BOOK VI: THE PHILOSOPHY OF GOVERNMENT




So now, Glaucon, I said, our argument after winding a long and weary way
has at last made clear to us who are the philosophers or lovers of wisdom and
who are not.

Yes, he said, a shorter way is perhaps not feasible.

Apparently not, I said. I, at any rate, think that the matter would have been made
still plainer if we had had nothing but this to speak of, and if there were not so
many things left which our purpose of discerning the difference between the
just and the unjust life requires us to discuss.

What, then, he said, comes next?

What else, said I, but the next in order? Since the philosophers are those who are
capable of apprehending that which is eternal and unchanging, while those who
are incapable of this, but lose themselves and wander amid the multiplicities of
multifarious things, are not philosophers, which of the two kinds ought to be the
leaders in a state?

What, then, he said, would be a fair statement of the matter?

Whichever, I said, appear competent to guard the laws and pursuits of society,
these we should establish as guardians.

Right, he said.

Is this, then, said I, clear, whether the guardian who is to keep watch over
anything ought to be blind or keen of sight?

Of course it is clear, he said.

Do you think, then, that there is any appreciable difference between the blind
and those who are veritably deprived of the knowledge of the veritable being of
things, those who have no vivid pattern in their souls and so cannot, as painters
look to their models, fix their eyes on the absolute truth, and always with
reference to that ideal and in the exactest possible contemplation of it establish
in this world also the laws of the beautiful, the just, and the good, when that is
needful, or guard and preserve those that are established?

No, by heaven, he said, there is not much difference.

Shall we, then, appoint these blind souls as our guardians, rather than those who
have learned to know the ideal reality of things and who do not fall short of the
others in experience and are not second to them in any part of virtue?

It would be strange indeed, he said, to choose others than the philosophers,
provided they were not deficient in those other respects, for this very knowledge
of the ideal would perhaps be the greatest of superiorities.

Then what we have to say is how it would be possible for the same persons
to have both qualifications, is it not?

Quite so.

Then, as we were saying at the beginning of this discussion, the first thing to
understand is the nature that they must have from birth, and I think that if we
sufficiently agree on this we shall also agree that the combination of qualities
that we seek belongs to the same persons, and that we need no others for
guardians of states than these.

How so?

We must accept as agreed this trait of the philosophical nature, that it is ever
enamored of the kind of knowledge which reveals to them something of that
essence which is eternal, and is not wandering between the two poles of
generation and decay.

Let us take that as agreed.

And, further, said I, that their desire is for the whole of it and that they do not
willingly renounce a small or a great, a more precious or a less honored, part of
it. That was the point of our former illustration drawn from lovers and men
covetous of honor.

You are right, he said.

Consider, then, next whether the men who are to meet our requirements must not
have this further quality in their natures.

What quality?

The spirit of truthfulness, reluctance to admit falsehood in any form, the hatred
of it and the love of truth.

It is likely, he said.

It is not only likely, my friend, but there is every necessity that he who is by
nature enamored of anything should cherish all that is akin and pertaining to the
object of his love.

Right, he said.

Could you find anything more akin to wisdom than truth?

Impossible, he said.

Then can the same nature be a lover of wisdom and of falsehood?

By no means.

Then the true lover of knowledge must, from childhood up, be most of all a
striver after truth in every form.

By all means.

But, again, we surely are aware that when in a man the desires incline strongly to
any one thing, they are weakened for other things. It is as if the stream had been
diverted into another channel.

Surely.

So, when a man's desires have been taught to flow in the channel of learning and
all that sort of thing, they will be concerned, I presume, with the pleasures of
the soul in itself, and will be indifferent to those of which the body is the
instrument, if the man is a true and not a sham philosopher.

That is quite necessary.

Such a man will be temperate and by no means greedy for wealth, for the things
for the sake of which money and great expenditure are eagerly sought others
may take seriously, but not he.

It is so.

And there is this further point to be considered in distinguishing the philoso-
phical from the unphilosophical nature.

What point?

You must not overlook any touch of illiberality. For nothing can be more contrary
than such pettiness to the quality of a soul that is ever to seek integrity and
wholeness in all things human and divine.

Most true, he said.

Do you think that a mind habituated to thoughts of grandeur and the contemplation
of all time and all existence can deem this life of man a thing of great concern?

Impossible, said he.

Hence such a man will not suppose death to be terrible?

Least of all.

Then a cowardly and illiberal spirit, it seems, could have no part in genuine
philosophy.

I think not.

What then? Could a man of orderly spirit, not a lover of money, not illiberal, nor
a braggart nor a coward, ever prove unjust, or a driver of hard bargains?

Impossible.

This too, then, is a point that in your discrimination of the philosophical and
unphilosophical soul you will observe--whether the man is from youth up just
and gentle or unsocial and savage.

Assuredly.

Nor will you overlook this, I fancy.

What?

Whether he is quick or slow to learn. Or do you suppose that anyone could
properly love a task which he performed painfully and with little result from
much toil?

That could not be.

And if he could not keep what he learned, being steeped in oblivion, could he
fail to be void of knowledge?

How could he?

And so, having all his labor for nought, will he not finally be constrained to
loathe himself and that occupation?

Of course.

The forgetful soul, then, we must not list in the roll of competent lovers of
wisdom, but we require a good memory.

By all means.

But assuredly we should not say that the want of harmony and seemliness in a
nature conduces to anything else than the want of measure and proportion.

Certainly.

And do you think that truth is akin to measure and proportion or to disproportion?

To proportion.

Then in addition to our other requirements we look for a mind endowed with
measure and grace, whose native disposition will make it easily guided to the
aspect of the ideal reality in all things.

Assuredly.

Tell me, then, is there any flaw in the argument? Have we not proved the
qualities enumerated to be necessary and compatible with one another for the
soul that is to have a sufficient and perfect apprehension of reality?

Nay, most necessary, he said.

Is there any fault, then, that you can find with a pursuit which a man could
not properly practice unless he were by nature of good memory, quick apprehension,
magnificent, gracious, friendly, and akin to truth, justice, bravery, and so-
briety?

Momus himself, he said, could not find fault with such a combination.

Well, then, said I, when men of this sort are perfected by education and maturity
of age, would you not entrust the state solely to them?

And Adimantus said, No one, Socrates, would be able to controvert these statements
of yours. But, all the same, those who occasionally hear you argue thus feel in
this way. They think that owing to their inexperience in the game of question and
answer they are at every question led astray a little bit by the argument, and when
these bits are accumulated at the conclusion of the discussion mighty is their fall,
and the apparent contradiction of what they at first said, and that just as by ex-
pert draughts players the unskilled are finally shut in and cannot make a move, so
they are finally blocked and have their mouths stopped by this other game of
draughts played not with counters but with words; yet the truth is not affected by
that outcome. I say this with reference to the present case, for in this instance
one might say that he is unable in words to contend against you at each question,
but that when it comes to facts he sees that of those who turn to philosophy, not
merely touching upon it to complete their education and dropping it while still young,
but lingering too long in the study of it, the majority become cranks, not to say
rascals, and those accounted the finest spirits among them are still rendered use-
less to society by the pursuit which you commend.

And I, on hearing this, said, Do you think that they are mistaken in saying so?

I don't know, said he, but I would gladly hear your opinion.

You may hear, then, that I think that what they say is true.

How, then, he replied, can it be right to say that our cities will never be freed
from their evils until the philosophers, whom we admit to be useless to them, be-
come their rulers?

Your question, I said, requires an answer expressed in a comparison or parable.

And you, he said, of course, are not accustomed to speak in comparisons!

So, said I, you are making fun of me after driving me into such an impasse of
argument. But, all the same, hear my comparison so that you may still better
see how I strain after imagery. For so cruel is the condition of the better sort
in relation to the state that there is no single thing like it in nature. But to
find a likeness for it and a defense for them one must bring together many things
in such a combination as painters mix when they portray goat stags and similar
creatures. Conceive this sort of thing happening either on many ships or on one.
Picture a shipmaster in height and strength surpassing all others on the ship,
but who is slightly deaf and of similarly impaired vision, and whose knowledge
of navigation is on a par with his sight and hearing. Conceive the sailors to be
wrangling with one another for control of the helm, each claiming that it is his
right to steer though he has never learned the art and cannot point out his teacher
or any time when he studied it. And what is more, they affirm that it cannot be
taught at all, but they are ready to make mincemeat of anyone who says that it
can be taught, and meanwhile they are always clustered about the shipmaster
importuning him and sticking at nothing to induce him to turn over the helm to
them. And sometimes, if they fail and others get his ear, they put the others
to death or cast them out from the ship, and then, after binding and stupefying
the worthy shipmaster with mandragora or intoxication or otherwise, they take
command of the ship, consume its stores and, drinking and feasting, make such
a voyage of it as is to be expected from such, and as if that were not enough,
they praise and celebrate as a navigator, a pilot, a master of shipcraft, the
man who is most cunning to lend a hand in persuading or constraining the ship-
master to let them rule, while the man who lacks this craft they censure as use-
less. They have no suspicion that the true pilot must give his attention to the
time of the year, the seasons, the sky, the winds, the stars, and all that per-
tains to his art if he is to be a true ruler of a ship, and that he does not
believe that there is any art or science of seizing the helm with or without the
consent of others, or any possibility of mastering this alleged art and the prac-
tice of it at the same time with the science of navigation. With such goings on
aboard ship do you not think that the real pilot would in very deed be called
a stargazer, an idle babbler, a useless fellow, by the sailors in ships managed
after this fashion?

Quite so, said Adimantus.

You take my meaning, I presume, and do not require us to put the comparison to
the proof and show that the condition we have described is the exact counterpart
of the relation of the state to the true philosophers.

It is indeed, he said.

To begin with, then, teach this parable to the man who is surprised that
philosophers are not honored in our cities, and try to convince him that it
would be far more surprising if they were honored.

I will teach him, he said.

And say to him further, You are right in affirming that the finest spirits among
the philosophers are of no service to the multitude. But bid him blame for this
uselessness, not the finer spirits, but those who do not know how to make use
of them. For it is not the natural course of things that the pilot should beg the
sailors to be ruled by him or that wise men should go to the doors of the rich.
The author of that epigram was a liar. But the true nature of things is that
whether the sick man be rich or poor he must needs go to the door of the
physician, and everyone who needs to be governed to the door of the man who
knows how to govern, not that the ruler should implore his natural subjects to let
themselves be ruled, if he is really good for anything. But you will make no
mistake in likening our present political rulers to the sort of sailors we were just
describing, and those whom these call useless and star gazing ideologists to the
true pilots.

Just so, he said.

Hence, and under these conditions, we cannot expect that the noblest pursuit
should be highly esteemed by those whose way of life is quite the contrary. But
far the greatest and chief disparagement of philosophy is brought upon it by the
pretenders to that way of life, those whom you had in mind when you affirmed that
the accuser of philosophy says that the majority of her followers are rascals
and the better sort useless, while I admitted that what you said was true. Is
not that so?

Yes.

Have we not, then, explained the cause of the uselessness of the better sort?

We have.

Shall we next set forth the inevitableness of the degeneracy of the majority,
and try to show if we can that philosophy is not to be blamed for this either?

By all means.

Let us begin, then, what we have to say and hear by recalling the starting point
of our description of the nature which he who is to be a scholar and gentleman
must have from birth. The leader of the choir for him, if you recollect, was truth.
That he was to seek always and altogether, on pain of being an impostor without
part or lot in true philosophy.

Yes, that was said.

Is not this one point quite contrary to the prevailing opinion about him?

It is indeed, he said.

Will it not be a fair plea in his defense to say that it was the nature of the real
lover of knowledge to strive emulously for true being and that he would not
linger over the many particulars that are opined to be real, but would hold on his
way, and the edge of his passion would not be blunted nor would his desire fail
till he came into touch with the nature of each thing in itself by that part of his
soul to which it belongs to lay hold on that kind of reality--the part akin to it,
namely--and through that approaching it, and consorting with reality really, he
would beget intelligence and truth, attain to knowledge, and truly live and grow,
and so find surcease from his travail of soul, but not before?

No plea could be fairer.

Well, then, will such a man love falsehood, or, quite the contrary, hate it?

Hate it, he said.

When truth led the way, no choir of evils, we, I fancy, would say, could ever
follow in its train.

How could it?

But rather a sound and just character, which is accompanied by temperance.

Right, he said.

What need, then, of repeating from the beginning our proof of the necessary
order of the choir that attends on the philosophical nature? You surely re-
member that we found pertaining to such a nature courage, grandeur of soul,
aptness to learn, memory. And when you interposed the objection that though
everybody will be compelled to admit our statements, yet, if we abandoned mere
words and fixed our eyes on the persons to whom the words referred, everyone
would say that he actually saw some of them to be useless and most of them base
with all baseness--it was in our search for the cause of this ill repute that we
came to the present question. Why is it that the majority are bad? And, for the
sake of this, we took up again the nature of the true philosophers and deemed
what it must necessarily be?

That is so, he said.

We have, then, I said, to contemplate the causes of the corruption of this nature
in the majority, while a small part escapes, even those whom men call not bad
but useless. And after that in turn we are to observe those who imitate this
nature and usurp its pursuits, and see what types of souls they are that thus
entering upon a way of life which is too high for them and exceeds their powers,
by the many discords and disharmonies of their conduct everywhere and among
all men, bring upon philosophy the repute of which you speak.

Of what corruptions are you speaking?

I will try, I said, to explain them to you if I can. I think everyone will grant
us this point, that a nature such as we just now postulated for the perfect
philosopher is a rare growth among men and is found in only a few. Don't you
think so?

Most emphatically.

Observe, then, the number and magnitude of the things that operate to destroy
these few.

What are they?

The most surprising fact of all is that each of the gifts of nature which we praise
tends to corrupt the soul of its possessor and divert it from philosophy. I am
speaking of bravery, sobriety, and the entire list.

That does sound like a paradox, said he.

Furthermore, said I, all the so-called goods corrupt and divert, beauty and
wealth and strength of body and powerful family connections in the city and all
things akin to them--you get my general meaning?

I do, he said, and I would gladly hear a more precise statement of it.

Well, said I, grasp it rightly as a general proposition and the matter will be
clear and the preceding statement will not seem to you so strange.

How do you bid me proceed? he said.

We know it to be universally true of every seed and growth, whether vegetable
or animal, that the more vigorous it is the more it falls short of its proper
perfection when deprived of the food, the mison, the place that suits it. For
evil is more opposed to the good than to the not-good.

Of course.

So it is, I take it, natural that the best nature should fare worse than the inferior
under conditions of nurture unsuited to it.

It is.

Then, said I, Adimantus, shall we not similarly affirm that the best endowed souls
become worse than the others under a bad education? Or do you suppose that great
crimes and unmixed wickedness spring from a slight nature and not from a vigorous
one corrupted by its nurture, while a weak nature will never be the cause of any-
thing great, either for good or evil?

No, he said, that is the case.

Then the nature which we assumed in the philosopher, if it receives the proper
teaching, must needs grow and attain to consummate excellence, but, if it be sown
and planted and grown in the wrong environment, the outcome will be quite the con-
trary unless some god comes to the rescue. Or are you too one of the multitude who
believe that there are young men who are corrupted by the Sophists, and that there
are Sophists in private life who corrupt to any extent worth mentioning, and that
it is not rather the very men who talk in this strain who are the chief Sophists
and educate most effectively and mold to their own heart's desire young and old,
men and women?

When? said he.

Why, when, I said, the multitude are seated together in assemblies or in
courtrooms or theaters or camps or any other public gathering of a crowd, and
with loud uproar censure some of the things that are said and done and approve
others, both in excess, with full-throated clamor and clapping of hands, and
thereto the rocks and the region round about re-echoing redouble the din of the
censure and the praise. In such case how do you think the young man's heart, as
the saying is, is moved within him? What private teaching do you think will hold
out and not rather be swept away by the torrent of censure and applause, and
borne off on its current, so that he will affirm the same things that they do to be
honorable and base, and will do as they do, and be even such as they?

That is quite inevitable, Socrates, he said.

And, moreover, I said, we have not yet mentioned the chief necessity and
compulsion.

What is it? said he.

That which these 'educators' and Sophists impose by action when their words fail
to convince. Don't you know that they chastise the recalcitrant with loss of civic
rights and fines and death?

They most emphatically do, he said.

What other Sophist, then, or what private teaching do you think will prevail in
opposition to these?

None, I fancy, said he.

No, said I, the very attempt is the height of folly. For there is not, never has
been, and never will be a divergent type of character and virtue created by an
education running counter to theirs--humanly speaking, I mean, my friend. For
the divine, as the proverb says, all rules fail. And you may be sure that, if
anything is saved and turns out well in the present condition of society and
government, in saying that the providence of God preserves it you will not be
speaking ill.

Neither do I think otherwise, he said.

Then, said I, think this also in addition.

What?

Each of these private teachers who work for pay, whom the politicians call
Sophists and regard as their rivals, inculcates nothing else than these opini-
ons of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this
knowledge wisdom. It is as if a man were acquiring the knowledge of the humors
and desires of a great strong beast which he had in his keeping, how it is to
be approached and touched, and when and by what things it is made most savage
or gentle, yes, and the several sounds it is wont to utter on the occasion of
each, and again what sounds uttered by another make it tame or fierce, and after
mastering this knowledge by living with the creature and by lapse of time should
call it wisdom, and should construct thereof a system and art and turn to the
teaching of it, knowing nothing in reality about which of these opinions and
desires is honorable or base, good or evil, just or unjust, but should apply all
these terms to the judgments of the great beast, calling the things that pleased
it good, and the things that vexed it bad, having no other account to render of
them, but should call what is necessary just and honorable, never having
observed how great is the real difference between the necessary and the good,
and being incapable of explaining it to another. Do you not think, by heaven,
that such a one would be a strange educator?

I do, he said.

Do you suppose that there is any difference between such a one and the man
who thinks that it is wisdom to have learned to know the moods and the
pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly, whether about painting or
music or, for that matter, politics? For if a man associates with these and offers
and exhibits to them his poetry or any other product of his craft or any political
service, and grants the mob authority over himself more than is unavoidable, the
proverbial necessity of Diomedes will compel him to give the public what it
likes, but that what it likes is really good and honorable, have you ever heard
an attempted proof of this that is not simply ridiculous?

No, he said, and I fancy I never shall hear it either.

Bearing all this in mind, recall our former question. Can the multitude possibly
tolerate or believe in the reality of the beautiful in itself as opposed to the
multiplicity of beautiful things, or can they believe in anything conceived in
its essence as opposed to the many particulars?

Not in the least, he said.

Philosophy, then, the love of wisdom, is impossible for the multitude.

Impossible.

It is inevitable, then, that those who philosophize should be censured by them.

Inevitable.

And so likewise by those laymen who, associating with the mob, desire to curry
favor with it.

Obviously.

From this point of view do you see any salvation that will suffer the born
philosopher to abide in the pursuit and persevere to the end? Consider it in the
light of what we said before. We agreed that quickness in learning, memory,
courage, and magnificence were the traits of this nature.

Yes.

Then even as a boy among boys such a one will take the lead in all things,
especially if the nature of his body matches the soul.

How could he fail to do so? he said.

His kinsmen and fellow citizens, then, will desire, I presume, to make use of him
when he is older for their own affairs.

Of course.

Then they will fawn upon him with petitions and honors, anticipating and flattering
the power that will be his.

That certainly is the usual way.

How, then, do you think such a youth will behave in such conditions, especially
if it happen that he belongs to a great city and is rich and wellborn therein, and
thereto handsome and tall? Will his soul not be filled with unbounded ambitious
hopes, and will he not think himself capable of managing the affairs of both
Greeks and barbarians, and thereupon exalt himself, haughty of mien and
stuffed with empty pride and void of sense?

He surely will, he said.

And if to a man in this state of mind someone gently comes and tells him what is
the truth, that he has no sense and sorely needs it, and that the only way to get
it is to work like a slave to win it, do you think it will be easy for him to lend
an ear to the quiet voice in the midst of and in spite of these evil surroundings?

Far from it, said he.

And even supposing, said I, that owing to a fortunate disposition and his
affinity for the words of admonition one such youth apprehends something and
is moved and drawn toward philosophy, what do we suppose will be the conduct
of those who think that they are losing his service and fellowship? Is there any
word or deed that they will stick at to keep him from being persuaded and to
incapacitate anyone who attempts it, both by private intrigue and public
prosecution in the court?

That is inevitable, he said.

Is there any possibility of such a one continuing to philosophize?

None at all, he said.

Do you see, then, said I, that we were not wrong in saying that the very qualities
that make up the philosophical nature do, in fact, become, when the environment
and nurture are bad, in some sort the cause of its backsliding, and so do the
socalled goods--riches and all such instrumentalities?

No, he replied, it was rightly said.

Such, my good friend, and so great as regards the noblest pursuit, is the
destruction and corruption of the most excellent nature, which is rare enough in
any case, as we affirm. And it is from men of this type that those spring who do
the greatest harm to communities and individuals, and the greatest good when
the stream chances to be turned into that channel, but a small nature never does
anything great to a man or a city.

Most true, said he.

Those, then, to whom she properly belongs, thus falling away and leaving
philosophy forlorn and unwed, themselves live an unreal and alien life, while
other unworthy wooers rush in and defile her as an orphan bereft of her kin, and
attach to her such reproaches as you say her revilers taunt her with, declaring
that some of her consorts are of no account and the many accountable for many
evils.

Why, yes, he replied, that is what they do say.

And plausibly, said I, for other manikins, observing that the place is unoccu-
pied and full of fine terms and pretensions, just as men escape from prison
to take sanctuary in temples, so these gentlemen joyously bound away from the
mechanical arts to philosophy, those that are most cunning in their little craft.
For in comparison with the other arts the prestige of philosophy even in her
present low estate retains a superior dignity, and this is the ambition and
aspiration of that multitude of pretenders unfit by nature, whose souls are bowed
and mutilated by their vulgar occupations even as their bodies are marred by
their arts and crafts. Is not that inevitable?

Quite so, he said.

Is not the picture which they present, I said, precisely that of a little bald-headed
tinker who has made money and just been freed from bonds and had a bath and
is wearing a new garment and has got himself up like a bridegroom and is about
to marry his master's daughter who has fallen into poverty and abandonment?

There is no difference at all, he said.

Of what sort will probably be the offspring of such parents? Will they not be
bastard and base?

Inevitably.

And so when men unfit for culture approach philosophy and consort with her
unworthily, what sort of ideas and opinions shall we say they beget? Will they
not produce what may in very deed be fairly called sophisms, and nothing that is
genuine or that partakes of true intelligence?

Quite so, he said.

There is a very small remnant, then, Adimantus, I said, of those who consort
worthily with philosophy, some wellborn and well-bred nature, it may be, held
in check by exile, and so in the absence of corrupters remaining true to philo-
sophy, as its quality bids, or it may happen that a great soul born in a little
town scorns and disregards its parochial affairs, and a small group perhaps might
by natural affinity be drawn to it from other arts which they justly disdain, and
the bridle of our companion Theages also might operate as a restraint. For in
the case of Theages all other conditions were at hand for his backsliding from
philosophy, but his sickly habit of body keeping him out of politics holds him
back. My own case, the divine sign, is hardly worth mentioning--for I suppose it
has happened to few or none before me. And those who have been of this little
company and have tasted the sweetness and blessedness of this possession and
who have also come to understand the madness of the multitude sufficiently and
have seen that there is nothing, if I may say so, sound or right in any present
politics, and that there is no ally with whose aid the champion of justice could
escape destruction, but that he would be as a man who has fallen among wild
beasts, unwilling to share their misdeeds and unable to hold out singly against
the savagery of all, and that he would thus, before he could in any way benefit
his friends or the state, come to an untimely end without doing any good to
himself or others--for all these reasons I say the philosopher remains quiet,
minds his own affair, and, as it were, standing aside under shelter of a wall in
a storm and blast of dust and sleet and seeing others filled full of lawlessness,
is content if in any way he may keep himself free from iniquity and unholy
deeds through this life and take his departure with fair hope, serene and well
content when the end comes.

Well, he said, that is no very slight thing to have achieved before taking his
departure.

He would not have accomplished any very great thing either, I replied, if it
were not his fortune to live in a state adapted to his nature. In such a state
only will he himself rather attain his full stature and together with his own
preserve the commonweal. The causes and the injustice of the calumniation
of philosophy, I think, have been fairly set forth, unless you have something
to add.

No, he said, I have nothing further to offer on that point. But which of our
present governments do you think is suitable for philosophy?

None whatever, I said, but the very ground of my complaint is that no polity
of today is worthy of the philosophical nature. This is just the cause of its
perversion and alteration; as a foreign seed sown in an alien soil is wont to be
overcome and die out into the native growth, so this kind does not preserve its
own quality but falls away and degenerates into an alien type. But if ever it finds
the best polity as it itself is the best, then will it be apparent that this was in
truth divine and all the others human in their natures and practices. Obviously
then you are next going to ask what is this best form of government.

Wrong, he said. I was going to ask not that but whether it is this one that we
have described in our establishment of a state or another.

In other respects it is this one, said I, but there is one special further point
that we mentioned even then, namely, that there would always have to be resident
in such a state an element having the same conception of its constitution that
you the lawgiver had in framing its laws.

That was said, he replied.

But it was not sufficiently explained, I said, from fear of those objections on
your part which have shown that the demonstration of it is long and difficult.
And apart from that the remainder of the exposition is by no means easy.

Just what do you mean?

The manner in which a state that occupies itself with philosophy can escape
destruction. For all great things are precarious and, as the proverb truly says,
'fine things are hard.'

All the same, he said, our exposition must be completed by making this plain.

It will be no lack of will, I said, but if anything, a lack of ability, that would
prevent that. But you shall observe for yourself my zeal. And note again how
zealously and recklessly I am prepared to say that the state ought to take up this
pursuit in just the reverse of our present fashion.

In what way?

At present, said I, those who do take it up are youths, just out of boyhood,
who in the interval before they engage in business and money-making approach
the most difficult part of it, and then drop it--and these are regarded forsooth as
the best exemplars of philosophy. By the most difficult part I mean discussion.
In later life they think they have done much if, when invited, they deign to listen
to the philosophical discussions of others. That sort of thing they think should be
bywork. And toward old age, with few exceptions, their light is quenched more
completely than the sun of Heraclitus, inasmuch as it is never rekindled.

And what should they do? he said.

Just the reverse. While they are lads and boys they should occupy themselves
with an education and a culture suitable to youth, and while their bodies are
growing to manhood take right good care of them, thus securing a basis and a
support for the intellectual life. But with the advance of age, when the soul
begins to attain its maturity, they should make its exercises more severe, and
when the bodily strength declines and they are past the age of political and
military service, then at last they should be given free range of the pasture and
do nothing but philosophize, except incidentally, if they are to live happily,
and, when the end has come, crown the life they have lived with a consonant
destiny in that other world.

You really seem to be very much in earnest, Socrates, he said. Yet I think most
of your hearers are even more earnest in their opposition and will not be in the
least convinced, beginning with Thrasymachus.

Do not try to breed a quarrel between me and Thrasymachus, who have just
become friends and were not enemies before either. For we will spare no effort
until we either convince him and the rest or achieve something that will profit
them when they come to that life in which they will be born again and meet with
such discussions as these.

A brief time your forecast contemplates, he said.

Nay, nothing at all, I replied, as compared with eternity. However, the unwill-
ingness of the multitude to believe what you say is nothing surprising. For
of the thing here spoken they have never beheld a token, but only the forced and
artificial chiming of word and phrase, not spontaneous and accidental as has
happened here. But the figure of a man 'equilibrated' and 'assimilated' to virtue's
self perfectly, so far as may be, in word and deed, and holding rule in a city of
like quality, that is a thing they have never seen in one case or in many. Do
you think they have?

By no means.

Neither, my dear fellow, have they ever seriously inclined to hearken to fair and
free discussions whose sole endeavor was to search out the truth at any cost for
knowledge's sake, and which dwell apart and salute from afar all the subtleties
and cavils that lead to nought but opinion and strife in courtroom and in private
talk.

They have not, he said,

For this cause and foreseeing this, we then despite our fears declared under
compulsion of the truth that neither city nor polity nor man either will ever be
perfected until some chance compels this un-corrupted remnant of philosophers,
who now bear the stigma of uselessness, to take charge of the state whether they
wish it or not, and constrains the citizens to obey them, or else until by some
divine inspiration a genuine passion for true philosophy takes possession either
of the sons of the men now in power and sovereignty or of themselves. To affirm
that either or both of these things cannot possibly come to pass is, I say,
quite unreasonable. Only in that case could we be justly ridiculed as uttering
things as futile as daydreams are. Is not that so?

It is.

If, then, the best philosophical natures have ever been constrained to take charge
of the state in infinite time past, or now are in some barbaric region far beyond
our ken, or shall hereafter be, we are prepared to maintain our contention that
the constitution we have described has been, is, or will be realized when this
philosophical Muse has taken control of the state. It is not a thing impossible to
happen, nor are we speaking of impossibilities. That it is difficult we too admit.

I also think so, he said.

But the multitude--are you going to say?--does not think so, said I.

That may be, he said.

My dear fellow, said I, do not thus absolutely condemn the multitude. They will
surely be of another mind if in no spirit of contention but soothingly and
endeavoring to do away with the dispraise of learning you point out to them
whom you mean by philosophers, and define as we recently did their nature and
their pursuits so that the people may not suppose you to mean those of whom
they are thinking. Or even if they do look at them in that way, are you still
going to deny that they will change their opinion and answer differently? Or do
you think that anyone is ungentle to the gentle or grudging to the ungrudging if
he himself is ungrudging and mild? I will anticipate you and reply that I think
that only in some few and not in the mass of mankind is so ungentle or harsh a
temper to be found.

And I, you may be assured, he said, concur.

And do you not also concur in this very point that the blame for this harsh
attitude of the many toward philosophy falls on that riotous crew who have burst
in where they do not belong, wrangling with one another, filled with spite, and
always talking about persons, a thing least befitting philosophy?

Least of all, indeed, he said.

For surely, Adimantus, the man whose mind is truly fixed on eternal realities has
no leisure to turn his eyes downward upon the petty affairs of men, and so
engaging in strife with them to be filled with envy and hate, but he fixes his gaze
upon the things of the eternal and unchanging order, and seeing that they neither
wrong nor are wronged by one another, but all abide in harmony as reason bids,
he will endeavor to imitate them and, as far as may be, to fashion himself in their
likeness and assimilate himself to them. Or do you think it possible not to imitate
the things to which anyone attaches himself with admiration?

Impossible, he said.

Then the lover of wisdom associating with the divine order will himself become orde-
ly and divine in the measure permitted to man. But calumny is plentiful everywhere.

Yes, truly.

If, then, I said, some compulsion is laid upon him to practice stamping on the
plastic matter of human nature in public and private the patterns that he visions
there, and not merely to mold and fashion himself, do you think he will prove a
poor craftsman of sobriety and justice and all forms of ordinary civic virtue?

By no means, he said.

But if the multitude become aware that what we are saying of the philosopher
is true, will they still be harsh with philosophers, and will they distrust our
statement that no city could ever be blessed unless its lineaments were traced by
artists who used the heavenly model?

They will not be harsh, he said, if they perceive that. But tell me, what is the
manner of that sketch you have in mind?

They will take the city and the characters of men, as they might a tablet, and first
wipe it clean--no easy task. But at any rate you know that this would be their
first point of difference from ordinary reformers, that they would refuse to take
in hand either individual or state or to legislate before they either received a
clean slate or themselves made it clean.

And they would be right, he said.

And thereafter, do you not think that they would sketch the figure of the
constitution?

Surely.

And then, I take it, in the course of the work they would glance frequently in
either direction, at justice, beauty, sobriety and the like as they are in the nature
of things, and alternately at that which they were trying to reproduce in mankind,
mingling and blending from various pursuits that hue of the flesh, so to speak,
deriving their judgment from that likeness of humanity which Homer too called,
when it appeared in men, the image and likeness of God.

Right, he said.

And they would erase one touch or stroke and paint it another until in the mea-
sure of the possible they had made the characters of men pleasing and dear to
God as may be.

That at any rate would be the fairest painting

Are we then making any impression on those who you said were advancing to
attack us with might and main? Can we convince them that such a political artist
of character and such a painter exists as the one we then were praising when our
proposal to entrust the state to him angered them, and are they now in a gentler
mood when they hear what we are now saying?

Much gentler, he said, if they are reasonable.

How can they controvert it? Will they deny that the lovers of wisdom are
lovers of reality and truth?

That would be monstrous, he said.

Or that their nature as we have portrayed it is akin to the highest and best?

Not that either.

Well, then, can they deny that such a nature bred in the pursuits that befit it will
be perfectly good and philosophical so far as that can be said of anyone? Or will
they rather say it of those whom we have excluded?

Surely not.

Will they, then, any longer be fierce with us when we declare that, until the
philosophical class wins control, there will be no surcease of trouble for city or
citizens nor will the polity which we fable in words be brought to pass in deed?

They will perhaps be less so, he said.

Instead of less so, may we not say that they have been altogether tamed and
convinced, so that for very shame, if for no other reason, they may assent?

Certainly, said he.

Let us assume, then, said I, that they are won over to this view. Will anyone
contend that there is no chance that the offspring of kings and rulers should be
born with the philosophical nature?

Not one, he said.

And can anyone prove that if so born they must necessarily be corrupted? The
difficulty of their salvation we too concede, but that in all the course of time not
one of all could be saved, will anyone maintain that?

How could he?

But surely, said I, the occurrence of one such is enough, if he has a state which
obeys him, to realize all that now seems so incredible.

Yes, one is enough, he said.

For if such a ruler, I said, ordains the laws and institutions that we have
described it is surely not impossible that the citizens should be content to carry
them out.

By no means.

Would it, then, be at all strange or impossible for others to come to the opinion
to which we have come?

I think not, said he.

And further that these things are best, if possible, has already, I take it, been
sufficiently shown.

Yes, sufficiently.

Our present opinion, then, about this legislation is that our plan would be best if
it could be realized and that this realization is difficult yet not impossible.

That is the conclusion, he said.

This difficulty disposed of, we have next to speak of what remains, in what way,
namely, and as a result of what studies and pursuits, these preservers of the
constitution will form a part of our state, and at what ages they will severally
take up each study.

Yes, we have to speak of that, he said.

I gained nothing, I said, by my cunning in omitting heretofore the distasteful
topic of the possession of women and procreation of children and the appointment
of rulers--because I knew that the absolutely true and right way would provoke
censure and is difficult of realization--for now I am nonetheless compelled
to discuss them. The matter of the women and children has been disposed of,
but the education of the rulers has to be examined again, I may say, from the
starting point. We were saying, if you recollect, that they must approve them-
selves lovers of the state when tested in pleasures and pains, and make it ap-
parent that they do not abandon this fixed faith under stress of labors or fears
or any other vicissitude, and that anyone who could not keep that faith must be
rejected, while he who always issued from the test pure and intact, like gold
tried in the fire, is to be established as ruler and to receive honors in life
and after death and prizes as well. Something of this sort we said while the
argument slipped by with veiled face in fear of starting our present debate.

Most true, he said. I remember.

We shrank, my friend, I said, from uttering the audacities which have now been
hazarded. But now let us find courage for the definitive pronouncement that as
the most perfect guardians we must establish philosophers.

Yes, assume it to have been said, said he.

Note, then, that they will naturally be few, for the different components of the
nature which we said their education presupposed rarely consent to grow in one,
but for the most part these qualities are found apart.

What do you mean? he said.

Facility in learning, memory, sagacity, quickness of apprehension, and their
accompaniments, and youthful spirit and magnificence in soul are qualities, you
know, that are rarely combined in human nature with a disposition to live
orderly, quiet, and stable lives, but such men, by reason of their quickness, are
driven about just as chance directs, and all steadfastness is gone out of them.

You speak truly, he said.

And on the other hand, the steadfast and stable temperaments, whom one could
rather trust in use, and who in war are not easily moved and aroused to fear, are
apt to act in the same way when confronted with studies. They are not easily
aroused, learn with difficulty, as if benumbed, and are filled with sleep and
yawning when an intellectual task is set them.

It is so, he said.

But we affirmed that a man must partake of both temperaments in due and fair com-
bination or else participate in neither the highest education nor in honors nor
in rule.

And rightly, he said.

Do you not think, then, that such a blend will be a rare thing?

Of course.

They must, then, be tested in the toils and fears and pleasures of which we then
spoke, and we have also now to speak of a point we then passed by, that we must
exercise them in many studies, watching them to see whether their nature is
capable of enduring the greatest and most difficult studies or whether it will
faint and flinch as men flinch in the trials and contests of the body.

That is certainly the right way of looking at it, he said. But what do you
understand by the greatest studies?

You remember, I presume, said I, that after distinguishing three kinds in the
soul, we established definitions of justice, sobriety, bravery, and wisdom
severally.

If I did not remember, he said, I should not deserve to hear the rest.

Do you also remember what was said before this?

What?

We were saying, I believe, that for the most perfect discernment of these things
another longer way was requisite which would make them plain to one who took
it, but that it was possible to add proofs on a par with the preceding discussion.
And you said that that was sufficient, and it was on this understanding that what
we then said was said, falling short of ultimate precision as it appeared to me,
but if it contented you it is for you to say.

Well, he said, it was measurably satisfactory to me, and apparently to the rest of
the company.

Nay, my friend, said I, a measure of such things that in the least degree falls
short of reality proves no measure at all. For nothing that is imperfect is the
measure of anything, though some people sometimes think that they have already
done enough and that there is no need of further inquiry.

Yes, indeed, he said, many experience this because of their sloth.

An experience, said I, that least of all befits the guardians of a state and of its
laws.

That seems likely, he said.

Then, said I, such a one must go around the longer way and must labor no less in
studies than in the exercises of the body, or else, as we were just saying, he
will never come to the end of the greatest study and that which most properly
belongs to him.

Why, are not these things the greatest? said he. But is there still something
greater than justice and the other virtues we described?

There is not only something greater, I said, but of these very things we need not
merely to contemplate an outline as now, hut we must omit nothing of their most
exact elaboration. Or would it not be absurd to strain every nerve to attain to
the utmost precision and clarity of knowledge about other things of trifling
moment and not to demand the greatest precision for the greatest matters?

It would indeed, he said, but do you suppose that anyone will let you go without
asking what is the greatest study and with what you think it is concerned?

By no means, said I, but do you ask the question. You certainly have heard it
often, but now you either do not apprehend or again you are minded to make
trouble for me by attacking the argument. I suspect it is rather the latter. For
you have often heard that the greatest thing to learn is the idea of good by
reference to which just things and all the rest become useful and beneficial. And
now I am almost sure you know that this is what I am going to speak of and to
say further that we have no adequate knowledge of it. And if we do not know it,
then, even if without the knowledge of this we should know all other things
never so well, you are aware that it would avail us nothing, just as no possession
either is of any avail without the possession of the good. Or do you think there
is any profit in possessing everything except that which is good, or in under-
standing all things else apart from the good while understanding and knowing
nothing that is fair and good?

No, by Zeus, I do not, he said.

But, furthermore, you know this too, that the multitude believe pleasure to be the
good, and the finer spirits intelligence or knowledge.

Certainly.

And you are also aware, my friend, that those who hold this latter view are not
able to point out what knowledge it is but are finally compelled to say that it is
the knowledge of the good.

Most absurdly, he said.

Is it not absurd, said I, if while taunting us with our ignorance of good they turn
about and talk to us as if we knew it? For they say it is the knowledge of the
good, as if we understood their meaning when they utter the word 'good.'

Most true, he said.

Well, are those who define the good as pleasure infected with any less confusion
of thought than the others? Or are not they in like manner compelled to admit
that there are bad pleasures?

Most assuredly.

The outcome is, I take it, that they are admitting the same things to be both good
and bad, are they not?

Certainly,

Then is it not apparent that there are many and violent disputes about it?

Of course.

And again, is it not apparent that while in the case of the just and the honorable
many would prefer the semblance without the reality in action, possession, and
opinion, yet when it comes to the good nobody is content with the possession of
the appearance but all men seek the reality, and the semblance satisfies nobody
here?

Quite so, he said.

That, then, which every soul pursues and for its sake does all that it does, with an
intuition of its reality, but yet baffled and unable to apprehend its nature adequa-
tely, or to attain to any stable belief about it as about other things, and for
that reason failing of any possible benefit from other things--in a matter of
this quality and moment, can we, I ask you, allow a like blindness and obscurity
in those best citizens to whose hands we are to entrust all things?

Least of all, he said.

I fancy, at any rate, said I, that the just and the honorable, if their relation and
reference to the good is not known, will not have secured a guardian of much
worth in the man thus ignorant, and my surmise is that no one will understand
them adequately before he knows this.

You surmise well, he said.

Then our constitution will have its perfect and definitive organization only when
such a guardian, who knows these things, oversees it.

Necessarily, he said. But you yourself, Socrates, do you think that knowledge is
the good or pleasure or something else and different?

What a man it is, said I. You made it very plain long ago that you would not be
satisfied with what others think about it.

Why, it does not seem right to me either, Socrates, he said, to be ready to state
the opinions of others but not one's own when one has occupied himself with the
matter so long.

But then, said I, do you think it right to speak as having knowledge about things
one does not know?

By no means, he said, as having knowledge, but one ought to be willing to tell as
his opinion what he opines.

Nay, said I, have you not observed that opinions divorced from knowledge are
ugly things? The best of them are blind. Or do you think that those who hold
some true opinion without intelligence differ appreciably from blind men who
go the right way?

They do not differ at all, he said.

Is it, then, ugly things that you prefer to contemplate, things blind and crooked,
when you might hear from others what is luminous and fair?

Nay, in heaven's name, Socrates, said Glaucon, do not draw back, as it were, at
the very goal. For it will content us if you explain the good even as you set forth
the nature of justice, sobriety, and the other virtues.

It will right well content me, my dear fellow, I said, but I fear that my powers
may fail and that in my eagerness I may cut a sorry figure and become a laughing-
stock. Nay, my beloved, let us dismiss for the time being the nature of the good
in itself, for to attain to my present surmise of that seems a pitch above the
impulse that wings my flight today. But of what seems to be the offspring of the
good and most nearly made in its likeness I am willing to speak if you too wish
it, and otherwise to let the matter drop.

Well, speak on, he said, for you will duly pay me the tale of the parent another
time.

I could wish, I said, that I were able to make and you to receive the payment and
not merely as now the interest. But at any rate receive this interest and the off-
spring of the good. Have a care, however, lest I deceive you unintentionally with
a false reckoning of the interest.

We will do our best, he said, to be on our guard. Only speak on.

Yes, I said, after first coming to an understanding with you and reminding you
of what has been said here before and often on other occasions.

What? said he.

We predicate 'to be' of many beautiful things and many good things, saying of
them severally that they are, and so define them in our speech.

We do.

And again, we speak of a self-beautiful and of a good that is only and merely
good, and so, in the case of all the things that we then posited as many, we turn
about and posit each as a single idea or aspect, assuming it to be a unity and call
it that which each really is.

It is so.

And the one class of things we say can be seen but not thought, while the ideas
can be thought but not seen,

By all means.

With which of the parts of ourselves, with which of our faculties, then, do we see
visible things?

With sight, he said.

And do we not, I said, hear audibles with hearing, and perceive all sensibles with
the other senses?

Surely.

Have you ever observed, said I, how much the greatest expenditure the creator of
the senses has lavished on the faculty of seeing and being seen?

Why, no, I have not, he said.

Well, look at it thus. Do hearing and voice stand in need of another medium
so that the one may hear and the other be heard, in the absence of which third
element the one will not hear and the other not be heard?

They need nothing, he said.

Neither, I fancy, said I, do many others, not to say that none require anything of
the sort. Or do you know of any?

Not I, he said.

But do you not observe that vision and the visible do have this further need?

How?

Though vision may be in the eyes and its possessor may try to use it, and though
color be present, yet without the presence of a third thing specifically and
naturally adapted to this purpose, you are aware that vision will see nothing and
the colors will remain invisible.

What is this thing of which you speak? he said.

The thing, I said, that you call light.

You say truly, he replied.

The bond, then, that yokes together visibility and the faculty of sight is more
precious by no slight form than that which unites the other pairs, if light is not
without honor.

It surely is far from being so, he said.

Which one can you name of the divinities in heaven as the author and cause of
this, whose light makes our vision see best and visible things to be seen?

Why, the one that you too and other people mean, he said, for your question
evidently refers to the sun.

Is not this, then, the relation of vision to that divinity?

What?

Neither vision itself nor its vehicle, which we call the eye, is identical with the
sun.

Why, no.

But it is, I think, the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense.

By far the most.

And does it not receive the power which it possesses as an influx, as it were,
dispensed from the sun?

Certainly.

Is it not also true that the sun is not vision, yet as being the cause thereof is
beheld by vision itself?

That is so, he said.

This, then, you must understand that I meant by the offspring of the good which
the good begot to stand in a proportion with itself. As the good is in the
intelligible region to reason and the objects of reason, so is this in the visible
world to vision and the objects of vision,

How is that? he said. Explain further.

You are aware, I said, that when the eyes are no longer turned upon objects upon
whose colors the light of day falls but that of the dim luminaries of night, their
edge is blunted and they appear almost blind, as if pure vision did not dwell in
them.

Yes, indeed, he said.

But when, I take it, they are directed upon objects illumined by the sun, they
see clearly, and vision appears to reside in these same eyes.

Certainly.

Apply this comparison to the soul also in this way When it is firmly fixed on the
domain where truth and reality shine resplendent it apprehends and knows them
and appears to possess reason, but when it inclines to that region which is
mingled with darkness, the world of becoming and passing away, it opines only
and its edge is blunted, and it shifts its opinions hither and thither, and again
seems as if it lacked reason.

Yes, it does.

This reality, then, that gives their truth to the objects of knowledge and the
power of knowing to the knower, you must say is the idea of good, and you must
conceive it as being the cause of knowledge, and of truth in so far as known. Yet
fair as they both are, knowledge and truth, in supposing it to be something
fairer still than these you will think rightly of it. But as for knowledge and truth,
even as in our illustration it is right to deem light and vision sunlike, but never
to think that they are the sun, so here it is right to consider these two their
counterparts, as being like the good or boniform, but to think that either of them
is the good is not right. Still higher honor belongs to the possession and habit of
the good.

An inconceivable beauty you speak of, he said, if it is the source of knowledge
and truth, and yet itself surpasses them in beauty. For you surely cannot mean
that it is pleasure.

Hush, said I, but examine the similitude of it still further in this way.

How?

The sun, I presume you will say, not only furnishes to visibles the power of
visibility but it also provides for their generation and growth and nurture though
it is not itself generation.

Of course not.

In like manner, then, you are to say that the objects of knowledge not only
receive from the presence of the good their being known, but their very existence
and essence is derived to them from it, though the good itself is not essence but
still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power.

And Glaucon very ludicrously said, Heaven save us, hyperbole can no further go.

The fault is yours, I said, for compelling me to utter my thoughts about it.

And don't desist, he said, but at least expound the similitude of the sun, if there
is anything that you are omitting.

Why, certainly, I said, I am omitting a great deal.

Well, don't omit the least bit, he said.

I fancy, I said, that I shall have to pass over much, but nevertheless so far as
it is at present practicable I shall not willingly leave anything out.

Do not, he said.

Conceive then, said I, as we were saying, that there are these two entities, and
that one of them is sovereign over the intelligible order and region and the other
over the world of the eyeball, not to say the sky-ball, but let that pass. You
surely apprehend the two types, the visible and the intelligible.

I do.

Represent them then, as it were, by a line divided into two unequal sections and
cut each section again in the same ratio--the section, that is, of the visible and
that of the intelligible order--and then as an expression of the ratio of their
comparative clearness and obscurity you will have, as one of the sections of
the visible world, images. By images I mean, first, shadows, and then reflections
in water and on surfaces of dense, smooth, and bright texture, and everything
of that kind, if you apprehend.

I do.

As the second section assume that of which this is a likeness or an image, that is,
the animals about us and all plants and the whole class of objects made by man.

I so assume it, he said.

Would you be willing to say, said I, that the division in respect of reality and
truth or the opposite is expressed by the proportion--as is the opinable to the
knowable so is the likeness to that of which it is a likeness?

I certainly would.

Consider then again the way in which we are to make the division of the intelli-
gible section.

In what way?

By the distinction that there is one section of it which the soul is compelled to
investigate by treating as images the things imitated in the former division, and
by means of assumptions from which it proceeds not up to a first principle but
down to a conclusion, while there is another section in which it advances from
its assumption to a beginning or principle that transcends assumption, and in
which it makes no use of the images employed by the other section, relying on
ideas only and progressing systematically through ideas.

I don't fully understand what you mean by this, he said.

Well, I will try again, said I, for you will better understand after this preamble.
For I think you are aware that students of geometry and reckoning and such
subjects first postulate the odd and the even and the various figures and three
kinds of angles and other things akin to these in each branch of science, regard
them as known, and, treating them as absolute assumptions, do not deign to render
any further account of them to themselves or others, taking it for granted that
they are obvious to everybody. They take their start from these, and pursuing
the inquiry from this point on consistently, conclude with that for the investi-
gation of which they set out.

Certainly, he said, I know that.

And do you not also know that they further make use of the visible forms and
talk about them, though they are not thinking of them but of those things of
which they are a likeness, pursuing their inquiry for the sake of the square as
such and the diagonal as such, and not for the sake of the image of it which they
draw? And so in all cases. The very things which they mold and draw, which
have shadows and images of themselves in water, these things they treat in
their turn as only images, but what they really seek is to get sight of those
realities which can be seen only by the mind.

True, he said.

This then is the class that I described as intelligible, it is true, but with the
reservation first that the soul is compelled to employ assumptions in the investi-
gation of it, not proceeding to a first principle because of its inability to
extricate itself from and rise above its assumptions, and second, that it uses as
images or likenesses the very objects that are themselves copied and adumbrated
by the class below them, and that in comparison with these latter are esteemed as
clear and held in honor.

I understand, said he, that you are speaking of what falls under geometry and the
kindred arts.

Understand then, said I, that by the other section of the intelligible I mean that
which the reason itself lays hold of by the power of dialectic, treating its assump-
tions not as absolute beginnings but literally as hypotheses, underpinnings, foot-
ings, and springboards so to speak, to enable it to rise to that which requires
no assumption and is the starting point of all, and after attaining to that again
taking hold of the first dependencies from it, so to proceed downward to the
conclusion, making no use whatever of any object of sense but only of pure
ideas moving on through ideas to ideas and ending with ideas.

I understand, he said, not fully, for it is no slight task that you appear to have
in mind, but I do understand that you mean to distinguish the aspect of reality and
the intelligible, which is contemplated by the power of dialectic, as something
truer and more exact than the object of the so-called arts and sciences whose
assumptions are arbitrary starting points. And though it is true that those who
contemplate them are compelled to use their understanding and not their senses,
yet because they do not go back to the beginning in the study of them but
start from assumptions you do not think they possess true intelligence about
them although the things themselves are intelligibles when apprehended in
conjunction with a first principle. And I think you call the mental habit of
geometers and their like mind or understanding and not reason because you
regard understanding as something intermediate between opinion and reason.

Your interpretation is quite sufficient, I said. And now, answering to these four
sections, assume these four affections occurring in the soul--intellection or
reason for the highest, understanding for the second, belief for the third, and for
the last, picture thinking or conjecture--and arrange them in a proportion,
considering that they participate in clearness and precision in the same degree as
their objects partake of truth and reality.

I understand, he said. I concur and arrange them as you bid.




BOOK VII: ON SHADOWS AND REALITIES IN EDUCATION




Next, said I, compare our nature in respect of education and its lack to such
an experience as this. Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with
a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having
their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same
spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their
heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance
behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along
which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet shows have
partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets.

All that I see, he said.

See also, then, men carrying past the wall implements of all kinds that rise above
the wall, and human images and shapes of animals as well, wrought in stone and
wood and every material, some of these bearers presumably speaking and others
silent.

A strange image you speak of, he said, and strange prisoners.

Like to us, I said. For, to begin with, tell me do you think that these men would
have seen anything of themselves or of one another except the shadows cast from
the fire on the wall of the cave that fronted them?

How could they, he said, if they were compelled to hold their heads unmoved
through life?

And again, would not the same be true of the objects carried past them?

Surely.

If then they were able to talk to one another, do you not think that they would
suppose that in naming the things that they saw they were naming the passing
objects?

Necessarily.

And if their prison had an echo from the wall opposite them, when one of the
passers-by uttered a sound, do you think that they would suppose anything else
than the passing shadow to be the speaker?

By Zeus, I do not, said he.

Then in every way such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the
shadows of the artificial objects.

Quite inevitably, he said.

Consider, then, what would be the manner of the release and healing from these
bonds and this folly if in the course of nature something of this sort should
happen to them. When one was freed from his fetters and compelled to stand up
suddenly and turn his head around and walk and to lift up his eyes to the light,
and in doing all this felt pain and, because of the dazzle and glitter of the light,
was unable to discern the objects whose shadows he formerly saw, what do you
suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before
was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and turned
toward more real things, he saw more truly? And if also one should point out to
him each of the passing objects and constrain him by questions to say what it is,
do you not think that he would be at a loss and that he would regard what he
formerly saw as more real than the things now pointed out to him?

Far more real, he said,

And if he were compelled to look at the light itself, would not that pain his eyes,
and would he not turn away and flee to those things which he is able to discern
and regard them as in very deed more clear and exact than the objects pointed
out?

It is so, he said.

And if, said I, someone should drag him thence by force up the ascent which is
rough and steep, and not let him go before he had drawn him out into the light of
the sun, do you not think that he would find it painful to be so haled along, and
would chafe at it, and when he came out into the light, that his eyes would be
filled with its beams so that he would not be able to see even one of the things
that we call real?

Why, no, not immediately, he said.

Then there would be need of habituation, I take it, to enable him to see the things
higher up. And at first he would most easily discern the shadows and, after that,
the likenesses or reflections in water of men and other things, and later, the
things themselves, and from these he would go on to contemplate the appearances
in the heavens and heaven itself, more easily by night, looking at the light of
the stars and the moon, than by day the sun and the sun's light.

Of course.

And so, finally, I suppose, he would be able to look upon the sun itself and see
its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it in an alien setting,
but in and by itself in its own place.

Necessarily, he said.

And at this point he would infer and conclude that this it is that provides the
seasons and the courses of the year and presides over all things in the visible
region, and is in some sort the cause of all these things that they had seen.

Obviously, he said, that would be the next step.

Well then, if he recalled to mind his first habitation and what passed for wisdom
there, and his fellow bondsmen, do you not think that he would count himself happy
in the change and pity them?

He would indeed.

And if there had been honors and commendations among them which they bestowed
on one another and prizes for the man who is quickest to make out the shadows
as they pass and best able to remember their customary precedences, sequences,
and coexistences, and so most successful in guessing at what was to come, do
you think he would be very keen about such rewards, and that he would envy
and emulate those who were honored by these prisoners and lorded it among them,
or that he would feel with Homer and greatly prefer while living on earth to
be serf of another, a landless man, and endure anything rather than opine with
them and live that life?

Yes, he said, I think that he would choose to endure anything rather than such a
life.

And consider this also, said I. If such a one should go down again and take his
old place would he not get his eyes full of darkness, thus suddenly coming out of
the sunlight?

He would indeed.

Now if he should be required to contend with these perpetual prisoners in
'evaluating' these shadows while his vision was still dim and before his eyes
were accustomed to the dark--and this time required for habituation would not
be very short--would he not provoke laughter, and would it not be said of him
that he had returned from his journey aloft with his eyes ruined and that it was
not worth while even to attempt the ascent? And if it were possible to lay hands
on and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they
not kill him?

They certainly would, he said.

This image then, dear Glaucon, we must apply as a whole to all that has been
said, likening the region revealed through sight to the habitation of the prison,
and the light of the fire in it to the power of the sun. And if you assume that the
ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul's ascension to the
intelligible region, you will not miss my surmise, since that is what you desire to
hear. But Gods knows whether it is true. But, at any rate, my dream as it appears
to me is that in the region of the known the last thing to be seen and hardly seen
is the idea of good, and that when seen it must needs point us to the conclusion
that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful,
giving birth in the visible world to light, and the author of light and itself in
the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason, and that
anyone who is to act wisely in private or public must have caught sight of this.

I concur, he said, so far as I am able.

Come then, I said, and join me in this further thought, and do not be surprised
that those who have attained to this height are not willing to occupy themselves
with the affairs of men, but their souls ever feel the upward urge and the yearn-
ing for that sojourn above. For this, I take it, is likely if in this point too the
likeness of our image holds.

Yes, it is likely.

And again, do you think it at all strange, said I, if a man returning from divine
contemplations to the petty miseries of men cuts a sorry figure and appears most
ridiculous, if, while still blinking through the gloom, and before he has become
sufficiently accustomed to the environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms
or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the images that cast the
shadows and to wrangle in debate about the notions of these things in the minds
of those who have never seen justice itself?

It would be by no means strange, he said.

But a sensible man, I said, would remember that there are two distinct disturb-
ances of the eyes arising from two causes, according as the shift is from light
to darkness or from darkness to light, and, believing that the same thing hap-
pens to the soul too, whenever he saw a soul perturbed and unable to discern
something, he would not laugh unthinkingly, but would observe whether coming
from a brighter life its vision was obscured by the unfamiliar darkness, or
whether the passage from the deeper dark of ignorance into a more luminous
world and the greater brightness had dazzled its vision. And so he would deem
the one happy in its experience and way of life and pity the other, and if it
pleased him to laugh at it, his laughter would be less laughable than that at
the expense of the soul that had come down from the light above.

That is a very fair statement, he said.

Then, if this is true, our view of these matters must be this, that
education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their
professions. What they aver is that they can put true knowledge into a
soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting vision into blind
eyes.

They do indeed, he said.

But our present argument indicates, said I, that the true analogy for this
indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends
is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except
by turning the whole body. Even so this organ of knowledge must be turned around from
the world of becoming together with the entire soul, like the scene-shifting peri-
actus in the theater, until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence
and the brightest region of being. And this, we say, is the good, do we not?

Yes.

Of this very thing, then, I said, there might be an art, an art of the speediest and
most effective shifting or conversion of the soul, not an art of producing vision
in it, but on the assumption that it possesses vision but does not rightly direct it
and does not look where it should, an art of bringing this about.

Yes, that seems likely, he said.

Then the other so-called virtues of the soul do seem akin to those of the body.
For it is true that where they do not pre-exist, they are afterward created by ha-
bit and practice. But the excellence of thought, it seems, is certainly of a more
divine quality, a thing that never loses its potency, but, according to the direct-
ion of its conversion, becomes useful and beneficent, or, again, useless and harm-
ful. Have you never observed in those who are popularly spoken of as bad, but
smart men how keen is the vision of the little soul, how quick it is to discern the
things that interest it, a proof that it is not a poor vision which it has, but one
forcibly enlisted in the service of evil, so that the sharper its sight the more
mischief it accomplishes?

I certainly have, he said.

Observe then, said I, that this part of such a soul, if it had been hammered from
childhood, and had thus been struck free of the leaden weights, so to speak, of
our birth and becoming, which attaching themselves to it by food and similar
pleasures and gluttonies turn downward the vision of the soul--if, I say, freed
from these, it had suffered a conversion toward the things that are real and true,
that same faculty of the same men would have been most keen in its vision of the
higher things, just as it is for the things toward which it is now turned.

It is likely, he said.

Well, then, said I, is not this also likely and a necessary consequence of what has
been said, that neither could men who are uneducated and inexperienced in truth
ever adequately preside over a state, nor could those who had been permitted to
linger on to the end in the pursuit of culture--the one because they have no
single aim and purpose in life to which all their actions, public and private, must
be directed, and the others, because they will not voluntarily engage in action,
believing that while still living they have been transported to the Islands of the
Blessed?

True, he said.

It is the duty of us, the founders, then, said I, to compel the best natures to attain
the knowledge which we pronounced the greatest, and to win to the vision of the good,
to scale that ascent, and when they have reached the heights and taken an adequate
view, we must not allow what is now permitted.

What is that?

That they should linger there, I said, and refuse to go down again among those
bondsmen and share their labors and honors, whether they are of less or of
greater worth.

Do you mean to say that we must do them this wrong, and compel them to live
an inferior life when the better is in their power?

You have again forgotten, my friend, said I, that the law is not concerned with
the special happiness of any class in the state, but is trying to produce this
condition in the city as a whole, harmonizing and adapting the citizens to one
another by persuasion and compulsion, and requiring them to impart to one another
any benefit which they are severally able to bestow upon the community, and that
it itself creates such men in the state, not that it may allow each to take what
course pleases him, but with a view to using them for the binding together of the
commonwealth.

True, he said, I did forget it.

Observe, then, Glaucon, said I, that we shall not be wronging, either, the
philosophers who arise among us, but that we can justify our action when we
constrain them to take charge of the other citizens and be their guardians. For
we will say to them that it is natural that men of similar quality who spring
up in other cities should not share in the labors there. For they grow up
spontaneously from no volition of the government in the several states, and it
is justice that the self-grown, indebted to none for its breeding, should not be
zealous either to pay to anyone the price of its nurture. But you we have engen-
dered for yourselves and the rest of the city to be, as it were, king bees and
leaders in the hive. You have received a better and more complete education
than the others, and you are more capable of sharing both ways of life. Down
you must go then, each in his turn, to the habitation of the others and accustom
yourselves to the observation of the obscure things there. For once habituated
you will discern them infinitely better than the dwellers there, and you will know
what each of the 'idols' is and whereof it is a semblance, because you have seen
the reality of the beautiful, the just and the good. So our city will be governed
by us and you with waking minds, and not, as most cities now which are inhabited
and ruled darkly as in a dream by men who fight one another for shadows and
wrangle for office as if that were a great good, when the truth is that the city in
which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office must needs be best
administered and most free from dissension, and the state that gets the contrary
type of ruler will be the opposite of this.

By all means, he said.

Will our alumni, then, disobey us when we tell them this, and will they refuse to
share in the labors of state each in his turn while permitted to dwell most of the
time with one another in that purer world?

Impossible, he said, for we shall be imposing just commands on men who are just.
Yet they will assuredly approach office as an unavoidable necessity, and in the
opposite temper from that of the present rulers in our cities.

For the fact is, dear friend, said I, if you can discover a better way of life
than office holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a
possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are really rich, not
in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness a good and wise life. But if,
being beggars and starvelings from lack of goods of their own, they turn to
affairs of state thinking that it is thence that they should grasp their own good,
then it is impossible. For when office and rule become the prizes of contention,
such a civil and internecine strife destroys the office seekers themselves and the
city as well.

Most true, he said.

Can you name any other type or ideal of life that looks with scorn on political
office except the life of true philosophers? I asked.

No, by Zeus, he said.

But what we require, I said, is that those who take office should not be lovers of
rule. Otherwise there will be a contest with rival lovers.

Surely.

What others, then, will you compel to undertake the guardianship of the city than
those who have most intelligence of the principles that are the means of good
government and who possess distinctions of another kind and a life that is
preferable to the political life?

No others, he said.

Would you, then, have us proceed to consider how such men may be produced
in a state and how they may be led upward to the light even as some are fabled to
have ascended from Hades to the gods?

Of course I would.

So this, it seems, would not be the whirling of the shell in the children's game,
but a conversion and turning about of the soul from a day whose light is
darkness to the veritable day--that ascension to reality of our parable which we
will affirm to be true philosophy.

By all means.

Must we not, then, consider what studies have the power to effect this?

Of course.

What, then, Glaucon, would be the study that would draw the soul away from
the world of becoming to the world of being? A thought strikes me while I
speak. Did we not say that these men in youth must be athletes of war?

We did.

Then the study for which we are seeking must have this additional qualification.

What one?

That it be not useless to soldiers.

Why, yes, it must, he said, if that is possible,

But in our previous account they were educated in gymnastics and music.

They were, he said.

And gymnastics, I take it, is devoted to that which grows and perishes, for it
presides over the growth and decay of the body.

Obviously.

Then this cannot be the study that we seek.

No.

Is it, then, music, so far as we have already described it?

Nay, that, he said, was the counterpart of gymnastics, if you remember. It
educated the guardians through habits, imparting by the melody a certain
harmony of spirit that is not science, and by the rhythm measure and grace, and
also qualities akin to these in the words of tales that are fables and those that
are more nearly true, But it included no study that tended to any such good as you
are now seeking.

Your recollection is most exact, I said, for in fact it had nothing of the kind. But
in heaven's name, Glaucon, what study could there be of that kind? For all the
arts were in our opinion base and mechanical.

Surely, and yet what other study is left apart from music, gymnastics, and the
arts?

Come, said I, if we are unable to discover anything outside of these, let us take
something that applies to all alike.

What?

Why, for example, this common thing that all arts and forms of thought and all
sciences employ, and which is among the first things that everybody must learn.

What? he said.

This trifling matter, I said, of distinguishing one and two and three. I mean, in
sum, number and calculation. Is it not true of them that every art and science
must necessarily partake of them?

Indeed it is, he said.

The art of war too? said I.

Most necessarily, he said.

Certainly, then, said I, Palamedes in the play is always making Agamemnon appear a
most ridiculous general. Have you not noticed that he affirms that by the invention
of number he marshaled the troops in the army at Troy in ranks and companies and
enumerated the ships and everything else as if before that they had not been count-
ed, and Agamemnon apparently did not know how many feet he had if he couldn't
count? And yet what sort of a general do you think he would be in that case?

A very queer one in my opinion, he said, if that was true.

Shall we not, then, I said, set down as a study requisite for a soldier the ability
to reckon and number?

Most certainly, if he is to know anything whatever of the ordering of his troops
--or rather if he is to be a man at all.

Do you observe then, said I, in this study what I do?

What?

It seems likely that it is one of those studies which we are seeking that
naturally conduce to the awakening of thought, but that no one makes the right
use of it, though it really does tend to draw the mind to essence and reality.

What do you mean? he said.

I will try, I said, to show you at least my opinion. Do you keep watch and
observe the things I distinguish in my mind as being or not being conducive to
our purpose, and either concur or dissent, in order that here too we may see more
clearly whether my surmise is right.

Point them out, he said.

I do point them out, I said, if you can discern that some reports of our
perceptions do not provoke thought to reconsideration because the judgment of
them by sensation seems adequate, while others always invite the intellect to
reflection because the sensation yields nothing that can be trusted.

You obviously mean distant appearances, he said, and shadow painting.

You have quite missed my meaning, said I.

What do you mean? he said.

The experiences that do not provoke thought are those that do not at the same
time issue in a contradictory perception. Those that do have that effect I set
down as provocatives, when the perception no more manifests one thing than its
contrary, alike whether its impact comes from nearby or afar. An illustration will
make my meaning plain. Here, we say, are three fingers, the little finger, the
second, and the middle.

Quite so, he said.

Assume that I speak of them as seen near at hand. But this is the point that you
are to consider.

What?

Each one of them appears to be equally a finger, and in this respect it makes no
difference whether it is observed as intermediate or at either extreme, whether
it is white or black, thick or thin, or of any other quality of this kind. For in none
of these cases is the soul of most men impelled to question the reason and to ask what
in the world is a finger, since the faculty of sight never signifies to it at the same
time that the finger is the opposite of a finger.

Why, no, it does not, he said.

Then, said I, it is to be expected that such a perception will not provoke or
awaken reflection and thought.

It is.

But now, what about the bigness and the smallness of these objects? Is our
vision's view of them adequate, and does it make no difference to it whether one
of them is situated outside or in the middle, and similarly of the relation of
touch, to thickness and thinness, softness and hardness? And are not the other
senses also defective in their reports of such things? Or is the operation of
each of them as follows? In the first place, the sensation that is set over the hand
is of necessity related also to the soft, and it reports to the soul that the same
thing is both hard and soft to its perception.

It is so, he said.

Then, said I, is not this again a case where the soul must be at a loss as to what
significance for it the sensation of hardness has, if the sense reports the same
thing as also soft? And, similarly, as to what the sensation of light and heavy
means by light and heavy, if it reports the heavy as light, and the light as heavy?

Yes, indeed, he said, these communications to the soul are strange and invite
reconsideration.

Naturally, then, said I, it is in such cases as these that the soul first summons to
its aid the calculating reason and tries to consider whether each of the things
reported to it is one or two.

Of course.

And if it appears to be two, each of the two is a distinct unit.

Yes.

If, then, each is one and both two, the very meaning of 'two' is that the soul will
conceive them as distinct. For if they were not separable, it would not have been
thinking of two, but of one.

Right.

Sight too saw the great and the small, we say, not separated but confounded. Is not
that so?

Yes.

And for the clarification of this, the intelligence is compelled to contemplate the
great and small, not thus confounded but as distinct entities, in the opposite way
from sensation.

True.

And is it not in some such experience as this that the question first occurs to us,
What in the world, then, is the great and the small?

By all means.

And this is the origin of the designation intelligible for the one, and visible for
the other.

Just so, he said.

This, then, is just what I was trying to explain a little while ago when I said that
some things are provocative of thought and some are not, deeming as provocative
things that impinge upon the senses together with their opposites, while those
that do not I said do not tend to awaken reflection.

Well, now I understand, he said, and agree.

To which class, then, do you think number and the one belong?

I cannot conceive, he said.

Well, reason it out from what has already been said. For, if unity is adequately
seen by itself or apprehended by some other sensation, it would not tend to draw
the mind to the apprehension of essence, as we were explaining in the case of the
finger. But if some contradiction is always seen coincidentally with it, so that it
no more appears to be one than the opposite, there would forthwith be need of
something to judge between them, and it would compel the soul to be at a loss
and to inquire, by arousing thought in itself, and to ask, whatever then is the one
as such, and thus the study of unity will be one of the studies that guide and
convert the soul to the contemplation of true being.

But surely, he said, the visual perception of it does especially involve this. For
we see the same thing at once as one and as an indefinite plurality.

Then if this is true of the one, I said, the same holds of all number, does it not?

Of course.

But, further, reckoning and the science of arithmetic are wholly concerned with
number.

They are, indeed.

And the qualities of number appear to lead to the apprehension of truth.

Beyond anything, he said.

Then, as it seems, these would be among the studies that we are seeking. For a
soldier must learn them in order to marshal his troops, and a philosopher because
he must rise out of the region of generation and lay hold on essence or he can
never become a true reckoner.

It is so, he said.

And our guardian is soldier and philosopher in one.

Of course.

It is befitting, then, Glaucon, that this branch of learning should be prescribed by
our law and that we should induce those who are to share the highest functions
of state to enter upon that study of calculation and take hold of it, not as
amateurs, but to follow it up until they attain to the contemplation of the nature
of number, by pure thought, not for the purpose of buying and selling, as if they
were preparing to be merchants or hucksters, but for the uses of war and for
facilitating the conversion of the soul itself from the world of generation to
essence and truth.

Excellently said, he replied.

And, further, I said, it occurs to me, now that the study of reckoning has been
mentioned, that there is something fine in it, and that it is useful for our purpose
in many ways, provided it is pursued for the sake of knowledge and not for
huckstering.

In what respect? he said.

Why, in respect of the very point of which we were speaking, that it strongly
directs the soul upward and compels it to discourse about pure numbers, never
acquiescing if anyone proffers to it in the discussion numbers attached to visible
and . For you are doubtless aware that experts in this study, if
anyone attempts to cut up the 'one' in argument, laugh at him and refuse to allow
it, but if you mince it up, they multiply, always on guard lest the one should
appear to be not one but a multiplicity of parts.

Most true, he replied.

Suppose now, Glaucon, someone were to ask them, My good friends, what numbers are
these you are talking about, in which the one is such as you postulate, each unity
equal to every other without the slightest difference and admitting no division
into parts? What do you think would be their answer?

This, I think--that they are speaking of units which can only be conceived by
thought, and which it is not possible to deal with in any other way.

You see, then, my friend, said I, that this branch of study really seems to be
indispensable for us, since it plainly compels the soul to employ pure thought
with a view to truth itself.

It most emphatically does.

Again, have you ever noticed this, that natural reckoners are by nature quick in
virtually all their studies? And the slow, if they are trained and drilled in this,
even if no other benefit results, all improve and become quicker than they were?

It is so, he said.

And, further, as I believe, studies that demand more toil in the learning and prac-
tice than this we shall not discover easily nor find many of them.

You will not, in fact.

Then, for all these reasons, we must not neglect this study, but must use it in the
education of the best-endowed natures.

I agree, he said.

Assuming this one point to be established, I said, let us in the second place
consider whether the study that comes next is suited to our purpose.

What is that? Do you mean geometry? he said.

Precisely that, said I.

So much of it, he said, as applies to the conduct of war is obviously suitable.
For in dealing with encampments and the occupation of strong places and the
bringing of troops into column and line and all the other formations of an army
in actual battle and on the march, an officer who had studied geometry would be
a very different person from what he would be if he had not.

But still, I said, for such purposes a slight modicum of geometry and calculation
would suffice. What we have to consider is whether the greater and more advanced
part of it tends to facilitate the apprehension of the idea of good. That tend-
ency, we affirm, is to be found in all studies that force the soul to turn its
vision round to the region where dwells the most blessed part of reality, which
it is imperative that it should behold.

You are right, he said.

Then if it compels the soul to contemplate essence, it is suitable; if genesis, it
is not.

So we affirm.

This at least, said I, will not be disputed by those who have even a slight
acquaintance with geometry, that this science is in direct contradiction with the
language employed in it by its adepts.

How so? he said.

Their language is most ludicrous, though they cannot help it, for they speak as if
they were doing something and as if all their words were directed toward action.
For all their talk is of squaring and applying and adding and the like, whereas in
fact the real object of the entire study is pure knowledge.

That is absolutely true, he said.

And must we not agree on a further point?

What?

That it is the knowledge of that which always is, and not of a something which at
some time comes into being and passes away.

That is readily admitted, he said, for geometry is the knowledge of the eternally
existent.

Then, my good friend, it would tend to draw the soul to truth, and would be product-
ive of a philosophical attitude of mind, directing upward the faculties that now
wrongly are turned earthward.

Nothing is surer, he said.

Then nothing is surer, said I, than that we must require that the men of your
fair city shall never neglect geometry, for even the by-products of such study
are not slight.

What are they? said he.

What you mentioned, said I, its uses in war, and also we are aware that for the
better reception of all studies there will be an immeasurable difference between
the student who has been imbued with geometry and the one who has not.

Immense indeed, by Zeus, he said.

Shall we, then, lay this down as a second branch of study for our lads?

Let us do so. he said.

Shall we set down astronomy as a third, or do you dissent

I certainly agree, he said, for quickness of perception about the seasons and the
courses of the months and the years is serviceable, not only to agriculture and
navigation, but still more to the military art.

I am amused, said I, at your apparent fear lest the multitude may suppose you to
be recommending useless studies. It is indeed no trifling task, but very difficult
to realize that there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that
is purified and kindled afresh by such studies when it has been destroyed and
blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten
thousand eyes, for by it only is reality beheld. Those who share this faith will
think your words superlatively true. But those who have and have had no inkling
of it will naturally think them all moonshine. For they can see no other bene-
fit from such pursuits worth mentioning. Decide, then, on the spot, to which
party you address yourself. Or are you speaking to neither, but chiefly carrying
on the discussion for vour own sake, without however grudging any other who
may be able to profit by it?

This is the alternative I choose, he said, that it is for my own sake chiefly that I
speak and ask questions and reply.

Fall back a little, then, said I, for we just now did not rightly select the study that
comes next after geometry.

What was our mistake? he said,

After plane surfaces, said I, we went on to solids in revolution before studying them
in themselves. The right way is next in order after the second dimension to take the
third. This, I suppose, is the dimension of cubes and of everything that has depth.

Why, yes, it is, he said, but this subject, Socrates, does not appear to have been
investigated yet.

There are two causes of that, said I. First, inasmuch as no city holds them in
honor, these inquiries are languidly pursued owing to their difficulty. And
secondly, the investigators need a director, who is indispensable for success and
who, to begin with, is not easy to find, and then, if he could be found, as things
are now, seekers in this field would be too arrogant to submit to his guidance.
But if the state as a whole should join in superintending these studies and honor
them, these specialists would accept advice, and continuous and strenuous
investigation would bring out the truth. Since even now, lightly esteemed as they
are by the multitude and hampered by the ignorance of their students as to the
true reasons for pursuing them, they nevertheless in the face of all these
obstacles force their way by their inherent charm and it would not surprise us
if the truth about them were made apparent.

It is true, he said, that they do possess an extraordinary attractiveness and charm.
But explain more clearly what you were just speaking of. The investigation of
plane surfaces, I presume, you took to be geometry?

Yes, said I.

And then, he said, at first you took astronomy next and then you drew back.

Yes, I said, for in my haste to be done I was making less speed. For, while the
next thing in order is the study of the third dimension or solids, I passed it over
because of our absurd neglect to investigate it, and mentioned next after
geometry astronomy, which deals with the movements of solids.

That is right, he said.

Then, as our fourth study, said I, let us set down astronomy, assuming that this
science, the discussion of which has been passed over, is available, provided,
that is, that the state pursues it.

That is likely, said he, and instead of the vulgar utilitarian commendation of
astronomy, for which you just now rebuked me, Socrates, I now will praise it on
your principles. For it is obvious to everybody, I think that this study
certainly compels the soul to look upward and leads it away from things here to
those higher things.

It may be obvious to everybody except me, said I, for I do not think so.

What do you think? he said.

As it is now handled by those who are trying to lead us up to philosophy, I think
that it turns the soul's gaze very much downward.

What do you mean? he said.

You seem to me in your thought to put a most liberal interpretation on the 'study
of higher things,' I said, for apparently if anyone with back-thrown head should
learn something by staring at decorations on a ceiling, you would regard him
as contemplating them with the higher reason and not with the eyes. Perhaps you
are right and I am a simpleton. For I, for my part, am unable to suppose that any
other study turns the soul's gaze upward than that which deals with being and the
invisible. But if anyone tries to learn about the things of sense, whether gaping
up or blinking down, I would never say that he really learns--for nothing of the
kind admits of true knowledge--nor would I say that his soul looks up, but down,
even though he study floating on his back on sea or land.

A fair retort, he said. Your rebuke is deserved. But how, then, did you mean that
astronomy ought to be taught contrary to the present fashion if it is to be learned
in a way to conduce to our purpose?

Thus, said I. These sparks that paint the sky, since they are decorations on a
visible surface, we must regard, to be sure, as the fairest and most exact of
material things, but we must recognize that they fall far short of the truth, the
movements, namely, of real speed and real slowness in true number and in all
true figures both in relation to one another and as vehicles of the things they
carry and contain. These can be apprehended only by reason and thought, but not
by sight, or do you think otherwise?

By no means, he said.

Then, said I, we must use the blazonry of the heavens as patterns to aid in the
study of those realities, just as one would do who chanced upon diagrams
drawn with special care and elaboration by Daedalus or some other craftsman or
painter. For anyone acquainted with geometry who saw such designs would
admit the beauty of the workmanship, but would think it absurd to examine them
seriously in the expectation of finding in them the absolute truth with regard to
equals or doubles or any other ratio.

How could it be otherwise than absurd? he said.

Do you not think, said I, that one who was an astronomer in very truth would
feel in the same way when he turned his eyes upon the movements of the stars?
He will be willing to concede that the artisan of heaven fashioned it and all that
it contains in the best possible manner for such a fabric. But when it comes to
the proportions of day and night, and of their relation to the month, and that of
the month to the year, and of the other stars to these and one another, do you
not suppose that he will regard as a very strange fellow the man who believes
that these things go on forever without change or the least deviation--though
they possess bodies and are visible objects--and that his unremitting quest is the
realities of these things?

I at least do think so, he said, now that I hear it from you.

It is by means of problems, then, said I, as in the study of geometry, that we
will pursue astronomy too, and we will let be the things in the heavens, if we
are to have a part in the true science of astronomy and so convert to right use
from uselessness that natural indwelling intelligence of the soul.

You enjoin a task, he said, that will multiply the labor of our present study of
astronomy many times.

And I fancy, I said, that our other injunctions will be of the same kind if we are
of any use as lawgivers. However, what suitable studies have you to suggest?

Nothing, he said, thus offhand.

Yet, surely, said I, motion in general provides not one but many forms or
species, according to my opinion. To enumerate them all will perhaps be the
task of a wise man, but even to us two of them are apparent.

What are they?

In addition to astronomy, its counterpart, I replied.

What is that?

We may venture to suppose, I said, that as the eyes are framed for astronomy so
the ears are framed for the movements of harmony, and these are in some sort
kindred sciences, as the Pythagoreans affirm and we admit, do we not, Glaucon?

We do, he said.

Then, said I, since the task is so great, shall we not inquire of them what their
opinion is and whether they have anything to add? And we in all this will be on
the watch for what concerns us.

What is that?

To prevent our fosterlings from attempting to learn anything that does not
conduce to the end we have in view, and does not always come out at what we
said ought to be the goal of everything, as we were just now saying about
astronomy. Or do you not know that they repeat the same procedure in the case
of harmonies? They transfer it to hearing and measure audible concords and
sounds against one another, expending much useless labor just as the astrono-
mers do.

Yes, by heaven, he said, and most absurdly too. They talk of something they call
minims and, laying their ears alongside, as if trying to catch a voice from next
door, some affirm that they can hear a note between and that this is the least
interval and the unit of measurement, while others insist that the strings now
render identical sounds, both preferring their ears to their minds.

You, said I, are speaking of the worthies who vex and torture the strings and
rack them on the pegs, but--not to draw out the comparison with strokes of the
plectrum and the musician's complaints of too responsive and too reluctant
strings--I drop the figure, and tell you that I do not mean these people, but
those others whom we just now said we would interrogate about harmony. Their
method exactly corresponds to that of the astronomer, for the numbers they
seek are those found in these heard concords, but they do not ascend to
generalized problems and the consideration which numbers are inherently
concordant and which not and why in each case.

A superhuman task, he said.

Say, rather, useful, said I, for the investigation of the beautiful and the good, but
if otherwise pursued, useless.

That is likely, he said.

And what is more, I said, I take it that if the investigation of all these studies
goes far enough to bring out their community and kinship with one another, and to
infer their affinities, then to busy ourselves with them contributes to our desired
end, and the labor taken is not lost, but otherwise it is vain.

I too so surmise, said he, but it is a huge task of which you speak, Socrates.

Are you talking about the prelude, I said, or what? Or do we not know that all this
is but the preamble of the law itself, the prelude of the strain that we have to ap-
prehend? For you surely do not suppose that experts in these matters are reason-
ers and dialecticians?

No, by Zeus, he said, except a very few whom I have met.

But have you ever supposed, I said, that men who could not render and exact an
account of opinions in discussion would ever know anything of the things we say
must be known?

No is surely the answer to that too.

This, then, at last, Glaucon, I said, is the very law which dialectic recites, the
strain which it executes, of which, though it belongs to the intelligible, we may
see an imitation in the progress of the faculty of vision, as we described its
endeavor to look at living things themselves and the stars themselves and finally
at the very sun. In like manner, when anyone by dialectic attempts through
discourse of reason and apart from all perceptions of sense to find his way to the
very essence of each thing and does not desist till he apprehends by thought
itself the nature of the good in itself, he arrives at the limit of the intelli-
gible, as the other in our parable came to the goal of the visible.

By all means, he said.

What, then, will you not call this progress of thought dialectic?

Surely.

And the release from bonds, I said, and the conversion from the shadows to the
images that cast them and to the light and the ascent from the subterranean
cavern to the world above, and there the persisting inability to look directly at
animals and plants and the light of the sun, but the ability to see the phantasms
created by God in water and shadows of objects that are real and not merely, as
before, the shadows of images cast through a light which, compared with the
sun, is as unreal as they--all this procedure of the arts and sciences that we
have described indicates their power to lead the best part of the soul up to the
contemplation of what is best among realities, as in our parable the clearest
organ in the body was turned to the contemplation of what is brightest in the
corporeal and visible region.

I accept this, he said, as the truth, and yet it appears to me very hard to accept,
and again, from another point of view, hard to reject. Nevertheless, since we
have not to hear it at this time only, but are to repeat it often hereafter, let us
assume that these things are as now has been said, and proceed to the melody
itself, and go through with it as we have gone through the prelude. Tell me, then,
what is the nature of this faculty of dialectic? Into what divisions does it fall?
And what are its ways? For it is these, it seems, that would bring us to the place
where we may, so to speak, rest on the road and then come to the end of our
journeying.

You will not be able, dear Glaucon, to follow me further, though on my part
there will be no lack of good will. And, if I could, I would show you, no longer
an image and symbol of my meaning, but the very truth, as it appears to me--
though whether rightly or not I may not properly affirm. But that something like
this is what we have to see, I must affirm. Is not that so?

Surely.

And may we not also declare that nothing less than the power of dialectic could
reveal this, and that only to one experienced in the studies we have described,
and that the thing is in no other wise possible?

That, too, he said, we may properly affirm.

This, at any rate, said I, no one will maintain in dispute against us, that there
is any other way of inquiry that attempts systematically and in all cases to deter-
mine what each thing really is. But all the other arts have for their object the
opinions and desires of men or are wholly concerned with generation and composi-
tion or with the service and tendance of the things that grow and are put to-
gether, while the remnant which we said did in some sort lay hold on reality?
geometry and the studies that accompany it--are, as we see, dreaming about
being, but the clear waking vision of it is impossible for them as long as they
leave the assumptions which they employ undisturbed and cannot give any account
of them. For where the starting point is something that the reasoner does not
know, and the conclusion and all that intervenes is a tissue of things not
really known, what possibility is there that assent in such cases can ever be
converted into true knowledge or science?

None, said he.

Then, said I, is not dialectic the only process of inquiry that advances in this
manner, doing away with hypotheses, up to the first principle itself in order to
find confirmation there? And it is literally true that when the eye of the soul
is sunk in the barbaric slough of the Orphic myth, dialectic gently draws it forth
and leads it up, employing as helpers and co-operators in this conversion the
studies and sciences which we enumerated, which we called sciences often from
habit, though they really need some other designation, connoting more clearness
than opinion and more obscurity than science. 'Understanding,' I believe, was the
term we employed. But I presume we shall not dispute about the name when
things of such moment lie before us for consideration.

No, indeed, he said.

Are you satisfied, then, said I, as before, to call the first division science,
the second understanding, the third belief, and the fourth conjecture or picture
thought--and the last two collectively opinion, and the first two intellection,
opinion dealing with generation, and intellection with essence, and this relation
being expressed in the proportion: as essence is to generation, so is intellect-
ion to opinion, and as intellection is to opinion, so is science to belief, and un-
derstanding to image thinking or surmise? But the relation between their object-
ive correlates and the division into two parts of each of these, the opinable,
namely, and the intelligible, let us dismiss, Glaucon, lest it involve us in dis-
cussion many times as long as the preceding.

Well, he said, I agree with you about the rest of it, so far as I am able to fol-
low.

And do you not also give the name dialectician to the man who is able to exact
an account of the essence of each thing? And will you not say that the one who
is unable to do this, in so far as he is incapable of rendering an account to
himself and others, does not possess full reason and intelligence about the
matter?

How could I say that he does? he replied.

And is not this true of the good likewise--that the man who is unable to define
in his discourse and distinguish and abstract from all other things the aspect or
idea of the good, and who cannot, as it were in battle, running the gauntlet of all
tests, and striving to examine everything by essential reality and not by opinion,
hold on his way through all this without tripping in his reasoning--the man who
lacks this power, you will say, does not really know the good itself or any
particular good, but if he apprehends any adumbration of it, his contact with it
is by opinion, not by knowledge, and dreaming and dozing through his present
life, before he awakens here he will arrive at the house of Hades and fall asleep
forever?

Yes, by Zeus, said he, all this I will stoutly affirm.

But, surely, said I, if you should ever nurture in fact your children whom you are
now nurturing and educating in word, you would not suffer them, I presume, to
hold rule in the state, and determine the greatest matters, being themselves as
irrational as the lines so called in geometry.

Why, no, he said.

Then you will provide by law that they shall give special heed to the discipline
that will enable them to ask and answer questions in the most scientific manner?

I will so legislate, he said, in conjunction with you.

Do you agree, then, said I, that we have set dialectic above all other studies to
be as it were the coping stone--and that no other, higher kind of study could right-
ly be placed above it, but that our discussion of studies is now complete?

I do, he said.

The distribution, then, remains, said I, to whom we are to assign these studies
and in what way.

Clearly, he said.

Do you remember, then, the kind of man we chose in our former selection of
rulers?

Of course, he said.

In most respects, then, said I, you must suppose that we have to choose those
same natures. The most stable, the most brave and enterprising are to be pre-
ferred, and, so far as practicable, the most comely. But in addition we must
now require that they not only be virile and vigorous in temper, but that
they possess also the gifts of nature suitable to this type of education.

What qualities are you distinguishing?

They must have, my friend, to begin with, a certain keenness for study, and must
not learn with difficulty. For souls are much more likely to flinch and faint in
severe studies than in gymnastics, because the toil touches them more nearly,
being peculiar to them and not shared with the body.

True, he said.

And we must demand a good memory and doggedness and industry in every sense
of the word. Otherwise how do you suppose anyone will consent both to under-
go all the toils of the body and to complete so great a course of study and
discipline?

No one could, he said, unless most happily endowed.

Our present mistake, said I, and the disesteem that has in consequence fallen
upon philosophy are, as I said before, caused by the unfitness of her associates
and wooers. They should not have been bastards but true scions.

What do you mean? he said.

In the first place, I said, the aspirant to philosophy must not limp in his
industry, in the one half of him loving, in the other shunning, toil. This happens
when anyone is a lover of gymnastics and hunting and all the labors of the body,
yet is not fond of learning or of listening or inquiring, but in all such matters
hates work. And he too is lame whose industry is one-sided in the reverse way.

Most true, he said.

Likewise in respect of truth, I said, we shall regard as maimed in precisely the
same way the soul that hates the voluntary lie and is troubled by it in its own
self and greatly angered by it in others, but cheerfully accepts the involuntary
falsehood and is not distressed when convicted of lack of knowledge, but
wallows in the mud of ignorance as insensitively as a pig.

By all means, he said.

And with reference to sobriety, said I, and bravery and loftiness of soul and
all the parts of virtue, we must especially be on our guard to distinguish the
baseborn from the trueborn. For when the knowledge necessary to make such
discriminations is lacking in individual or state, they unawares employ at
random for any of these purposes the crippled and baseborn natures, as their
friends or rulers.

It is so indeed, he said.

But we, I said, must be on our guard in all such cases, since, if we bring men
sound of limb and mind to so great a study and so severe a training, justice
herself will have no fault to find with us, and we shall preserve the state and
our polity-but, if we introduce into it the other sort, the outcome will be
just the opposite, and we shall pour a still greater flood of ridicule upon
philosophy.

That would indeed be shameful, he said.

Most certainly, said I, but here again I am making myself a little ridiculous.

In what way?

I forgot, said I, that we were jesting, and I spoke with too great intensity.
For, while speaking, I turned my eyes upon philosophy, and when I saw how
she is undeservedly reviled, I was revolted, and, as if in anger, spoke too
earnestly to those who are in fault.

No, by Zeus, not too earnestly for me as a hearer.

But too much so for me as a speaker, I said. But this we must not forget, that in
our former selection we chose old men, but in this one that will not do. For we
must not take Solon's word for it that growing old a man is able to learn many
things. He is less able to do that than to run a race. To the young belong all
heavy and frequent labors.

Necessarily, he said.

Now, all this study of reckoning and geometry and all the preliminary studies
that are indispensable preparation for dialectic must be presented to them while
still young, not in the form of compulsory instruction.

Why so?

Because, said I, a free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly,
for while bodily labors performed under constraint do not harm the body,
nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind.

True, he said.

Do not, then, my friend, keep children to their studies by compulsion but by
play. That will also better enable you to discern the natural capacities of
each.

There is reason in that, he said.

And do you not remember, I said, that we also declared that we must conduct the
children to war on horseback to be spectators, and wherever it may be safe, bring
them to the front and give them a taste of blood as we do with whelps?

I do remember.

And those who as time goes on show the most facility in all these toils and
studies and alarms are to be selected and enrolled on a list.

At what age? he said.

When they are released from their prescribed gymnastics. For that period,
whether it be two or three years, incapacitates them for other occupations.
For great fatigue and much sleep are the foes of study, and moreover one of
our tests of them, and not the least, will be their behavior in their physical
exercises.

Surely it is, he said.

After this period, I said, those who are given preference from the twenty-year
class will receive greater honors than the others, and they will be required to
gather the studies which they disconnectedly pursued as children in their
former education into a comprehensive survey of their affinities with one
another and with the nature of things.

That, at any rate, he said, is the only instruction that abides with those who
receive it.

And it is also, said I, the chief test of the dialectic nature and its opposite. For
he who can view things in their connection is a dialectician; he who cannot, is not.

I concur, he said.

With these qualities in mind, I said, it will be your task to make a selection of
those who manifest them best from the group who are steadfast in their studies
and in war and in all lawful requirements, and when they have passed the
thirtieth year to promote them, by a second selection from those preferred in the
first, to still greater honors, and to prove and test them by the power of dialectic
to see which of them is able to disregard the eyes and other senses and go on to
being itself in company with truth. And at this point, my friend, the greatest care
is requisite.

How so? he said.

Do you not note, said I, how great is the harm caused by our present treatment
of dialectic?

What is that? he said.

Its practitioners are infected with lawlessness.

They are indeed.

Do you suppose, I said, that there is anything surprising in this state of mind, and
do you not think it pardonable?

In what way, pray? he said.

Their case, said I, resembles that of a supposititious son reared in abundant
wealth and a great and numerous family amid many flatterers, who on arriving
at manhood should become aware that he is not the child of those who call them-
selves his parents, and should not be able to find his true father and mother.
Can you divine what would be his feelings toward the flatterers and his sup-
posed parents in the time when he did not know the truth about his adoption,
and, again, when he knew it? Or would you like to hear my surmise?

I would.

Well, then, my surmise is, I said, that he would be more likely to honor his
reputed father and mother and other kin than the flatterers, and that there
would be less likelihood of his allowing them to lack for anything, and that he
would be less inclined to do or say to them anything unlawful, and less liable to
disobey them in great matters than to disobey the flatterers--during the time
when he did not know the truth.

It is probable, he said.

But when he found out the truth, I surmise that he would grow more remiss in
honor and devotion to them and pay more regard to the flatterers, whom he
would heed more than before and would henceforth live by their rule,
associating with them openly, while for that former father and his adoptive kin
he would not care at all, unless he was naturally of a very good disposition.

All that you say, he replied, would be likely to happen. But what is the
pertinency of this comparison to the novices of dialectic?

It is this. We have, I take it, certain convictions from childhood about the just
and the honorable, in which, in obedience and honor to them, we have been bred
as children under their parents.

Yes, we have,

And are there not other practices going counter to these, that have pleasures
attached to them and that flatter and solicit our souls, but do not win over
men of any decency; but they continue to hold in honor the teachings of their
fathers and obey them?

It is so.

Well, then, said I, when a man of this kind is met by the question, What is the
honorable? and on his giving the answer which he learned from the lawgiver, the
argument confutes him, and by many and various refutations upsets his faith and
makes him believe that this thing is no more honorable than it is base, and
when he has had the same experience about the just and the good and everything
that he chiefly held in esteem, how do you suppose that he will conduct himself
thereafter in the matter of respect and obedience to this traditional morality?

It is inevitable, he said, that he will not continue to honor and obey as before.

And then, said I, when he ceases to honor these principles and to think that
they are binding on him, and cannot discover the true principles, will he be likely
to adopt any other way of life than that which flatters his desires?

He will not, he said.

He will, then, seem to have become a rebel to law and convention instead of the
conformer that he was.

Necessarily.

And is not this experience of those who take up dialectic in this fashion to be
expected and, as I just now said, deserving of much leniency?

Yes, and of pity too, he said.

Then that we may not have to pity thus your thirty-year-old disciples, must you
not take every precaution when you introduce them to the study of dialectic?

Yes, indeed, he said,

And is it not one chief safeguard not to suffer them to taste of it while young?
For I fancy you have not failed to observe that lads, when they first get a taste
of disputation, misuse it as a form of sport, always employing it contentiously,
and, imitating confuters, they themselves confute others. They delight like pup-
pies in pulling about and tearing with words all who approach them.

Exceedingly so, he said.

And when they have themselves confuted many and been confuted by many,
they quickly fall into a violent distrust of all that they formerly held true, and
the outcome is that they themselves and the whole business of philosophy are
discredited with other men.

Most true, he said.

But an older man will not share this craze, said I, but will rather choose to
imitate the one who consents to examine truth dialectically than the one who
makes a jest and a sport of mere contradiction, and so he will himself be more
reasonable and moderate, and bring credit rather than discredit upon his pursuit.

Right, he said.

And were not all our preceding statements made with a view to this precaution?
our requirement that those permitted to take part in such discussions must have
orderly and stable natures, instead of the present practice of admitting to it any
chance and unsuitable applicant?

By all means, he said.

Is it enough, then, to devote to the continuous and strenuous study of dialectic
undisturbed by anything else, as in the corresponding discipline in bodily
exercises, twice as many years as were allotted to that?

Do you mean six or four? he said.

Well, I said, set it down as five. For after that you will have to send them down
into the cave again, and compel them to hold commands in war and the other
offices suitable to youth, so that they may not fall short of the other type in
experience either. And in these offices, too, they are to be tested to see whether
they will remain steadfast under diverse solicitations or whether they will flinch
and swerve.

How much time do you allow for that? he said.

Fifteen years, said I, and at the age of fifty those who have survived the tests and
approved themselves altogether the best in every task and form of knowledge
must be brought at last to the goal. We shall require them to turn upward the
vision of their souls and fix their gaze on that which sheds light on all, and when
they have thus beheld the good itself they shall use it as a pattern for the right
ordering of the state and the citizens and themselves throughout the remainder of
their lives, each in his turn, devoting the greater part of their time to the study
of philosophy, but when the turn comes for each, toiling in the service of the
state and holding office for the city's sake, regarding the task not as a fine
thing but a necessity. And so, when each generation has educated others like them-
selves to take their place as guardians of the state, they shall depart to the
Islands of the Blessed and there dwell. And the state shall establish public mem-
orials and sacrifices for them as to divinities if the Pythian oracle approves
or, if not, as to divine and godlike men.

A most beautiful finish, Socrates, you have put upon your rulers, as if you were
a statuary.

And on the women too, Glaucon, said I, for you must not suppose that my words
apply to the men more than to all women who arise among them endowed with
the requisite qualities.

That is right, he said, if they are to share equally in all things with the men as we
laid it down,

Well, then, said I, do you admit that our notion of the state and its polity is
not altogether a daydream, but that though it is difficult, it is in a way pos-
sible and in no other way than that described? when genuine philosophers, many
or one, becoming masters of the state scorn the present honors, regarding them
as illiberal and worthless, but prize the right and the honors that come from
that above all things, and regarding justice as the chief and the one indis-
pensable thing, in the service and maintenance of that reorganize and
administer their city?

In what way? he said. All inhabitants above the age of ten, I said, they will
send out

into the fields, and they will take over the children, remove them from the
manners and habits of their parents, and bring them up in their own customs and
laws which will be such as we have described. This is the speediest and easiest
way in which such a city and constitution as we have portrayed could be
established and prosper and bring most benefit to the people among whom it
arises.

Much the easiest, he said, and I think you have well explained the manner of
its realization if it should ever be realized.

Then, said I, have we not now said enough about this state and the corresponding
type of man--for it is evident what our conception of him will be?

It is evident, he said, and, to answer your question, I think we have finished.




BOOK VIII: FOUR FORMS OF GOVERNMENT




Very good. We are agreed then, Glaucon, that the state which is to achieve
the height of good government must have community of wives and children and
all education, and also that the pursuits of men and women must be the same in
peace and war, and that the rulers or kings over them are to be those who have
approved themselves the best in both war and philosophy.

We are agreed, he said.

And we further granted this, that when the rulers are established in office they
shall conduct these soldiers and settle them in habitations such as we described,
that have nothing private for anybody but are common for all, and in addition to
such habitations we agreed, if you remember, what should be the nature of their
possessions.

Why, yes, I remember, he said, that we thought it right that none of them should
have anything that ordinary men now possess, but that, being as it were athletes
of war and guardians, they should receive from the others as pay for their
guardianship each year their yearly sustenance, and devote their entire
attention to the care of themselves and the state.

That is right, I said. But now that we have finished this topic let us recall the
point at which we entered on the digression that has brought us here, so that we
may proceed on our way again by the same path.

That is easy, he said, for at that time, almost exactly as now, on the supposition
that you had finished the description of the city, you were going on to say that
you assumed such a city as you then described and the corresponding type of
man to be good, and that too though, as it appears, you had a still finer city and
type of man to tell of, but at any rate you were saying that the others are
aberrations, if this city is right. But regarding the other constitutions, my
recollection is that you said there were four species worth speaking of and
observing their defects and the corresponding types of men, in order that when
we had seen them all and come to an agreement about the best and the worst
man, we might determine whether the best is the happiest and the worst most
wretched or whether it is otherwise. And when I was asking what were the four
constitutions you had in mind, Polemarchus and Adimantus thereupon broke
in, and that was how you took up the discussion again and brought it to this
point.

Your memory is most exact, I said.

A second time then, as in a wrestling match, offer me the same hold, and when
I repeat my question try to tell me what you were then about to say.

I will if I can, said I.

And indeed, said he, I am eager myself to hear what four forms of government
you meant.

There will be no difficulty about that, said I. For those I mean are precisely those
that have names in common usage--that which the many praise, your Cretan and
Spartan constitution, and the second in place and in honor, that which is called
oligarchy, a constitution teeming with many ills, and its sequent counterpart and
opponent, democracy, and then the noble tyranny surpassing them all, the fourth
and final malady of a state. Can you mention any other type of government, I
mean any other that constitutes a distinct species? For, no doubt, there are
hereditary principalities and purchased kingships, and similar intermediate con-
stitutions which one could find in even greater numbers among the barbarians
than among the Greeks.

Certainly many strange ones are reported, be said

Are you aware, then, said I, that there must bv as many types of character
among men as there are forms of government? Or do you suppose that consti-
tutions spring from the proverbial oak or rock and not from the characters
of the citizens, which, as it were, by their momentum and weight in the
scales draw other things after them?

They could not possibly come from any other source, he said.

Then if the forms of government are five, the patterns of individual souls must
be five also.

Surely.

Now we have already described the man corresponding to aristocracy or the
government of the best, whom we aver to be the truly good and just man.

We have.

Must we not, then, next after this, survey the inferior types, the man who is
contentious and covetous of honor, corresponding to the Laconian constitution,
and the oligarchic man in turn, and the democratic and the tyrannical, in order
that, after observing the most unjust of all, we may oppose him to the most just,
and complete our inquiry as to the relation of pure justice and pure injustice in
respect of the happiness and unhappiness of the possessor, so that we may
either follow the counsel of Thrasymachus and pursue injustice or the present
argument and pursue justice?

Assuredly, he said, that is what we have to do.

Shall we, then, as we began by examining moral qualities in states before
individuals, as being more manifest there, so now consider first the constitution
based on the love of honor? I do not know of any special name for it in use. We
must call it either timocracy or timarchy. And then in connection with this we
will consider the man of that type, and thereafter oligarchy and the oligarch,
and again, fixing our eyes on democracy, we will contemplate the democratic
man, and fourthly, after coming to the city ruled by a tyrant and observing it, we
will in turn take a look into the tyrannical soul, and so try to make ourselves
competent judges of the question before us.

That would be at least a systematic and consistent way of conducting the
observation and the decision, he said.

Come, then, said I, let us try to tell in what way a timocracy would arise out
of an aristocracy. Or is this the simple and unvarying rule, that in every form
of government revolution takes its start from the ruling class itself, when dis-
sension arises in that, but so long as it is at one with itself, however small it
be, innovation is impossible?

Yes, that is so.

How, then, Glaucon, I said, will disturbance arise in our city, and how will
our helpers and rulers fall out and be at odds with one another and themselves?
Shall we, like Homer, invoke the Muses to tell how faction first fell upon
them, and say that these goddesses playing with us and teasing us as if
we were children address us in lofty, mock-serious tragic style?

How?

Somewhat in this fashion. Hard in truth it is for a state thus constituted to be
shaken and disturbed, but since for everything that has come into being destruc-
tion is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but
it shall surely be dissolved, and this is the manner of its dissolution. Not only for
plants that grow from the earth but also for animals that live upon it there is a
cycle of bearing and barrenness for soul and body as often as the revolutions of
their orbs come full circle, in brief courses for the short-lived and oppositely for
the opposite. But the laws of prosperous birth or infertility for your race, the
men you have bred to be your rulers will not for all their wisdom ascertain by
reasoning combined with sensation, but they will escape them, and there will be
a time when they will beget children out of season. Now for divine begettings
there is a period comprehended by a perfect number, and for mortal by the first
in which augmentations dominating and dominated when they have attained to
three distances and four limits of the assimilating and the dissimilating, the
waxing and the waning, render all things conversable and commensurable
with one another, whereof a basal four thirds wedded to the pempad yields two
harmonies at the third augmentation, the one the product of equal factors taken
one hundred times, the other of equal length one way but oblong--one
dimension of a hundred numbers determined by the rational diameters of the
pempad lacking one in each case, or of the irrational lacking two; the other
dimension of a hundred cubes of the triad. And this entire geometric number is
determinative of this thing, of better and inferior births. And when your
guardians, missing this, bring together brides and bridegrooms unseasonably, the
offspring will not be wellborn or fortunate. Of such offspring the previous
generation will establish the best, to be sure, in office, but still these, being
unworthy, and having entered in turn into the powers of their fathers, will first as
guardians begin to neglect us, paying too little heed to music and then to
gymnastics, so that our young men will deteriorate in their culture, and the rulers
selected from them will not approve themselves very efficient guardians for
testing Hesiod's and our races of gold, silver, bronze, and iron. And this
intermixture of the iron with the silver and the bronze with the gold will
engender unlikeness and an unharmonious unevenness, things that always beget
war and enmity wherever they arise. 'Of this lineage, look you,' we must aver the
dissension to be, wherever it occurs and always.

'And rightly too,' he said, we shall affirm that the Muses answer.

They must needs, I said, since they are Muses. Well, then, said he, what do the

Muses say next?

When strife arose, said I, the two groups were pulling against each other, the
iron and bronze toward money-making and the acquisition of land and houses
and gold and silver, and the other two. the golden and silver, not being poor, but
by nature rich in their souls, were trying to draw them back to virtue and their
original constitution, and thus, striving and contending against one another, they
compromised on the plan of distributing and taking for themselves the land and
the houses, enslaving and subjecting as periocci and serfs their former friends
and supporters, of whose freedom they had been the guardians, and occupying
themselves with war and keeping watch over these subjects.

I think, he said, that this is the starting point of the transformation.

Would not this polity, then, said I, be in some sort intermediate between
aristocracy and oligarchy?

By all means.

By this change, then, it would arise. But after the change what will be its way
of life? Is it not obvious that in some things it will imitate the preceding polity,
in some the oligarchy, since it is intermediate, and that it will also have some
qualities peculiar to itself?

That is so, he said.

Then in honoring its rulers and in the abstention of its warrior class from farming
and handicraft and money-making in general, and in the provision of common
public tables and the devotion to physical training and expertness in the game
and contest of war? in all these traits it will copy the preceding state?

Yes.

But in its fear to admit clever men to office, since the men it has of this
kind are no longer simple and strenuous but of mixed strain, and in its
inclining rather to the more high-spirited and simple-minded type, who are
better suited for war than for peace, and in honoring the stratagems and
contrivances of war and occupying itself with war most of the time--in
these respects for the most part its qualities will be peculiar to itself?

Yes.

Such men, said I, will be avid of wealth, like those in an oligarchy, and will
cherish a fierce secret lust for gold and silver, owning storehouses and private
treasuries where they may hide them away, and also the enclosures of their
homes, literal private love nests in which they can lavish their wealth on their
women and any others they please with great expenditure.

Most true, he said.

And will they not be stingy about money, since they prize it and are not allowed
to possess it openly, prodigal of others' wealth because of their appetites,
enjoying their pleasures stealthily, and running away from the law as boys from
a father, since they have not been educated by persuasion but by force because
of their neglect of the true Muse, the companion of discussion and philosophy,
and because of their preference of gymnastics to music?

You perfectly describe, he said, a polity that is a mixture of good and evil.

Why, yes, the elements have been mixed, I said, but the most conspicuous
feature in it is one thing only, due to the predominance of the high-spirited
element, namely contentiousness and covetousness of honor.

Very much so, said he.

Such, then, would be the origin and nature of this polity if we may merely out-
line the figure of a constitution in words and not elaborate it precisely, since
even the sketch will suffice to show us the most just and the most unjust type
of man, and it would be an impracticable task to set forth all forms of govern-
ment without omitting any, and all customs and qualities of men.

Quite right, he said.

What, then, is the man that corresponds to this constitution? What is his origin
and what his nature?

I fancy, Adimantus said, that he comes rather close to Glaucon here in point of
contentiousness.

Perhaps, said I, in that, but I do not think their natures are alike in the
following respects.

In what?

He will have to be somewhat self-willed and lacking in culture, yet a lover of
music and fond of listening to talk and speeches, though by no means himself a
rhetorician. And to slaves such a one would be harsh, not scorning them as
the really educated do, but he would be gentle with the freeborn and very
submissive to officials, a lover of office and of honor, not basing his claim to
office on ability to speak or anything of that sort but on his exploits in war or
preparation for war, and he would be a devotee of gymnastics and hunting.

Why, yes, he said, that is the spirit of that polity.

And would not such a man be disdainful of wealth too in his youth, but the older
he grew the more he would love it because of his participation in the covetous
nature and because his virtue is not sincere and pure since it lacks the best
guardian?

What guardian? said Adimantus.

Reason, said I, blended with culture, which is the only indwelling preserver of
virtue throughout life in the soul that possesses it.

Well said, he replied.

This is the character, I said, of the timocratic youth, resembling the city that
bears his name.

By all means.

His origin is somewhat on this wise. Sometimes he is the young son of a good
father who lives in a badly governed state and avoids honors and office and
lawsuits and all such meddlesomeness and is willing to forbear something of his
rights in order to escape trouble.

How does he originate? he said.

Why, when, to begin with, I said, he hears his mother complaining that her
husband is not one of the rulers and for that reason she is slighted among the
other women, and when she sees that her husband is not much concerned about
money and does not fight and brawl in private lawsuits and in the public
assembly, but takes all such matters lightly, and when she observes that he is
self-absorbed in his thoughts and neither regards nor disregards her overmuch,
and in consequence of all this laments and tells the boy that his father is too
slack and no kind of a man, with all the other complaints with which women nag
in such cases.

Many indeed, said Adimantus, and after their kind.

You are aware, then, said I, that the very house slaves of such men, if they are
loyal and friendly, privately say the same sort of things to the sons, and if they
observe a debtor or any other wrongdoer whom the father does not prosecute,
they urge the boy to punish all such when he grows to manhood and prove
himself more of a man than his father, and when the lad goes out he hears and
sees the same sort of thing. Men who mind their own affairs in the city are
spoken of as simpletons and are held in slight esteem, while meddlers who mind
other people's affairs are honored and praised. Then it is that the youth, hearing
and seeing such things, and on the other hand listening to the words of his father,
and with a near view of his pursuits contrasted with those of other men, is
solicited by both, his father watering and fostering the growth of the rational
principle in his soul and the others the appetitive and the passionate; and as he is
not by nature of a bad disposition but has fallen into evil communications, under
these two solicitations he comes to a compromise and turns over the government
in his soul to the intermediate principle of ambition and high spirit and becomes
a man haughty of soul and covetous of honor.

You have, I think, most exactly described his origin. Then, said I, we have our
second polity and second type of man.

We have, he said.

Shall we then, as Aeschylus would say, tell of another champion before another
gate, or rather, in accordance with our plan, the city first?

That, by all means, he said.

The next polity, I believe, would be oligarchy.

And what kind of a regime, said he, do you understand by oligarchy?

That based on a property qualification, said I, wherein the rich hold office and
the poor man is excluded.

I understand, said he.

Then, is not the first thing to speak of how timocracy passes over into this?

Yes.

And truly, said I, the manner of the change is plain even to the proverbial blind
man.

How so?

That treasure house which each possesses filled with gold destroys that polity,
for first they invent ways of expenditure for them-e selves and pervert the laws
to this end, and neither they nor their wives obey them.

That is likely, he said.

And then, I take it, by observing and emulating one another they bring the
majority of them to this way of thinking.

That is likely, he said.

And so, as time goes on, and they advance in the pursuit of wealth, the more
they hold that in honor the less they honor virtue. May not the opposition of
wealth and virtue be conceived as if each lay in the scale of a balance inclining
opposite ways?

Yes, indeed, he said.

So, when wealth is honored in a state, and the wealthy, virtue and the good
are less honored.

Obviously.

And that which men at any time honor they practice, and what is not honored is
neglected.

It is so.

Thus, finally, from being lovers of victory and lovers of honor they become
lovers of gain getting and of money, and they commend and admire the rich man
and put him in office but despise the man who is poor.

Quite so.

And is it not then that they pass a law defining the limits of an oligarchic
polity, prescribing a sum of money, a larger sum where it is more of an
oligarchy, where it is less a smaller, and proclaiming that no man shall hold
office whose property does not come up to the required valuation? And this law
they either put through by force of arms, or without resorting to that they
establish their government by terrorization. Is not that the way of it?

It is.

The establishment then, one may say, is in this wise.

Yes, he said, but what is the character of this constitution, and what are the
defects that we said it had?

To begin with, said I, consider the nature of its constitutive and
defining principle. Suppose men should appoint the pilots of ships in this way,
by property qualification, and not allow a poor man to navigate, even if he were
a better pilot.

A sorry voyage they would make of it, he said.

And is not the same true of any other form of rule?

I think so.

Except of a city, said I, or does it hold for a city too? Most of all, he said, by as
much as that is the greatest and most difficult rule of all.

Here, then, is one very great defect in oligarchy.

So it appears.

Well, and is this a smaller one?

What?

That such a city should of necessity be not one, but two, a city of the rich and a
city of the poor, dwelling together, and always plotting against one another.

No, by Zeus, said he, it is not a bit smaller.

Nor, further, can we approve of this?the likelihood that they will not be able
to wage war, because of the necessity of either arm-e ing and employing the
multitude, and fearing them more than the enemy, or else, if they do not make
use of them, of finding themselves on the field of battle, oligarchs indeed, and
rulers over a few. And to this must be added their reluctance to contribute
money, because they are lovers of money.

No, indeed, that is not admirable.

And what of the trait we found fault with long ago?the fact that in such a
state the citizens are busybodies and Jacks-of-all-trades, farmers, financiers,
and soldiers all in one? Do you think that is right?

By no manner of means.

Consider now whether this polity is not the first that admits that which is the
greatest of all such evils.

What?

The allowing a man to sell all his possessions, which another is permitted to
acquire, and after selling them to go on living in the city, but as no part of it,
neither a money-maker, nor a craftsman, nor a knight, nor a foot soldier, but
classified only as a pauper and a dependent.

This is the first, he said.

There certainly is no prohibition of that sort of thing in oligarchic states.
Otherwise some of their citizens would not be excessively rich, and others out-
and-out paupers.

Right.

But observe this. When such a fellow was spending his wealth, was he then of
any more use to the state in the matters of which we were speaking, or did he
merely seem to belong to the ruling class, while in reality he was neither ruler
nor helper in the state, but only a consumer of goods?

It is so, he said. He only seemed, but was just a spendthrift.

Shall we, then, say of him that as the drone springs up in the cell, a pest of the
hive, so such a man grows up in his home, a pest of the state?

By all means, Socrates, he said.

And has not God, Adimantus, left the drones which have wings and fly stingless
one and all, while of the drones here who travel afoot he has made some stingless
but has armed others with terrible stings? And from the stingless finally issue
beggars in old age, but from those furnished with stings all that are denomi-
nated malefactors?

Most true, he said.

It is plain, then, said I, that wherever you see beggars in a city, there are
somewhere in the neighborhood concealed thieves and cut-purses and temple
robbers and similar artists in crime.

Clearly, he said.

Well, then, in oligarchic cities do you not see beggars?

Nearly all are such, he said, except the ruling class.

Are we not to suppose, then, that there are also many criminals in them
furnished with stings, whom the rulers by their surveillance forcibly restrain?

We must think so, he said.

And shall we not say that the presence of such citizens is the result of a defective
culture and bad breeding and a wrong constitution of the state?

We shall.

Well, at any rate such would be the character of the oligarchic state, and these, or
perhaps even more than these, would be the evils that afflict it.

Pretty nearly these, he said.

Then, I said, let us regard as disposed of the constitution called oligarchy,
whose rulers are determined by a property qualification. And next we are to
consider the man who resembles it?how he arises and what after that his
character is.

Quite so, he said.

Is not the transition from that timocratic youth to the oligarchic type mostly on
this wise?

How?

When a son born to the timocratic man at first emulates his father, and follows in
his footsteps, and then sees him suddenly dashed, as a ship on a reef, against the
state, and making complete wreckage of both his possessions and himself--perhaps
he has been a general, or has held some other important office, and has then been
dragged into court by mischievous sycophants and put to death or banished or out-
lawed and has lost all his property . . .

It is likely, he said.

And the son, my friend, after seeing and suffering these things, and losing his
property, grows timid, I fancy, and forthwith thrusts headlong from his
bosom's throne that principle of love of honor and that high spirit, and being
humbled by poverty turns to the getting of money, and greedily and stingily and
little by little by thrift and hard work collects property. Do you not suppose that
such a one will then establish on that throne the principle of appetite and avarice,
and set it up as the great king in his soul, adorned with tiaras and collars of gold,
and girt with the Persian sword?

I do, he said.

And under this domination he will force the rational and high-d spirited
principles to crouch lowly to right and left as slaves, and will allow the one to
calculate and consider nothing but the ways of making more money from a little,
and the other to admire and honor nothing but riches and rich men, and to take
pride in nothing but the possession of wealth and whatever contributes to that?
There is no other transformation so swift and sure of the ambitious youth into the
avaricious type, Is this, then, our oligarchic man? said I.

He is developed, at any rate, out of a man resembling the constitution from
which the oligarchy sprang.

Let us see, then, whether he will have a like character. Let us see. Would he
not, in the first place, resemble it in prizing wealth above everything?

Inevitably.

And also by being thrifty and laborious, satisfying only his own necessary
appetites and desires and not providing for expenditure on other things, but
subduing his other appetites as vain and unprofitable?

By all means.

He would be a squalid fellow, said I, looking for a surplus of profit in
everything, and a hoarder, the type the multitude approves. Would not this be the
character of the man who corresponds to such a polity?

I certainly think so, he said. Property, at any rate, is the thing most esteemed by
that state and that kind of man.

That, I take it, said I, is because he has never turned his thoughts to true culture.
I think not, he said, else he would not have made the blind one leader of his choir
and first in honor.

Well said, I replied. But consider this. Shall we not say that owing to this lack
of culture the appetites of the drone spring up in him, some the beggarly, others
the rascally, but that they are forcibly re-c strained by his general self-sur-
veillance and self-control?

We shall indeed, he said.

Do you know, then, said I, to what you must look to discern the rascalities of
such men?

To what? he said.

To guardianships of orphans, and any such opportunities of doing injustice with
impunity.

True.

And is it not apparent by this that in other dealings, where he enjoys the repute
of a seeming just man. he by some better element in himself forcibly keeps
down other evil desires dwelling within, not persuading them that it is better not'
nor taming them by reason, but by compulsion and fear, trembling for his
possessions generally.

Quite so. he said.

Yes, by Zeus, said I, my friend. In most of them, when there is occasion to spend
the money of others, you will discover the existence of dronelike appetites.

Most emphatically.

Such a man. then, would not be free from internal dissension. He would not be
really one, but in some sort a double man. Yet for the most part, his better
desires would have the upper hand over the worse.

It is so.

And for this reason, I presume, such a man would be more seemly, more respectable,
than many others, but the true virtue of a soul in unison and harmony with itself
would escape him and dwell afar.

I think so.

And again, the thrifty stingy man would be a feeble competitor personally in
the city for any prize of victory or in any other honorable emulation. He is
unwilling to spend money for fame and rivalries of that sort, and, fearing to
awaken his prodigal desires and call them into alliance for the winning of the
victory, he fights in true oligarchic fashion with a small part of his resources
and is defeated for the most part and?finds himself rich!

Yes indeed, he said.

Have we any further doubt, then, I said, as to the correspondence and
resemblance between the thrifty and money-making man and the oligarchic
state?

None, he said.

We have next to consider, it seems, the origin and nature of democracy, that we
may next learn the character of that type of man and range him beside the others
for our judgment.

That would at least be a consistent procedure.

Then, said I, is not the transition from oligarchy to democracy effected in some
such way as this?by the insatiate greed for that which it set before itself as the
good, the attainment of the greaU possible wealth?

In what way?

Why, since its rulers owe their offices to their wealth, they are not willing to
prohibit by law the prodigals who arise among the youth from spending and wasting
their substance. Their object is, by lending money on the property of such men,
and buying it in, to become still richer and more esteemed.

By all means.

And is it not at once apparent in a state that this honoring of wealth is incom-
patible with a sober and temperate citizenship, but that one or the other of
these two ideals is inevitably neglected, That is pretty clear, he said.
And such negligence and encouragement of licentiousness in oligarchies not
infrequently has reduced to poverty men of no ignoble quality.

It surely has.

And there they sit, I fancy, within the city, furnished with stings, that is, arms,
some burdened with debt, others disfranchised, others both, hating and conspiring
against the acquirers of their estates and the rest of the citizens, and eager for
revolution.

Tis so.

But these money-makers with down-bent heads, pretending not even to see them, but
inserting the sting of their money into any of the remainder who do not resist,
and harvesting from them in interest as it were a manifold progeny of the parent
sum, foster the drone and pauper element in the state.

They do indeed multiply it, he said.

And they are not willing to quench the evil as it bursts into flame either by way
of a law prohibiting a man from doing as he likes with his own, or in this way,
by a second law that does away with such abuses.

What law?