Some dwell upon the earth as holy spirits,

Good guardians protecting mortal men?”

“Certainly we shall.”

“So we will enquire of the god* how we ought to inter spiritual and divine men, and what distinction to give them, and we should inter them according as he shall answer.”

“So we will indeed.”

“And to the end of time we will tend their tombs and worship before them as the sepulchres of spirits; and we will observe these same customs whenever one dies from old age or in any other way, of those who have been judged in life to be pre-eminent.”

“At least that is just.”

“Next, how shall our soldiers behave towards their enemies?”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“Take enslavement first: Do you think it just for Hellenes to enslave the people of Hellenic cities, and should they allow another city to do so if they can help it? Should it not be the custom to spare the Hellenic race, foreseeing the danger of racial enslavement under the barbarians?”†

“To spare is out and out the best,” he said.

“Then they shall not possess a Hellenic slave themselves, nor consent that other Hellenes should possess one.”

“Certainly,” he said, “and in that way they would be more turned against the barbarians and keep their hands off themselves.”

“Well, will they strip the dead,” said I, “when they are victors, more than of their arms? Is that good? It may offer an excuse to cowards not to attack the fighting man, as if they were doing part of their duty when poking about the dead man; and many an army has perished because of such robbery.”

“Very true.”

“Don’t you think it mean and greedy to despoil a corpse, and a sign of a petty, womanish mind to think the dead body an enemy, when the foeman has flitted afar, and only what he fought with is left? Do you think there is any difference between those who do this and dogs which worry the stones that strike them and never touch the thrower?”

“Not a bit,” said he.

“Then we will have nothing to do with the robbing of corpses and with preventing their being taken up for burial?”

“Nothing, by God!” he said.

“Furthermore, we will not carry the arms to a temple and dedicate them there, least of all the arms of Hellenes, if we care anything for good feeling towards the other Hellenes. Rather than that we shall even fear a pollution in bringing such arms of our own people to a temple, unless the god himself says otherwise.”

“Most rightly so,” said he.

“And what of ravaging the land of Hellenes and burning their houses? How will your soldiers deal with their enemies in that matter?”

“Tell me your own opinion,” said he. “I should be glad to hear.”

“Then it seems to me that they should do neither, but only take the year’s crops. Shall I tell you why?”

“Pray do.”

“My opinion is: Just as there are these two different names, war and faction, so there are two epithets which apply to two kinds of disagreement. The two epithets I mean are, one, domestic and family, the other, alien and outland; faction is the name given to domestic hostility, war to alien.”

“That is quite to the point,” said he.

“Consider then whether this is equally to the point: I say that the Hellenic race is domestic and family to itself, outland and alien to the barbarian.”

“Good,” he said.

“Well then—Hellenes fighting against barbarians and barbarians against Hellenes we will say are enemies by nature, and that they are warring against each other, and this hostility should be called ‘war’; but Hellenes fighting against Hellenes, whenever they do such a thing, we will say are by nature friends, and that in such a case Hellas is diseased with factions, and a hostility of this sort should be called faction.”

“I fully agree with your way of thinking.”

“Consider then this faction,” I said, “as it is now understood, whenever something like this happens and a city is divided against itself. If both parties lay waste the farms of each other and burn their houses, the faction is thought abominable and both parties unpatriotic, or else they could never have brought themselves to ravage their mother and nurse; but all think it reasonable for the victors to take the crops of the vanquished—only they must behave as expecting to be friends again someday and not to make war forever.”

“Yes,” he said, “this is a much more humane feeling than the other.”

“Now then,” I said, “will not the city which you are founding be Hellenic?”

“It ought to be so,” he said.

“Will they not be both good and gentle?”

“Abundantly.”

“And will they not love the Hellenic nation? Will they not consider Hellas to be their own, and share in the same temples as the others do?”

“Most assuredly so.”

“Then they will consider this quarrel with Hellenes as faction, since it is against their own, and not so much as give it the name of war?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“And they will quarrel as expecting one day to be friends again?”

“Certainly.”

“Then they will chastise kindly; they will not punish to the extent of slavery or destruction, being chastisers, not enemies.”

“Just so,” he said.

“Being Hellenes then, they will not ravage Hellas; they will not burn houses; they will not admit all to be their foes in any city, men and women and children, but their foes will always be few—only those who caused the quarrel; and for all these reasons they will never wish to ravage the land, since most of them are their friends, nor to pull down the houses. They will carry on the quarrel only until the guilty ones shall be compelled by the suffering innocents to make amends.”

“I, at least, agree,” he said; “that is how our citizens ought to behave towards their adversaries, but to barbarians they should do as Hellenes now do to each other.”

“Let us lay down this law, then, for our guardians, that they neither lay waste the land nor burn the houses.”

“Yes,” he said, “and let us agree that these rules are as good as the former ones.

“But if we let you go on like this, my dear Socrates, I think you will never remember the question you thrust aside some time ago before you made all this long talk—is this constitution able to come into being, and if so, how in the world is it possible. If it could ever be, then I agree that all would be fine in the city that had it. I even add something which you omit: against their enemies they would fight at their very best because they would never desert each other, when they knew each other and called one another by these names of ‘brother,’

‘father,’ ‘son.’ And if women also should be on the campaign, whether in the same rank or posted in the rear, to strike terror into the enemy or in case of some necessity for help at any time, I am sure they would be made quite invincible by that. And they would have many blessings at home which you have not mentioned, I see also. I freely admit that all these good things would be there, and thousands besides, if this constitution could be founded, so you need say no more about it. But the one thing we should try to prove to ourselves is whether it is possible, and if so, how; let us leave the other things to take care of themselves.”

“What a sudden assault you have made upon my proposals!” I said. “You have no pity on a poor wretch in a tight corner!* Perhaps you don’t know that this is the third wave; I have only just escaped two, and here you come with the third and largest and most dangerous.† As soon as you see it and hear it you will certainly forgive me, and know that I had good reason to shrink and fear before telling such an extraordinary tale and trying to examine it.”

“The more you talk in that way,” he said, “the less we will let you go; tell us you must how this constitution can come into being. Go on, and don’t waste any more time.”

“Very well,” I said. “First it must be remembered that our quest was for justice, if we could find out what it is, and injustice also; and that has brought us to this stage.”

“Yes,” he said, “but what of that?”

“Oh, nothing; but if we do find what sort of thing justice is, shall we claim that the just man must in no way differ from perfect justice, but must in all respects be such as justice is? Or shall we be content if he gets as near as possible to it and has more justice in him than any other man?”

“Oh, that will content us,” he said.

“Very well, then,” I said, “what we sought was a model to show us what actual justice is, and the man perfectly just if he could be so, and what he would be if such a man could be; so with injustice again and the utterly unjust man. We kept our eyes on these two, to decide how each would prove to be as regards happiness and unhappiness; so that we might be forced to agree about ourselves also, that each of us would receive a portion most like to theirs according as he was most like to them. We were not trying to show that the thing is possible.”

“That is quite true,” he said.

“Take a painter now: if he should paint a pattern of the ideally* beautiful man, and put into the painting all the details properly, but if he could not prove that such a man is possible, do you think he would be the worse painter for that?”

“Not a bit, I swear,” said he.

“Very well,” said I, “what we made was a pattern of the good city in words.”

“Just that,” he said.

“Then if we cannot prove that it is possible to make a real state in the way it was described, do you think our description is any the worse?”

“Not at all,” said he.

“Then that is the truth,” I said, “and if I must really do my best for you, and show how and in what respect it could most likely be possible, you must make the same concession to me for such a proof.”

“What?”

“Is it possible for things to be done exactly as they are said? Or is it natural that doing has less grasp of the truth than saying, even if some do not think so? Come now, do you agree yourself about this or not?”

“I do.”

“Then do not force me to prove that what we have discussed in words must be done wholly and exactly in fact. No, if we should be able to find how a city could be managed most nearly as we described it, you must allow that the thing is possible and your demand has been met. Won’t you be satisfied to get that? I should myself.”

“So should I,” he said.

“Then the next thing is, as it seems, we must try to discover and to show what exactly is now badly conducted in cities, which cause them not to be managed like this one, and what is the smallest change that will bring a city into our kind of constitution: one thing if that is enough, or else two, or as few in number as possible and least farreaching.”

“By all means,” he said.

“There is one change,” said I, “which I think would make the transformation, and I think I can prove it; it is certainly neither small nor easy, but it is possible.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“Ah! now,” I said. “I am right upon that which we likened to the greatest wave. But I will speak, even if the deluge is going to have the laugh of us and swallow us up utterly in a wave of contempt; do consider what I am going to say.”

“Go on,” he said.

“The philosophers must become kings in our cities,” I said, “or those who are now called kings and potentates must learn to seek wisdom like true and genuine philosophers, and so political power and intellectual wisdom will be joined in one; and the crowds of natures who now pursue one or the other separately must be excluded. Until that happens, my dear Glaucon, there can be no rest from troubles for the cities, and I think for the whole human race. Until then, this constitution which we have now evolved in words will never grow into being, as something possible; it will never see the light of the sun, but it will live only in our description. Now this is what has made me so reluctant so long to speak, because I saw that it would run clean contrary to opinion; for it is not easy to see that no other constitution could give happiness to man or to people.”

He answered, “O Socrates! what a speech, what a doctrine, you have thrown at our heads! Say this, and you’ll have an army upon you in a jiffy, don’t make any mistake, and no contemptible adversaries! They will throw off their coats and come at you stripped, each seizing the first weapon he finds, in a furious rush to wreak signal vengeance. If your logic does not defend you and keep them off, you will pay the penalty and be well and truly jeered at!”

“And it’s all your fault,” I said.

“And I’m glad of it,” said he. “But I won’t desert you, I’ll help all I can. What I can do is to wish you luck and say, ‘Go to it!’ Yes, and perhaps I could answer your questions less objectionably than another. Count on my help, then, and try to show unbelievers that what you say is right.”

“I must try,” said I, “since you provide this mighty alliance. I think it necessary, then, if we are to escape that great army of yours, to define for them clearly whom we mean by the philosophers who ought to rule, as we dare to say. If we can make that clear, a man can make some defence, by showing that it is the proper nature of these to keep hold of true wisdom and to lead in the city, but of the others to leave philosophy alone and follow their leader.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is high time to define that clearly.”

“Come along, then, follow me on my road and see if we can explain it sufficiently somehow.”

“Come on!” he said.

“I shall have to remind you, then,” said I, “or perhaps you remember, that when we say someone loves a thing he must obviously be fond of it altogether, not loving part of it and lacking love for another part, if we describe him aright.”

“I need reminding, as it seems,” he said, “for I really don’t understand.”

“Oh dear,” I said, “that remark, Glaucon, would suit someone else better. A lover like you ought not to forget that all youths in their bloom sting and stir somehow or other the lover and courter of boys; they all seem worthy of attention and a kiss. Isn’t that how you all feel towards young beauties? You will praise one with a tilted nose and call him Gracie, another’s hook, you say, is a royal nose, the one between has the happy mean; swarthy ones are brave to look at, fair are little angels; as for honey-coloured, the very name, you think, must be the invention of a coaxing lover who does not mind a pallid skin one bit if there is bloom behind it. In one word, you make every excuse and blurt out anything and everything so as not to reject any who are in fresh bloom.”

“If you wish to infer from me,” he said, “that amorous people do so, I grant it, just to help your argument along.”

“And then again,” I said, “you find those who are fond of wine doing just the same, don’t you? They make any and every excuse for welcoming a drink.”

“So they do.”

“And those who are in love with honour, you find them the same, I think; if they can’t become generals they are willing to be captains, and if they can’t have honour from great imposing people they are content to have it from common, little people, but honour of some sort they will have.”

“Exactly so.”

“Now then, say yes or no to this: When we speak of one who has a desire for something, does he desire the whole thing, whatever it may be, and not only a part?”

“The whole,” he said.

“Then we may say the philosopher, the wisdom-lover, desires wisdom so, not merely parts but the whole.”

“True.”

“So if anyone makes a fuss about his studies, especially one young who does not know what is good or what is not, we shall say he is no lover of learning and no philosopher. He is like a fussy feeder, not really hungry, who has no appetite for his vittles; we don’t call him a philosopher of the table, but just a bad trencherman.”

“Just the right word, that!”

“But if anyone has a good appetite for study, if he is ready to taste every dish, and tackles learning gladly and never can have enough, we justly call him a philosopher, don’t we?”

Glaucon replied, “You will find many of that sort and they are very odd people. Of the same sort, so at least it seems to me, are sight-fanciers always gazing at shows, who delight in learning something; there are lecture-fanciers who love listening, the last persons in the world to be counted philosophers—they will never attend a discussion or any such serious study if they can help it, but their ears are for public hire; they run about to hear all the concerts at festival time,* not leaving out one town or one village. So we are to allow all these to be philosophers, all the fanciers of such petty performances?”

“Not at all,” said I, “but they are imitation philosophers.”

“And which do you call the real ones?” he asked.

“Those who are sight-fanciers of truth,” said I.

“Well,” he said, “that is right enough, but what do you mean by it?”

“It would not be easy to explain,” said I, “to anyone else; but you will agree with me, I think, about this.”

“About what?”

“Since the beautiful is opposite to the ugly, these are two.”

“Oh, of course.”

“Since they are two, each is one.”

“Yes, yes.”

“The same can be said of other pairs, just and unjust, good and bad, and all such notions: each of these by itself is one, but each appears to be many because each shows itself everywhere in community with the others and with actions and bodies.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“Then here I draw the line,” said I. “On one side are the sight-fanciers and art-fanciers you spoke of, and practical men; on the other side again the subjects of our discussion, those who alone may rightly be named philosophers.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The one class, I take it,” said I, “sound-fanciers and sight-fanciers, delight in beautiful voices and colours and shapes and all which craftsmen have made from such; but their mind is incapable of seeing and delighting in the beautiful itself.”

“That is certainly so,” he said.

“But the other class are able to approach the beautiful itself and to see it by itself; and would not these be few?”

“Very few.”

“Then if a man believes things to be beautiful, but does not believe in beauty by itself, and cannot follow when he is led towards the knowledge of it, what is his life? Is he awake, or is his life a dream? What do you think? Consider. What is dreaming but this, whether one be asleep or awake: thinking what is like something to be not the likeness but the thing itself?”

“I at least would say,” he replied, “that such a one is dreaming.”

“Take the opposite case. The man who believes in beauty itself, and can distinguish it from things which partake of it, who does not believe the things with beauty to be beauty, or beauty to be those things: do you think that his life is a dream, or is he awake?”

“He is awake,” said he, “no doubt about that.”

“Then could we not call this man’s state of mind knowledge, as of one who knows, and the other’s opinion, as of one who opines?”

“By all means.”

“Then suppose the one who opines but does not know, as we say, suppose he is angry with us and challenges us as not speaking the truth; can we console him and peacefully persuade him without telling him plainly that he is not sane?”

“We ought to try,” he said.

“Very well, think what we shall say to him. Shall we say that if he knows anything, we won’t grudge him that; on the contrary, we shall be delighted to see that he does know something. Then we might add the question,

‘Does the knower know something or nothing, please tell us that?’ But answer for him yourself.”

“I will answer, then,” said he, “that he knows something.”

“Something which is or which is not?”

“Which is—how could he know what is not?”

“Then we are sufficiently convinced that however we may examine it, that which wholly is, is wholly knowable, and that which in no way is, is in every way unknowable?”

“Most sufficiently.”

“Good, but if there is anything in such a state as both to be and not to be, that would lie between that which simply is and that which is not at all; is that correct?”

“Yes, between them.”

“So since knowledge belongs to what is, and ignorance of necessity to what is not, for this thing between, something must be sought between ignorance and acquired knowledge, if there really is such a thing between?”

“Certainly.”

“Do we say there is such a thing as opinion?”

“Of course.”

“Is it the same power as knowledge or different?”

“Different.”

“Then opinion has been assigned to one thing and knowledge to another, according to the power of each.”

“Just so.”

“Then knowledge naturally belongs to that which is, to know in what way it is? But stay, here is a distinction I think I must make first.”

“How do you mean?”

“We will say that ‘powers’ are a class of entities—I mean the powers which make us able to do what we are able, and everything else to do what it is able. For example, sight and hearing are powers, if you really understand what sort of things I mean.”

“Oh, I understand,” said he.

“Then hear what I think about them. In power I see no colour, and no shape, or anything of that kind, such as I see in many other things, which I hold in view when I distinguish objects in my mind, some as being different from others, but in power I look only at one thing, what does it belong to and what does it effect; in this way I always call each of them a power, and if one belongs to the same thing and effects the same thing I call it the same power, but one that belongs to another thing and does another thing I call another power. What about you? What do you do?”

“The same as you,” he said.

“Come back again now, my good friend,” I went on.

“Knowledge—do you say it is a power, or what class do you put it in?”

“This power class,” he said, “yes, most mighty of all powers.”

“And opinion—shall we put that with power, or with another class?”

“Of course not with another class,” he said, “for that with which we are able to opine can be nothing else than opinion.”

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

“Yes, no one with common sense would say that the infallible is the same as the fallible.”

“Good,” said I, “so we are clearly agreed that opinion is different from knowledge.”

“Yes, different.”

“Then each of them has a different power over a different thing.”

“Necessarily.”

“Knowledge, I take it, over that which is, to know in what state that is.”

“Yes.”

“And opinion, we say, has power to opine?”

“Yes.”

“To opine the same that knowledge knows? Will the same thing be both knowable and opinable, or is that impossible?”

“Impossible,” he said, “from what has been agreed between us; if really different powers belong to different things, and both knowledge and opinion are powers, and they are different, as we say, it follows that knowable and opinable cannot be the same.”

“Then if the knowable is that which is, the opinable is different from that which is.”

“Yes, different.”

“Then does it opine what is not? Or is it impossible to opine what is not? Think a moment: Does not the opiner bring his opinion to something? Or is it possible to opine and yet to opine nothing?”

“Impossible.”

“Then the opiner opines some one thing?”

“Yes.”

“But that which is not, is not some one thing; it would most properly be named nothing.”

“By all means.”

“Further, we assigned ignorance to what is not, of necessity, and knowledge to what is?”

“Rightly so,” he said.

“Then he does not opine either what is or what is not.”

“True.”

“Opinion then would be neither ignorance nor knowledge.”

“So it seems.”

“Then is it outside of both these, surpassing either knowledge in clearness or ignorance in unclearness?”

“Neither.”

“So then,” I said, “opinion is darker than knowledge and brighter than ignorance? Is that what appears to you?”

“Most certainly,” said he.

“And it lies between the two?”

“Yes.”

“Between them, that is where opinion lies.”

“Exactly so.”

“We have already asserted that if anything should be found, as it were, being and not being at the same time, such would lie between what simply is and what wholly is not; and neither knowledge nor ignorance would belong to it but that which was found between knowledge and ignorance.”

“You are right.”

“And now between these two has been found what we call opinion.”

“It has.”

“One thing, then, seems to be left for us to find, that which partakes of both being and not-being, which could not be named simply one or the other; so that if it appears, we may justly name it the opinable, assigning thus extremes to extremes and between to between. Don’t you think so?”

“I do.”

“We have so much then, clear before us. Now let that honest fellow speak out, I will say, now let him answer my question. He does not believe in the beautiful itself, he will have no model of perfect beauty always unchangeable, but he believes in a host of beautiful things; this is that sight-fancier who will not tolerate to be told that the beautiful is one,* and the just is one, and so forth. This is my question: ‘My good man, of all these beautiful things is there a single one which will not sometimes appear ugly? Of all these just things will one never appear unjust? Of all these pious things, will one never appear impious?’”

“No; it is inevitable,” he said, “that they would appear both beautiful in a way and in a way ugly, and so with all you mention in your questions.”

“And again, the host of doubles can appear as halves all the same?”

“Every one of them.”

“And things great and small, and light and heavy, as we call them, cannot they have the opposite names equally well?”

“They can,” said he. “Each will have part in both opposites.”

“Then is each of these many things really what we call it, or equally is it not what we call it?”

“This is like the double meanings which they play with at table, like the children’s riddle about the eunuch, where they riddle how he shot at the bat, what he hit it with and what it sat on.* These sayings also have double meanings, and it is impossible to fix any of them firmly in the mind as being or not being, or as both or as neither.”†

“Then don’t you know what to do with them?” said I;

“do you know where better to put them than between being and not-being? For they cannot seem brighter than being, so that they should more be, or darker than not-being, so that they should more not-be.”

“Very true,” he said.

“We have found then, as it seems, that the common beliefs of the multitude about beautiful and so forth are just rolling about between simply and truly being and not being.”

“We have.”

“But we have agreed already that if any belief of this kind should come to light it ought to be called opinable and not knowable, something astray in the middle and caught by the middle power.”

“We have.”

“Then if people gaze at many beautiful things, and cannot see the beautiful itself or follow one who leads them to it, and the same with just things and justice itself and so in all cases, we will say they opine all these but know nothing of what they opine?”

“That must be so,” he said.

“But what of those who gaze at all these as they are in themselves unchangeable forever? Those do not opine, but know?”

“That also must be so.”

“Shall we not say also that those men welcome and love the things to which knowledge belongs, and the others the things of opinion? Do we not remember saying that these love and gaze at beautiful sounds and colours and so on, and will not tolerate the idea of the beautiful itself as something which is?”

“We remember.”

“Then shall we perhaps give offence by calling them philodoxers rather than philosophers?* Will they be very angry with us if we call them that?”

“Not if they take my advice,” he said; “for to be angry with the truth is not right.”

“And those who welcome that which is, in each case, must be called true philosophers, not philodoxers.”

“By all means.”

BOOK VI

“So then, Glaucon, they have appeared at last!” I said, “and we know who are the philosophers and who are not, after our argument has travelled a long and difficult road.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “it would not have been easy by a shorter road.”

“So it seems,” I said, “though I can’t help thinking at least that it might have been better shown if we had only had this to discuss. But there are so many things left to examine for one who means to discover how just life differs from unjust.”

“Well, what are we to take next?” he asked.

“Why, the next thing, of course!” I said—“since philosophers alone are able to lay hold of the ever same and unchangeable, and those who cannot do so, but keep wandering amid the changeable and manifold are not philosophers,—which ought to be leaders of a city?”

“I hardly know what to say, without saying too much,” he said.

“Whichever of the two,” said I, “appear able to guard the laws and habits of cities, set them up as guardians.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“Here is another question,” said I: “Ought a guardian to be blind or sharp-sighted when he watches anything? Is that clear?”

“Of course it is clear,” he said.

“Well then, are those any better than blind men who are in truth deprived of knowledge of what truly each thing is?—who have no bright-shining pattern in the soul; who cannot fix their eyes on the truest, like painters, always referring to it and beholding it most exactly, and only thus lay down ordinances here as regards what is beautiful and just and good, if that is necessary, and preserve and keep safe those already laid down?”

“No indeed,” he said, “they are not much better than the blind.”

“Then shall we choose to establish these as guardians, or those who do know everything that really is, and in experience are not inferior to the others, and in any portion of virtue, too, are not behind them?”

“Really it would be extraordinary,” said he, “to choose others, provided that the philosophers were not otherwise inferior, when they would be superior in this very knowledge—perhaps the greatest of superiorities.”

“Then let us say now, in what way the same persons will be able to have both qualifications.”

“By all means.”

“Then we should first learn their nature, as we said when we began this talk. And I believe that if we can satisfy ourselves as to that, we shall agree both that the same persons are able to have both, and that these and no others ought to be leaders of cities.”

“How?”

“One thing in the nature of philosophers let us take as agreed, that they always are in love with learning, that is, whatever makes clear to them anything of that being* which is eternal, and does not merely wander about between the limits of birth and death.”

“Let that be taken as agreed.”

“Further,” said I, “they never leave hold of this being, if they can help it, the whole or a part, neither a greater part nor smaller, neither a more honourable part nor less honourable. We have shown that already in discussing lovers of honour and the amorous.”

“You are right,” he answered.

“Next, consider if there be necessity to have something else, in the nature of those who are to be such as we described.”

“What?”

“Truthfulness—never to admit willingly a falsehood, to hate it and to love the truth.”

“That is likely,” said he.

“Not only likely, my friend,” said I; “it is absolute necessity that one who is in love with anything by his nature should be fond of all that is akin to his beloved and at home in his beloved.”

“Quite right,” said he.

“But could you find anything more at home in wisdom than truth?”

“Of course not,” said he.

“Then is it possible for the same nature to love wisdom and to love falsehood?”

“By no means.”

“So the real lover of learning must reach after all truth with all his might from youth upwards.”

“By all means.”

“But further, if the desires in anyone weigh strongly towards some one thing, we know, I suppose, that they are weaker for other things, like a flow of water drawn away to one place by a channel.”

“Certainly.”

“Well, when the desires in anyone flow towards learning and every such object, their concern would surely be with the pleasure of the soul within itself, and they would leave alone bodily pleasures, if one were a true lover of wisdom, not a sham.”

“That is utterly necessary.”

“Again, such a one would be temperate, and in no wise a money-lover; for to seek earnestly those things for which wealth with its great expenditure is earnestly sought belongs to anyone but him.”

“That is so.”

“There is something more which you must ask if you mean to distinguish the philosopher’s nature from the sham.”

“What is that?”

“Has it a touch of meanness? Don’t overlook that; for littleness is the most opposite, I take it, to a soul which is always yearning to reach after what is whole and complete, both human and divine.”

“Very true,” said he.

“Then if a mind has magnificence, and a view over all time and all being, do you believe such a one thinks human life a great thing?”

“Impossible,” said he.

“Then he will consider death to be no terror?”

“Not in the least,” said he.

“Then a cowardly and mean nature could have no part in true philosophy, as it seems.”

“I think not.”

“Very well; one well-ordered and not covetous, not mean or cowardly, no impostor, could never become a hard bargainer or unjust?”

“It is not possible.”

“Here too is something which you must consider in distinguishing the true and sham wisdom-loving soul—whether from childhood the man is just and gentle, or unsocial and savage.”

“By all means.”

“Another thing you will not omit, I believe.”

“What?”

“Is he teachable or unteachable? Do you expect that anyone will ever properly love doing anything when he would only do it painfully and effect little with much work?”

“That could not be.”

“Again, what if he could not preserve anything he learnt, being full of forgetfulness? Would not such a one certainly be empty of knowledge?”

“Of course he would.”

“So, labouring uselessly, don’t you think he will be compelled at last to hate such work and himself too?”

“Of course.”

“A forgetful soul, then, we should never include among the souls capable of loving wisdom enough; we must look for one of good memory.”

“By all means.”

“Again, we should say, bad culture and bad manners in a nature could only draw the man to bad proportion.”*

“Surely.”

“And do you think truth is akin to bad proportion, or to good proportion?”

“Good proportion.”

“So, in addition, let us look for a mind also naturally well-proportioned and graceful, which will make the in-born nature easy to lead towards every form of real being.”

“Of course.”

“Very well. Surely the qualities in our list follow one from another, and they are necessary for a soul which is to apprehend real being sufficiently and perfectly—do you disagree anywhere?”

“No, indeed, they are most necessary.”

“Then can you find a fault anywhere in such a pursuit, which a man would never be able to practise competently unless he were by nature good at remembering and learning, endowed with magnificence and grace, friendly and akin to truth, justice, courage, temperance?”

“Not Fault-finding himself†† personified,” said he,

“could find any fault in that.”

“Very well,” I said, “when such men are perfected by education and ripe age, you would commit the city to them alone, wouldn’t you?”

And Adeimantos answered, “What you say, Socrates, no one could contradict. But you should know what happens to those who hear you each time you speak in this way. They feel their own inexperience in question and answer, and they think they are led astray a little in each question, so that at the end of an argument the many littles make a muckle; they stumble badly and find themselves contradicting what they said at first. It is like a game of checkers, when bad players in the end are held in check by the good players and can’t make a move: so they also find themselves in check and can’t make a speech in this other game with words for counters; and they feel indeed that they have not grasped the truth any better by this game. I speak with an eye to the present case. As things are, one might say that in each question he could not contradict you in argument; but they say what they see in fact is that of those who apply themselves to philosophy and spend a long time in the study, not those who only touch it as a part of education and drop it while still young, most become regular cranks, not to say quite worthless, and those who are considered the finest are made useless to their cities by the very pursuit which you praise.”

I listened to this and said, “Then do you think that those who say this are saying untruths?”

“I don’t know,” said he, “but I would gladly hear your opinion.”

“You would hear then,” said I, “that they appear to me to be speaking the truth.”

“Then how can it be right,” said he, “to say that cities will have no end to their miseries until philosophers rule in them, when we admit that philosophers are useless to them?”

“You ask a question,” said I, “which must be answered in a parable.”*

“And you never use parables, of course!” he said.

“Oh, all right!” I said. “You make fun of me after dumping me into an argument so hard to prove! Listen to my parable then, and see more than ever how greedy I am of parables. The fact is, that what happens to the finest philosophers in their relation to cities is hard; there is no single thing in the world like it, but one must compile a parable from all sorts of things to defend them, like a painter painting a goat-stag† and other such mixtures. Imagine a ship or a fleet of ships in the following state. The captain* is above all on board in stature and strength, but rather deaf and likewise rather shortsighted, and he knows navigation no better than he sees and hears. The crew are quarrelling about pilotage; everyone thinks he ought to be pilot, although he knows nothing of the art, and cannot tell us who taught him or where he learnt it. Besides, they all declare that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to tear in pieces anyone who says it can; they all keep crowding round the solitary captain, begging and praying and doing anything and everything to get him to hand over the helm to them. Sometimes one party fails but another succeeds better; then one party kills the other, or throws them overboard, and the good, honest captain they bind hand and foot by some opiate† or intoxicant or some other means and take command of the ship. They use up all the stores, drinking and feasting, and make such a voyage as you might expect with such men. Besides, they have their votes of thanks: one has a testimonial as Good Navigator, another is a Born Pilot and Master Mariner. These are for any who are good hands at backing them up when they try to persuade or compel the captain to let them rule; for those who will not they have a vote of censure, Good-For-Nothing, and the true pilot is nowhere—they won’t listen to him. They fail to understand that he must devote his attention to year and seasons, sky and stars and winds, and all that belongs to his art, if he is really to be anything like a ruler of the ship; but that as for gaining control of the helm, with the approval of some people and the disapproval of others, neither art nor practice of this can be comprehended at the same time as the art of navigation. With such a state of things on board the ships, don’t you believe the true-born pilot would be dubbed stargazer, bibble-babbler, good-for-nothing, by those afloat in ships so provided?”

“That he would,” said Adeimantos.

“I don’t suppose,” I said, “you want us to examine the parable bit by bit, and so to see how this is exactly what happens between the true philosopher and the city; I think you understand what I mean.”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Well, then, if anyone is surprised that philosophers are not honoured in a city, first teach him this parable, and try to persuade him that it would be much more surprising if they were.”

“That I will,” said he.

“And tell him he is quite right in saying that the finest philosophers are useless to the multitude; but tell him it is their fault for not using them, no fault of these fine men. For it is not natural that a pilot should beg the sailors to be ruled by him; nor that the wise should wait at the rich man’s door.* No, the author of that neat saying told a lie, but the truth is that the sick man must wait at the doctor’s door, whether he is rich or poor; and anyone who needs to be ruled should wait at the door of one who is able to rule him, not that the ruler should petition the subjects to be ruled, if there is truly any help in him. But you will make no mistake in likening the present political rulers to the sailors I described just now, and those whom they call good-for-nothing and stargazing babblers to the true pilots.”

“Quite right,” said he.

“For these reasons then, and in these conditions, it is not easy for the best of studies to have a good name from those who study the very opposite. But by far the worst and strongest reproach comes upon philosophy because of those who profess to be philosophers; no doubt these were meant by the accuser you mentioned, when he said that most of the students who go to philosophy are worthless, and the best of them are useless, and I agree that you spoke truly. Is not that so?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we have discussed why the good ones are useless.”

“Certainly.”

“Now the worthlessness of the many bad ones: Shall we discuss that next, and try to show, if we can, that this must be so, but that philosophy is not to blame for this any more than the other?”

“By all means.”

“Let us listen then, and let us speak; reminding ourselves of the starting point from which we described what must be the inborn nature of one who is to be ‘beautiful and good’—a ‘gentleman.’ The first and leading thing in him, if you remember, was truth, which he was bound to pursue wholly and everywhere, unless he was to be an impostor and never have a part in true philosophy.”

“Yes, that was what we said.”

“Well, is not this one thing clean contrary to the opinion now held of him?”

“It is indeed,” he said.

“Then will it not be our reasonable defence that the real lover of knowledge by his nature strives towards real being, and is not content to abide by this multitude of things which exist only in opinion; forwards he always goes, and he is never blunted, and never ceases from that love, until he grasps the nature of what really is in each case, by that part of the soul to which it belongs to grasp such a thing, and that is the part akin to real being; then going in unto this and mingling with the real he would beget mind and truth, he would know, and truly live, and be nourished, and so he would cease from his travail, but never before.”

“Most reasonable,” he said.

“Well then, will it be in him to be fond of falsehood at all, or will he, on the contrary, hate it?”

“He will hate it.”

“Then while truth leads, never, I think we should say, could a train of evils follow her?”

“How could it!” he said.

“But a wholesome and just spirit, accompanied by temperance.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“So there is no need, I think, to insist on mustering the rest of the train of the philosopher’s nature once more from the beginning. You remember, no doubt, that we found belonging to these, courage and magnificence, ready learning and good memory. Then you interposed that all will necessarily agree with what we say, but if they left words alone and fixed their eyes on the persons discussed, they would say that they saw some of them to be useless, and most to be vicious with every vice. And searching for the cause of this prejudice we have now come to ask why most of them are vicious; and that is why we have once more taken up the nature of the true philosopher and defined it, as we were compelled to do.”

“That is true,” he said.

“Accordingly,” I said, “we must survey the corruptions of the true philosopher’s nature; it is corrupted in most, but a small portion escapes, those, of course, whom they call not bad but useless. Next again, those who imitate this character and settle down into its pursuits—we must examine what are the natures of their souls, seeing that they enter upon a pursuit which is too good and too great for them, and so give offence in many ways, and everywhere and amongst all men have fastened this repute onto philosophy.”

“What are these corruptions?” he said.

“I will try to describe them,” I said, “if I can. I suppose at least that such a nature, one that has all we have just mentioned as necessary if he is to be a perfect philosopher, is a rare growth rarely found among men; everyone will agree to that, don’t you think so?”

“Very rare indeed.”

“Only think how many dangers of destruction, and how great, attend upon these rare few.”

“What, pray?”

“One which will be most surprising of all to hear: that each one of the very qualities which we praise in such a nature corrupts the soul which has it, and drags it away from philosophy. I mean courage, temperance and all we described.”

“That is amazing,” he said.

“Moreover,” I said, “besides these, all the reputed good things corrupt and distract, beauty and riches, bodily strength, and powerful kindred in the city, and all that belongs to these. Now you have the sketch of what I mean.”

“I have,” said he, “and I should be glad to learn more exactly what you mean.”

“Grasp it rightly as a whole,” said I, “and then it will clearly appear, and what I have just said will not amaze you at all.”

“How, exactly?” he asked, “what do you ask me to do?”

“Every seed or growth,” I said, “vegetable or animal, the stronger it is the more it falls short of being its proper self, if it lacks the nurture that each ought to have and the proper place and season: for evil is more opposed to the good than to the not-good.”

“Of course.”

“It is reasonable, then, I think, that the best nature with unsuitable nurture turns out worse than the poor one.”

“That is reasonable.”

“Then, Adeimantos.” I said, “we may likewise say that the souls naturally best become more exceedingly evil if they have evil education. Or perhaps you think that the greatest injustice and unmitigated rottenness come from a poor nature, and not from a vigorous one corrupted by its nurture? Do you think perhaps that a weak nature will ever be the cause of great good or great evil?”

“No,” said he, “but I think as you do.”

“The philosopher’s nature then, as we described it, if it has proper instruction, must, I think, necessarily attain all virtue as it grows; but if it is not sown and grown and nourished in proper surroundings it will grow to everything opposite, unless a god comes to the help. Or perhaps you hold the common opinion; you think it is a case of a few young men corrupted by Sophists, or a few minor Sophists corrupting on their own account, if they are really worth mentioning; you don’t see it is the people themselves talking in this way who are the greatest Sophists, and they most perfectly educate everybody to be such as they wish, young and old, men and women.”

“When, pray?” he asked.

“When they take their seats in large numbers together,” I said, “in parliament, or in the law court, in theatre or in camp, or any other public assembly of a crowd, when they hoot what is said or done with loud roars, or cheer in turn, each extravagantly; they shout and they clap, and besides their own noise the place of meeting and the rocks around re-echo and redouble the din of applause and denunciation. What’s the state of the young man’s heart, as the saying goes, when that kind of thing happens? What private education will hold out in him? Won’t it be deluged by this praising or blaming, and go floating away down the stream wherever that carries him? Won’t he say ‘yes’ to their notions of beautiful and ugly, and follow their practices, and be like them?”

“He can’t help it, Socrates,” said he.

“Ah,” said I, “but we have not yet mentioned the strongest compulsion.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“The one these ‘educators’ and ‘Sophists’ impose by deed, when they can’t convince by word. Don’t you know that they chastise the disobedient with disgrace and fines and death?”

“I do indeed,” he said.

“What other Sophist then, or what private sermons, do you expect to prevail contending against these?”

“None, I think,” said he.

“No,” I said, “but even to try is utter madness. For there is not, and never has been, and never will be, a character which has become different from the many as regards virtue, through having been educated towards virtue contrary* to the education which the many give—an ordinary human character, I mean, my friend; the divine, however, we must except from the rule, as the proverb says. For you may be quite certain that if anything is saved and becomes such as it ought to be, in the present state of society, it is saved by the providence of God;† that you are safe in saying.”

“And that is what I think,” he said.

“Then kindly think this too,” said I.

“What?” said he.

“That all these private persons who take pay, whom those politicians call Sophists and think them rivals, teach nothing but these very resolutions* which the multitude pass and the opinions which they opine when they gather together; and this they call wisdom. It’s like a keeper with a huge, powerful monster in charge. He learns by heart all the beast’s whims and wishes, how he must approach, and how touch him, when he is dangerous and when he is tame, and why; learns his language, too—what sounds he usually makes at what, and what sound uttered by another creature quiets him and what infuriates him. The keeper learns these lessons perfectly in the course of time, by living with him, and calls it wisdom: then compiles a handbook of veterinary art and sets up as a professor. He knows nothing, in truth, about these resolutions or whims of the multitude, whether any of them is beautiful or ugly, good or evil, just or unjust, but gives a name to each according to the monster’s opinions, calling beautiful what pleases the monster and evil what annoys him; he has no other principle whatever in all this, but he calls necessities just and beautiful; and how really different by nature necessity is from good he has never seen himself and he is unable to teach another. Don’t you think in heaven’s name that such a one would be a strange educator?”

“I do!” said he.

“Isn’t he exactly like one who considers it wisdom to have learnt off the temper and pleasures of that vast congregation of incompatibles, in painting or music or, for that matter, in politics? If any expert in poetry or some other art or craft or public service mixes with the multitude and exhibits his work, if he makes the many his masters beyond what he must, then necessity will know no law, as the proverb goes,† he will have to do or make whatever they like; but to prove that whatever they like is good and beautiful, did you ever hear anyone offer a reason which was not absolutely ridiculous?”

“I never did,” said he, “and I think I never shall.”

“Keep this in mind, then, and recall another question. Is it possible that a crowd will ever believe in the beautiful by itself as distinct from the many beautiful things, and each of those other notions by itself in the same way?”

“It will not put up with such an idea! Not a bit,” said he.

“So then,” said I, “a crowd cannot be a lover of wisdom.”

“Impossible!” said he.

“And they must necessarily defame all who practise philosophy.”

“They must.”

“And so must all private persons who company with the crowd and desire to please it.”

“That is plain.”

“That being so, what safety do you see for one with a philosopher’s nature? How can he abide by his practice to the end? Think of it from what we said before. We have agreed, I take it, that ease of learning and memory belong to this nature, and courage and magnificence.”

“Yes.”

“Then such a one will from boyhood be first among all the boys, especially if his body be naturally well matched with the soul.”

“Of course he will,” said he.

“So when he grows older, his relatives will, I presume, wish to use him for their own affairs, and so will his fellow-citizens.”

“Of course.”

“Then they will all be at his feet supplicating and honouring him, getting hold of his future power in good time, and flattering him in advance?”

“That’s what generally happens,” he said.

“Then what do you expect such a one will do in such a case,” said I, “especially if he belongs to a great city, and if he is rich and highly born in that city, and if, besides, he is handsome and big? Will he not be filled with unlimited hopes? Will he not believe himself to be fit to manage the affairs of both Hellenes and barbarians; and to lift himself high upon this base, infected with ‘empty posturing, pretentious pride,’* without real sense?”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Then if someone quietly comes up to him while he is getting into that condition, and tells him the truth, how there is no sense in him and sense is what he needs, but he must work like a slave to win it or he never will—do you suppose he will find it easy to hear through all that evil din?”

“Far from it,” he said.

“But supposing there really is one,” I said, “who, by good inborn nature and natural affinity for sound advice, understands in some measure and is bent and drawn towards philosophy, what do we think the others will do who believe they are losing his use and fellowship? Will they not leave nothing unsaid and nothing undone to him and his admonisher, that he may never obey and the other may not have the power to warn? What private plots and public prosecutions there will be!”

“No doubt about that,” he said.

“Then it is possible that such a one will follow philosophy?”

“Impossible,” said he.

“You see then,” said I, “that we were not wrong in saying that even the parts of the philosopher’s own nature are themselves in a way causes of backsliding from his profession, if they grow up under evil nurture; and so are the reputed advantages, riches and all that sort of equipment.”

“Not wrong; we spoke rightly,” he said.

“There then,” said I, “my excellent fellow, there is the ruin, there is the destruction, how great and how dire! of that noblest nature—rare in any case, as we say—entering the best of all vocations. And from this class, then, come those who work the greatest evil upon cities and upon private men, as well as those who work the greatest good when the flood carries them that way; but a small nature never does anything great either to man or to city.”

“Most true,” said he.

“And so these, her nearest and dearest, fall away, leaving Philosophy deserted and jilted,* and they themselves live a false life, a life not theirs at all. Philosophy is left bereft of kindred, and other persons unworthy of her burst in and insult her and fasten reproaches upon her, such as you say her defamers reproach her with—that some of those who court her are quite worthless and most are worthy of condign punishment.”

“Yes,” he said, “that, at any rate, is what they say.”

“With reason, too,” said I. “For others, a lot of manikins, espy this territory empty of men but full of beautiful names and pretences, and, like criminals escaped from prison rushing away into the sanctuaries, are just as glad to jump out of their trades into philosophy, whoever are smartest in their own little trade. For although philosophy is in this plight, nevertheless her dignity remains more magnificent as compared with the other arts; this, of course, is what attracts many whose natures are imperfect—as their bodies are damaged by their arts and crafts, so their souls are doubled up and maimed by their vulgar lives, don’t you think that must be so?”

“It must be so, certainly,” he said.

“To look at them,” I said, “don’t they remind you of a little bald-headed tinker who has come into money and just been freed from his chains, and has had a wash in the bathing house, with a brand-new robe around him decked out like a bridegroom and going to marry his master’s daughter because the poor girl is destitute?”

“There is not any difference,” he said.

“Then what will such men probably produce? Mean, bastard offspring, I should expect!”

“They certainly must, indeed!”

“Well, and when men unworthy of culture pay court to philosophy and consort with her above their worth, what sort of thoughts and opinions shall we expect them to beget? Would you not say—things most truly and properly to be called sophisms, nothing genuine, nothing with a touch of true intelligence?”

“Exactly so,” he said.

“Very small indeed, Adeimantos,” I said, “is this remnant of those who court philosophy as an equal. It may be a character genuine and well bred, overtaken by exile and, in the absence of corruptors, abiding instinctively in philosophy; or it may be a great soul born in some small city, who despises the city’s business as dishonourable; or possibly some small number of persons from some craft or other* might rightly despise that and come to philosophy by their own fine nature. It may be too that the bridle of our friend Theages† is enough sometimes to hold a man back; everything is there ready to make Theages desert philosophy, but bodily ill health holds him back and keeps him out of politics. My own case is not worth mentioning, the spiritual sign,‡ for I believe that such a thing has never or hardly ever happened to anyone before. Those who belong to this little band have tasted how sweet and delectable their treasure is, and they have seen sufficiently the madness of the multitude; they know that in public life hardly a single man does any act that has any health in it, and there is no ally who would stand by anyone going to the help of justice, and would save him from destruction. Such a champion would be like a man fallen among wild beasts; he would never consent to join in wickedness, but one alone he could not fight all the savages. So he would perish before he could do any good to the city or his friends, useless both to himself and to others. When the philosopher considers all this he keeps quiet and does his own business, like one who runs under a wall for shelter in a storm when dust and sleet is carried before the wind. He sees the others being filled full of lawlessness, and he is content if somehow he can keep himself clean from injustice and impious doings, and so live his life on earth and at the end depart in peace and good will with beautiful hopes.”

“But he would have done a great work first,” said Adeimantos, “before he departed.”

“Yet not the greatest,” I said, “if his city had not the constitution that suited him, for in a suitable city he will grow greater himself, and save the common fortunes along with his own.

“I think now I have explained fairly well why that prejudice came upon philosophy, and how unjust it is—unless you have something further to say?”

“No,” he answered, “nothing about that; but tell me which of the present constitutions is suitable for it.”

“Not a single one,” I said, “and that is exactly the fault I find, that no constitution of any existing state is worthy of the philosopher’s nature. That is exactly why it is turned and changed. When a foreign seed is sown in another soil it is likely to be overpowered and to fade out into the native culture; just so this philosophic stock no longer holds its own power but degenerates into an alien character; but if it can only get the best constitution, being itself also best, then experience will show that this stock was really divine and the others were merely human both in nature and in practice. Now I am sure you are going to ask, which is this best constitution.”

“You are wrong,” he said, “I was not going to ask that, but whether it is this which we have described in founding our city, or another.”

“Generally speaking, yes,” I said, “but don’t forget what we also said then: something more there must always be in the city, something which has the same understanding of its constitution as you had when you laid down its laws as lawgiver.”

“So we did say,” he answered.

“But it was not explained clearly enough,” said I, “because I was afraid of those very matters which you seized upon; you have shown that the demonstration was long and difficult, and indeed the part remaining is anything but easy.”

“Which is that?”

“How a city shall deal with philosophy so as not to be destroyed itself. For all great things are hazardous, and it is true, as the proverb says, that beautiful things are hard.”

“Never mind,” he said, “let this be cleared up and let the demonstration be completed.”

“There’s no want of will,” said I, “but want of ability will hinder me, if anything. You shall see my readiness with your own eyes. Just see now how readily and recklessly I shall stand up and say that a city should deal with this way of life not as it does now but just the opposite.”

“How so?”

“At present,” said I, “those who do take it up are only lads just out of boyhood, who approach the most difficult part of it in the time before the serious business of housekeeping and moneymaking, and then drop it; yes, and these are your perfect philosophers! By the most difficult part I mean that which is concerned with words, dialectic. In later years, if they do consent after much persuading to listen to others engaged in this, they go as a great favour, and think they should take part in it only as a sideline. In old age, apart from a few, their light is quenched much more than the sun of Heracleitos, for their flame is never rekindled.”*

“But how should they do?” he asked.

“Exactly the opposite. While they are boys and lads they should occupy themselves with boyish education and philosophy, and train their bodies very carefully while these are growing and coming into manhood; the lads are gaining possession of their bodies as a help to liberal education. Then as their age goes on, the time when the soul begins to be perfected, they should tune up the exercises of the soul; and when decreasing strength puts them outside politics and warfare, from then on let them pasture at will in the meadows, and practise nothing other than philosophy except as a byeend; those, I mean, who intend to live happily, and when they come to their latter end to crown the life they have led with a fitting portion in the next world.”

“In very truth, Socrates,” he said, “I think you are much in earnest; however, I believe most of your hearers are even more eager to resist and will not be persuaded at all, beginning with Thrasymachos.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” I answered, “don’t make me and Thrasymachos quarrel so soon after we have made friends! But really we were not foes before. I tell you I will never give up trying until I persuade him and all the rest, or at least until we achieve something useful towards that life when they shall be born again and there meet with discussions like this.”

“That will be quite soon, of course, from your words!” he said.

“A mere nothing,” said I, “compared with all time. It is no wonder that the multitude do not believe what we are saying. For they have never seen in existence the project now being discussed; instead they have heard a lot of phrases (such as these),* arranged in an artificial assonance, not falling together into their natural pattern like ours do; and a man, balanced and equated with virtue as nearly as possible to perfection in word and deed, and, moreover, holding sovereignty in a city perfectly equated with him, this they have never seen; they have seen neither one man, nor more men than one. Don’t you agree?”

“I do; they never have.”

“And, on the other hand, they have never cared to listen, bless you, with sufficient attention, to words beautiful and generous, words able to seek out the truth attentively by every means for the sake of knowing, which keep a respectful distance from the clever sophistries that lead nowhere except to opinion and strife both in courts of law and in private discussions.”

“They listen to nothing of that sort,” he said.

“This I foresaw, let me tell you, and this is the reason why I was afraid that time; nevertheless I spoke, because truth constrained me; and I dared to say that no city or constitution, or likewise man either, will ever become perfect until the philosophers take charge of the state, those few now dubbed ‘not bad but useless’*—if some necessity of fortune throws it upon them, whether they wish or not, and compels the city to listen to them, or if true love for true philosophy comes over the sons of those who now are potentates and kings or the men themselves, by some divine inspiration. It is not impossible that one or both of these things might happen; there is no reason in saying that they cannot, or we should fairly be laughed at as pious dreamers. Don’t you agree?”

“I do.”

“If, then, it has ever happened in the extreme past times, or if it now is so in some barbaric place somewhere far out of our ken, or if it ever shall be, that some necessity brings the highest philosophic natures to take charge of a city, then we are ready to maintain to the end our contention that the described constitution has been and is, yes and shall be, realised, whenever this Muse gains power over a city. For the thing is not impossible, and we are not speaking of impossibilities; difficulties there are indeed—even we admit that.”

“I think so too,” said he.

“But the multitude,” said I, “do not think it possible—is that what you will say?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Bless you,” said I, “don’t be so hard on the multitude. They will surely change their opinion if you soothe them without controversy; if you undo this prejudice against the love of learning by showing what you mean by philosophers, and if you define their nature and their practice as we have lately done and convince the multitude that you do not mean those whom they now regard as philosophers. As soon as they see this, surely you will admit they will get a different opinion and answer in a different way. Who will quarrel with the unquarrelsome, who will grudge the ungrudging, if he is himself ungrudging and gentle? I take the words out of your own lips, and say that I believe a nature so quarrelsome and unkind exists only in a few, not in the many.”

“So I believe also,” he said; “be sure of that.”

“Then you surely believe also that the many are now unkind to philosophy only because of that gang of outsiders who have come rioting in where they have no business, abusing each other, behaving like lovers of wrangling, and always indulging in personalities, which is the thing least like philosophy?”

“Very true,” he said.

“For the truth is, my dear Adeimantos, one who really keeps his mind on the things which are has no leisure to look below upon the transactions of mankind, and, battling with them, to be infected by jealousy and ill will; but by seeing and contemplating things which are well ordered and ever unchangeable,* each thing neither wronged nor wronging another, but all things in concord and regulated by reason, we surely imitate these things and make ourselves most like to them; or is it possible in any way, do you think, not to imitate what one converses with and admires?”

“Impossible,” he said.

“Then conversing with the divine and orderly,† the philosopher becomes orderly and divine so far as a man can; but there is much unbalance‡ in all men.”

“Indeed there is.”

“Then,” said I, “if he feels any constraint not only to mould himself, but to practise bringing into human customs both publicly and privately what he sees there, do you believe he will be a bad craftsman for the people, of temperance and justice and all civic virtue?”

“By no means,” he said.

“But if the multitude really perceive that we speak the truth about him, will they indeed be angry with philosophers, and disbelieve us when we say that a city could never be happy and fortunate unless it could be painted by these artists using the divine model?”

“Oh no,” he said, “they will not be angry if they really perceive the truth. But tell me, please, how the painting will be done.”

“They would take a city of men and manners, as it were, already sketched on a panel,” I said, “and they would begin by wiping the panel clean, which is not at all easy; but then be sure that here they would at once differ from others—they will not want to put a finger to city or man, or inscribe a law, until they make the panel clean themselves or get a clean one.”

“And quite right, too,” said he.

“The next thing would be to make a sketch of the constitution; don’t you think so?”

“Why, what else!”

“After that, I should say, they would work out the picture. They must cast a glance constantly this way and that; they must look now upon what is just in its real nature, or good or temperate, and so forth, and now again upon what they are implanting in mankind, mixing and mingling from various practices the man’s tint for the man’s image, judging from that which Homer called, when it appeared in human beings, the likeness divine and tint divine.”*

“Well said,” he replied.

“Here they will erase, no doubt, and here they will insert, until as far as possible they will make human manners as like as men can be to those that God loves.”

“A beautiful painting, at least, that would be,” he said.

“Well now,” said I, “are we beginning to convince that army which you said was eagerly marching to attack us, that such an artist of constitutions is the very man whom we were praising to them, and about whom they were so angry because we were proposing to put the cities into his hand? Are they growing any gentler at all for listening to our talk?”

“Much gentler,” said he, “if they have any sound sense.”

“Why, how indeed will they find any objection to make? Will they say the philosophers are not enamoured of truth, and that which really is?”

“Absurd, that would be,” he said.

“That their nature, as we described it, is not akin to the best?”

“No, they could not say that.”

“Well, can they deny that such a nature, if it be given the practices which suit it, will be perfectly good and philosophic if any can be? Or will they declare that those whom we excluded are better?”

“I don’t think that likely.”

“Then will they still be wild if we say that until the philosophic character is master of a city there will be no rest from misery for either city or citizens, and the constitution which we describe in words in our fable will never be accomplished in fact?”

“Not so wild, perhaps.”

“Not so wild!” said I. “Please don’t let us say that; let us say they have become wholly gentle and convinced, so that they agree for very shame if not for any other reason.”

“By all means,” he said.

“Very well, then,” said I, “let us take it they are convinced of this. Next, will anyone deny that kings or potentates might possibly have sons philosophic in nature?”

“No one could deny that,” he said.

“If such were born, can anyone say it is absolutely necessary that they must be corrupted? It is difficult that they should be preserved, we admit that ourselves; but will anyone maintain that in all time, out of them all, not even one would be preserved?”

“How could that be said?”

“Well then,” I said, “one is enough, if he has an obedient city, to make real all that now seems incredible.”

“One is enough,” said he.

“For no doubt,” said I, “if a ruler laid down the laws and practices which we described, I don’t suppose it is impossible that the citizens would be willing to obey.”

“Not at all.”

“Then is it impossible, or even surprising, that others should think as we think?”

“I don’t believe it is,” said he.

“And further, we have sufficiently shown already, as I believe, that it is best, if it really is possible.”

“Quite sufficiently.”

“Very well: now to sum up, it follows that what we said of lawgiving is best if it could be done, and to do it is difficult but not impossible.”

“Yes, that follows,” he said.

“Now that we have finished with this after all our difficulties, we still have some more things left to discuss: what method, what learnings, and what doings, will produce these, our saviours of the constitution, and keep them among us—and the age when each group shall take up each?”

“We have,” said he.

“My little trick,” said I, “came to nothing, when I left out some time ago that troublesome business about possessing women and getting children and the appointment of rulers, because I knew that the wholly true way was difficult and offensive. You see it has come—I am obliged to discuss it now all the same. The women and children have been disposed of, but the rulers must be considered almost from the beginning. We said, if you remember, that they must be proved patriotic while tested in pleasures and pains; they must prove that they did not throw away that faith in hardship or in fear or in any other vicissitude, and he that did not endure was to be dismissed; but he that came out everywhere pure, like gold tested in the fire, was to be established ruler—honours were to be given him both in life and after death, and prizes too; something like that was said as our tale crept by with veiled head, fearing to stir up what is now before us.”

“Very true,” he said. “I remember.”

“I shrank, my friend,” said I, “from saying what I have now had the audacity to say: now let us dare to say that we must establish philosophers as the most perfect guardians, the rulers.”

“Let that be understood,” he said.

“Observe then, that you will naturally find only a few. For they must have the nature we described, and its parts will not be born all together very often, but generally it is born in pieces.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Those who love knowledge, and have good memory, the quick-witted and sharp, and all else that goes with these qualities, and stirring men magnificent in mind, these you know are not usually born also willing to live modestly in quietude and steadiness; such men are carried anywhere and everywhere by their quickness, and all steadiness is gone from them.”

“True,” he said.

“On the other hand, that steady character not easily swayed, which one would choose to use as trustworthy, which in war also is not easily moved to fear, behaves in the same way towards learning; it is hard to move and hard to teach, as if benumbed, and it is full of sleep and yawns whenever it must do work of that kind.”

“That is true,” he said.

“But we say that a man must have a good, handsome share of both kinds, or we must not give him part in the most complete education or honour or rule.”

“Rightly too,” he said.

“Then don’t you think it will be a rare thing?”

“Of course I do.”

“He must be tested then, you see, in both kinds; in the labours and fears and pleasures, which we described before, and besides, as you see now, in what we omitted then; we must practise their nature in learning many different things, and watch if it is able to endure the hardest studies, or whether it will flinch as men flinch in games and sports.”*

“We ought certainly to watch them so,” he said; “but what do you mean by the hardest studies?”

“You remember, I suppose,” said I, “that when we distinguished three parts in the soul, we deduced definitions of justice, temperance, courage and wisdom.”

“If I did not remember,” said he, “I should have no right to hear the rest.”

“Do you remember what went before that?”

“What, pray?”

“We said, I fancy, that to gain the best possible view, another and a longer roundabout way was necessary which would show all clearly, if we took it, but that it was possible to proceed by tacking onto our argument proofs which followed from what we said before. You all said that would do, and consequently we went on; what we said lacked exactness, as it appeared to me, but if you were satisfied you might say so.”

“It satisfied me in a measure,” he said, “and the others thought the same.”

“But, my friend,” said I, “short measure is no measure; in such matters you cannot be satisfied in a measure less than the reality, because an imperfect measure measures nothing, although some people think that it is well enough and there is no need to seek further.”

“Yes indeed,” he said, “a good few feel in that way because of laziness of mind.”

“That feeling,” I said, “is the last thing in the world we ought to find in a guardian of city and laws.”

“That is fair enough,” he said.

“Well then, my comrade,” said I, “such a one must go round the longer way, and he must labour as hard over learning as he does in bodily exercise; or else, as we said just now, he will never come to the end of that greatest task which is proper to him.”

“What!” said he, “are not these the greatest tasks? Is there another still greater than justice and the other things we have described?”

“Not only so,” said I, “but of these very things we need to do more than examine our present sketch; we must not omit the most complete working out. Surely it is ridiculous not to exact the greatest accuracy in the greatest things, when for others of small value we strain every nerve to make them as exact and clear as they can be!”

“Certainly,” he said; “but do you believe anyone can let you get off without asking what this greatest task is, and what it is all about?”

“Oh dear, no,” said I, “just ask me. Certainly you have heard it often enough, but now either you don’t understand it, or else you want to make difficulties for me by interrupting! That’s what I rather think; for you have often heard that the greatest task is to learn the perfect model of the good,* the use of which makes all just things and other such become useful and helpful. And now you know pretty well that I am about to speak of this, and to say, besides, that we do not know the model sufficiently; but if we do not know it, you know it will not be of any advantage to us to understand all the rest perfectly without this model,† just as it is no advantage to possess anything without the good. Do you suppose there is any gain in possessing everything in the world without possessing the good? Or to understand everything in the world except the good?—to understand nothing of the beautiful and the good?”

“No, indeed, by heaven,” said he.

“Further, you know that the many think pleasure to be the good, and the smarter sort say understanding.”‡

“Certainly.”

“You know also, my friend, that those who say ‘understanding,’ cannot tell us what understanding, but they are compelled at last to say the understanding of the good.”

“Silly fools!” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “silly indeed, if they first blame us for not knowing the good, and then talk to us as if we do know it. For they call this an understanding of good—our knowing what they mean whenever they utter the word ‘good.’”

“Very true,” he said.

“Well then, are those who define pleasure as a good any less infected by error than the others? Are they not equally compelled to admit that there are evil pleasures?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“It follows then that they admit the same things to be both good and evil; isn’t that true?”

“Of course.”

“It is plain, then, that there are many great controversies about it.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“And again: Is it not plain also about things just and beautiful that many would choose what seem so even if they are not—would still prefer such things to do and to possess and to seem; but about good things none are content to possess what seems good, but they seek what really is good, and here at last everyone despises the seeming?”

“Assuredly,” he said.

“Then what of a thing which every soul pursues, and will do anything and everything to get, divining that it really is something but being puzzled because he cannot understand what it is, and cannot find any sufficiently lasting confidence about that as he does about other things; and through this he loses all the advantage which may be in the other things? Are we to say that such a thing, so great a thing, should be kept in the dark, even from those best men of all in whose hands we are to place everything?”

“No indeed,” said he.

“I believe, at least,” said I, “that if it is unknown in what way just things and beautiful things are good,* these things will not have gained a guardian of themselves worth much, in one who does not know this himself; and I prophesy that no one will understand them satisfactorily before he does.”

“You are a true prophet,” he said.

“Then will not our constitution be perfectly arranged only if such a one is guardian in charge, one who does know these things?”

“That must be so,” he said. “But what do you say yourself, Socrates? Is knowledge the good, or pleasure, or something else?”

“A nice fellow this!” I said. “I saw through you long ago! I knew you would never be satisfied with what other people think about it.”

“Well, Socrates,” he said, “it does not appear to me fair, to be able to give other people’s opinions, but not your own, when you have been busy so long about the matter.”

“What’s that?” I said. “Is it fair for a man to speak about what he doesn’t know as if he does?”

“No, no,” he said, “not as if he does, but he ought fairly to be willing to speak these things which he believes, as believing them.”

“Very well,” I said. “You have noticed that opinions without knowledge are all ugly. The best of them are blind. Don’t you think that those who, without intelligence, have a true opinion are like blind men going along on the right road?”

“Just like them,” he said.

“Then do you choose to contemplate ugly things, blind and crooked things, when you could hear brilliant and beautiful things from others?”

“In God’s name, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “don’t back out as if you had come to the end. We shall be satisfied if you will explain the good as well as you explained justice and temperance and the rest.”

“So shall I be, my good man,” said I, “and very well satisfied. But I am afraid I shall not be able and my clumsy eagerness will only make a fool of me. But bless you, my friends, let us pass by the question what the good is, just for the present; I fear my present impulse is not strong enough to carry me as far as what I think on that subject now. But there is an interesting offspring of the good, as it seems to me, and very like it; I am willing to speak of that, if you care, or not if you don’t care.”

“Do go on,” he said, “you can pay up your account of the father another time.”

“I only wish,” I said, “that I could pay it up and you two could pocket the whole, and not merely the off-springing interest as now.* Anyway, put in your pockets this interest and offspring of the good itself; only be careful that I may not cheat you and myself by paying spurious coin in the account.”

“Oh, we’ll be careful,” said he, “as far as we can; only go on.”

“So I will,” said I, “as soon as we have come to an agreement. May I remind you of something already said in our talk and often on other occasions?”

“What?” he asked.

“We speak of there being many beautiful things and many good things and so on; that is how we describe it.”

“Yes indeed.”

“And we speak of beauty by itself and good by itself—and so on for each of all those things which we have just put as many; again, moreover, we say that these* are related to one single perfect ideal for each, and we put each as a portion of a single essence, and each is really what we name.”†

“That is true.”

“Further, we say that those ‘many’ things are seen‡ but not thought, and the ideals appeal to the mind, though not seen.”

“Most assuredly.”

“Now by what part of ourselves do we see things seen?”

“Sight.”

“And so,” I said, “we hear things by hearing, and perceive all other things perceived by the other senses of perception?”

“Of course.”

“Now, have you noticed,” said I, “with what great extravagance the creator has created this power of seeing and being seen?”

“Not particularly,” he said.

“Look here, then. Do hearing and sound need anything else besides to hear and be heard, so that if this third be absent, hearing will not hear and sound will not be heard?”

“Nothing,” he answered.

“And I believe,” said I, “that most, if not all, the other powers need nothing more. Can you tell me of one?”

“No, I cannot,” he said.

“But don’t you notice that the power of sight and the visible do need something else?”

“How so?”

“If sight is in the eyes, and the possessor tries to use it, and if colour is in the things, you know, I suppose, that it will see nothing and the colours will be unseen unless a third thing is there specially created for this very purpose.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said, “that which you call light.”

“True,” said he.

“Then how great is the conception* through which the sense of sight and the power of being seen have been united by a more precious bond than the other pairs!—unless light is quite without worth.”

“Oh no,” said he, “far from that.”

“Then which of the gods in heaven can you put down as cause and master of this, whose light makes our sight see so beautifully and the things to be seen?”

“The same as you do,” said he, “and everyone else; it is plain that you mean the sun!”

“Shall I suggest how sight is related to this divinity?”

“Well, how?”

“Sight itself is not the sun, nor is that in which it is, which we call eye.”

“It is not.”

“But sight is the most sunlike, I think, of the organs of sense.”

“Much the most.”

“Moreover, the power which it has is always being dispensed by the sun like an inundation, and sight possesses it?”

“Certainly.”

“Then again the sun is not sight, but the cause of sight, and is seen by sight itself.”

“That is quite correct,” he said.

“Surely, now,” I said, “my meaning must appear to be that this, the offspring of the good which the good begat, is in relation to the good itself an analogy, and what the good effects, by its influence, in the region of the mind, towards mind and things thought, this the sun effects, in the region of seeing, towards sight and things seen.”

“How?” he asked, “please explain further.”

“When a man turns his eyes,” I said, “no longer to those things whose colours are pervaded by the light of day, but on those pervaded by the luminaries of night, the eyes grow dim and appear to be nearly blind, as if pure sight were not in them.”

“Yes, they do,” he said.

“But whenever he turns them to what the sunlight illumines, they see clearly, and sight appears to be in these same eyes.”

“Certainly.”

“Understand then, that it is the same with the soul, thus: when it settles itself firmly in that region in which truth and real being brightly shine, it understands and knows it and appears to have reason; but when it has nothing to rest on but that which is mingled with darkness—that which becomes and perishes, it opines, it grows dim-sighted, changing opinions up and down, and is like something without reason.”

“So it is.”

“Then that which provides their truth to the things known, and gives the power of knowing to the knower, you must say is the idea or principle of the good, and you must conceive it as being the cause of understanding and of truth in so far as known; and thus while knowledge and truth as we know them are both beautiful, you will be right in thinking that it is something different, something still more beautiful than these. As for knowledge and truth, just as we said before that it was right to consider light and sight to be sunlike, but wrong to think them to be sun; so here, it is right to consider both these to be goodlike, but wrong to think either of them to be the good—the eternal nature* of the good must be allowed a yet higher value.”

“What infinite beauty you speak of!” he said, “if it provides knowledge and truth, and is above them itself in beauty! You surely don’t mean that it is pleasure!”

“Hush!” I said. “But here is something more to consider about its likeness.”

“What?”

“The sun provides not only the power of being seen for things seen, but, as I think you will agree, also their generation and growth and nurture, although it is not itself generation.”

“Of course not.”

“Similarly with things known, you will agree that the good is not only the cause of their becoming known, but the cause that knowledge exists and of the state of knowledge,* although the good is not itself a state of knowledge but something transcending far beyond it in dignity and power.”†

Glaucon said very comically, “O Lord, what a devil of a hyperbole!”

“All your fault,” said I, “for compelling me to say what I think about it.”

“Oh, please don’t stop!” he said. “At least do finish the comparison with the sun, if you are leaving anything out.”

“Oh yes,” I said, “I am leaving a lot out.”

“Not one little bit, please!” he said.

“I’m afraid I must leave out a good deal,” said I; “but I won’t willingly leave out anything now if I can help it.”

“Please do not,” he said.

“Conceive then,” I said, “that there are these two, as we say; and one reigns over the region and things‡ of the mind, the other over those of the eye—not to say the sky, or you will think I am playing on the word!¶ Now then, you have these two ideas distinct—‘seen’ and ‘thought.’”

“I have.”

THE DIVIDED LINE

“Suppose you take a line [AE],* cut into two unequal parts [at C]to represent in proportion† the worlds of things seen and things thought, and then cut each part in the same proportion‡ [at B and D]. Your two parts [AB and BC]in the world of things seen will differ in degree of clearness and dimness,¶ and one part [AB] will contain images; by images I mean first of all shadows, then reflections in water and in surfaces which are of close texture, smooth and shiny, and everything of that kind, if you understand.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Take the second part of this [BC] for the things which the images resemble, the animals about us and all trees and plants and all kinds of manufactured articles.”

“Very good,” said he.

“Would you be willing to admit,” said I, “that in respect of truth and untruth there is the same distinction between the opinable and the knowable as there is between the image and its model?”*

“Oh yes, certainly,” he answered.

“Now then, consider how the section for ‘things thought’ should be divided.”

“How?”

“This way. In the first part [CD] the soul in its search is compelled to use as images the things imitated† —the realities of the former part [BC]—and from things taken for granted‡ passes not to a new beginning, a first principle, but to an end, a conclusion; in the second part [DE] it passes from an assumption to a first principle free from assumption, without the help of images which the other part [CD] uses, and makes its path of enquiry amongst ideals themselves by means of them alone.”

He answered, “I don’t quite understand that.”

“Let us try again,” I said; “you will understand easier when I have said some more first. I suppose you know that students of geometry and arithmetic and so forth begin by taking for granted odd and even, and the usual figures, and the three kinds of angles, and things akin to these, in every branch of study; they take them as granted and make them assumptions¶ or postulates, and they think it unnecessary to give any further account of them to themselves or to others, as being clear to everybody. Then, starting from these, they go on through the rest by logical steps until they end at the object which they set out to consider.”

“Certainly I know that,” he said.

“Then you know also that they use the visible figures and give lectures about them, while they are not thinking of these they can see but the ideas which these are like; a square in itself is what they speak of, and a diameter**in itself, not the one they are drawing. It is always so; the very things which they model or draw, which have shadows of their own and images in water, they use now as images; but what they seek is to see those ideals which can be seen only by the mind.”

“True,” he said.

“This ideal, then, that I have been describing belongs to the first part [CD]of things thought, but the soul, as I said, is compelled to use assumptions in its search for this; it does not pass to a first principle because of being unable to get out clear above the assumptions, but uses as images the very things [in BC] which are represented by those below [in AB] and were esteemed and honoured as bright compared with those.”*

“I understand,” he said, “that you speak of what belongs to geometry and its kindred arts.”

“Now, then, understand,” I said, “that by the other part [DE]of things thought I mean what the arguing process itself grasps by power of dialectic, treating assumptions not as beginnings, but as literally hypotheses,† that is to say steps and springboards for assault, from which it may push its way up to the region free of assumptions and reach the beginning of all,‡ and grasp it, clinging again and again to whatever clings to this; and so may come down to a conclusion without using the help of anything at all that belongs to the senses, but only ideals themselves, and, passing through ideals, it may end in ideals.”

“I understand,” said he, “though not sufficiently, for you seem to me to describe a heavy task; but I see that you wish to lay down that a clearer perception of real being and the world of mind is given by knowledge of dialectic, than by the so-called ‘arts’ which start from pure assumptions. It is true that those who view them through these are compelled to view them with the understanding and not the senses, but because they do not go back to the beginning in their study, but start from assumptions, they do not seem to you to apply a reasoning mind about these matters, although with a first principle added they belong to the world of mind. The mental state of geometricians and suchlike you seem to call understanding, not reason, taking understanding as something between opinion and reason.”

“You have taken my meaning quite sufficiently,” I said. “Now then, accept these four affections of the soul* for my four divisions of the line: Exercise of Reason for the highest, Understanding for the second; put Belief for the third and Conjecture for the last. Then arrange the divisions in proportion, believing they partake of clearness just as the affections which they represent partake of truth.”

“I understand,” said he, “and I agree, and I arrange them as you tell me.”

BOOK VII

“Next, then,” I said, “take the following parable of education and ignorance as a picture of the condition of our nature. Imagine mankind as dwelling in an underground cave with a long entrance open to the light across the whole width of the cave; in this they have been from childhood, with necks and legs fettered, so they have to stay where they are. They cannot move their heads round because of the fetters, and they can only look forward, but light comes to them from fire burning behind them higher up at a distance. Between the fire and the prisoners is a road above their level, and along it imagine a low wall has been built, as puppet showmen have screens in front of their people over which they work their puppets.”

“I see,” he said.

“See, then, bearers carrying along this wall all sorts of articles which they hold projecting above the wall, statues of men and other living things,* made of stone or wood and all kinds of stuff, some of the bearers speaking and some silent, as you might expect.”

“What a remarkable image,” he said, “and what remarkable prisoners!”

“Just like ourselves,” I said. “For, first of all, tell me this: What do you think such people would have seen of themselves and each other except their shadows, which the fire cast on the opposite wall of the cave?”

“I don’t see how they could see anything else,” said he, “if they were compelled to keep their heads unmoving all their lives!”

“Very well, what of the things being carried along? Would not this be the same?”

“Of course it would.”

“Suppose the prisoners were able to talk together, don’t you think that when they named the shadows which they saw passing they would believe they were naming things?”†

“Necessarily.”

“Then if their prison had an echo from the opposite wall, whenever one of the passing bearers uttered a sound, would they not suppose that the passing shadow must be making the sound? Don’t you think so?”

“Indeed I do,” he said.

“If so,” said I, “such persons would certainly believe that there were no realities except those shadows of handmade things.”‡

“So it must be,” said he.

“Now consider,” said I, “what their release would be like, and their cure from these fetters and their folly; let us imagine whether it might naturally be something like this. One might be released, and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round, and to walk and look towards the firelight; all this would hurt him, and he would be too much dazzled to see distinctly those things whose shadows he had seen before. What do you think he would say, if someone told him that what he saw before was foolery, but now he saw more rightly, being a bit nearer reality and turned towards what was a little more real? What if he were shown each of the passing things, and compelled by questions to answer what each one was? Don’t you think he would be puzzled, and believe what he saw before was more true than what was shown to him now?”

“Far more,” he said.

“Then suppose he were compelled to look towards the real light, it would hurt his eyes, and he would escape by turning them away to the things which he was able to look at, and these he would believe to be clearer than what was being shown to him.”

“Just so,” said he.

“Suppose, now,” said I, “that someone should drag him thence by force, up the rough ascent, the steep way up, and never stop until he could drag him out into the light of the sun, would he not be distressed and furious at being dragged; and when he came into the light, the brilliance would fill his eyes and he would not be able to see even one of the things now called real?”*

“That he would not,” said he, “all of a sudden.”

“He would have to get used to it, surely, I think, if he is to see the things above. First he would most easily look at shadows, after that images of mankind and the rest in water, lastly the things themselves. After this he would find it easier to survey by night the heavens themselves and all that is in them, gazing at the light of the stars and moon, rather than by day the sun and the sun’s light.”

“Of course.”

“Last of all, I suppose, the sun; he could look on the sun itself by itself in its own place, and see what it is like, not reflections of it in water or as it appears in some alien setting.”

“Necessarily,” said he.

“And only after all this he might reason about it, how this is he who provides seasons and years, and is set over all there is in the visible region, and he is in a manner the cause of all things which they saw.”

“Yes, it is clear,” said he, “that after all that, he would come to this last.”

“Very good. Let him be reminded of his first habitation, and what was wisdom in that place, and of his fellow-prisoners there; don’t you think he would bless himself for the change, and pity them?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“And if there were honours and praises among them and prizes for the one who saw the passing things most sharply and remembered best which of them used to come before and which after and which together, and from these was best able to prophesy accordingly what was going to come—do you believe he would set his desire on that, and envy those who were honoured men or potentates among them? Would he not feel as Homer says,* and heartily desire rather to be serf of some landless man on earth and to endure anything in the world, rather than to opine as they did and to live in that way?”

“Yes indeed,” said he, “he would rather accept anything than live like that.”

“Then again,” I said, “just consider; if such a one should go down again and sit on his old seat, would he not get his eyes full of darkness coming in suddenly out of the sun?”

“Very much so,” said he.

“And if he should have to compete with those who had been always prisoners, by laying down the law about those shadows while he was blinking before his eyes were settled down—and it would take a good long time to get used to things—wouldn’t they all laugh at him and say he had spoiled his eyesight by going up there, and it was not worthwhile so much as to try to go up? And would they not kill anyone who tried to release them and take them up, if they could somehow lay hands on him and kill him?”†

“That they would!” said he.

“Then we must apply this image, my dear Glaucon,” said I, “to all we have been saying. The world of our sight is like the habitation in prison, the firelight there to the sunlight here, the ascent and the view of the upper world is the rising of the soul into the world of mind; put it so and you will not be far from my own surmise, since that is what you want to hear; but God knows if it is really true. At least, what appears to me is, that in the world of the known, last of all,* is the idea of the good, and with what toil to be seen! And seen, this must be inferred to be the cause of all right and beautiful things for all, which gives birth to light and the king of light in the world of sight, and, in the world of mind, herself the queen produces truth and reason; and she must be seen by one who is to act with reason publicly or privately.”

“I believe as you do,” he said, “in so far as I am able.”

“Then believe also, as I do,” said I, “and do not be surprised, that those who come thither are not willing to have part in the affairs of men, but their souls ever strive to remain above; for that surely may be expected if our parable fits the case.”

“Quite so,” he said.

“Well then,” said I, “do you think it surprising if one leaving divine contemplations and passing to the evils of men is awkward and appears to be a great fool, while he is still blinking—not yet accustomed to the darkness around him, but compelled to struggle in law courts or elsewhere about shadows of justice, or the images which make the shadows, and to quarrel about notions of justice in those who have never seen justice itself?”

“Not surprising at all,” said he.

“But any man of sense,” I said, “would remember that the eyes are doubly confused from two different causes, both in passing from light to darkness and from darkness to light; and believing that the same things happen with regard to the soul also, whenever he sees a soul confused and unable to discern anything he would not just laugh carelessly; he would examine whether it had come out of a more brilliant life, and if it were darkened by the strangeness; or whether it had come out of greater ignorance into a more brilliant light, and if it were dazzled with the brighter illumination. Then only would he congratulate the one soul upon its happy experience and way of life, and pity the other; but if he must laugh, his laugh would be a less downright laugh than his laughter at the soul which came out of the light above.”

“That is fairly put,” said he.

“Then if this is true,” I said, “our belief about these matters must be this, that the nature of education is not really such as some of its professors say it is; as you know, they say that there is not understanding in the soul, but they put it in, as if they were putting sight into blind eyes.”

“They do say so,” said he.

“But our reasoning indicates,” I said, “that this power is already in the soul of each, and is the instrument by which each learns; thus if the eye could not see without being turned with the whole body from the dark towards the light, so this instrument must be turned round with the whole soul away from the world of becoming until it is able to endure the sight of being and the most brilliant light of being: and this we say is the good, don’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Then this instrument,” said I, “must have its own art, for the circumturning or conversion, to show how the turn can be most easily and successfully made; not an art of putting sight into an eye, which we say has it already, but since the instrument has not been turned aright and does not look where it ought to look—that’s what must be managed.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“Now most of the virtues which are said to belong to the soul are really something near to those of the body; for in fact they are not already there, but they are put later into it by habits and practices; but the virtue of understanding everything really belongs to something certainly more divine, as it seems, for it never loses its power, but becomes useful and helpful or, again, useless and harmful, by the direction in which it is turned. Have you not noticed men who are called worthless but clever, and how keen and sharp is the sight of their petty soul, and how it sees through the things towards which it is turned? Its sight is clear enough, but it is compelled to be the servant of vice, so that the clearer it sees the more evil it does.”

“Certainly,” said he.

“Yet if this part of such a nature,” said I, “had been hammered at from childhood, and all those leaden weights of the world of becoming knocked off—the weights, I mean, which grow into the soul from gorging and gluttony and such pleasures, and twist the soul’s eye downwards—if, I say, it had shaken these off and been turned round towards what is real and true, that same instrument of those same men would have seen those higher things most clearly, just as now it sees those towards which it is turned.”

“Quite likely,” said he.

“Very well,” said I, “isn’t it equally likely, indeed, necessary, after what has been said, that men uneducated and without experience of truth could never properly supervise a city, nor can those who are allowed to spend all their lives in education right to the end? The first have no single object in life, which they must always aim at in doing everything they do, public or private; the second will never do anything if they can help it, believing they have already found mansions abroad in the Islands of the Blest.”*

“True,” said he.

“Then it is the task of us founders,” I said, “to compel the best natures to attain that learning which we said was the greatest, both to see the good, and to ascend that ascent; and when they have ascended and properly seen, we must never allow them what is allowed now.”

“What is that, pray?” he asked.

“To stay there,” I said, “and not be willing to descend again to those prisoners, and to share their troubles and their honours, whether they are worth having or not.”

“What!” said he, “are we to wrong them and make them live badly, when they might live better?”

“You have forgotten again, my friend,” said I, “that the law is not concerned how any one class in a city is to prosper above the rest; it tries to contrive prosperity in the city as a whole, fitting the citizens into a pattern by persuasion and compulsion, making them give of their help to one another wherever each class is able to help the community. The law itself creates men like this in the city, not in order to allow each one to turn by any way he likes, but in order to use them itself to the full for binding the city together.”

“True,” said he, “I did forget.”

“Notice then, Glaucon,” I said, “we shall not wrong the philosophers who grow up among us, but we shall treat them fairly when we compel them to add to their duties the care and guardianship of the other people. We shall tell them that those who grow up philosophers in other cities have reason in taking no part in public labours there; for they grow up there of themselves, though none of the city governments wants them; a wild growth has its rights, it owes nurture to no one, and need not trouble to pay anyone for its food. But you we have engendered, like king bees* in hives, as leaders and kings over yourselves and the rest of the city; you have been better and more perfectly educated than the others, and are better able to share in both ways of life. Down you must go then, in turn, to the habitation of the others, and accustom yourselves to their darkness; for when you have grown accustomed you will see a thousand times better than those who live there, and you will know what the images are and what they are images of, because you have seen the realities behind just and beautiful and good things. And so our city will be managed wide awake for us and for you, not in a dream, as most are now, by people fighting together for shadows, and quarrelling to be rulers, as if that were a great good. But the truth is more or less that the city where those who are to rule are least anxious to be rulers is of necessity best managed and has least faction in it; while the city which gets rulers who want it most is worst managed.”

“Certainly,” said he.

“Then will our fosterlings disobey us when they hear this? Will they refuse to help, each group in its turn, in the labours of the city, and want to spend most of their time dwelling in the pure air?”

“Impossible,” said he, “for we shall only be laying just commands on just men. No, but undoubtedly each man of them will go to the ruler’s place as to a grim necessity, exactly the opposite of those who now rule in cities.”

“For the truth is, my friend,” I said, “that only if you can find for your future rulers a way of life better than ruling, is it possible for you to have a well-managed city; since in that city alone those will rule who are truly rich, not rich in gold, but in that which is necessary for a happy man, the riches of a good and wise life: but if beggared and hungry, for want of goods of their own, they hasten to public affairs, thinking that they must snatch goods for themselves from there, it is not possible. Then rule becomes a thing to be fought for; and a war of such a kind, being between citizens and within them, destroys both them and the rest of the city also.”

“Most true,” said he.

“Well, then,” said I, “have you any other life despising political office except the life of true philosophy?”

“No, by heaven,” said he.

“But again,” said I, “they must not go awooing office like so many lovers! If they do, their rival lovers will fight them.”

“Of course they will!”

“Then what persons will you compel to accept guardianship of the city other than those who are wisest in the things which enable a city to be best managed, who also have honours of another kind and a life better than the political life?”

“No others,” he answered.

“Would you like us, then, to consider next how such men are to be produced in a city, and how they shall be brought up into the light, as you know some are said to go up from Hades to heaven?”

“Of course I should,” said he.

“Remember that this, as it seems, is no spinning of a shell,* it’s more than a game; the turning of a soul round from a day which is like night to a true day—this is the ascent into real being, which we shall say is true philosophy.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“We must consider, then, which of the studies has a power like that.”

“Of course.”

“Then, my dear Glaucon, what study could draw the soul from the world of becoming to the world of being? But stay, I have just thought of something while speaking—surely we said that these men must of necessity be athletes of war in their youth.”

“We did say so.”

“Then the study we seek must have something else in addition.”

“What?”

“Not to be useless for men of war.”

“Oh yes, it must,” he said, “if possible.”

“Gymnastic and music† we used before to educate them.”

“That is true,” said he.

“Gymnastic, I take it, is devoted to what becomes and perishes, for it presides over bodily growth and decay.”

“So it appears.”

“Then this, I suppose, could not be the study we seek.”

“No indeed.”

“Is it music, then, as far as we described that?”

“But if you remember,” said he, “music was the counterbalance of gymnastic. Music educated the guardians by habits, and taught them no science, but a fine concord by song and a fine rhythm by tune, and the words they used had in them qualities akin to these, whether the words were fabulous tales or true. But a study! There was nothing in it which led to any such good as you now seek.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” said I. “What you say is quite accurate; it had nothing of that sort in it. But, my dear man, Glaucon, what study could there be of that sort? For all the arts and crafts were vulgar, at least we thought so.”

“Certainly we did, but what study is left apart from gymnastic and music and the arts and crafts?”

“Look here,” I said; “if we can’t find anything more outside these, let us take one that extends to them all.”

“Which?” he asked.

“This, which they have in common, which is used in addition by all arts and all sciences and ways of thinking, which is one of the first things every man must learn of necessity.”

“What’s that?” he asked again.

“Just this trifle,” I said—“to distinguish between one and two and three: I mean, in short, number and calculation. Is it not always true that every art and science is forced to partake of these?”

“Most certainly,” he said.

“Even the art of war?”

“So it must,” said he.

“At least,” I said, “Palamedes* in the plays is always making out Agamemnon to be a perfectly ridiculous general. Haven’t you noticed that Palamedes claims to have invented number, and with this arranged the ranks in the encampment before Troy, and counted the ships and everything else, as if they had not been counted before and as if before this Agamemnon did not know how many feet he had, as it seems if he really could not count? Then what sort of general do you think he was?”

“Odd enough,” said he, “if that was true!”

“Then shall we not put down this,” I said, “as a study necessary for a soldier, to be able to calculate and count?”

“Nothing more so,” said he, “if he is to understand anything at all about his own ranks, or, rather, if he is to be even anything of a man.”

“I wonder,” said I, “if you notice what I do about this study.”

“And what may that be?”

“It is really one of those we are looking for, those which lead naturally to thinking; but no one uses it rightly, although it draws wholly towards real being.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I will try to explain,” said I, “what I, at least, believe. Whatever points I distinguish in my own mind as leading in favour of or against what we are speaking of, pray look at them with me and agree or disagree; then we shall see more clearly if this study is what I divine it to be.”

“Do indicate them,” said he.

“That is what I am doing,” I said. “If you observe, some things which the senses perceive do not invite the intelligence to examine them, because they seem to be judged satisfactorily by the sense; but some altogether urge it to examine them because the sense appears to produce no sound result.”

“Obviously you mean,” he said, “things seen from a distance, or in shadow drawing.”*

“You have not quite caught my point,” I said.

“Then what do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean by those which do not invite thought,” I said,

“all those which do not pass from one sensation to its opposite at the same time. Those that do, I put down as inviting thought, that is, when the sensation shows two opposites equally, whether its impact comes from near or from far.† I can explain what I mean more clearly. These are three fingers, we say, little finger and second and middle.”

“Just so,” said he.

“Suppose now that I speak of them as seen close by. Just ask yourself this, please—”

“What?”

“Each of them appears to be equally a finger, and in this respect there is no difference whether the one seen is in the middle or on the outside, whether it is white or black, thick or thin, and so forth. In all these things the soul of most men is not forced to call on thought and ask, ‘Whatever is a finger?’ for the sight does not signal to it at all that the finger is the opposite of a finger.”

“No, indeed,” said he.

“Then it is not likely,” said I, “that such a case would invite or arouse thought.”

“Not at all likely.”

“Very good. What of their bigness and smallness? Does the sight see these sizes adequately, and does it make no difference to it that one is in the middle or on the outside? Thickness or thinness again, and softness or hardness, does the touch feel these surely enough? So with the other senses—are they not also defective in what they show? Or rather what happens is this: In the first place, the sensation which is appointed to judge the hard must also be appointed over the soft, and as it goes on feeling, it reports to the soul that the same thing is both hard and soft.”*

“Just so,” said he.

“Then,” said I, “is it not necessary that the soul is puzzled in such cases, as to what, indeed, the sensation signifies to it by ‘hard’ if it says the same thing is ‘soft’; and so with the feeling of light and heavy, what light or heavy means, if the sensation declares the heavy light and the light heavy?”

“Really,” he said, “these explanations are queer for the soul, and need examination.”

“It is likely, then,” I said, “that it is in such cases the soul first calls in calculation and reasoning, and tries to examine whether one thing or two things are reported to it each time.”

“Of course.”

“If it appears to be two, then, each appears to be distinct from the other, and one?”

“Yes.”

“And if each appears to be one, and both together two, it will conceive of the two as separate because they are two, or else it would have conceived of one, not two, if they were inseparable.”

“Quite right.”

“Sight, again, saw big and small, we say, but as something compounded, not separate; don’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

“But, on the other hand, to make this something clear, as in fact big and small, reason was compelled to see it not as compounded but separate, the opposite of what sight saw.”

“True.”

“So from some beginning like this we first think of asking the question, ‘Then what, after all, is bigness and smallness?’”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And that, you know, is how we came to call one thing a thing of the mind* and another a thing of sight.”

“Quite right,” said he.

“Then this is what I was trying to say just now, when I said that some things provoke thought and some do not; I distinguished as provocative of thought those which bring their opposites with them when they fall upon the senses, and, as not awaking the intelligence, all such as do not bring in their opposites.”

“I understand you at last,” he said, “and I think so too.”

“Very good. Which class does number belong to, and the ‘one’?”

“I have no notion,” he said.

“Start from what has been said already, and reason it out. If the ‘one’ is sufficiently seen in itself and by itself, or if it is sufficiently apprehended by any other sense, it could not draw towards real being, as we described in the case of the finger; but if some opposite is always seen along with it so that it appears to be no more than the opposite, at once it would need a critic to decide; the soul would be forced to be puzzled over it and enquire by stirring thought within itself, and to ask, ‘What, after all, is the one in itself?’ So the study of the ‘one’ would be one of the studies which lead and divert the soul towards the contemplation of real being.”

“But surely,” he said, “an opposite is just what the ‘one’ especially has when it is examined by sight; for we can at the same time see the same thing both as one and as an infinite number.”*

“Then if that is true of one,” said I, “the same happens with all number.”

“Of course.”

“But the science of numbers and the art of calculation are wholly concerned with numbers.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Number, then, appears to lead towards the truth.”

“That is abundantly clear.”

“Then, as it seems, this would be one of the studies we seek; for this is necessary for the soldier to learn because of arranging his troops, and for the philosopher, because he must rise up out of the world of becoming and lay hold of real being or he will never become a reckoner.”

“That is true,” said he.

“Again, our guardian is really both soldier and philosopher.”

“Certainly.”

“Then, my dear Glaucon, it is proper to lay down that study by law, and to persuade those who are to share in the highest things in the city to go for and tackle the art of calculation, and not as amateurs; they must keep hold of it until they are led to contemplate the very nature of numbers by thought alone, practising it not for the purpose of buying and selling like merchants or hucksters, but for war, and for the soul itself, to make easier the change from the world of becoming to real being and truth.”

“Excellently said,” he answered.

“And besides,” I said, “it comes into my mind, now the study of calculations has been mentioned, how refined that is and useful to us in many ways for what we want, if it is followed for the sake of knowledge and not for chaffering.”

“How so?” he asked.

“In this way, as we said just now; how it leads the soul forcibly into some upper region and compels it to debate about numbers in themselves; it nowhere accepts any account of numbers as having tacked onto them bodies which can be seen or touched.* For of course you know that experts in these matters laugh at anyone who tries in discussion to cut unity itself, and they do not accept this; but if you chop it into bits they multiply them,† taking care lest the unit should ever appear not a unit but a lot of little pieces.”

“Very true,” he said.

“Then suppose, Glaucon, that someone should say to them, ‘Numbers indeed! You people surprise me. What are you talking about—numbers in which all your ones are equal each to each, and not a bit different, and have within them no parts?’ What do you think they would answer?”

“Just this, I think, that they are speaking of what can only be conceived in the mind, which it is impossible to deal with in any other way.”

“You see then, my friend,” said I, “that really this seems to be the study we need, since it clearly compels the soul to use pure reason in order to find out the truth.”

“So it most certainly does,” he said.

“Very well. You have seen already that natural calculators are sharp, for the most part, in all studies, and the slow ones have only to be educated and practised in this to become sharper than before, every one of them, even if they get no other benefit?”

“That is true,” said he.

“And besides, I don’t believe you could easily find studies which give more hard work than this in learning and in practice, not many at least.”

“No, indeed.”

“For all these reasons, then, we must not omit this study, but the best natures must be trained in it.”

“I agree,” he said.

“Then let us take that as point one settled,” I said.

“Let us see, secondly, if what comes next to this is proper for us.”

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

“Just that,”* said I.

“Clearly it is proper,” said he, “as far as it is concerned with warfare. In measuring encampments and assaulting strongholds, in closing up and extending the order of troops, and all other arrangements men make in armies in actual battles or on the march, it would make a great difference whether a general was a geometrician or not.”

“But for all this at least,” I said, “a very little geometry and calculation would be enough. We have to consider if the greater and higher part of the study tends towards our end, to make it easier to see the idea of the good. All does tend to this, we say, which compels the soul to turn round towards that region in which is the happiest and most fortunate part of real being, which the soul by all means must see.”

“You are right,” said he.

“So if it compels the soul to contemplate being, it is proper; if to contemplate becoming, it is not proper.”

“So we say.”

“Well then, no one who has any knowledge of geometry will deny to us that the science goes clean contrary to the way the geometricians talk.”

“How?” he asked.

“They speak in a very laughable and forced style, for they speak as if they were really doing and achieving something, as if their words had some action in view, talking loudly about squaring and applying and adding and all the rest of it; but the fact is, of course, that the whole study has only knowledge in view.”*

“No doubt of it,” said he.

“But must we not agree to this further?”

“What?”

“That the knowledge they seek is not knowledge of something which comes into being for a moment and then perishes, but knowledge of what always is.”

“Agreed with all my heart,” said he, “for geometrical knowledge is of that which always is.”

“A generous admission! Then it would attract the soul towards truth, and work out the philosopher’s mind so as to direct upwards what we now improperly keep downwards.”

“As certainly as can be,” he said.

“Then you must ordain as certainly as can be that in your City Beautiful they shall not neglect geometry by any means, for even its bye-ends are not small.”

“What bye-ends?” he asked.

“What you mentioned,” I said; “all that concerns warfare; and moreover as regards the better taking in of all studies, we doubtless know that it will make all the difference in the world whether one has grasped geometry or not.”

“Yes,” he said, “all the difference in the world.”

“So this is the second study we must lay down for our young people?”

“Yes,” said he.

“Very well: Shall we put astronomy third? Or don’t you think so?”

“I do,” said he; “for to have a good sense of seasons, of months and years is proper not only for husbandry and navigation, but for strategy in war no less.”

“I like that!” said I. “You seem to fear that the multitude may think you to be ordaining studies which are useless. It is no petty thing in fact, but hard to believe, that in every man’s soul there is an instrument which is purified by these studies and enkindled, but corrupted and blinded by the other practices; an instrument more important to preserve than countless eyes, for by this alone can truth be seen. Those then who agree with you will think this to be abundantly true; but those who have never perceived it at all* will naturally think you are talking nonsense, for naturally they see no practical benefit in them worth mention. Very well, make up your mind on the spot which class you are speaking to. Or perhaps to neither? Perhaps you are stating your opinions chiefly for your own sake, although you would not grudge another if he could find use in them?”

“That is what I choose,” he said; “I speak, ask and answer mostly for my own sake.”

“Come back a little, then,” said I, “for see, we were wrong in taking the study of astronomy next after geometry.”

“How were we wrong?” he asked.

“After the plane surface,” I said, “we took solids already in revolution, before we examined them by themselves; but the right way is to take the third increase† next after the second. This study relates of course to cubic increase and to forms having depth.”

“Quite so,” he said; “but it seems that those problems have not yet been solved.”

“For two reasons,” I said. “Because no city holds them in honour, they are weakly pursued, being difficult. Again, the seekers lack a guide, without whom they could not discover; it is hard to find one in the first place, and if they could, as things now are, the seekers in these matters would be too conceited to obey him. But if any whole city should hold these things honourable and take a united lead and supervise, they would obey, and solutions sought constantly and earnestly would become clear. Indeed even now, although dishonoured by the multitude, and held back by the seekers themselves having no conception of the objects for which they are useful, these things do nevertheless force on and grow against all this by their own charm, and I should not be surprised if they should really come to light.”

“Yes, indeed,” he said, “the charm in them is remarkable. But tell me more clearly what you mean by what you were just saying. You put down geometry as the study of the plane surface.”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Next after this,” he said, “at first you put astronomy, but afterwards you drew back.”

“Yes,” I said, “hastening to go through everything quickly—the less I speed.* The treatment of solids† does come next, but it is dealt with so ridiculously through neglect that I passed that by and put next to geometry astronomy, that is solids in motion.”

“Quite right,” said he.

“Very well, let us put astronomy the fourth study, assuming that solid geometry, which we leave aside now, is there for us if only the city would support it.”

“That is reasonable,” said he, “and now I will tell the advantages of astronomy in the way you regard it, Socrates; you blamed me for praising it in the vulgar way just now. I think it is plain to everyone that this compels the soul to look on high, and leads it away yonder from things here.”‡

“Everyone except me, perhaps,” I said, “for I don’t think so.”

“Then what do you think?” he asked.

“As it is treated now by those who would lead us to the heights of philosophy, I think it makes the soul look down very much indeed.”

“What do you mean?” said he.

“A grand conception you truly seem to have,” said I,

“of the study of things on high. For if anyone should throw back his head and learn something by staring at the varied patterns on a ceiling, apparently you would think that he was contemplating with his reason, when he was only staring with his eyes. Your opinion may be right, I may be only a simpleton; but on the contrary, I cannot but believe that no study makes the soul look on high except that which is concerned with real being and the unseen. Whether he gape and stare upwards, or shut his mouth and stare downwards, if it be things of the senses that he tries to learn something about, I declare he never could learn, for none of these things admit of knowledge: I say his soul is looking down, not up, even if he is floating on his back on land or on sea!”*

“It serves me right,” he said, “I deserved the reproof. But what did you mean by saying that they ought to be taught astronomy differently if their learning it is to be useful for what we want?”

“This is what I meant,” said I. “Those lovely patterns in the heavens are decorations in the visible world, so they may well be thought most beautiful and perfect of visible things; but they fall far short of those which are true, far short of the movements by which a real quickness and a real slowness in true number and in all sorts of true forms move about in relation to one another and carry about what is in them. These I tell you can be apprehended by reason and by thought, but not by sight. Don’t you think so?”

“I do,” said he.

“Then,” I said, “one must use the intricate decorations of the heavens as models to help in the study of those others, as one would do if he happened upon excellently drawn and elaborated diagrams* by Daidalos† or some other great craftsman or painter. For a man acquainted with geometry on seeing such things would think they were exquisite in workmanship, but that only a fool would study them in earnest and expect to find in them the realities of equals or doubles or of some other proportion.”

“Indeed he would be a fool to expect it,” he said.

“Then don’t you think the true astronomer will have the same feelings when he gazes at the movements of the stars? He will believe that the great architect of the heavens has framed the heavens and all that is in them as beautiful as such works can possibly be; and when he reflects how night and day are fitted together, and these with month and month with year, and the other stars with these and one another, will he not consider it absurd to believe that these things, which both have bodies and are visible, exist as they are forever without any change, and absurd to seek with all his power to grasp reality in these?”

“I think so at least,” he said, “when I hear you now.”

“So then,” I said, “we will pursue problems in astronomy as we do in geometry, and leave the starry heavens alone, if we mean to tackle astronomy truly and to make useful instead of useless the natural power of thinking in the soul.”

“What a multiplication of work,” he said, “you prescribe for astronomy, compared with present practice!”

“Yes,” I said, “and I believe we shall prescribe a lot of other work also in the same way, if we are to be of any use as lawgivers. But what have you to suggest,” I said, “in the way of proper studies?”

“I can’t think of one just now,” said he.

“Yet surely,” I said, “movement offers not one but several. All of them, perhaps, it would need a very wise man to tell; but two are obvious to us.”

“What two, please?”

“Besides astronomy,” I said, “its counterpart.”

“What?”

“It seems,” I said, “that just as our eyes were made* for astronomy, so our ears were made for harmonic movements, and these two are sister sciences, as the Pythagoreans aver, and as we, Glaucon, agree, don’t we?”

“We do,” he said.

“Then,” said I, “since the task is great, let us ask them what they have to say about it, and other things too, perhaps; but all the while we will keep our own purpose in view.”

“What is that?”

“Never to let any of our pupils try to study anything not perfect, anything which does not always arrive at that end which all studies ought to reach, as we said just now about astronomy. Don’t you know the Pythagoreans do the same sort of thing again about harmony? They measure up against one another the sounds and concords which are heard, the same ineffectual labour as in astronomy.”

“So they do, by heaven,” he said, “enough to make one laugh;† they give names to certain close intervals, and stick out their ears as if they were eavesdropping on a voice next door; some say they can still hear a note in between and that is the smallest interval to measure by; some will have it the notes now sound alike—both trust their ears rather than their mind!”

“Ah, but you,” said I, “you mean those worthy persons who make life unpleasant for gutstrings, tormenting them and racking them round the pegs—not to mention the beatings administered with plectrum and the loud accusals, expostulations and braggings‡ of the strings—but I will stop so as not to carry the metaphor too far, and will only say that I don’t mean these, I mean those whom we proposed to question about harmonics. They do just the same as people engaged in astronomy. They search for the numbers in the concords which are heard, but they do not come up as high as problems, so as to discover which numbers are concordant and which not, and why in each case.”

“A devil of a job that is!” he said.

“Say rather a useful job,” I answered, “if pursued in seeking for the beautiful and the good, but if pursued otherwise, useless.”

“That’s reasonable,” said he.

“Besides,” I said, “if indeed our examination of all these arts which we have been discussing brings us to consider the community and kinship between them and if it shows in what way they are related to one another, then I think the study of them does bring us a bit further on towards what we want, and our labour is not in vain, but otherwise it is.”

“So I surmise also,” he said; “but it is a gigantic task, Socrates.”

“Do you mean the preamble,” I asked, “or what? Surely we know that all these are only preambles, approach paths leading to the law itself, which we need to learn about? For I don’t suppose you think that the experts in these things, know anything of dialectics.”

“By God they don’t!” said he, “except a very few of those I have met.”

“But did you ever meet any that could not give and take in argument, whom you thought likely to know anything of what we say they ought to know?”

“No, as before,” said he.

“Then, my dear Glaucon,” said I, “is this the law at last, which dialectic brings out to its final meaning,* and which being the law of mind would have a likeness in the power† of sight trying, as we described it,‡ to look at last upon living things themselves, and the stars themselves, and finally upon the sun itself? Just so when a man tries by discussion to get a start towards the real thing, through reason and without any help from the senses, and will not desist until he grasps by thought alone the real nature of good itself, he arrives at the very end of the world of thought, as the other before was at the end of the world of sight.”

“Undoubtedly,” said he.

“Very good: Don’t you give the name dialectic to this progress of thought?”

“Of course.”

“Well,” said I, “there* was release from chains, and turning away from the shadows to the images and the light, and an upward passage from underground to the sun; and there still no ability to look at living things and plants and sunlight, but only upon godlike reflections in water and shadows of real things, not now shadows of images cast from another light such as, compared with the sun, was as shadowy as they were. All this diligent study of the arts—those we have been discussing—has this power, a stirring up and bringing out of the best in the soul to survey the best in things which really are, just as there it brought the clearest thing in the body to survey the most brilliant things in the bodily world of vision.”

“I accept that,” he said; “but all the same it seems to me hard to accept, yet again in another way hard not to accept. However, don’t let us hear this only now at this moment—we must return to it again often; so let us assume what has been said, and go on to the law itself, and discuss it, as we have discussed the preamble. Then pray tell us what is the character of the power of dialectic, and what are its various kinds, and lastly what are its methods. For the methods, as it seems, would be ways ready to lead us to that very place where we may rest from the road and come to our journey’s end.”

“You will not be able,” I said, “to follow me further, my dear Glaucon, although on my part there would be no want of good will. I should be glad to show you, if I could, no longer an image of what we speak of, but the truth as it appears to me, at least—though whether really so or not, I dare not say for certain; but I must certainly say that what we should see is something like that. Don’t you agree?”

“Of course.”

“And we could say also that only the power of discussion could show it, and only to one with experience of the studies which we have just described, and in no other way is it possible?”

“This too,” he said, “one might say for certain.”

“At any rate,” I said, “no one will ever contradict us when we say that it is some method of investigation different from these, which tries to ascertain step by step about everything what each really is in itself. Nearly all the other arts are concerned with the opinions and desires of men, or generation and composition, or the care of things growing and being compounded; and the few which do take hold of truth a little, as we said, geometry and those which go with it, we see are in dreamland about real being, and to perceive with a waking vision is impossible for these arts so long as they leave untouched the hypotheses which they use and cannot give any account of them. For when a beginning is something a man does not know, and the middle and end are woven of what he does not know, how can such a mere admission ever amount to knowledge?”

“Impossible,” said he.

“Then the dialectic method proceeds alone by this way, demolishing the hypotheses as it goes, back to the very beginning itself, in order to find firm ground; the soul’s eye, which is really buried deep in a sort of barbaric bog,* it draws out quietly and leads upwards, having the arts we have described as handmaids and helpers. These we have often termed sciences from habit, but they need another name, one clearer than opinion and dimmer than science. We have defined it already somewhere as understanding; but we are not debating about names when we have before us things so great to examine.”

“No, indeed,” said he.*

“We are content, then,” said I, “as before to call the first part science,† and the second understanding, and the third belief, and the fourth conjecture: these last two together we may call opinion, and the first two exercise of reason. Opinion is concerned with becoming, and exercise of reason with being; and what being is to becoming, that exercise of reason is to opinion, and what exercise of reason is to opinion, that science is to belief, and understanding to conjecture. But let us leave aside, Glaucon, the proportion‡ between lines which represent these, and the division of opinable and reasonable¶ each in two, or we shall have our fill of many times the number of discussions we had before.”

“Oh, well, for myself,” he said, “I agree with you about the other things, as far as I can follow.”

“Then one who exacts an account of the real being of each thing, you call the man of dialectic? And one who cannot, you will say, has not understanding of this, in so far as he cannot give an account of it to himself and to another?”

“Why, how could I say he has?” was the reply.

“Exactly the same about the good. If a man cannot distinguish by reasoning, and isolate the idea of the good from all other things, you will declare that he does not know the real good at all. He must behave like a soldier in battle; through all tests he must push, determined to test things not according to opinion but according to reality, and in all these things pass through without a fall in his reasoning. If not, you will say that he does not know either the good or any good thing; if he does somehow get hold of an image* of it, he holds it by opinion, not by knowledge; and he lives the present life sleeping and dreaming, never awaking in this world, until he comes to the house of Hades for his long, eternal sleep.”

“Yes, by God,” he said, “that is just what I shall say.”

“And further, if you ever in fact had sons of your own to foster and train, as you now are training children in our discourse, you would not let them remain ‘as irrational as pen strokes’† to rule in the city and be masters of the highest things.”

“That I should not,” said he.

“You will lay down, then, in the law, that they must adhere chiefly to the education which makes them able to question and answer most scientifically.”

“So I will,” he said, “with your help.”

“Then do you agree,” said I, “that we place dialectic on top of our other studies like a coping-stone; that no other study could rightly be put above this, and that here here discussion of studies is ended?”

“I do,” said he.

“Now then, distribution,” said I. “That is what remains for us; as to who shall be given these studies, and how.”

“Clearly,” he said.

“Do you remember, then, the choice of rulers we made before, what sort we chose?”

“Of course,” he said.

“So in general,” said I, “those are the natures which ought to be our choice; we must prefer the steadiest and the bravest, and as far as possible the most handsome. But besides that we must seek not only those who are generous and beefy* in character, but they must have in their nature all that suits this education.”

“What are you thinking of particularly now?” he asked.

“Keenness, bless you!” I said. “They must have that for their studies, and they must not find learning difficult. The soul flinches much more, let me tell you, in hard study than in athletics; the labour goes more home to the soul, its very own, not shared by the body.”

“True,” he said.

“And we must seek the man who has a good memory and doggedness, and is a lover of all sorts of hard labour. Else how do you think anyone would want both to work hard with his body and to complete all that study and practising as well?”

“No one would,” he said, “unless of a fine all-around nature.”

“At any rate, the mistake of today,” said I, “and the dishonour which has fallen upon philosophy, comes from what I said before, that they cannot approach her as equals: for bastards, we said, ought not to touch her, only true-born sons.”

“How so?” he asked.

“In the first place,” I said, “no one should come near her lame in diligence, half of him loving hard work and half idle. This happens whenever one loves athletics and hunting and loves all hard work which involves the body, but does not love learning or listening or enquiring; in fact hates all that kind of work. He is equally lame who puts hate and love of work the opposite way.”

“Very true,” said he.

“So again with truth,” I said, “we will set down as a soul maimed for truth one which hates only the intended lie, and will itself have nothing to do with that and is very angry with others who are false; and yet easily accepts the unintended falsehood, and is not vexed when detected in some ignorance, but rolls in the mud of ignorance like a pig.”

“Most certainly,” he said.

“And with regard to temperance,” I said, “and courage and magnificence, and all the parts of virtue, we must be most careful to distinguish bastard and true-born. For when a city, or a person indeed, does not know how to examine things of that sort, they use unconsciously for any of their purposes cripples and bastards for rulers or friends, as the case may be.”

“Certainly that is true,” he said.

“But we shall have to be most cautious,” I said, “in all such matters. If we bring those of sound body and sound mind to this great study and this great practice, and so educate them, we shall save both city and constitution, and justice herself will have no fault to find with us; but if we bring in aliens our lot will be altogether contrary, and we shall let loose a still greater flood of ridicule on philosophy.”

“That would indeed be an ugly thing,” said he.

“It certainly would,” I said. “But I—here’s a funny thing happening to me again!”

“What?” he asked.

“I forgot we were playing,” I said, “and I spoke too strongly. As I was speaking I glanced at philosophy, and saw her unworthily trampled underfoot; I suppose it provoked me and I spoke as I did, like an angry man, too seriously against those who were to blame.”

“Not too seriously for me,” said he, “as a hearer.”

“Ah, but for me,” I said, “as a speaker. But we must not forget that in our former choice we chose old men, but in this one that will not be possible. We must not believe Solon* that a man can learn many things while growing old. He is less able to learn than to run; most of the labours, and all the hard ones, are for young men.”

“That comes of necessity,” said he.

“Then what belongs to calculations and geometries and all the education which is necessary as a prelude to dialectic must be set before them while still young, and not as a scheme of instruction which they must be compelled to learn.”

“Why, pray?”

“Because,” I said, “the free man must not learn anything coupled with slavery. For bodily labours under compulsion do no harm to the body, but no compulsory learning can remain in the soul.”

“True,” said he.

“No compulsion then, my good friend,” said I, “in teaching children; train them by a kind of game, and you will be able to see more clearly the natural bent of each.”

“There’s reason in that,” he said.

“Well,” said I, “you remember we said that the children must be brought to war on horseback as spectators, and if there were a safe place they must be brought near and taste blood, like dogs?”

“I remember,” said he.

“Then in all these things,” I said, “in labours and learnings and fears, whoever always appears most ready and active must be enrolled in a class apart.”

“At what age?” he asked.

“The age,” I said, “when they are released from compulsory gymnastics. For in this time, two or three years as it may be, they can do nothing else; labour and sleep are enemies to learning, and besides, how they will prove themselves in these exercises is one of our chief tests.”

“Certainly,” said he.

“After this time, then,” said I, “those who are judged best of the twenty-year-olds will receive greater honours than the rest; and these must gather together into one connected view all the studies which they followed without order in their education in childhood, to disclose the relationship of the studies to one another and to the nature of real being.”

“At any rate,” he said, “only such learning as that could remain firm in those who have it.”

“And it is also,” I said, “the chief test of the dialectic nature and the reverse: for the ‘synoptic’ person is a ‘dialectic’ person;* anyone else is not.”

“I agree with you,” said he.

“Then these are the matters,” I said, “which you must supervise, and you must see which most of all among them have these qualities, and are steadfast in their studies, steadfast in war and in their other duties. When these pass their thirty years, choose the best in this select class and give them greater honours; then test them in the power of dialectic, to discover which has the power to shake off sight and the other senses and pass onwards to real being in very truth. And now you must be especially careful, my comrade.”

“Why, I wonder!” said he.

“Do you not notice,” I said, “what a mighty danger there is now in the use of dialectic?”

“What danger?” he asked.

“They get filled with lawlessness,” said I.

“So they do,” he said.

“Well, do you think that what happens to them is at all surprising,” I said; “can you find no excuse?”

“What excuse?” he asked.

“Just suppose,” I said, “a changeling son brought up in great wealth in a great family and surrounded by flatterers; when he grew up to be a man, suppose he should perceive that he was no son to those who called themselves parents but he could not find out who the real ones were. Can you imagine how he would feel towards the flatterers and towards his supposed parents during the time when he did not know of his substitution, and again when he did? Perhaps you would like to hear me imagine.”

“I should,” said he.

“I imagine, then,” I said, “that while he did not know the truth, he would be more likely to honour his father and mother and his other apparent relatives than to honour the flatterers, and less ready to leave them in want, less ready to say or do anything lawless to them, less ready to disobey them in great matters than to disobey the flatterers.”

“That is likely,” he said.

“But, on the other hand, when he found out the facts, I imagine that he would be remiss in the honour and care due to these and increase it towards the flatterers, he would obey the flatterers more than before and live now after their fashion, he would associate openly with them and care nothing for that old father and the adoptive relatives, unless he had a particularly generous nature.”

“That is exactly what would happen,” said he; “but how does that picture suit those who are tackling the study of words?”

“I will tell you how,” I said. “We have, I suppose, been influenced from childhood by settled opinions about just and beautiful things, opinions amongst which we have been brought up, obeying and honouring them, as if in subjection to parents.”

“We have.”

“And also there are other practices contrary to these, which have pleasures in them, and these flatter our soul and draw it towards themselves; yet they do not convince those who are at all decent, who still honour the old traditions and obey them.”

“That is true.”

“Very good,” said I. “Suppose a question comes along to someone in that condition, asking him, ‘What is the beautiful?’ Suppose he answers what he used to hear from the lawgiver, but argument begins to pick holes, and tests the answer this way and that way over and over again and drives him into the opinion that the thing is no more beautiful than ugly; if the same thing happens about the just and the good and whatever he held most in honour—what do you think he will do then about honour and obedience?”

“Neither honour nor obey as before, that’s a necessity.”

“Very well,” said I; “he no longer thinks the old opinions honourable and of his own kith and kin, as he did once, and he cannot find the true ones. What other life do you expect him to give himself up to? Will he not probably go straight over to the life of flatterers?”

“That he will,” said he.

“From law-abiding, then, it seems likely he will have become lawbreaking, I think.”

“It must be so.”

“So that is likely to be the experience of those who take up word study in this way, and, as I said just now, there should be much excuse for it.”

“And pity too,” he said.

“Therefore, so that there may be none of this pity on behalf of your thirty-year-olds, the study of words must be tackled most cautiously in every way.”

“Very much so, indeed,” he said.

“And one great safeguard is not to let them taste these things while they are young, isn’t it? For I am sure you have not failed to notice that as soon as youngsters get a first taste of words in their mouth, they treat them as a game, and misuse them, always words against words; they copy people who refute them, and themselves refute others in the same way, as happy as a lot of puppies to worry and tear with their words those who happen to be nearest to them.”

“They do love it vastly!” said he.

“So they refute many, and many refute them, and in the end they tumble headlong into a strong disbelief of all they used to believe. The result is, as you see, that they get a bad name everywhere themselves, and the whole cause of philosophy is prejudiced.”

“Most true,” he said.

“But the older man,” I said, “would never want to share such insanity. He will rather choose to imitate those who wish to argue and search for the truth, not those who make it a game and contradict for fun. So he will be a more moderate man, and he will make his pursuits appear more honourable, not more dishonourable.”

“Quite right,” said he.

“And surely what we laid down before this was also said with a view to this caution—I mean that we must choose decent and steady natures to teach the art of words, and we must not have any chance comer taking it up who may be unsuitable.”

“I quite agree,” he said.

“Well now, for the study of words is it enough if a man sticks to it constantly and intently, and does nothing else but exercise himself in it, just as was done in the exercises for his body, but for twice as many years as then?”

“Six years do you mean,” he said, “or four?”

“Oh, well,” said I, “put it down as five; for after that they must be taken down again into that cave, and compelled to rule in the affairs of war and the other offices of young men, that they may not be behind the others in experience. Even in these also they must be further tested, to see whether they will stand firm when attracted in all directions, or will in the least give way.”

“How long,” said he, “do you put for that?”

“Fifteen years,” I said. “And when they are fifty years old, those who have come safely through and distinguished themselves everywhere in everything, both action and knowledge, must now be brought to the last task. They must be made to uplift the brilliant radiance of the soul and to fix their gaze on that which provides light for all; then, beholding the good in itself, and using that as a standard, they must adorn city and men, yes, themselves also, for the rest of their lives each in turn. Most of the time must be spent in philosophy, but when their turn comes, they must labour hard yet again in politics; rulers they must each be, for the city’s sake, doing it not as a beautiful thing but as a necessity. And so educating others to be like them, they must leave them as guardians of the city in their place, then depart and dwell in the Islands of the Blest; the city shall make public monuments and sacrifices in their honour, as holy spirits, if the Pythian oracle concurs, or else as men happy and divine.”

“A noble row of rulers you have made, Socrates,” he said, “like a sculptor making statues!”

“And don’t forget the women, Glaucon,” I said, “they may be rulers, too! Don’t suppose that what I have said was meant only for men; women too, as many as are born among us with natures sufficiently capable.”

“Quite right,” he said, “if they are to share all in common with men, as we described.”

“Very well,” I said; “you agree that what we said of the city and its constitution was not altogether a pious prayer. Difficult it is indeed, but possible somehow, and only in the way we said, when those who are truly philosophers become potentates whether one or more in the city, men who despise what are now honours, believing them to be ignoble and worthless, but hold the right of most value and the honours which come from that; men who hold the greatest and most necessary thing to be justice, and, steadfastly serving and exalting justice, set their city into complete order.”

“How?” he asked.

“All above ten years of age in the city,” said I, “must be sent out into the country; and all the children among them must be taken charge of and kept outside their present surroundings and the ways of life led by their parents; and the reformers must bring them up in their own ways and customs, which are such as we have described already. Thus most easily and most quickly, don’t you agree, the city and constitution we described will be established and prosper and be happy, and the nation in which it exists will receive most benefit?”

“Yes, by far,” said he; “and I think, Socrates, that you have well explained how that could be done, if ever it should be done.”

“Then we have said enough now,” I went on, “about this city and of the man who is like it, haven’t we? For it is also clear, I take it, what sort of person we shall expect him to be.”

“Quite clear,” said he, “and, to answer your question, I think we have come to the end.”

BOOK VIII

“Very well. So far we are agreed, Glaucon. The city which is to be arranged in the best possible way must have women in common, children in common and all education in common. So also its practices must be common to all, both in war and peace; kings among them must be those who have shown themselves best both in philosophy and in warfare.”

“So far we are agreed,” said he.

“And further, we agreed as to what the rulers are to do when appointed. They will take the soldiers and settle them in such lodgings as we described, common to all without any thing private. Besides the lodgings, if you remember, we agreed what property they should have.”

“Yes, I remember,” said he; “we thought they should have no property at all such as other people now have, but, as being athletes of war and guardians, they were to receive a wage for their guarding from the others, namely the year’s keep for these purposes, and their duty was to take care of the rest of the city and themselves.”

“Quite correct,” I said; “but now that we have finished that matter, let us recall where we turned off on the path which led us here, and go by the old road.”

“That is not difficult,” said he, “you were then saying very much the same as now. You assumed that the city had been fully described, and went on to say that you would call such a city good, and a man like it good, although you could describe a better city and a better man; then, further, that if this one were right all other cities were wrong. The constitutions remaining, as I remember it, you said were of four kinds; and it was worthwhile to take account of these and see their faults, and to observe the men resembling them; thus by examining all these, and agreeing about the best and worst man, we might consider whether the best man was happiest and the worst most miserable, or otherwise. Then I asked what these four constitutions were. There Polemarchos and Adeimantos broke into the discussion; then you resumed, and so you have arrived at this stage.”

“Quite correct,” I said, “you have a good memory.”

“Then give me the same hold again, like a wrestler, and when I ask the same question, try to say what you were going to say then.”

“If I can!” said I.

“Well, indeed,” said he, “I do desire to hear for myself what you meant by the four constitutions.”

“That will not be difficult,” I said, “you shall hear; these are what I mean, as far as they have names. First, your Cretan and Laconian,* which are generally praised. The second is called oligarchy, the rule of the few, which is praised in the second place, a constitution full of many evils. Next after this comes democracy, the rule of the people, its antagonist, which naturally follows; and last, far removed from all these, that glorious thing tyranny, fourth—the extremest pestilence which a city can have. Can you name any other kind of constitution that stands in a distinct class? There are principalities, I suppose, and purchased royalties, and constitutions of such kinds somewhere in between these—one could find more of them among barbarians than Hellenes.”

“A good few indeed,” he said, “and strange ones, as they are described.”

“Well then,” said I, “you know there must be as many kinds of men as constitutions. You don’t suppose the constitutions grow out of a tree or a stone;* no, they grow out of men’s manners in the cities, whichever manners tip the scales down, so to speak, and draw the others after them.”

“True indeed,” said he, “that’s where they come from.”

“Then if there are five kinds of constitutions, there should be five conditions of soul of private men.”

“Of course.”

“We have already described the man who is like aristocracy, ‘the rule of the best,’ the one whom we properly describe as good and just, the best man.”

“We have.”

“Then what next—should we describe the inferior sorts? One imperious and greedy of honour, answering to the Laconian state; one again the member of a ruling class—oligarchy, and the democratic man, and the natural tyrant? What we want is to compare the most unjust to the most just, and that will end our enquiry as to how justice unmixed stands to injustice unmixed in the possessor, whether he is happy or miserable. Are we to obey Thrasymachos and pursue injustice, or to obey the argument which is now appearing, and pursue justice?”

“Yes, that is what we should do next,” said he, “by all means.”

“We began by examining the manners in states before taking persons, as being clearer there; shall we do the same now, and examine first the honour-loving constitution? I can’t find any other word for it in our Greek language; it must be called timocracy or timarchy, the power or rule of honour. Then we will consider the man of that kind; after that oligarchy and the oligarchical man, and then again democracy and the democratical man. And fourthly we will come to the city under a tyranny and look at that, turning our eyes towards the tyrannic soul. Last of all, we will try to be competent judges of the one question which we have set before us.”

“I must say at least,” he answered, “that would be a reasonable way to examine and to judge.”

“Come, then,” said I, “let us try to say how a timocracy would grow out of an aristocracy. One thing is plain, I think; change in a constitution always begins from the governing class when there is a faction within; but so long as they are of one mind, even if they be a very small class, it is impossible to disturb them.”

“That is true.”

“Very well, Glaucon,” I said, “how will our city be disturbed? How will the assistants and the rulers quarrel with one another and themselves? Would you like us to beseech the Muses, as Homer does, to tell us ‘how first fell faction among them’;* and should we imagine the Muses mouthing their words in the lofty tragic vein, while really they are playing up mock-heroic and teasing us as if we were children?”

“How?”

“Like this more or less. ‘It is difficult indeed to disturb a city thus constituted; but destruction comes to everything existing, and therefore even a fabric like this will not endure for ever, but it must be dissolved. The dissolution will be thus. In plants which grow in the earth, and also in animals which live on the earth, there is bearing and barrenness both in soul and bodies when the rounding circles of each come completely round, a short course for the short-lived and a long course for the long-lived; but in your race, mankind,† the city leaders whom you have educated will never succeed in procuring the fine births and the barrenness, however wise they are, by reasoning combined with sensation, but these will escape them, and they will sometimes beget children when they should not. For a divine birthling the circle is comprehended by a perfect number,* for a human birth by the first number in which increases by root and square are given three dimensions, with four marking-points† of things that make like and unlike, that wax and wane, and make all commensurable together and rational, from which numbers, three and four wedded with five‡ and cubed produce two harmonies, one square, so many times a hundred, one oblong: one side being one hundred squares of the rational diameter of five¶ less one each, or of the irrational diameter less two; the other side one hundred cubes of three. This whole number, geometrical, master of gestation on earth,** is controller of better and worse births. And when your guardians, not knowing this, bring brides and bridegrooms together unseasonably, the children will not be of fine nature or fine fortune. The best of them will be established in office by their predecessors, it is true; but still, being unworthy, when they come in turn into their fathers’ powers, they will begin to neglect us as guardians, first slighting music more than is proper, secondly gymnastic; whence your young people will care less for us Muses. And the rulers appointed from them will not behave like very good guardians in testing the breeds among you, Hesiod’s golden and silvern and brazen and iron:* iron will be mixed with silver and brass with gold, and so unlikeness and unevenness unharmonised will come up; and if these grow up, wherever they grow up, they also bring forth war and hatred. From this generation I tell you† is begotten faction, whenever and wherever faction appears.’”

“‘Well answered, indeed, Muses!’ shall be our reply,” he said.

“As you might expect,” said I, “since they are Muses.”

“Well, what next?” he asked, “how do the Muses go on?”

“When faction comes up,” said I, “there is a tug of war between the two breeds among the guardians; iron and brazen pulling towards moneymaking and freehold property and riches of silver and gold; and on the other side, the silvern and golden, being themselves naturally rich in their souls, not poor, pull towards virtue and the ancient tradition. So, after a violent struggle together they compromise the matter; they would share land and houses among themselves in private possession, and then make slaves of those whom they had been guarding in freedom, their friends and supporters, keeping them now as yeomen‡ and servants, and themselves managing war and guardianship over them?”

“Yes,” he said, “that seems how the change comes about.”

“Accordingly,” said I, “this would be a constitution between aristocracy and oligarchy.”

“Exactly.”

“Thus, then, the change will come about. But after the change, how will it go on? Obviously, it will imitate partly the old constitution, and partly oligarchy, being between them, and it will also have something of its own.”

“Just so,” he said.

“Then in honouring the rulers, and in keeping away from agriculture and handicrafts and moneymaking that part which fights for the city, in establishing messes and attending to gymnastic and training for war, in all such things it will imitate the old constitution?”

“Yes.”

“But in many ways it will also have special customs of its own; thus, it will fear to bring the wise into places of government, because the men of that sort which it has are no longer simple and earnest but a mixture; it will incline to the high-spirited and more single-minded men, those whose nature is rather for war than for peace, and it will hold in honour warlike stratagems and contrivances and spend the whole time in war.”

“Yes.”

“Covetous, again, such men will be,” said I, “covetous of riches as those in oligarchies are, with a fierce love in the darkness for gold and silver, now they are possessed of storehouses and private treasuries to store and hide these things in; they will build habitations about them to dwell in, nothing less than little nests for themselves, in which they can spend fortunes lavishing money on their women and any others they may wish.”

“Most true,” said he.

“And so they will be misers with their own money, because they value it so and have to keep it hidden, but spendthrifts with the money of others, because of their desires; they will enjoy their pleasures in secret, running away from the law like boys who run from their father, since force and not persuasion has educated them, all because they have neglected the true Muse, the comrade of reason and philosophy, and have honoured gymnastic with greater reverence than music.”

“Assuredly,” said he, “this constitution is a mixture of both evil and good.”

“Yes, a great mixture,” said I, “but most manifest in it is one thing only, because the high-spirited part is predominant—I mean the desire to be first* and the passion for honour.”

“Decidedly,” said he.

“Well, then,” I said, “this is the constitution, and this is how it arises, and such would be a general sketch of it without going into details exactly; even the sketch is enough to show the most just and the most unjust man, and our task would be unmanageable to describe all constitutions and all characters without leaving out any.”

“You are quite right,” said he.

“What of the man corresponding to such a constitution? How does he come up, and what sort of person is he?”

“My notion is,” said Adeimantos, “that he comes pretty near to our friend Glaucon in the wish to be first.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “as far as that goes; but there are some things where they are different.”

“What are those?”

“He must be more self-willed than Glaucon,” said I,

“and a little less cultured, yet a lover of music; fond of hearing speakers, yet in no way a speaker himself. Such a man would be brutal to slaves, instead of treating slaves with disdain, as a man properly educated would do; but he is gentle to the freeborn. He would be very obedient to rulers, with a passion for rule himself, and for honour; but he would claim the right to rule not because he could talk or anything of that sort, but because of his deeds of war and practice of warlike exercises, and being fond of gymnastic and hunting.”

“Yes,” he said, “because that is the character of this constitution.”

“As to money, too,” I said, “such a man would despise it in youth, but the older he grew, the more he would love it, because he has a bit of the money-loving nature within him, and is not single-minded for virtue—his best guardian has left him.”

“What guardian?” asked Adeimantos.

“Reason,” said I, “mingled with music; this alone when it grows within dwells throughout life in the possessor as the saviour of virtue.”

“Well said!” he answered.

“There then,” said I, “is the character of the timocratic youth, like to the city of the same kind.”

“By all means.”

“And this is how he is produced, more or less,” I said.

“Sometimes he is the young son of a good father, a father who lives in a city without a good constitution, who eschews honours and offices and lawsuits, and all such meddlesomeness, and is willing to be overreached so long as he can be spared trouble.”

“And how does he become what he is?”

“It begins,” I said, “when he hears his mother grumbling that her husband is not one of the governing class and so the other women look down upon her. Then she sees that her husband does not worry much about money, and will not fight and rail in private lawsuits and in parliament; he takes all that quietly, and she notices he is always attending to himself and doesn’t pay much respect to her, though he is never rude to her. So the boy just listens, and she goes on grumbling, because of all this, that father is no man and only slack, and all the other grievances which women love to harp on.”

“You’re right,” said Adeimantos, “no end of grievances, that’s just like the women.”

“Then you know too,” said I, “that the servants of such people, servants who seem to be loyal, sometimes say the same sort of thing to the sons quietly; and if they see someone in their debt and the father will not prosecute, or any other wrong they may see, they exhort the boy to punish them all when he grows up, and be more of a man than father; and out of doors he hears and sees other things of the same sort—those in the city that attend quietly to their own business being called simpletons and thought little of, while those who meddle in other business are honoured and praised. Then as the young man hears and sees all this, and hears on the contrary what his father says and compares his ways with the others, he is attracted by both: his father waters* and fosters the reasoning part in his soul, the others the desiring and high-spirited part. So, because his nature is not evil, but is influenced by the evil natures of his companions, he is dragged into the middle by both these, and yields the governance of himself to the mean, the self-asserting and high-spirited part, and becomes an ambitious and honour-loving man.”

“I think you have got it exactly,” said he; “that is how such a man is produced.”

“Then,” said I, “there we have the second constitution and the second kind of man.”

“We have,” said he.

“Next, then, shall we tell of ‘another man set up against another city,’† as Aeschylus might say—or rather take the city first, according to our system?”

“By all means,” he said.

“Well, the next constitution, I think, would be oligarchy.”

“But what sort of establishment,” said he, “would you call oligarchy?”

“A constitution,” I said, “according to property, in which the rich govern and the poor man has no share in government.”

“I understand,” said he.

“Then shall I explain first how timocracy changes into oligarchy?”

“Yes.”

“Yet a blind man could see that,” I said.

“How?”

“That storehouse full of gold,” said I, “which every man has, destroys such a constitution. First they invent ways of spending for themselves, and neither they nor their wives obey the laws, but they pervert them to support this.”

“That is likely,” said he.

“After that,” I said, “they observe each other and rival each other, and make the whole body of the people like themselves.”

“Quite likely.”

“By and by, then,” said I, “they push ahead with their moneymaking, and the more they value money the less they value virtue; in truth, we may imagine riches and virtue as always balanced in scales against each other.”

“Just so,” said he.

“And when riches are honoured in a city, virtue and the good people are less honoured than the rich.”

“That is clear.”

“Now what is honoured anywhere is practised, and what is dishonoured is neglected.”

“Just so.”

“Thus in the end they have become lovers of money and moneymaking and no longer aim at honour and ambition; they praise the rich man and admire him and bring him into places of government, and the poor man they dishonour.”

“Certainly.”

“So then they lay down a law of limitation in the constitution; they fix a sum of money, greater or less, according as the oligarchy is more or less complete, and proclaim that no one may share in the government unless his property comes up to the assessment. This they carry out by force of arms, or they have used terror before this to establish such a constitution. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then that is how it is established, more or less.”

“Yes,” he said, “but how does the constitution work? And what are those faults which we said it had?”

“First of all,” said I, “look at the character of this very limitation. Suppose pilots were chosen on board ship by their property, and no poor man could be chosen even if he were a better pilot.”

“A bad voyage,” said he, “is what I should prophesy for them.”

“Would it not be the same with any other form of government?”

“I think so.”

“Except government of a city?” said I, “or does it hold for a city too?”

“Most of all for a city,” said he, “for that government is the greatest and the most difficult.”

“This, then, is one great fault in an oligarchy.”

“So it appears.”

“Very well; there is another just as bad.”

“What?”

“That a city of that sort is not one but two by necessity, a city of the rich and a city of the poor, living together and always plotting against each other.”

“Indeed, that is just as bad as the first,” said he.

“And there is something besides which is not good. They may be unable perhaps to wage some war, because then they are compelled either to arm the populace and to fear them more than the enemy, or not to use them, and so to see themselves literally oligarchs in the very process of battle, with precious few to rule. And remember that they are money-lovers, and so they will not be ready to pay levies.”*

“Not at all good, that!”

“Very well, what about another thing which we have already condemned? They meddle in many businesses, the same people farmers and traders and fighters all at once under such a constitution; do you think that right?”

“By no manner of means.”

“Just consider now; is not this constitution the first which admits the greatest of all these evil things?”

“What do you mean?”

“That a man may sell all his goods, and another may get hold of them, and the seller may go on living in the city when he is no part of it at all, neither trader nor craftsman, neither horse soldier nor foot soldier, but simply dubbed pauper and destitute.”

“Yes, this is the first,” said he; “certainly nothing is done to prevent it in oligarchic states, or else some people would not be extremely rich and others utter paupers.”

“Quite right. Look here again. When such a man was rich and spent his money, was he of any more use then to the city for what we spoke of just now? He was thought then one of the governing class, but isn’t it the truth that he was neither governor nor servant of the city, but only a consumer of stores?”

“Exactly,” said he; “he was nothing but a consumer, whatever he was thought!”

“Then, if you please,” I said, “we will call him a drone in the home, where he is produced to be a plague to the city, as a drone in the honeycomb is a plague to the hive!”

“Excellent, Socrates!” he said.

“All drones with wings, my dear Adeimantos,” I said,

“God has made without stings; but some of these drones with two legs have terrible stings, although some have none. Those who reach old age at last as beggars come from the stingless ones; all the people called criminal come from the stinging ones.”

“Most true,” he said.

“It is clear, then,” said I, “that wherever you see beggars in any city, you may be sure that hidden somewhere not far off are thieves and cutpurses and sacrilegious persons, and craftsmen of all crimes of that sort.”

“Yes, that is clear,” said he.

“Very well, then,” said I, “don’t you see beggars in oligarchical cities?”

“Nearly all are beggars,” he said, “except the government.”

“Then are we not to believe,” I said, “that there are plenty of criminals in them with stings, whom the governors take great care to hold down by force?”

“We must certainly believe that.”

“Shall we say, then, that the reason why such creatures are produced there is lack of education and bad nurture and a bad constitution of the state?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, then; such would be the oligarchic state, and such the evils in it, perhaps even more.”

“Something like that,” said he.

“So much then,” said I, “for this constitution called oligarchy, which chooses its rulers according to property. Now let us examine the man who is like this city, and ask how he is produced and what his character is.”

“By all means,” he said.

“First, perhaps, I may suggest how our timocratic man changes into the oligarchic.”

“How?”

“When a son is born to the timocratic man, he first imitates his father and follows in his footsteps. Then he sees him suddenly wrecked against the state like a ship on a sunken reef, and himself and his cargo washed overboard; he may have been at the head of an army or in some other great post and then thrown into the law court, ruined by false informers, and put to death, or banished, or outlawed and all his estate confiscated.”

“That is likely enough,” said he.

“And when the young man sees this, my friend, after such an experience, and being robbed of all he had, he kicks out that love of honour and that high spirit from his soul’s throne head over heels; he is humbled by poverty and turns greedily to trading, and, little by little, by miserly savings and hard work he collects money. Don’t you suppose such a man will then seat upon that empty throne Coveting and Greed, and will make a Great Mogul within himself, crowned with tiaras, collars about its neck and scimitars at its sides?”

“That I do!” said he.

“And beneath, I suppose, he will put, squatting on the floor like a couple of slaves, Reasoning on the right and Passion on the left; and to reasoning he allows no other task than to calculate how less money shall be made into more, and passion may admire nothing and honour nothing but riches and the rich, and be ambitious for no single thing in the world but getting money and whatever leads to that.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, “no change is so swift and sure as from love of honour to love of money for the young man.”

“Then,” said I, “is this the oligarchic man?”

“At least his change is from a man like the constitution whence the oligarchy came.”

“Let us consider, then, if he would be like it himself.”

“Very good,” said he.

“Firstly, then, he would be like in prizing money most highly?”

“Of course.”

“And further, in being parsimonious and hardworking, in fulfilling only the necessary desires of his household, and refusing all other expenditure, and enslaving his other desires as vain.”

“Certainly.”

“A shabby creature,” said I, “and a hoarder, making profit from everything. Those are the ones the multitude praises. Would not such be the man who is like such a constitution?”

“Yes, at least I think so,” he said; “at least money is chiefly honoured both by the city and by such a man.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “and that, I think, is because he has not attended to education.”

“So I think,” he said, “or else he would not have put a ‘blind-eyes’* to lead the dance and thus chiefly honoured him.”

“Good!” said I. “But consider this. May we not suppose that dronish desires come up in him because of this lack of education, some beggarly and some criminal, which are restrained forcibly by his general carefulness?”

“Undoubtedly,” said he.

“And do you know where to look in order to discover the criminal acts of those men?”

“Where?” he asked.

“Guardianships of orphans, if they ever get such a thing, because these allow ample freedom to act unjustly.”

“True.”

“This makes it clear then, that in his other contracts where he has won a good name for seeming honest dealing, he is using force, but this time a sort of decent force, upon himself, to restrain other evil desires which are within him; he does not persuade them that ‘it is better not,’ nor tame them by reasons, but does it by compulsion and terror, trembling for his other property.”

“Exactly so,” said he.

“And I do declare, my friend,” said I, “that whenever they have to pay out the money of others, you will find in most of them desires akin to the drone.”

“I agree heartily.”

“Then he would not be without faction within himself; he is not one, but a kind of double creature, with desires overpowering desires, the better overpowering the worse, on the whole.”

“That is true.”

“This, you see, is the reason why such a man would make a better outside show than many, but true virtue would flee afar from him—that comes when the soul is in concord and one with itself.”

“So I think.”

“But the thrifty man would be a feeble competitor in person against his fellow-citizens, for victory in the games or any other fine ambition; he would be unwilling to spend money for a fine name and such competitions, he fears to excite the spending desires if he summons them to be allies in his desire for victory, and so he brings only a few* parts of himself into the war, and like an oligarch loses most of his fights and keeps his riches.”

“Just so,” said he.

“Then have we any doubt left,” said I, “that there is a likeness and correspondence between the thrifty moneymaker and the oligarchic city?”

“None at all,” said he.

“Democracy,† then, as it seems, is the next thing to examine: how it arises, and what character it has. Then again we may observe the character of that kind of man and parade him for comparison.”

“That, at least, would be our usual method of procedure,” said he.

“Well then,” said I, “the oligarchy changes into a democracy something in this way: through its insatiate desire for that which it sets before itself as a good and a duty—to become as rich as possible.”

“How do you mean?”

“The rulers hold their position, I take it, because of their great possessions; and they will not make laws against undisciplined young men to prevent any who may turn up from running through their fortunes. They hope to lend money on the property of such men, and then buy it up, and so to become richer and more honourable than ever.”

“Only too true!”

“Well, we have already clearly seen that to honour riches, and at the same time to acquire enough temperance, is a thing impossible for the citizens in a city; they must of necessity neglect one of the two.”

“That is pretty clear,” said he.

“So in the oligarchies by overlooking or even encouraging intemperance, they have sometimes compelled men not ignoble to become paupers.”

“Very true indeed.”

“And there they sit idle, I suppose, in the city, stings ready—that is, fully armed; some in debt, some disfranchised, some both, hating and plotting against those who have gotten their goods and everybody else, in love with revolution.”

“That is true.”

“And there are the moneymakers, stooping as they go and pretending not to see them; when any of the others submits, they wound him with a shot of money and carry off multiplicated interest, the offspring of the parent loan, and so they fill the city with drones and beggars.”

“Yes indeed!” said he.

“Here is a fire of evil,” said I, “blazing up, which they do not want to quench, although they could in two ways: one is what I suggested, by preventing a man from turning his property to any purpose he likes; the other is this—by doing away with such evils by a different law.”

“And what is that other law?”

“The next best law, one that compels the citizens to care for virtue. For if it laid down that in most of the voluntary contracts a man must act on his own risk, people in the city would not be so shameless in their dealings, and not so many of those evils we have mentioned would come up at all.”

“Far fewer,” he said.

“But as things are,” I said, “and for all such reasons, you see what a state the rulers have brought the ruled into; and as to themselves and their sons, are not the young people luxurious and lazy in matters concerning both body and soul? Are they not too soft to stand firm before both pleasures and pains, and idle?”

“Of course.”

“And themselves—are they not careless of all else but making money, and do they not care no more for virtue than the poor do?”

“No more, indeed.”

“So when, thus prepared, rulers and ruled are thrown together, on the march perhaps or in some other association, whether for festival or campaign, shipmates or tent-mates, or even amidst the dangers of battle, then they can observe each other, and then the poor are not despised by the rich at all! Often enough a sinewy, sun-browned poor man may be posted in battle beside a rich man fostered in shady places, encumbered with alien fat, and sees him panting and helpless. Don’t you suppose he reflects that his own cowardice has allowed such men to be rich? Will not one pass the word to another, when they meet together in private, ‘We’ve got the fellows! There’s nothing in them!’”

“I’m quite sure,” said he, “that’s what they do!”

“You know that an unhealthy body needs only to have a small push from without to make it fall ill, and sometimes even without that the body rebels against itself: just so a city which is in the same state as that body needs only a small excuse; if one party invites outside help from some oligarchic city, or another from a democratic city, it falls ill in the same way and fights against itself, or sometimes even without those outside develops internal strife.”

“Only too true.”

“So democracy, I suppose, comes into being when the poor conquer, and kill some of the other party and banish others, and share out the citizenship and government equally with the rest; and the offices in it are generally settled by lot.”*

“Yes,” he said, “that is how democracy is established, whether by force of arms, or by fear, as when the other party go out and escape.”

“Well, then,” I said, “how do these people live? And how does this constitution also work? For it is clear that such a man will prove to be the democratic.”

“That is clear,” said he.

“First of all, then, they are free men; the city is full of freedom and liberty of speech, and men in it may do what they like.”

“So it is said, at least,” he replied.

“Where there is liberty of action, it is clear that each man would arrange his own private life in it just as it pleased him.”

“Yes, that is clear.”

“Consequently, I suppose, all varieties of men would be produced under this system more than anywhere else.”

“Of course.”

“In fact,” I said, “this is the most beautiful of constitutions. It is decked out with all sorts and conditions of manners, as a robe of many colours is embroidered with all the flowers of the field, and what could be more beautiful! Yes, perhaps,” I went on, “many would judge it most beautiful, staring at it like a lot of women and children admiring a pretty frock!”

“Yes, indeed,” said he.

“Yes indeed, bless you!” said I, “this is the city in which to look for a constitution.”

“Why, if you please?”

“Because of this liberty! All sorts of constitutions are there; and if anyone wants to fit up a city, as we have been doing, it is only necessary for him to go to a city governed by a democracy, and choose whatever fashion of constitution pleases him, as if he had come to a bazaar of constitutions; then, having picked out his pattern, he can make his city accordingly.”

“Perhaps at least,” he said, “there would be plenty of patterns there.”

“No necessity to be governor there,” said I, “even if you are fit for it, no need to be ruled if you don’t like it; you need not go to war if they fight, you need not keep the peace if the others keep it, unless you desire peace; if a law forbids you to be a magistrate or a judge, you may be magistrate and judge all the same if you take it into your head—what a lovely, heavenly life, while it lasts!”

“Yes, while it lasts,” he said.

“And what a sweet temper there is in the convicts! Isn’t it delightful? Haven’t you seen in such a city nothing less than men condemned to death or banishment calmly remaining and mixing in society; and how a man can go about like a hero returned from the dead, nobody noticing him or seeing him?”

“I’ve seen that often enough,” he said.

“Toleration! No worrying in democracy about a trifle! What contempt of the solemn proclamations we made in founding our city, that no one could become a good man unless he had a superlative nature—unless from a boy he should play among beautiful things and study beautiful practices! How magnificently it tramples all this underfoot, and cares nothing what he practises before entering and living political life, but gives him honour if he only says he is loyal to the people!”*

“What a noble constitution!” he exclaimed.

“These things, then,” I said, “and other such like them are in democracy; a delightful constitution it would be, as it seems: no governor and plenty of colour; equality of a sort, distributed to equal and unequal alike.”

“Oh yes, we know all that,” said he.

“Now,” said I, “look and see what kind of man corresponds in private character. Shall we begin as we did with the constitution, and ask how he is produced?”

“Yes,” said he.

“Well, then, surely, in this way. The thrifty oligarchic man would have a son, I suppose, brought up under his father in his father’s manners.”

“Of course.”

“But he, like his father, rules his own pleasures by force, those of them which are called unnecessary, those which cause spending and are not moneymaking.”

“Clearly,” said he.

“Now don’t let us talk in the dark; suppose we first explain what we mean by desires necessary and not necessary.”

“I am quite willing,” said he.

“Then would it not be right to call those necessary which we cannot turn away, and those which benefit us when fulfilled? For it is plain necessity that we reach after both by our very nature. Don’t you think so?”

“Certainly I do.”

“Then we shall be right in giving these the title necessary.”

“We shall.”

“Very good. Those which a man could get rid of if he trained himself to do it from youth up, which also do no good by being in him—indeed some do harm—we should be right in saying that all these are unnecessary, shouldn’t we?”

“Quite right.”

“Suppose we take an example of each class to get a general notion.”

“So we should.”

“Then the desire of eating would be a necessary one, the desire for simple bread and meat,* enough for health and vigour.”

“So I think.”

“The desire for bread is necessary on both counts, both because bread is beneficial and because a living man cannot suppress the desire for it.”

“Yes.”

“And the desire for meat, if it provides any help towards vigour.”

“By all means.”

“Very well. And we might fairly name any further desire unnecessary, a desire for other viands than those we have mentioned, one that can be corrected and trained from youth and can be got rid of by most people, which does harm to the body and harm to the soul as regards wisdom and temperance.”

“Most rightly, indeed.”

“And may we not call these desires spending desires, and the others moneymaking because they are useful in production?”

“Certainly.”

“We will say the same of love-making and so forth.”

“Just so.”

“Well, didn’t we name that fellow a drone just now, the one laden with such pleasures and desires and ruled by the unnecessary desires, and we called the one ruled by the necessary desires thrifty and oligarchic?”

“Sure enough we did.”

“Now we just go back,” said I, “and explain how the democratic man is produced. Here, it seems to me, is the usual way.”

“What?”

“A young man brought up as we described, in parsimony and ignorance, gets a taste of the drones’ honey, and finds himself among wild beasts fiery and dangerous, who are able to provide pleasures of every variety and complexity and condition; there you must see the beginning of his inward change from the oligarchic to the democratic.”

“No doubt about that,” said he.

“As the city then was changed by the alliance coming from without to assist one party within, like to assist like, so the young man changes by a crowd of desires from without coming to assist one of the parts within him, a crowd akin and alike.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And if another alliance comes from somewhere to assist the oligarchic part in the man—from the father, perhaps, or others of the family, who warn and reproach him—then there is faction and anti-faction and a battle ensues within him against himself.”

“To be sure.”

“And sometimes, I suppose, the democratic part retreats before the oligarchic, some of the desires are destroyed, and some are banished; a little shame comes up in the young man’s soul, and it is brought into order again.”

“That does happen sometimes,” he said.

“Then again, I take it, when the desires are banished others grow up unnoticed, through the father’s lack of knowledge of right upbringing, and these become many and strong.”

“Yes,” he said, “at least that is what generally happens.”

“Then they draw him back to the same associations, and they spawn secretly and breed a multitudinous brood.”

“Yes, to be sure.”

“So in the end, I think, they storm the fortress of the young man’s soul, and they find it empty of learning and beautiful practices and without words of truth, which are indeed the best sentinels and guardians in the minds of men whom the gods love.”

“By far the best,” said he.

“Now liars and impostors, I suppose, false words and opinions, charge up and occupy the place of the others in such a man.”

“So they do,” said he.

“So then the young man comes back among these lotos-eaters* and makes his home there openly; if any support comes from his family for the thrifty part of his soul, those bragging words bar up the gates of the royal castle in him, and will not let in even these allies, nor even receive any embassy of words from his older friends in private life. A battle follows, and they win; Shame they dub Silliness and cast it forth, a dishonoured outlaw; Temperance they dub Cowardice, trample it under foot and banish it; they persuade the man that moderation and decent spending are clownishness and vulgarity, and drive them out beyond the border by the help of a gang of unprofitable desires.”

“Indeed they do!”

“And so having purged and swept clean of such things the soul of this man, who is now in their power and being initiated into their grand Mysteries,* they proceed at once to bring home again Violence and Anarchy and Licentiousness and Immodesty with a long train of attendants, resplendent with garlands about their heads; and they glorify them and call them by soft names—Violence is now Good Breeding, Anarchy is Liberty, Licentiousness is Magnificence, Immodesty is Courage. There,” said I, “you see more or less how the young man who was being trained among necessary desires is led into the emancipation and release of unnecessary and unprofitable pleasures.”

“And a very clear picture it is,” he said.

“And so he lives, I think, after this, spending money and pains and study upon unnecessary pleasures no less than the necessary. But if he is fortunate and not too dissolute, if as he grows older the great riot abates a bit, he receives back again parts of the exiles, and does not yield himself wholly to the intruders; he carries on his pleasures, maintaining if you please a sort of equality among them; he gives over the rule of himself to any pleasure that comes along, as if it had gained that by lot†—until he has had enough, then to another again, without disrespect for any, but cherishing all equally.”

“Quite so.”

“And not a word of truth,” I said, “does he receive into the fortress of his soul, he will not even let it into the guardhouse. If anyone tells him that some pleasures belong to beautiful and good desires, others to those which are vile; some he should practise and respect, others he should chasten and enslave—at all such warnings, he nods his head up‡ and says, ‘Not at all, they are all equal, and to be respected equally.’”

“Exactly,” says he, “that’s what he does in such a state of things.”

“And so,” said I, “he spends his life, every day indulging the desire that comes along; now he drinks deep and tootles on the pipes, then again he drinks water and goes in for slimming; at times it is bodily exercise, at times idleness and complete carelessness, sometimes he makes a show of studying philosophy. Often he appears in politics, and jumps up to say and do whatever comes into his head. Perhaps the fame of a military man makes him envious, and he tries that; or a lord of finance—there he is again. There is no discipline or necessity in his life; but he calls it delightful and free and full of blessings, and follows it all his days.”

“Upon my word,” said he, “that’s a lifelike picture of the man who is all for equal laws.”

“So you see,” said I, “this, I think, is a variegated man, full of all sorts of conditions and manners, this is the beautiful, many-coloured man exactly like that city, one whose life many a man and many a woman would envy, having in himself patterns innumerable of constitutions and characters.”

“That’s the man!” said he.

“Very well. Let such a man be ranked beside our democracy as the democratic man rightly so called.”

“Yes, let him be ranked there!” said he.

“And now for the most beautiful constitution,” said I,

“and the most beautiful man—that’s what is left for us to describe, tyranny and the tyrant.”

“Exactly so,” said he.

“Tell me then, my dear friend, how does tyranny come about? Of course democracy changes into this, so much is clear enough.”

“Quite clear.”

“Then does tyranny come out of democracy more or less in the same way as democracy comes out of oligarchy?”

“How?”

“What they set before them as their good,” said I, “and through which oligarchy was established—that was riches, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So, then, oligarchy was destroyed by the insatiate desire of riches, and disregard of everything else for the sake of moneymaking.”

“True,” said he.

“Then is democracy also dissolved by insatiate desire for that which it defines as good?”

“What do you say it so defines?”

“Liberty,” I said. “That, I suppose, you would always hear described as most beautiful in the democratic city, and therefore this is the only city where a man of free nature thinks life worth living.”

“Oh yes,” he said, “that word is on every tongue.”

“Is it true then, as I was going to say, that the insatiate desire for this, and disregard of everything else, transforms the constitution here also and makes it want a tyranny?”

“How?” he asked.

“When a democratic city athirst for liberty gets worthless butlers presiding over its wine, and has drunk too deep of liberty’s heady draught, then, I think, if the rulers are not very obliging and won’t provide plenty of liberty, it calls them blackguards and oligarchs and chastises them.”

“So they do,” said he.

“Yes,” I went on, “and any who obey the rulers they trample in the dust as willing slaves and not worth a jot; and rulers who are like subjects, and subjects who are like rulers, come in for the votes of thanks and the honours, public and private. In such a city must not your liberty go to all lengths?”

“Of course it must.”

“And it must go creeping, my friend,” said I, “into private houses too, and the end is, their anarchy even gets into the animals!”

“Why, how can that be?” he exclaimed.

“This is how,” said I. “The father gets into the habit of behaving like the son and fears his own children, the son behaves like a father, and does not honour or fear his parents, ‘must have liberty’ he says. Settler is equal to citizen and citizen to settler, the foreigner is the same.”

“Yes, that’s what happens,” he said.

“And there are these other trifles too,” I said.

“Teacher fears pupil in such a state of things, and plays the toady; pupils despise their teachers and tutors, and in general, the young imitate their elders and stand up to them in word and deed. Old men give way to the young; they are all complaisance and wriggling, and behave like young men themselves so as not to be thought disagreeable or dictatorial.”

“Just so,” said he.

“And behold the topmost pinnacle!” said I. “Mob liberty can go no further in such a city, when slaves bought with money, both men and women, are no less free than the buyers! Ah, I almost forgot to tell how great equality and liberty there is between women and men, between men and women!”

“Shall we say what now cometh to our lips,” he rejoined, “as Aeschylus put it?”*

“By all means,” I said, “so I will. The domestic animals—how much more free-and-easy they are in a city like this than in others, no one would believe who had not seen it. There’s really nothing to choose between missus and bitch, as the proverb goes.† Horses and asses, if you please, adopt the habit of marching along with the greatest freedom and haughtiness, bumping into everyone they meet who will not get out of the way; and all the other animals likewise are filled full of liberty.”

“Oh, that’s just my own dream come true!”‡ said the other. “That often happens to me when I’m going out into the country.”

“To sum up,” said I, “observe what comes of all these things together: how touchy it makes the people! They fret at the least hint of servitude, and won’t have it; for at last, you know, they care nothing for the laws written or unwritten, that no one may be their master in anything.”

“Oh yes, I know that,” said he.

“This then, my friend,” said I, “is the beginning from which tyranny grows, such a beautiful, bright beginning!”

“Bright and gay indeed,” he said, “but what comes after that?”

“The same as in the oligarchy,” said I; “the same disease which destroyed that gets in here, stronger and more violent from this liberty, and enslaves democracy. And in fact that is what generally happens in the world. To do anything too much tends to take you to the opposite extreme, in weather and in plants and in living bodies, and so also in constitutions most of all.”

“That is likely,” said he.

“For too great liberty seems to change into nothing else than too great slavery, both in man and in city.”

“Yes, that is likely.”

“Then it is likely,” said I, “that democracy is precisely the constitution out of which tyranny comes; from extreme liberty, it seems, comes a slavery most complete and most cruel.”

“Yes,” he said, “there is reason in that.”

“But I think that is not what you asked about,” I said;

“you asked what kind of disease it was which grows up the same both in oligarchy and in democracy, and enslaves democracy.”

“True,” said he.

“Well, then,” I said, “what I meant was that class of idle and extravagant men, of which the most manly part leads and the most unmanly part follows. You remember we likened them to drones, some with stings and some without.”

“And quite right, too,” said he.

“These two, then,” said I, “make a mess of every constitution they get into, like hot phlegm and cold gall in the body; the good physician must beware of them both in good time, and so must the good lawgiver in the city, no less than the skilful beemaster. It is best not to let them get in at all; but if they do, cut them out, honeycombs and all.”

“The very thing,” said he, “the whole lot of them.”

“Then let us take it in this way,” said I, “so that we may see what we want more clearly.”

“How, pray?”

“Let us assume that a democratic city is made up of three parts, as it really is. One, a class such as we have described, grows here because of democratic licence, no less than in the oligarchic city.”

“That is true.”

“And indeed much fiercer here than there.”

“How so?”

“There they get no training and gather no strength, because they are excluded from the government as being held in no honour; but in democracy this is the dominant class, all but a few. The fiercest part of them talk and act while the others swarm round the platform and buzz; they never tolerate anyone who speaks on the other side, so that all business of state is managed by this class, with a few exceptions.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“Another class, besides, is always being separated from the mass.”

“What class?”

“When all are busy in making money, the most orderly by nature, I suppose, generally become richest.”

“That is likely.”

“From them, I think, comes the most honey for the drones, and they are most easy to squeeze.”

“Of course,” he said; “how could one squeeze it out of those that have little?”

“‘The rich’ is the name they go by, you see, drones’ fodder.”

“Pretty nearly,” he said.

“‘People’ will be the name of the third class; all who are handiworkers and outside politics, without much property of their own. This is the largest and most sovereign class in democracy, when it combines.”

“So it is,” he said, “but it does not often care to combine unless it can get a bit of the honey.”

“Well, it does get a bit from time to time,” I said,

“depending on the ability of the presidents, in taking the property away from those who have it and distributing it among the people, to keep most of it themselves.”

“Yes, it gets a share to that extent,” he said.

“So those whom they plunder have to defend themselves, I suppose, by speaking before the people and taking action in what way they can.”

“Of course.”

“And so they are accused by the other party of plotting against the people, even if they have no wish to revolt, and they are said to be reactionary oligarchs.”

“To be sure.”

“In the end, when they see the people, ignorant and completely deceived by the false accusers, trying recklessly to do them wrong, then at last willy-nilly they become truly oligarchic, not willingly, but this evil thing also is put in them by that drone stinging them.”

“Exactly so.”

“Then come impeachments and sentences and lawsuits between them.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“So the common people will always put up for itself some special protector,* whom it supports and magnifies?”

“Yes, that’s its way.”

“One thing is clear then,” I said, “that when a tyrant appears, he grows simply and solely from a protectorship as the root.”

“That is quite clear.”

“Then what is the beginning of this change from protector to tyrant? Isn’t it when the protector begins to do like the man in the fable about the temple of Lycaian Zeus in Arcadia?”

“What fable?” he asked.

“That whoever tasted the one bit of human entrails minced up with all the sacrificial meat must be changed into a wolf. Haven’t you heard the story?”

“I have.”

“This is just the same. When the Protector of the People finds a very obedient mob; when he will not abstain from shedding tribal blood; when he drags someone into court by the usual unjust accusations, and incurs blood-guilt by destroying the life of a man; when, with unholy mouth and tongue, he tastes a kinsman’s gore; when he banishes and executes, when he hints at abolition of debts and partition of estates—surely for such a one the necessity is ordained that he must either perish at the hands of his enemies, or become a tyrant, and be a wolf instead of a man?”

“Such must be his fate of necessity,” said he.

“That is the man then,” said I, “who comes to lead a party against those who possess property.”

“That’s the man,” said he.

“He may be banished then, and return in despite of his enemies a tyrant finished and complete?”

“That is clear.”

“And if they are unable to banish him, or to accomplish his death by setting the mind of the city against him, they may plot violent death for him in secret?”

“At least that often happens,” he said.

“And to prevent this those who get so far always hit on the tyrant’s notorious plea—they beg the people to give them a bodyguard, in order that the people’s champion may be kept safe for themselves.”

“They do indeed,” said he.

“So the people grant the bodyguard; fearing for him, I suppose, but quite easy about themselves.”

“Exactly.”

“And when a man sees this who has money and with his money the repute of being a people-hater, then my friend, that man thinks of the oracle given to Crœsus;* and

Along the pebbly Hermos

He flees, he does not wait, he has no shame

To be a coward.”

“Not he!” said the other. “He would have no second chance to be ashamed.”