part
and a part not.
Certainly.
The student, then, who is finical about his studies, especially when he is young
and cannot yet know by reason what is useful and what is not, we shall say is not
a lover of learning or a lover of wisdom, just as we say that one who is dainty
about his food is not really hungry, has not an appetite for food, and is not a
lover of food, but a poor feeder.
We shall rightly say so.
But the one who feels no distaste in sampling every study, and who attacks his
task of learning gladly and cannot get enough of it, him we shall justly
pronounce the lover of wisdom, the philosopher, shall we not? To which
Glaucon replied, You will then be giving the name to a numerous and strange
band, for all the lovers of spectacles are what they are, I fancy, by virtue of their
delight in learning something. And those who always want to hear some new
thing are a very queer lot to be reckoned among philosophers. You couldn't
induce them to attend a serious debate or any such entertainment, but as if they
had farmed out their ears to listen to every chorus in the land, they
run about to all the Dionysiac festivals, never missing one, either in the towns or
in the country villages. Are we to designate all these, then, and similar folk and
all the practitioners of the minor arts as philosophers?
Not at all, I said, but they do bear a certain likeness to philosophers.
Whom do you mean, then, by the true philosophers?
Those for whom the truth is the spectacle of which they are enamored, said I.
Right again, said he, but in what sense do you mean it?
It would be by no means easy to explain it to another, I said, but I think that you
will grant me this.
What?
That since the fair and honorable is the opposite of the base and ugly, they are
two.
Of course.
And since they are two, each is one.
That also.
And in respect of the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and all the ideas
or forms, the same statement holds, that in itself each is one, but that by virtue of
their communion with actions and bodies and with one another they present
themselves everywhere, each as a multiplicity of aspects.
Right, he said.
This, then, said I, is my division. I set apart and distinguish those of whom you
were just speaking, the lovers of spectacles and the arts, and men of action, and
separate from them again those with whom our argument is concerned and who
alone deserve the appellation of philosophers or lovers of wisdom.
What do you mean? he said.
The lovers of sounds and sights, I said, delight in beautiful tones and colors and
shapes and in everything that art fashions out of these, but their thought is
incapable of apprehending and taking delight in the nature of the beautiful in
itself.
Why, yes, he said, that is so.
And on the other hand, will not those be few who would be able to approach
And on the other hand, will not those be few who would be able to approach
beauty itself and contemplate it in and by itself?
They would, indeed. c
He, then, who believes in beautiful things, but neither believes in beauty itself
nor is able to follow when someone tries to guide him to the knowledge of it?
do you think that his life is a dream or a waking? Just consider. Is not the dream
state, whether the man is asleep or awake, just this?the mistaking of
resemblance for identity?
I should certainly call that dreaming, he said.
Well, then, take the opposite case, the man whose thought recognizes a beauty in
itself, and is able to distinguish that self-beautiful d
PLATO: COLLECTED DIALOGUES
and the things that participate in it, and neither supposes the participants to be it
nor it the participants?is his life, in your opinion, a waking or a dream state?
He is very much awake, he replied.
Could we not rightly, then, call the mental state of the one as knowing,
knowledge, and that of the other as opining, opinion?
Assuredly.
Suppose, now, he who we say opines but does not know should be angry and
challenge our statement as not true?can we find any way of soothing him and
gently winning him over, without telling him too plainly that he is not in his
right mind?
We must try, he said.
Come, then, consider what we are to say to him, or would you have us question
him in this fashion?premising that if he knows anything, nobody grudges it
him, but we should be very glad to see him knowing something?but tell us this,
Does he who knows know something or nothing? Do you reply in his behalf.
I will reply, he said, that he knows something.
I will reply, he said, that he knows something.
Is it something that is or is not? That is. How could that which is not be
known?
We are sufficiently assured of this, then, even if we should examine it from
every point of view, that that which entirely is is entirely knowable, and that
which in no way is is in every way unknowable?
Most sufficiently.
Good. If a thing, then, is so conditioned as both to be and not to be, would it not
lie between that which absolutely and unqualifiedly is and that which in no way
is?
Between.
Then since knowledge pertains to that which is and ignorance of necessity to that
which is not, for that which lies between we must seek for something between
nescience and science, if such a thing there be.
By all means.
Is there a thing which we call opinion?
Surely.
Is it a different faculty from science or the same?
A different.
Then opinion is set over one thing and science over another, each by virtue of its
own distinctive power or faculty.
That is so.
May we say, then, that science is naturally related to that which is, to know that
and how that which is is? But rather, before we proceed, I think we must draw
the following distinctions.
What ones? Shall we say that faculties, powers, abilities are a class of entities
by virtue of which we and all other things are able to do what we or they are able
by virtue of which we and all other things are able to do what we or they are able
to do? I mean that sight and hearing, for example, are faculties, if so be that you
understand the class or type that I am trying to describe.
I understand, he said.
Hear, then, my notion about them. In a faculty I cannot see any color or shape or
similar mark such as those on which in many other cases I fix my eyes in
discriminating in my thought one thing from another. But in the case of a faculty
I look to one thing only?that to which it is related and what it effects, and it is
in this way that I come to call each one of them a faculty, and that which is
related to the same thing and accomplishes the same thing I call the same
faculty, and that to another I call other. How about you, what is your practice?
The same, he said.
To return, then, my friend, said I, to science or true knowledge, do you say that it
is a faculty and a power, or in what class do you put it?
Into this, he said, the most potent of all faculties.
And opinion?shall we assign it to some other class than faculty? e
By no means, he said, for that by which we are able to opine is nothing else than
the faculty of opinion.
But not long ago you agreed that science and opinion are not identical.
How could any rational man affirm the identity of the infallible with the fallible?
Excellent, said I, and we are plainly agreed that opinion is a dif- ferent thing
from scientific knowledge.
Yes, different.
Each of them, then, since it has a different power, is related to a different object.
Of necessity.
Science, I presume, to that which is, to know the condition of that which is?
Yes.
Yes.
But opinion, we say, opines.
Yes.
Does it opine the same thing that science knows, and will the knowable and the
opinable be identical, or is that impossible?
Impossible by our admissions, he said. If different faculties are naturally related
to different objects and both opinion and science are faculties, but each
different from the other, as we say?these admissions do not leave place for the
identity of the knowable and the opinable.
Then, if that which is a knowable, something other than that which is would be
the opinable.
Something else.
PLATO: COLLECTED DIALOGUES
Does it opine that which is not, or is it impossible cwn to opine that which is
not? Reflect. Does not he who opines bring his opinion to bear upon something
or shall wr reverse ourselves and say that it is possible to opine, yet opine
nothing?
That is impossible.
Then he who opines opines some one thing?
Yes.
But surely that which is not could not be designated as some one thing, but most
rightly as nothing at all.
Yes.
To that which is not we of necessity assigned nescience, and to that which is,
knowledge.
Rightly, he said.
Then neither that which is nor that which is not is the object of opinion.
It seems not.
Then opinion would be neither nescience nor knowledge.
So it seems.
Is it then a faculty outside of these, exceeding either knowledge in lucidity or
ignorance in obscurity?
It is neither.
But do you deem opinion something darker than knowledge but brighter than
ignorance?
Much so, he said.
And does it lie within the boundaries of the two?
Yes.
Then opinion would be between the two.
Most assuredly.
Were we not saying a little while ago that if anything should turn up such that it
both is and is not, that sort of thing would lie between that which purely and
absolutely is and that which wholly is not, and that the faculty correlated with it
would be neither science nor nescience, but that which should appear to hold a
place correspondingly between nescience and science.
Right.
And now there has turned up between these two the thing that we call opinion.
There has.
It would remain, then, as it seems, for us to discover that which partakes of both,
of to be and not to be, and that could not be rightly designated either in its
exclusive purity, so that, if it shall be discovered, we may justly pronounce it to
be the opinable, thus assigning extremes to extremes and the intermediate to the
intermediate. Is not that so?
This much premised, let him tell me, I will say, let him answer me, that
good fellow who does not think there is a beautiful in itself or any idea of beauty
in itself always remaining the same and unchanged, but who does believe in
many beautiful things?the lover of spectacles, I mean, who cannot endure to
hear anybody say that the beautiful is one and the just one, and so of other things
?and this will be our question. My good fellow, is there any one of these many
fair and honorable things that will not sometimes appear ugly and base? And of
the just things, that will not seem unjust? And of the pious things, that will not
the just things, that will not seem unjust? And of the pious things, that will not
seem impious?
No, it is inevitable, he said, that they would appear to be both beautiful in a
way and ugly, and so with all the other things you asked about.
And again, do the many double things appear any the less halves than doubles?
None the less.
And likewise of the great and the small things, the light and the heavy things?
will they admit these predicates any more than their opposites?
No, he said, each of them will always hold of, partake of, both.
Then is each of these multiples rather than it is not that which one affirms it to
be?
They are like those jesters who palter with us in a double sense at banquets, he
replied, and resemble the children's riddle about the eunuch and his hitting of
the bat?with what and as it sat on what they signify that he struck it. For these
things too equivocate, and it is impossible to conceive firmly any one of them to
be or not to be or both or neither.
Do you know what to do with them, then? said I. And can you find a better place
to put them than that midway between existence or essence and the not to be?
For we shall surely not discover a darker region than not-being that they should
still more not be, nor a brighter than being that they should still more be. Most
true, he said.
We would seem to have found, then, that the many conventions of the many
about the fair and honorable and other things are tumbled about in the midregion between that which is not and that which is in the true and absolute sense.
We have so found it.
But we agreed in advance that if anything of that sort should be discovered, it
must be denominated opinable, not knowable, the wanderer between being
caught by the faculty that is betwixt and between.
We did.
We shall affirm, then, that those who view many beautiful things but do not
see the beautiful itself and are unable to follow another's
PLATO: COLLECTED DIALOGUES
guidance to it, and many just things, but not justice itself, and so in all cases?
we shall say that such men have opinions about all things, but know nothing of
the things they opine.
Of necessity.
And, on the other hand, what of those who contemplate the very things
themselves in each case, ever remaining the same and unchanged?shall we not
say that they know and do not merely opine?
That, too, necessarily follows.
Shall we not also say that the one welcomes to his thought and loves the things
subject to knowledge and the other those to opinion? Do we not remember
that we said that those loved and regarded tones and beautiful colors and the
like, but they could not endure the notion of the reality of the beautiful itself?
We do remember.
Shall we then offend their ears if we call them doxophilists rather than
philosophers and will they be very angry if we so speak?
Not if they heed my counsel, he said, for to be angry with truth is not lawful.
Then to those who in each and every kind welcome the true being, lovers of
wisdom and not lovers of opinion is the name we must give.
By all means.