§ 327a  BOOK 1
SOCRATES: I went down yesterday to the Peiraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pay my devotions to the Goddess [Bendis], and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival since this was its inauguration. I thought the procession of the citizens very fine, but it was no better than the show, made by the marching of the Thracian contingent.

§ 327b  After we had said our prayers and seen the spectacle we were starting for town when Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, caught sight of us from a distance as we were hastening homeward and ordered his boy run and bid us to wait for him, and the boy caught hold of my himation from behind and said, “Polemarchus wants you to wait.” And I turned around and asked where his master was. “There he is,” he said, “behind you, coming this way. Wait for him.”
“So we will,” said Glaucon,

§ 327c  and shortly after Polemarchus came up and Adeimantus, the brother of Glaucon, and Niceratus, the son of Nicias, and a few others apparently from the procession. Whereupon Polemarchus said, “Socrates, you appear to have turned your faces townward and to be going to leave us.”
“Not a bad guess,” said I.
“But you see how many we are?” he said.
“Surely.”
“You must either then prove yourselves the better men or stay here.”
“Why, is there not left,” said I, “the alternative of our persuading you that you ought to let us go?”
“But could you persuade us,” said he, “if we refused to listen?”
“Nohow,” said Glaucon.
“Well, we won't listen, and you might as well make up your minds to it.”
“Do you mean to say,” interposed Adeimantus,

§ 328a  “that you haven't heard that there is to be a torchlight race this evening on horseback in honor of the Goddess?”
“On horseback?” said I. “That is a new idea. Will they carry torches and pass them along to one another as they race with the horses, or how do you mean?”
“That's the way of it,” said Polemarchus, “and, besides, there is to be a night festival which will be worth seeing. For after dinner we will get up and go out and see the sights and meet a lot of the lads there and have good talk. So stay and do as we ask.”

§ 328b  “It looks as if we should have to stay,” said Glaucon. “Well,” said I, “if it so be, so be it.”
So we went with them to Polemarchus's house, and there we found Lysias and Euthydemus, the brothers of Polemarchus, yes, and Thrasymachus, too, of Chalcedon, and Charmantides of the deme of Paeania, and Kleitophon the son of Aristonymus. And the father of Polemarchus, Cephalus, was also at home. And I thought him much aged,

§ 328c  for it was a long time since I had seen him. He was sitting on a sort of couch with cushions and he had a chaplet on his head, for he had just finished sacrificing in the court. So we went and sat down beside him, for there were seats there disposed in a circle. As soon as he saw me Cephalus greeted me and said, “You are not a very frequent visitor, Socrates. You don't often come down to the Peiraeus to see us. That is not right. For if I were still able to make the journey up to town easily there would be no need of your resorting hither,

§ 328d  but we would go to visit you. But as it is you should not space too widely your visits here. For I would have you know that, for my part, as the satisfactions of the body decay, in the same measure my desire for the pleasures of good talk and my delight in them increase. Don't refuse then, but be yourself a companion to these lads and make our house your resort and regard us as your very good friends and intimates.”
“Why, yes, Cephalus,” said I, “and I enjoy talking with the very aged.

§ 328e  For to my thinking we have to learn of them as it were from wayfarers who have preceded us on a road on which we too, it may be, must some time fare — what it is like — is it rough and hard going or easy and pleasant to travel. And so now I would fain learn of you what you think of this thing, now that your time has come to it, the thing that the poets call ‘the threshold of old age.’ Is it a hard part of life to bear or what report have you to make of it?”
“Yes, indeed, Socrates,” he said, “I will tell you my own feeling about it.

§ 329a  For it often happens that some of us elders of about the same age come together and verify the old saw of like to like. At these reunions most of us make lament, longing for the lost joys of youth and recalling to mind the pleasures of wine, women, and feasts, and other things thereto appertaining, and they repine in the belief that the greatest things have been taken from them and that then they lived well and now it is no life at all. And some of them

§ 329b  complain of the indignities that friends and kinsmen put upon old age and thereto recite a doleful litany of all the miseries for which they blame old age. But in my opinion, Socrates, they do not put the blame on the real cause. For if it were the cause I too should have had the same experience so far as old age is concerned, and so would all others who have come to this time of life. But in fact I have ere now met with others who do not feel in this way, and in particular I remember hearing Sophocles the poet greeted by a fellow who asked,

§ 329c  'How about your service of Aphrodite, Sophocles — is your natural force still unabated?' And he replied, 'Hush, man, most gladly have I escaped this thing you talk of, as if I had run away from a raging and savage beast of a master.' I thought it a good answer then and now I think so still more. For in very truth there comes to old age a great tranquillity in such matters and a blessed release. When the fierce tensions of the passions and desires relax, then is the word of Sophocles approved,

§ 329d  and we are rid of many and mad masters. But indeed in respect of these complaints and in the matter of our relations with kinsmen and friends there is just one cause, Socrates — not old age, but the character of the man. For if men are temperate and cheerful even old age is only moderately burdensome. But if the reverse, old age, Socrates, and youth are hard for such dispositions.”
And I was filled with admiration for the man by these words, and desirous of hearing more I tried to draw him out and said, “I fancy,

§ 329e  Cephalus, that most people, when they hear you talk in this way, are not convinced but think that you bear old age lightly not because of your character but because of your wealth. ‘For the rich,’ they say, ‘have many consolations.’”
“You are right,” he said. “They don't accept my view and there is something in their objection, though not so much as they suppose. But the retort of Themistocles comes in pat here, who, when a man from the little island of Seriphus grew abusive and told him that he owed his fame not to himself

§ 330a  but to the city from which he came, replied that neither would he himself ever have made a name if he had been born in Seriphus nor the other if he had been an Athenian. And the same principle applies excellently to those who not being rich take old age hard; for neither would the reasonable man find it altogether easy to endure old age conjoined with poverty, nor would the unreasonable man by the attainment of riches ever attain to self-contentment and a cheerful temper.”
“May I ask, Cephalus,” said I, “whether you inherited most of your possessions or acquired them yourself?”

§ 330b  “Acquired, eh?” he said. “As a moneymaker, I hold a place somewhere halfway between my grandfather and my father. For my grandfather and namesake inherited about as much property as I now possess and multiplied it many times, my father Lysanias reduced it below the present amount, and I am content if I shall leave the estate to these boys not less but by some slight measure more than my inheritance.”
“The reason I asked,” I said, is that you appear to me not to be over-fond of money.

§ 330c  And that is generally the case with those who have not earned it themselves. But those who have themselves acquired it have a double reason in comparison with other men for loving it. For just as poets feel complacency about their own poems and fathers about their own sons, so men who have made money take this money seriously as their own creation and they also value it for its uses as other people do. So they are hard to talk to since they are unwilling to commend anything except wealth.”

§ 330d  “You are right,” he replied. “I assuredly am,” said I. “But tell me further this. What do you regard as the greatest benefit you have enjoyed from the possession of property?”
“Something,” he said, “which I might not easily bring many to believe if I told them. For let me tell you, Socrates,” he said, “that when a man begins to realize that he is going to die, he is filled with apprehensions and concern about matters that before did not occur to him. The tales that are told of the world below and how the men who have done wrong here must pay the penalty there, though he may have laughed them down hitherto,

§ 330e  then begin to torture his soul with the doubt that there may be some truth in them. And apart from that the man himself either from the weakness of old age or possibly as being now nearer to the things beyond has a somewhat clearer view of them. Be that as it may, he is filled with doubt, surmises, and alarms and begins to reckon up and consider whether he has ever wronged anyone. Now he to whom the ledger of his life shows an account of many evil deeds starts up even from his dreams like children again and again in affright and his days are haunted by anticipations of worse to come. But on him who is conscious of no wrong

§ 331a  that he has done a sweet hope ever attends and a goodly to be nurse of his old age, as Pindar too says. For a beautiful saying it is, Socrates, of the poet that when a man lives out his days in justice and piety
“sweet companion with him, to cheer his heart and nurse his old age, accompanies
Hope, who chiefly rules the changeful mind of mortals.” That is a fine saying and an admirable. It is for this, then, that I affirm that the possession of wealth is of most value

§ 331b  not it may be to every man but to the good man. Not to cheat any man even unintentionally or play him false, not remaining in debt to a god for some sacrifice or to a man for money, so to depart in fear to that other world — to this result the possession of property contributes not a little. It has also many other uses. But, setting one thing against another, I would lay it down, Socrates, that for a man of sense this is the chief service of wealth.”
“An admirable sentiment, Cephalus,” said I.

§ 331c  “But speaking of this very thing, justice, are we to affirm thus without qualification that it is truth-telling and paying back what one has received from anyone, or may these very actions sometimes be just and sometimes unjust? I mean, for example, as everyone I presume would admit, if one took over weapons from a friend who was in his right mind and then the lender should go mad and demand them back, that we ought not to return them in that case and that he who did so return them would not be acting justly — nor yet would he who chose to speak nothing but the truth to one who was in that state.”

§ 331d  “You are right,” he replied. “Then this is not the definition of justice: to tell the truth and return what one has received.”
“Nay, but it is, Socrates,” said Polemarchus breaking in, “if indeed we are to put any faith in Simonides.”
“Very well,” said Cephalus, “indeed I make over the whole argument to you. For it is time for me to attend the sacrifices.”
“Well,” said I, “is not Polemarchus the heir of everything that is yours?”
“Certainly,” said he with a laugh, and at the same time went out to the sacred rites.

§ 331e  “Tell me, then, you the inheritor of the argument, what it is that you affirm that Simonides says and rightly says about justice.”
“That it is just,” he replied, “to render to each his due. In saying this I think he speaks well.”
“I must admit,” said I, “that it is not easy to disbelieve Simonides. For he is a wise and inspired man. But just what he may mean by this you, Polemarchus, doubtless know, but I do not. Obviously he does not mean what we were just speaking of, this return of a deposit to anyone whatsoever even if he asks it back when not in his right mind. And yet what the man deposited is due to him in a sense, is it not?”

§ 332a  “Yes.”
“But rendered to him it ought not to be by any manner of means when he demands it not being his right mind.”
“True,” said he. “It is then something other than this that Simonides must, as it seems, mean by the saying that it is just to render back what is due.”
“Something else in very deed,” he replied, “for he believes that friends owe it to friends to do them some good and no evil.”
“I see,” said I; “you mean that he does not render what is due or owing who returns a deposit of gold

§ 332b  if this return and the acceptance prove harmful and the returner and the recipient are friends. Isn't that what you say Simonides means?”
“Quite so.”
“But how about this — should one not render to enemies what is their due?”
“By all means,” he said, “what is due and owing to them, and there is due and owing from an enemy to an enemy what also is proper for him, some evil.”
“It was a riddling definition of justice, then, that Simonides gave after the manner of poets; for while his meaning,

§ 332c  it seems, was that justice is rendering to each what befits him, the name that he gave to this was the due.'”
“What else do you suppose?” said he. “In heaven's name!” said I, “suppose someone had questioned him thus: 'Tell me, Simonides, the art that renders what that is due and befitting to what is called the art of medicine.' What do you take it would have been his answer?”
“Obviously,” he said, “the art that renders to bodies drugs, foods, and drinks.”
“And the art that renders to what things what that is due and befitting is called the culinary art?”

§ 332d  “Seasoning to meats.”
“Good. In the same way tell me the art that renders what to whom would be denominated justice.”
“If we are to follow the previous examples, Socrates, it is that which renders benefits and harms to friends and enemies.”
“To do good to friends and evil to enemies, then, is justice in his meaning?”
“I think so.”
“Who then is the most able when they are ill to benefit friends and harm enemies in respect to disease and health?”
“The physician.”

§ 332e  “And who navigators in respect of the perils of the sea?”
“The pilot.”
“Well then, the just man, in what action and for what work is he the most competent to benefit friends and harm enemies?”
“In making war and as an ally, I should say.”
“Very well. But now if they are not sick, friend Polemarchus, the physician is useless to them.”
“True.”
“And so to those who are not at sea the pilot.”
“Yes.”
“Shall we also say this that for those who are not at war the just man is useless?”
“By no means.”
“There is a use then even in peace for justice?”

§ 333a  “Yes, it is useful.”
“But so is agriculture, isn't it?”
“Yes.”
“Namely, for the getting of a harvest?”
“Yes.”
“But likewise the cobbler's art?”
“Yes.”
“Namely, I presume you would say, for the getting of shoes.”
“Certainly.”
“Then tell me, for the service and getting of what would you say that justice is useful in time of peace?”
“In engagements and dealings, Socrates.”
“And by dealings do you mean associations, partnerships, or something else?”
“Associations, of course.”
“Is it the just man,

§ 333b  then, who is a good and useful associate and partner in the placing of draughts or the draught-player?”
“The player.”
“And in the placing of bricks and stones is the just man a more useful and better associate than the builder?”
“By no means.”
“Then what is the association in which the just man is a better partner than the harpist as an harpist is better than the just man for striking the chords?”
“For money-dealings, I think.”
“Except, I presume, Polemarchus, for the use of money when there is occasion to buy in common

§ 333c  or sell a horse. Then, I take it, the man who knows horses, isn't it so?”
“Apparently.”
“And again, if it is a vessel, the shipwright or the pilot.”
“It would seem so.”
“What then is the use of money in common for which a just man is the better partner?”
“When it is to be deposited and kept safe, Socrates.”
“You mean when it is to be put to no use but is to lie idle?”
“Quite so.”
“Then it is when money is useless that justice is useful in relation to it?”

§ 333d  “It looks that way.”
“And similarly when a scythe is to be kept safe, then justice is useful both in public and private. But when it is to be used, the vinedresser's art is useful?”
“Apparently.”
“And so you will have to say that when a shield and a lyre are to be kept and put to no use, justice is useful, but when they are to be made use of, the military art and music.”
“Necessarily.”
“And so in all other cases, in the use of each thing, justice is useless but in its uselessness useful?”
“It looks that way.”

§ 333e  “Then, my friend, justice cannot be a thing of much worth if it is useful only for things out of use and useless. But let us consider this point. Is not the man who is most skilful to strike or inflict a blow in a fight, whether as a boxer or elsewhere, also the most wary to guard against a blow?”
“Assuredly.”
“Is it not also true that he who best knows how to guard against disease is also most cunning to communicate it and escape detection?”
“I think so.”
“But again

§ 334a  the very same man is a good guardian of an army who is good at stealing a march upon the enemy in respect of their designs and proceedings generally.”
“Certainly.”
“Of whatsoever, then, anyone is a skilful guardian, of that he is also a skilful thief?”
“It seems so.”
“If then the just man is an expert in guarding money he is an expert in stealing it.”
“The argument certainly points that way.”
“A kind of thief then the just man it seems has turned out to be, and it is likely that you acquired this idea from Homer. For he regards with complacency Autolycus,

§ 334b  the maternal uncle of Odysseus, and says “‘he was gifted beyond all men in thievery and perjury.’” (Hom. Od. 19.395) So justice, according to you and Homer and Simonides, seems to be a kind of stealing, with the qualification that it is for the benefit of friends and the harm of enemies. Isn't that what you meant?”
“No, by Zeus,” he replied. “I no longer know what I did mean. Yet this I still believe, that justice benefits friends and harms enemies.”

§ 334c  “May I ask whether by friends you mean those who seem to a man to be worthy or those who really are so, even if they do not seem, and similarly of enemies?”
“It is likely,” he said, “that men will love those whom they suppose to be good and dislike those whom they deem bad.”
“Do not men make mistakes in this matter so that many seem good to them who are not and the reverse?”
“They do.”
“For those, then, who thus err the good are their enemies and the bad their friends?”
“Certainly.”
“But all the same is then just for them to benefit the bad and injure the good?”

§ 334d  “It would seem so.”
“But again the good are just and incapable of injustice.”
“True.”
“On your reasoning then it is just to wrong those who do no injustice.”
“Nay, nay, Socrates,” he said, “the reasoning can't be right.”
“Then,” said I, “it is just to harm the unjust and benefit the just.”
“That seems a better conclusion than the other.”
“It will work out, then, for many, Polemarchus, who have misjudged men that it is just to harm their friends,

§ 334e  for they have got bad ones, and to benefit their enemies, for they are good. And so we shall find ourselves saying the very opposite of what we affirmed Simonides to mean.”
“Most certainly,” he said, “it does work out so. But let us change our ground; for it looks as if we were wrong in the notion we took up about the friend and the enemy.”
“What notion, Polemarchus?”
“That the man who seems to us good is the friend.”
“And to what shall we change it now?” said I. “That the man who both seems and is good is the friend, but that he who seems

§ 335a  but is not really so seems but is not really the friend. And there will be the same assumption about the enemy.”
“Then on this view it appears the friend will be the good man and the bad the enemy.”
“Yes.”
“So you would have us qualify our former notion of the just man by an addition. We then said it was just to do good to a friend and evil to an enemy, but now we are to add that it is just to benefit the friend if he is good and harm the enemy if he is bad?”

§ 335b  “By all means,” he said, “that, I think, would be the right way to put it.”
“Is it then,” said I, “the part of a good man to harm anybody whatsoever?”
“Certainly it is,” he replied; “a man ought to harm those who are both bad and his enemies.”
“When horses are harmed does it make them better or worse?”
“Worse.”
“In respect of the excellence or virtue of dogs or that of horses?”
“Of horses.”
“And do not also dogs when harmed become worse in respect of canine and not of equine virtue?”
“Necessarily.”

§ 335c  “And men, my dear fellow, must we not say that when they are harmed it is in respect of the distinctive excellence or virtue of man that they become worse?”
“Assuredly.”
“And is not justice the specific virtue of man?”
“That too must be granted.”
“Then it must also be admitted, my friend, that men who are harmed become more unjust.”
“It seems so.”
“Do musicians then make men unmusical by the art of music?”
“Impossible.”
“Well, do horsemen by horsemanship unfit men for dealing with horses?”
“No.”
“By justice then do the just make men unjust,

§ 335d  or in sum do the good by virtue make men bad?”
“Nay, it is impossible.”
“It is not, I take it, the function of heat to chill but of its opposite.”
“Yes.”
“Nor of dryness to moisten but of its opposite.”
“Assuredly.”
“Nor yet of the good to harm but of its opposite.”
“So it appears.”
“But the just man is good?”
“Certainly.”
“It is not then the function of the just man, Polemarchus, to harm either friend or anyone else, but of his opposite.”
“I think you are altogether right,

§ 335e  Socrates.”
“If, then, anyone affirms that it is just to render to each his due and he means by this, that injury and harm is what is due to his enemies from the just man and benefits to his friends, he was no truly wise man who said it. For what he meant was not true. For it has been made clear to us that in no case is it just to harm anyone.”
“I concede it,” he said. “We will take up arms against him, then,” said I, “you and I together, if anyone affirms that either Simonides or Bias or Pittacus or any other of the wise and blessed said such a thing.”
“I, for my part,” he said, “am ready to join in the battle with you.”

§ 336a  “Do you know,” said I, “to whom I think the saying belongs — this statement that it is just to benefit friends and harm enemies?”
“To whom?” he said. “I think it was the saying of Periander or Perdiccas or Xerxes or Ismenias the Theban or some other rich man who had great power in his own conceit.”
“That is most true,” he replied. “Very well,” said I, “since it has been made clear that this too is not justice and the just, what else is there that we might say justice to be?”

§ 336b  Now Thrasymachus, even while we were conversing, had been trying several times to break in and lay hold of the discussion but he was restrained by those who sat by him who wished to hear the argument out. But when we came to a pause after I had said this, he couldn't any longer hold his peace. But gathering himself up like a wild beast he hurled himself upon us as if he would tear us to pieces. And Polemarchus and I were frightened and fluttered apart, and he bawled out into our midst,

§ 336c  “What balderdash is this that you have been talking, and why do you Simple Simons truckle and give way to one another? But if you really wish, Socrates, to know what the just is, don't merely ask questions or plume yourself upon controverting any answer that anyone gives — since your acumen has perceived that it is easier to ask questions than to answer them, but do you yourself answer and tell

§ 336d  what you say the just is. And don't you be telling me that it is that which ought to be, or the beneficial or the profitable or the gainful or the advantageous, but express clearly and precisely whatever you say. For I won't take from you any such drivel as that!” And I, when I heard him, was dismayed, and looking upon him was filled with fear, and I believe that if I had not looked at him before he did at me I should have lost my voice. But as it is, at the very moment when he began to be exasperated by the course of the argument

§ 336e  I glanced at him first, so that I became capable of answering him and said with a light tremor: “Thrasymachus, don't be harsh with us. If I and my friend have made mistakes in the consideration of the question, rest assured that it is unwillingly that we err. For you surely must not suppose that while if our quest were for gold we would never willingly truckle to one another and make concessions in the search and so spoil our chances of finding it, yet that when we are searching for justice, a thing more precious than much fine gold, we should then be so foolish as to give way to one another and not rather do our serious best to have it discovered. You surely must not suppose that, my friend. But you see it is our lack of ability that is at fault. It is pity then that we should far more reasonably receive

§ 337a  from clever fellows like you than severity.”
And he on hearing this gave a great guffaw and laughed sardonically and said, “Ye gods! here we have the well-known irony of Socrates, and I knew it and predicted that when it came to replying you would refuse and dissemble and do anything rather than answer any question that anyone asked you.”
“That's because you are wise, Thrasymachus, and so you knew very well that if you asked a man how many are twelve,

§ 337b  and in putting the question warned him: don't you be telling me, fellow, that twelve is twice six or three times four or six times two or four times three, for I won't accept any such drivel as that from you as an answer — it was obvious I fancy to you that no one could give an answer to a question framed in that fashion. Suppose he had said to you, 'Thrasymachus, what do you mean? Am I not to give any of the prohibited answers, not even, do you mean to say, if the thing really is one of these, but must I say something different from the truth,

§ 337c  or what do you mean?' What would have been your answer to him?”
“Humph!” said he, “how very like the two cases are!”
“There is nothing to prevent,” said I; “yet even granted that they are not alike, yet if it appears to the person asked the question that they are alike, do you suppose that he will any the less answer what appears to him, whether we forbid him or whether we don't?”
“Is that, then,” said he, “what you are going to do? Are you going to give one of the forbidden answers?”
“I shouldn't be surprised,” I said, “if on reflection that would be my view.”
“What then,”

§ 337d  he said, “if I show you another answer about justice differing from all these, a better one — what penalty do you think you deserve?”
“Why, what else,” said I, “than that which it befits anyone who is ignorant to suffer? It befits him, I presume, to learn from the one who does know. That then is what I propose that I should suffer.”
“I like your simplicity,” said he; “but in addition to 'learning' you must pay a fine of money.”
“Well, I will when I have got it,” I said. “It is there,” said Glaucon: “if money is all that stands in the way, Thrasymachus, go on with your speech. We will all contribute for Socrates.”
“Oh yes, of course,”

§ 337e  said he, “so that Socrates may contrive, as he always does, to evade answering himself but may cross-examine the other man and refute his replies.”
“Why, how,” I said, “my dear fellow, could anybody answer if in the first place he did not know and did not even profess to know, and secondly even if he had some notion of the matter, he had been told by a man of weight that he mustn't give any of his suppositions as an answer?

§ 338a  Nay, it is more reasonable that you should be the speaker. For you do affirm that you know and are able to tell. Don't be obstinate, but do me the favor to reply and don't be chary of your wisdom, and instruct Glaucon here and the rest of us.”
When I had spoken thus Glaucon and the others urged him not to be obstinate. It was quite plain that Thrasymachus was eager to speak in order that he might do himself credit, since he believed that he had a most excellent answer to our question. But he demurred and pretended to make a point of my being the respondent. Finally he gave way and then said,

§ 338b  “Here you have the wisdom of Socrates, to refuse himself to teach, but go about and learn from others and not even pay thanks therefor.”
“That I learn from others,” I said, “you said truly, Thrasymachus. But in saying that I do not pay thanks you are mistaken. I pay as much as I am able. And I am able only to bestow praise. For money I lack. But that I praise right willingly those who appear to speak well you will well know forthwith as soon as you have given your answer.

§ 338c  For I think that you will speak well.”
“Hearken and hear then,” said he. “I affirm that the just is nothing else than the advantage of the stronger. WeIl, why don't you applaud? Nay, you'll do anything but that.”
“Provided only I first understand your meaning,” said I; “for I don't yet apprehend it. The advantage of the stronger is what you affirm the just to be. But what in the world do you mean by this? I presume you don't intend to affirm this, that if Polydamas the pancratiast is stronger than we are and the flesh of beeves is advantageous for him,

§ 338d  for his body, this viand is also for us who are weaker than he both advantageous and just.”
“You're a buffoon, Socrates, and take my statement in the most detrimental sense.”
“Not at all, my dear fellow” said I; “I only want you to make your meaning plainer.”
“Don't you know then,” said he, “that some cities are governed by tyrants, in others democracy rules, in others aristocracy?”
“Assuredly.”
“And is not this the thing that is strong and has the mastery in each — the ruling party?”
“Certainly.”

§ 338e  “And each form of government enacts the laws with a view to its own advantage, a democracy democratic laws and tyranny autocratic and the others likewise, and by so legislating they proclaim that the just for their subjects is that which is for their — the rulers' — advantage and the man who deviates from this law they chastise as a law-breaker and a wrongdoer. This, then, my good sir, is what I understand as the identical principle of justice that obtains in all states

§ 339a   — the advantage of the established government. This I presume you will admit holds power and is strong, so that, if one reasons rightly, it works out that the just is the same thing everywhere, the advantage of the stronger.”
“Now,” said I, “I have learned your meaning, but whether it is true or not I have to try to learn. The advantageous, then, is also your reply, Thrasymachus, to the question, what is the just — though you forbade me to give that answer.

§ 339b  But you add thereto that of the stronger.”
“A trifling addition perhaps you think it,” he said. “It is not yet clear whether it is a big one either; but that we must inquire whether what you say is true, is clear. For since I too admit that the just is something that is of advantage — but you are for making an addition and affirm it to be the advantage of the stronger, while I don't profess to know, we must pursue the inquiry.”
“Inquire away,” he said.
“I will do so,” said I. “Tell me, then; you affirm also, do you not, that obedience to rulers is just?”

§ 339c  “I do.”
“May I ask whether the rulers in the various states are infallible or capable sometimes of error?”
“Surely,” he said, “they are liable to err.”
“Then in their attempts at legislation they enact some laws rightly and some not rightly, do they not?”
“So I suppose.”
“And by rightly we are to understand for their advantage, and by wrongly to their disadvantage? Do you mean that or not?”
“That.”
“But whatever they enact must be performed by their subjects and is justice?”
“Of course.”

§ 339d  “Then on your theory it is just not only to do what is the advantage of the stronger but also the opposite, what is not to his advantage.”
“What's that you're saying?” he replied. “What you yourself are saying, I think. Let us consider it more closely. Have we not agreed that the rulers in giving orders to the ruled sometimes mistake their own advantage, and that whatever the rulers enjoin is just for the subjects to perform? Was not that admitted?”
“I think it was,” he replied.

§ 339e  “Then you will have to think,” I said, “that to do what is disadvantageous to the rulers and the stronger has been admitted by you to be just in the case when the rulers unwittingly enjoin what is bad for themselves, while you affirm that it is just for the others to do what they enjoined. In that way does not this conclusion inevitably follow, my most sapient Thrasymachus, that it is just to do the very opposite of what you say? For it is in that case surely the disadvantage of the stronger or superior that the inferior are commanded to perform.”

§ 340a  “Yes, by Zeus, Socrates,” said Polemarchus, “nothing could be more conclusive.”
“Of course,” said Cleitophon, breaking in, “if you are his witness.”
“What need is there of a witness?” Polemarchus said. “Thrasymachus himself admits that the rulers sometimes enjoin what is evil for themselves and yet says that it is just for the subjects to do this.”
“That, Polemarchus, is because Thrasymachus laid it down that it is just to obey the orders of the rulers.”
“Yes, Cleitophon, but he also took the position that the advantage of the stronger is just.

§ 340b  And after these two assumptions he again admitted that the stronger sometimes bid the inferior and their subjects do what is to the disadvantage of the rulers. And from these admissions the just would no more be the advantage of the stronger than the contrary.”
“O well,” said Cleitophon, “by the advantage of the superior he meant what the superior supposed to be for his advantage. This was what the inferior had to do, and that this is the just was his position.”
“That isn't what he said,”

§ 340c  replied Polemarchus. “Never mind, Polemarchus,” said I, “but if that is Thrasymachus's present meaning, let us take it from him in that sense.
“XIV. So tell me, Thrasymachus, was this what you intended to say, that the just is the advantage of the superior as it appears to the superior whether it really is or not? Are we to say this was your meaning?”
“Not in the least,” he said.“Do you suppose that I call one who is in error a superior when he errs?”
“I certainly did suppose that you meant that,” I replied, “when you agreed that rulers are not infallible but sometimes make mistakes.”

§ 340d  “That is because you argue like a pettifogger, Socrates. Why, to take the nearest example, do you call one who is mistaken about the sick a physician in respect of his mistake or one who goes wrong in a calculation a calculator when he goes wrong and in respect of this error? Yet that is what we say literally — we say that the physician erred and the calculator and the schoolmaster. But the truth, I take it, is, that each of these

§ 340e  in so far as he is that which we entitle him never errs; so that, speaking precisely, since you are such a stickler for precision, no craftsman errs. For it is when his knowledge abandons him that he who goes wrong goes wrong — when he is not a craftsman. So that no craftsman, wise man, or ruler makes a mistake then when he is a ruler, though everybody would use the expression that the physician made a mistake and the ruler erred. It is in this loose way of speaking, then, that you must take the answer I gave you a little while ago. But the most precise statement is that other, that the ruler

§ 341a  in so far forth as ruler does not err, and not erring he enacts what is best for himself, and this the subject must do, so that, even as I meant from the start, I say the just is to do what is for the advantage of the stronger.”
“So then, Thrasymachus,” said I, “my manner of argument seems to you pettifogging?”
“It does,” he said. “You think, do you, that it was with malice aforethought and trying to get the better of you unfairly that I asked that question?”
“I don't think it, I know it,” he said, “and you won't make anything by it, for you won't get the better of me by stealth and,

§ 341b  failing stealth, you are not of the force to beat me in debate.”
“Bless your soul,” said I, “I wouldn't even attempt such a thing. But that nothing of the sort may spring up between us again, define in which sense you take the ruler and stronger. Do you mean the so-called ruler or that ruler in the precise sense of whom you were just now telling us, and for whose advantage as being the superior it will be just for the inferior to act?”
“I mean the ruler in the very most precise sense of the word,” he said. “Now bring on against this your cavils and your shyster's tricks if you are able.

§ 341c  I ask no quarter. But you'll find yourself unable.”
“Why, do you suppose,” I said, “that I am so mad to try to try to beard a lion and try the pettifogger on Thrasymachus?”
“You did try it just now,” he said, “paltry fellow though you be.”
“Something too much of this sort of thing,” said I. “But tell me, your physician in the precise sense of whom you were just now speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick? And remember to speak of the physician who is really such.”
“A healer of the sick,” he replied. “And what of the lot — the pilot rightly so called — is he a ruler of sailors or a sailor?”

§ 341d  “A ruler of sailors.”
“We don't, I fancy, have to take into account the fact that he actually sails in the ship, nor is he to be denominated a sailor. For it is not in respect of his sailing that he is called a pilot but in respect of his art and his ruling of the sailors.”
“True,” he said. “Then for each of them is there not a something that is for his advantage?”
“Quite so.”
“And is it not also true,” said I, “that the art naturally exists for this, to discover and provide for each his advantage?”
“Yes, for this.”
“Is there, then, for each of the arts any other advantage than to be perfect as possible?”

§ 341e  “What do you mean by that question?”
“Just as if,” I said, “you should ask me whether it is enough for the body to be the body or whether it stands in need of something else, I would reply, 'By all means it stands in need. That is the reason why the art of medicine has now been invented, because the body is defective and such defect is unsatisfactory. To provide for this, then, what is advantageous, that is the end for which the art was devised.' Do you think that would be a correct answer, or not?”

§ 342a  “Correct,” he said. “But how about this? Is the medical art itself defective or faulty, or has any other art any need of some virtue, quality, or excellence — as the eyes of vision, the ears of hearing, and for this reason is there need of some art over them that will consider and provide what is advantageous for these very ends — does there exist in the art itself some defect and does each art require another art to consider its advantage and is there need of still another for the considering art and so on ad infinitum, or will the art look out for its own advantage?

§ 342b  Or is it a fact that it needs neither itself nor another art to consider its advantage and provide against its deficiency? For there is no defect or error at all that dwells in any art. Nor does it befit an art to seek the advantage of anything else than that of its object. But the art itself is free from all harm and admixture of evil, and is right so long as each art is precisely and entirely that which it is. And consider the matter in that precise way of speaking. Is it so or not?”
“It appears to be so,” he said. “Then medicine,” said I,

§ 342c  “does not consider the advantage of medicine but of the body?”
“Yes.”
“Nor horsemanship of horsemanship but of horses, nor does any other art look out for itself — for it has no need — but for that of which it is the art.”
“So it seems,” he replied. “But surely, Thrasymachus, the arts do hold rule and are stronger than that of which they are the arts.” He conceded this but it went very hard. “Then no art considers or enjoins the advantage of the stronger but every art that of the weaker

§ 342d  which is ruled by it.” This too he was finally brought to admit though he tried to contest it. But when he had agreed — “Can we deny, then,” said I, “that neither does any physician in so far as he is a physician seek or enjoin the advantage of the physician but that of the patient? For we have agreed that the physician, 'precisely' speaking, is a ruler and governor of bodies and not a moneymaker. Did we agree on that?” He assented. “And so the 'precise' pilot is a ruler of sailors,

§ 342e  not a sailor?” That was admitted. “Then that sort of a pilot and ruler will not consider and enjoin the advantage of the pilot but that of the sailor whose ruler he is.” He assented reluctantly. “Then,” said I, “Thrasymachus, neither does anyone in any office of rule in so far as he is a ruler consider and enjoin his own advantage but that of the one whom he rules and for whom he exercises his craft, and he keeps his eyes fixed on that and on what is advantageous and suitable to that in all that he says and does.”

§ 343a  When we had come to this point in the discussion and it was apparent to everybody that his formula of justice had suffered a reversal of form, Thrasymachus, instead of replying, said, “Tell me, Socrates, have you got a nurse?”
“What do you mean?” said I. “Why didn't you answer me instead of asking such a question?”
“Because,” he said, “she lets her little 'snotty' run about drivelling and doesn't wipe your face clean, though you need it badly, if she can't get you to know the difference between the shepherd and the sheep.”
“And what, pray, makes you think that?” said I. “Because you think that the shepherds

§ 343b  and the neat-herds are considering the good of the sheep and the cattle and fatten and tend them with anything else in view than the good of their masters and themselves; and by the same token you seem to suppose that the rulers in our cities, I mean the real rulers, differ at all in their thoughts of the governed from a man's attitude towards his sheep or that they think of anything else night and day than

§ 343c  the sources of their own profit. And you are so far out concerning the just and justice and the unjust and injustice that you don't know that justice and the just are literally the other fellow's good — the advantage of the stronger and the ruler, but a detriment that is all his own of the subject who obeys and serves; while injustice is the contrary and rules those who are simple in every sense of the word and just, and they being thus ruled do what is for his advantage who is the stronger and make him happy

§ 343d  in serving him, but themselves by no manner of means. And you must look at the matter, my simple-minded Socrates, in this way: that the just man always comes out at a disadvantage in his relation with the unjust. To begin with, in their business dealings in any joint undertaking of the two you will never find that the just man has the advantage over the unjust at the dissolution of the partnership but that he always has the worst of it. Then again, in their relations with the state, if there are direct taxes or contributions to be paid, the just man contributes more from an equal estate and the other less, and when there is a distribution

§ 343e  the one gains much and the other nothing. And so when each holds office, apart from any other loss the just man must count on his own affairs falling into disorder through neglect, while because of his justice makes no profit from the state, and thereto he will displease his friends and his acquaintances by his unwillingness to serve them unjustly. But to the unjust man all the opposite advantages accrue. I mean, of course, the one I was just speaking of,

§ 344a  the man who has the ability to overreach on a large scale. Consider this type of man, then, if you wish to judge how much more profitable it is to him personally to be unjust than to be just. And the easiest way of all to understand this matter will be to turn to the most consummate form of injustice which makes the man who has done the wrong most happy and those who are wronged and who would not themselves willingly do wrong most miserable. And this is tyranny, which both by stealth and by force takes away what belongs to others, both sacred and profane, both private and public, not little by little but at one swoop.

§ 344b  For each several part of such wrongdoing the malefactor who fails to escape detection is fined and incurs the extreme of contumely; for temple-robbers, kidnappers, burglars, swindlers, and thieves the appellations of those who commit these partial forms of injustice. But when in addition to the property of the citizens men kidnap and enslave the citizens themselves, instead of these opprobrious names they are pronounced happy and blessed not only by their fellow-citizens

§ 344c  but by all who hear the story of the man who has committed complete and entire injustice. For it is not the fear of doing but of suffering wrong that calls forth the reproaches of those who revile injustice. Thus, Socrates, injustice on a sufficiently large scale is a stronger, freer, and a more masterful thing than justice, and, as I said in the beginning, it is the advantage of the stronger that is the just, while the unjust is what profits man's self and is for his advantage.”

§ 344d  After this Thrasymachus was minded to depart when like a bathman he had poured his speech in a sudden flood over our ears. But the company would not suffer him and were insistent that he should remain and render an account of what he had said. And I was particularly urgent and said, “I am surprised at you, Thrasymachus; after hurling such a doctrine at us, can it be that you propose to depart without staying to teach us properly or learn yourself whether this thing is so or not? Do you think it is a small matter that you are attempting to determine

§ 344e  and not the entire conduct of life that for each of us would make living most worth while?”
“Well, do I deny it?” said Thrasymachus. “You seem to,” said I, “or else to care nothing for us and so feel no concern whether we are going to live worse or better lives in our ignorance of what you affirm that you know. Nay, my good fellow, do your best to make the matter clear to us also:

§ 345a  it will be no bad investment for you — any benefit that you bestow on such company as this. For I tell you for my part that I am not convinced, neither do I think that injustice is more profitable than justice, not even if one gives it free scope and does not hinder it of its will. But, suppose, sir, a man to be unjust and to be able to act unjustly either because he is not detected or can maintain it by violence, all the same he does not convince me that it is more profitable than justice.

§ 345b  Now it may be that there is someone else among us who feels in this way and that I am not the only one. Persuade us, then, my dear fellow, convince us satisfactorily that we are ill advised in preferring justice to injustice.”
“And how am I to persuade you?” he said. “If you are not convinced by what I just now was saying, what more can I do for you? Shall I take the argument and ram it into your head?”
“Heaven forbid!” I said, “don't do that. But in the first place when you have said a thing stand by it, or if you shift your ground change openly and don't try to deceive us.

§ 345c  But, as it is, you see, Thrasymachus — let us return to the previous examples — you see that while you began by taking the physician in the true sense of the word, you did not think fit afterwards to be consistent and maintain with precision the notion of the true shepherd, but you apparently think that he herds his sheep in his quality of shepherd not with regard to what is best for the sheep but as if he were a banqueter about to be feasted with regard to the good cheer or again with a view to the sale of them

§ 345d  as if he were a money-maker and not a shepherd. But the art of the shepherd surely is concerned with nothing else than how to provide what is best for that over which is set, since its own affairs, its own best estate, are entirely sufficiently provided for so long as it in nowise fails of being the shepherd's art. And in like manner I supposed that we just now were constrained to acknowledge that every form of rule in so far as it is rule considers what is best for nothing else than that which is governed and cared for by it,

§ 345e  alike in political and private rule. Why, do you think that the rulers and holders of office in our cities — the true rulers — willingly hold office and rule?”
“I don't think,” he said, “I know right well they do.”
“But what of other forms of rule, Thrasymachus? Do you not perceive that no one chooses of his own will to hold the office of rule, but they demand pay, which implies that not to them will benefit accrue from their holding office but to those whom they rule?

§ 346a  For tell me this: we ordinarily say, do we not, that each of the arts is different from others because its power or function is different? And, my dear fellow, in order that we may reach some result, don't answer counter to your real belief.”
“Well, yes,” he said, “that is what renders it different.” And does not each art also yield us benefit that is peculiar to itself and not general, as for example medicine health, the pilot's art safety at sea, and the other arts similarly?”
“Assuredly.”
“And does not the wage-earner's art yield wage? For that is its function.

§ 346b  Would you identify medicine and the pilot's art? Or if you please to discriminate 'precisely' as you proposed, none the more if a pilot regains his health because a sea voyage is good for him, no whit the more, I say, for this reason do you call his art medicine, do you?”
“Of course not,” he said. “Neither, I take it, do you call wage-earning medicine if a man earning wages is in health.”
“Surely not.”

§ 346c  “But what of this? Do you call medicine wage-earning, if a man when giving treatment earns wages?”
“No,” he said. “And did we not agree that the benefit derived from each art is peculiar to it?”
“So be it,” he said. “Any common or general benefit that all craftsmen receive, then, they obviously derive from their common use of some further identical thing.”
“It seems so,” he said. “And we say that the benefit of earning wages accrues to the craftsmen from their further exercise of the wage-earning art.” He assented reluctantly. “Then the benefit,

§ 346d  the receiving of wages does not accrue to each from his own art. But if we are to consider it 'precisely' medicine produces health but the fee-earning art the pay, and architecture a house but the fee-earning art accompanying it the fee, and so with all the others, each performs its own task and benefits that over which it is set, but unless pay is added to it is there any benefit which the craftsman receives from the craft?”
“Apparently not,” he said. “Does he then bestow no benefit either when he works for nothing?”

§ 346e  “I'll say he does.”
“Then, Thrasymachus, is not this immediately apparent, that no art or office provides what is beneficial for itself — but as we said long ago it provides and enjoins what is beneficial to its subject, considering the advantage of that, the weaker, and not the advantage the stronger? That was why, friend Thrasymachus, I was just now saying that no one of his own will chooses to hold rule and office and take other people's troubles in hand to straighten them out, but everybody expects pay for that,

§ 347a  because he who is to exercise the art rightly never does what is best for himself or enjoins it when he gives commands according to the art, but what is best for the subject. That is the reason, it seems, why pay must be provided for those who are to consent to rule, either in form of money or honor or a penalty if they refuse.”
“What do you mean by that, Socrates?” said Glaucon. “The two wages I recognize, but the penalty you speak of and described as a form of wage I don't understand.”
“Then,” said I, “you don't understand the wages of the best men

§ 347b  for the sake of which the finest spirits hold office and rule when they consent to do so. Don't you know that to be covetous of honor and covetous of money is said to be and is a reproach?”
“I do,” he said. “Well, then,” said I, “that is why the good are not willing to rule either for the sake of money or of honor. They do not wish to collect pay openly for their service of rule and be styled hirelings nor to take it by stealth from their office and be called thieves, nor yet for the sake of honor,

§ 347c  for they are not covetous of honor. So there must be imposed some compulsion and penalty to constrain them to rule if they are to consent to hold office. That is perhaps why to seek office oneself and not await compulsion is thought disgraceful. But the chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse if a man will not himself hold office and rule. It is from fear of this, as it appears to me, that the better sort hold office when they do, and then they go to it not in the expectation of enjoyment nor as to a good thing, but as to a necessary evil and because they are unable to turn it over to better men than themselves

§ 347d  or to their like. For we may venture to say that, if there should be a city of good men only, immunity from office-holding would be as eagerly contended for as office is now, and there it would be made plain that in very truth the true ruler does not naturally seek his own advantage but that of the ruled; so that every man of understanding would rather choose to be benefited by another than to be bothered with benefiting him. This point then I

§ 347e  by no means concede to Thrasymachus, that justice is the advantage of the superior. But that we will reserve for another occasion. A far weightier matter seems to me Thrasymachus's present statement, his assertion that the life of the unjust man is better than that of the just. Which now do you choose, Glaucon?” said I, “and which seems to you to be the truer statement?”
“That the life of the just man is more profitable, I say,” he replied.

§ 348a  “Did you hear,” said I, “all the goods that Thrasymachus just now enumerated for the life of the unjust man?”
“I heard,” he said, “but I am not convinced.”
“Do you wish us then to try to persuade him, supposing we can find a way, that what he says is not true?”
“Of course I wish it,” he said. “If then we oppose him in a set speech enumerating in turn the advantages of being just and he replies and we rejoin, we shall have to count up and measure the goods listed in the respective speeches

§ 348b  and we shall forthwith be in need of judges to decide between us. But if, as in the preceding discussion, we come to terms with one another as to what we admit in the inquiry, we shall be ourselves both judges and pleaders.”
“Quite so,” he said. “Which method do you like best?” said I. “This one,” he said.
“Come then, Thrasymachus,” I said, “go back to the beginning and answer us. You affirm that perfect and complete injustice is more profitable than justice that is complete.”

§ 348c  “I affirm it,” he said, “and have told you my reasons.”
“Tell me then how you would express yourself on this point about them. You call one of them, I presume, a virtue and the other a vice?”
“Of course.”
“Justice the virtue and injustice the vice?”
“It is likely, you innocent, when I say that injustice pays and justice doesn't pay.”
“But what then, pray?”
“The opposite,” he replied. “What! justice vice?”
“No, but a most noble simplicity or goodness of heart.”
“Then do you call injustice badness of heart?”

§ 348d  “No, but goodness of judgement.”
“Do you also, Thrasymachus, regard the unjust as intelligent and good?”
“Yes, if they are capable of complete injustice,” he said, “and are able to subject to themselves cities and tribes of men. But you probably suppose that I mean those who take purses. There is profit to be sure even in that sort of thing,” he said, “if it goes undetected. But such things are not worth taking into the account, but only what I just described.”

§ 348e  “I am not unaware of your meaning in that,” I said; “but this is what surprised me, that you should range injustice under the head of virtue and wisdom, and justice in the opposite class.”
“Well, I do so class them,” he said. “That,” said I, “is a stiffer proposition, my friend, and if you are going as far as that it is hard to know what to answer. For if your position were that injustice is profitable yet you conceded it to be vicious and disgraceful as some other disputants do, there would be a chance for an argument on conventional principles. But, as it is, you obviously are going to affirm that it is honorable and strong and you will attach to it all the other qualities

§ 349a  that we were assigning to the just, since you don't shrink from putting it in the category of virtue and wisdom.”
“You are a most veritable prophet,” he replied. “Well,” said I, “I mustn't flinch from following out the logic of the inquiry, so long as I conceive you to be saying what you think. For now, Thrasymachus, I absolutely believe that you are not 'mocking' us but telling us your real opinions about the truth.”
“What difference does it make to you,” he said, “whether I believe it or not?”
“Why don't you test the argument?”

§ 349b  “No difference,” said I, “but here is something I want you to tell me in addition to what you have said. Do you think the just man would want to overreach or exceed another just man?”
“By no means,” he said; “otherwise he would not be the delightful simpleton that he is.”
“And would he exceed or overreach or go beyond the just action?”
“Not that either,” he replied. “But how would he treat the unjust man — would he deem it proper and just to outdo, overreach, or go beyond him or would he not?”
“He would,” he said, “but he wouldn't be able to.”
“That is not my question,” I said,

§ 349c  “but whether it is not the fact that the just man does not claim and wish to outdo the just man but only the unjust?”
“That is the case,” he replied. “How about the unjust then? Does he claim to overreach and outdo the just man and the just action?”
“Of course,” he said, “since he claims to overreach and get the better of everything.”
“Then the unjust man will overreach and outdo also both the unjust man and the unjust action, and all his endeavor will be to get the most in everything for himself.”
“That is so.”
“Let us put it in this way,” I said; “the just man does not seek to take advantage of his like but of his unlike, but the unjust man of both.”

§ 349d  “Admirably put,” he said. “But the unjust man is intelligent and good and the just man neither.”
“That, too, is right,” he said. “Is it not also true,” I said, “that the unjust man is like the intelligent and good and the just man is not?”
“Of course,” he said, “being such he will be like to such and the other not.”
“Excellent. Then each is such as that to which he is like.”
“What else do you suppose?” he said. “Very well, Thrasymachus,

§ 349e  but do you recognize that one man is a musician and another unmusical?”
“I do.”
“Which is the intelligent and which the unintelligent?”
“The musician, I presume, is the intelligent and the unmusical the unintelligent.”
“And is he not good in the things in which he is intelligent and bad in the things in which he is unintelligent?”
“Yes.”
“And the same of the physician?”
“The same.”
“Do you think then, my friend, that any musician in the tuning of a lyre would want to overreach another musician in the tightening and relaxing of the strings or would claim and think fit to exceed or outdo him?”
“I do not.”
“But would the the unmusical man?”
“Of necessity,” he said. “And how about the medical man?

§ 350a  In prescribing food and drink would he want to outdo the medical man or the medical procedure?”
“Surely not.”
“But he would the unmedical man?”
“Yes.”
“Consider then with regard to all forms of knowledge and ignorance whether you think that anyone who knows would choose to do or say other or more than what another who knows would do or say, and not rather exactly what his like would do in the same action.”
“Why, perhaps it must be so,” he said, “in such cases.”
“But what of the ignorant man — of him who does not know? Would he not overreach or outdo equally the knower and the ignorant?”

§ 350b  “It may be.”
“But the one who knows is wise?”
“I'll say so.”
“And the wise is good?”
“I'll say so.”
“Then he who is good and wise will not wish to overreach his like but his unlike and opposite.”
“It seems so,” he said. “But the bad man and the ignoramus will overreach both like and unlike?”
“So it appears.”
“And does not our unjust man, Thrasymachus, overreach both unlike and like? Did you not say that?”
“I did,” he replied.

§ 350c  “But the just man will not overreach his like but only his unlike?”
“Yes.”
“Then the just man is like the wise and good, and the unjust is like the bad and the ignoramus.”
“It seems likely.”
“But furthermore we agreed that such is each as that to which he is like.”
“Yes, we did.”
“Then the just man has turned out on our hands to be good and wise and the unjust man bad and ignorant.”
Thrasymachus made all these admissions

§ 350d  not as I now lightly narrate them, but with much baulking and reluctance and prodigious sweating, it being summer, and it was then I beheld what I had never seen before — Thrasymachus blushing. But when we did reach our conclusion that justice is virtue and wisdom and injustice vice and ignorance, “Good,” said I, “let this be taken as established. But we were also affirming that injustice is a strong and potent thing. Don't you remember, Thrasymachus?”
“I remember,” he said; “but I don't agree with what you are now saying either and I have an answer to it,

§ 350e  but if I were to attempt to state it, I know very well that you would say that I was delivering a harangue. Either then allow me to speak at such length as I desire, or, if you prefer to ask questions, go on questioning and I, as we do for old wives telling their tales, will say 'Very good' and will nod assent and dissent.”
“No, no,” said I, “not counter to your own belief.”
“Yes, to please you,” he said, “since you don't allow me freedom of speech. And yet what more do you want?”
“Nothing, indeed,” said I; “but if this is what you propose to do, do it and I will ask the questions.”
“Ask on, then.”
“This, then, is the question I ask, the same as before, so that our inquiry may proceed in sequence.

§ 351a  What is the nature of injustice as compared with justice? For the statement made, I believe, was that injustice is a more potent and stronger thing than justice. But now,” I said, “if justice is wisdom and virtue, it will easily, I take it, be shown to be also a stronger thing than injustice, since injustice is ignorance — no one could now fail to recognize that — but what I want is not quite so simple as that. I wish, Thrasymachus, to consider it in some such fashion as this. A city, you would say, may be unjust and

§ 351b  try to enslave other cities unjustly, have them enslaved and hold many of them in subjection.”
“Certainly,” he said; “and this is what the best state will chiefly do, the state whose injustice is most complete.”
“I understand,” I said, “that this was your view. But the point that I am considering is this, whether the city that thus shows itself superior to another will have this power without justice or whether she must of necessity combine it with justice.”

§ 351c  “If,” he replied, “what you were just now saying holds good, that justice is wisdom, with justice; if it is as I said, with injustice.”
“Admirable, Thrasymachus,” I said; “you not only nod assent and dissent, but give excellent answers.”
“I am trying to please you,” he replied.
“Very kind of you. But please me in one thing more and tell me this: do you think that a city, an army, or bandits, or thieves, or any other group that attempted any action in common, could accomplish anything if they wronged one another?”

§ 351d  “Certainly not,” said he. “But if they didn't, wouldn't they be more likely to?”
“Assuredly.”
“For factions, Thrasymachus, are the outcome of injustice, and hatreds and internecine conflicts, but justice brings oneness of mind and love. Is it not so?”
“So be it,” he replied, “not to differ from you.”
“That is good of you, my friend; but tell me this: if it is the business of injustice to engender hatred wherever it is found, will it not, when it springs up either among freemen or slaves, cause them to hate and be at strife with one another, and make them incapable of effective action in common?”

§ 351e  “By all means.”
“Suppose, then, it springs up between two, will they not be at outs with and hate each other and be enemies both to one another and to the just?”
“They will,” he said. “And then will you tell me that if injustice arises in one it will lose its force and function or will it none the less keep it?”
“Have it that it keeps it,” he said. “And is it not apparent that its force is such that wherever it is found in city, family, camp, or in anything else

§ 352a  it first renders the thing incapable of cooperation with itself owing to faction and difference, and secondly an enemy to itself and to its opposite in every case, the just? Isn't that so?”
“By all means.”
“Then in the individual too, I presume, its presence will operate all these effects which it is its nature to produce. It will in the first place make him incapable of accomplishing anything because of inner faction and lack of self-agreement, and then an enemy to himself and to the just. Is it not so?”
“Yes.”
“But, my friend, the gods too are just.”

§ 352b  “Have it that they are,” he said. “So to the gods also, it seems, the unjust man will be hateful, but the just man dear.”
“Revel in your discourse,” he said, “without fear, for I shall not oppose you, so as not to offend your partisans here.”
“Fill up the measure of my feast, then, and complete it for me,” I said, “by continuing to answer as you have been doing. Now that the just appear to be wiser and better and more capable of action and the unjust incapable of any common action,

§ 352c  and that if we ever say that any men who are unjust have vigorously combined to put something over, our statement is not altogether true, for they would not have kept their hands from one another if they had been thoroughly unjust, but it is obvious that there was in them some justice which prevented them from wronging at the same time one another too as well as those whom they attacked; and by dint of this they accomplished whatever they did and set out to do injustice only half corrupted by injustice, since utter rascals completely unjust

§ 352d  are completely incapable of effective action — all this I understand to be the truth, and not what you originally laid down. But whether it is also true that the just have a better life than the unjust and are happier, which is the question we afterwards proposed for examination, is what we now have to consider. It appears even now that they are, I think, from what has already been said. But all the same we must examine it more carefully. For it is no ordinary matter that we are discussing, but the right conduct of life.”
“Proceed with your inquiry,” he said. “I proceed,” said I. “Tell me then — would you say

§ 352e  that a horse has a specific work or function?”
“I would.”
“Would you be willing to define the work of a horse or of anything else to be that which one can do only with it or best with it?”
“I don't understand,” he replied. “Well, take it this way: is there anything else with which you can see except the eyes?”
“Certainly not.”
“Again, could you hear with anything but ears?”
“By no means.”
“Would you not rightly say that these are the functions of these (organs)?”
“By all means.”
“Once more,

§ 353a  you could use a dirk to trim vine branches and a knife and many other instruments.”
“Certainly.”
“But nothing so well, I take it, as a pruning-knife fashioned for this purpose.”
“That is true.”
“Must we not then assume this to be the work or function of that?”
“We must.”
“You will now, then, I fancy, better apprehend the meaning of my question when I asked whether that is not the work of a thing which it only or it better than anything else can perform.”
“Well,” he said, “I do understand, and agree that the work of anything is that.”

§ 353b  “Very good,” said I. “Do you not also think that there is a specific virtue or excellence of everything for which a specific work or function is appointed? Let us return to the same examples. The eyes we say have a function?”
“They have.”
“Is there also a virtue of the eyes?”
“There is.”
“And was there not a function of the ears?”
“Yes.”
“And so also a virtue?”
“Also a virtue.”
“And what of all other things? Is the case not the same?”
“The same.”
“Take note now. Could the eyes possibly fulfil their function well

§ 353c  if they lacked their own proper excellence and had in its stead the defect?”
“How could they?” he said; “for I presume you meant blindness instead of vision.”
“Whatever,” said I, “the excellence may be. For I have not yet come to that question, but am only asking whether whatever operates will not do its own work well by its own virtue and badly by its own defect.”
“That much,” he said, “you may affirm to be true.”
“Then the ears, too, if deprived of their own virtue will do their work ill?”
“Assuredly.”
“And do we then apply the same principle to all things?”

§ 353d  “I think so.”
“Then next consider this. The soul, has it a work which you couldn't accomplish with anything else in the world, as for example, management, rule, deliberation, and the like, is there anything else than soul to which you could rightly assign these and say that they were its peculiar work?”
“Nothing else.”
“And again life? Shall we say that too is the function of the soul?”
“Most certainly,” he said. “And do we not also say that there is an excellence virtue of the soul?”

§ 353e  “We do.”
“Will the soul ever accomplish its own work well if deprived of its own virtue, or is this impossible?”
“It is impossible.”
“Of necessity, then, a bad soul will govern and manage things badly while the good soul will in all these things do well.”
“Of necessity.”
“And did we not agree that the excellence or virtue of soul is justice and its defect injustice?”
“Yes, we did.”
“The just soul and the just man then will live well and the unjust ill?”
“So it appears,” he said, “by your reasoning.”

§ 354a  “But furthermore, he who lives well is blessed and happy, and he who does not the contrary.”
“Of course.”
“Then the just is happy and the unjust miserable.”
“So be it,” he said. “But it surely does not pay to be miserable, but to be happy.”
“Of course not.”
“Never, then, most worshipful Thrasymachus, can injustice be more profitable than justice.”
“Let this complete your entertainment, Socrates, at the festival of Bendis.”
“A feast furnished by you, Thrasymachus,” I said, “now that you have become gentle with me and are no longer angry. I have not dined well, however —

§ 354b  by my own fault, not yours. But just as gluttons snatch at every dish that is handed along and taste it before they have properly enjoyed the preceding, so I, methinks, before finding the first object of our inquiry — what justice is — let go of that and set out to consider something about it, namely whether it is vice and ignorance or wisdom and virtue; and again, when later the view was sprung upon us that injustice is more profitable than justice I could not refrain from turning to that from the other topic. So that for me

§ 354c  the present outcome of the discussion is that I know nothing. For if I don't know what the just is, I shall hardly know whether it is a virtue or not, and whether its possessor is or is not happy.”

§ 357a  BOOK 2
Socrates
When I had said this I supposed that I was done with the subject, but it all turned out to be only a prelude. For Glaucon, who is always an intrepid enterprising spirit in everything, would not on this occasion acquiesce in Thrasymachus's abandonment of his case, but said, “Socrates, is it your desire to seem to have persuaded us

§ 357b  or really to persuade us that it is without exception better to be just than unjust?”
“Really,” I said, “if the choice rested with me.”
“Well, then, you are not doing what you wish. For tell me: do you agree that there is a kind of good which we would choose to possess, not from desire for its after effects, but welcoming it for its own sake? As, for example, joy and such pleasures are harmless and nothing results from them afterwards save to have and to hold the enjoyment.”

§ 357c  “I recognise that kind,” said I. “And again a kind that we love both for its own sake and for its consequences, such as understanding, sight, and health? For these presume we welcome for both reasons.”
“Yes,” I said. “And can you discern a third form of good under which falls exercise and being healed when sick and the art of healing and the making of money generally? For of them we would say that they are laborious and painful yet beneficial, and for their own sake

§ 357d  we would not accept them, but only for the rewards and other benefits that accrue from them.”
“Why yes,” I said, “I must admit this third class also. But what of it?”
“In which of these classes do you place justice?” he said.

§ 358a  “In my opinion,” I said, “it belongs in the fairest class, that which a man who is to be happy must love both for its own sake and for the results.”
“Yet the multitude,” he said, “do not think so, but that it belongs to the toilsome class of things that must be practised for the sake of rewards and repute due to opinion but that in itself is to be shunned as an affliction.”
“I am aware,” said I, “that that is the general opinion and Thrasymachus has for some time been disparaging it as such and praising injustice. But I, it seems, am somewhat slow to learn.”
“Come now,”

§ 358b  he said, “hear what I too have to say and see if you agree with me. For Thrasymachus seems to me to have given up to you too soon, as if he were a serpent that you had charmed, but I am not yet satisfied with the proof that has been offered about justice and injustice. For what I desire is to hear what each of them is and what potency and effect it has in and of itself dwelling in the soul, but to dismiss their rewards and consequences. This, then, is what I propose to do, with your concurrence. I will renew

§ 358c  the argument of Thrasymachus and will first state what men say is the nature and origin of justice; secondly, that all who practise it do so reluctantly, regarding it as something necessary and not as a good; and thirdly, that they have plausible grounds for thus acting, since forsooth the life of the unjust man is far better than that of the just man — as they say; though I, Socrates, don't believe it. Yet I am disconcerted when my ears are dinned by the arguments of Thrasymachus and innumerable others. But the case for justice,

§ 358d  to prove that it is better than injustice, I have never yet heard stated by any as I desire to hear it. What I desire is to hear an encomium on justice in and by itself. And I think I am most likely to get that from you. For which reason I will lay myself out in praise of the life of injustice, and in so speaking will give you an example of the manner in which I desire to hear from you in turn the dispraise of injustice and the praise of justice. Consider whether my proposal pleases you.”
“Nothing could please me more,” said I;

§ 358e  “for on what subject would a man of sense rather delight to hold and hear discourse again and again?”
“That is excellent,” he said; “and now listen to what I said would be the first topic — the nature and origin of justice. By nature, they say, to commit injustice is a good and to suffer it is an evil, but that the excess of evil in being wronged is greater than the excess of good in doing wrong. So that when men do wrong and are wronged by one another and taste of both, those who lack the power

§ 359a  to avoid the one and take the other determine that it is for their profit to make a compact with one another neither to commit nor to suffer injustice; and that this is the beginning of legislation and covenants between men, and that they name the commandment of the law the lawful and the just, and that this is the genesis and essential nature of justice — a compromise between the best, which is to do wrong with impunity, and the worst, which is to be wronged and be impotent to get one's revenge. Justice, they tell us, being mid-way between the two, is accepted and approved,

§ 359b  not as a real good, but as a thing honored in the lack of vigor to do injustice, since anyone who had the power to do it and was in reality 'a man' would never make a compact with anybody either to wrong nor to be wronged; for he would be mad. The nature, then, of justice is this and such as this, Socrates, and such are the conditions in which it originates, according to the theory.
“But as for the second point, that those who practise it do so unwillingly and from want of power to commit injustice — we shall be most likely to apprehend that if we entertain some such supposition as this in thought:

§ 359c  if we grant to each, the just and the unjust, licence and power to do whatever he pleases, and then accompany them in imagination and see whither his desire will conduct each. We should then catch the just man in the very act of resorting to the same conduct as the unjust man because of the self-advantage which every creature by its nature pursues as a good, while by the convention of law it is forcibly diverted to paying honor to 'equality.' The licence that I mean would be most nearly such as would result from supposing them to have the power

§ 359d  which men say once came to the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian. They relate that he was a shepherd in the service of the ruler at that time of Lydia, and that after a great deluge of rain and an earthquake the ground opened and a chasm appeared in the place where he was pasturing; and they say that he saw and wondered and went down into the chasm; and the story goes that he beheld other marvels there and a hollow bronze horse with little doors, and that he peeped in and saw a corpse within, as it seemed, of more than mortal stature,

§ 359e  and that there was nothing else but a gold ring on its hand, which he took off and went forth. And when the shepherds held their customary assembly to make their monthly report to the king about the flocks, he also attended wearing the ring. So as he sat there it chanced that he turned the collet of the ring towards himself, towards the inner part of his hand, and when this took place they say that he became invisible

§ 360a  to those who sat by him and they spoke of him as absent and that he was amazed, and again fumbling with the ring turned the collet outwards and so became visible. On noting this he experimented with the ring to see if it possessed this virtue, and he found the result to be that when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, and when outwards visible; and becoming aware of this, he immediately managed things so that he became one of the messengers

§ 360b  who went up to the king, and on coming there he seduced the king's wife and with her aid set upon the king and slew him and possessed his kingdom. If now there should be two such rings, and the just man should put on one and the unjust the other, no one could be found, it would seem, of such adamantine temper as to persevere in justice and endure to refrain his hands from the possessions of others and not touch them, though he might with impunity take what he wished even from the marketplace,

§ 360c  and enter into houses and lie with whom he pleased, and slay and loose from bonds whomsoever he would, and in all other things conduct himself among mankind as the equal of a god. And in so acting he would do no differently from the other man, but both would pursue the same course. And yet this is a great proof, one might argue, that no one is just of his own will but only from constraint, in the belief that justice is not his personal good, inasmuch as every man, when he supposes himself to have the power to do wrong, does wrong.

§ 360d  For that there is far more profit for him personally in injustice than in justice is what every man believes, and believes truly, as the proponent of this theory will maintain. For if anyone who had got such a licence within his grasp should refuse to do any wrong or lay his hands on others' possessions, he would be regarded as most pitiable and a great fool by all who took note of it, though they would praise him before one another's faces, deceiving one another because of their fear of suffering injustice. So much for this point.

§ 360e  “But to come now to the decision between our two kinds of life, if we separate the most completely just and the most completely unjust man, we shall be able to decide rightly, but if not, not. How, then, is this separation to be made? Thus: we must subtract nothing of his injustice from the unjust man or of his justice from the just, but assume the perfection of each in his own mode of conduct. In the first place, the unjust man must act as clever craftsmen do: a first-rate pilot or physician, for example, feels the difference between impossibilities and possibilities in his art

§ 361a  and attempts the one and lets the others go; and then, too, if he does happen to trip, he is equal to correcting his error. Similarly, the unjust man who attempts injustice rightly must be supposed to escape detection if he is to be altogether unjust, and we must regard the man who is caught as a bungler. For the height of injustice is to seem just without being so. To the perfectly unjust man, then, we must assign perfect injustice and withhold nothing of it, but we must allow him, while committing the greatest wrongs, to have secured for himself the greatest reputation for justice;

§ 361b  and if he does happen to trip, we must concede to him the power to correct his mistakes by his ability to speak persuasively if any of his misdeeds come to light, and when force is needed, to employ force by reason of his manly spirit and vigor and his provision of friends and money; and when we have set up an unjust man of this character, our theory must set the just man at his side — a simple and noble man, who, in the phrase of Aeschylus, does not wish to seem but be good. Then we must deprive him of the seeming. For if he is going to be thought just

§ 361c  he will have honors and gifts because of that esteem. We cannot be sure in that case whether he is just for justice' sake or for the sake of the gifts and the honors. So we must strip him bare of everything but justice and make his state the opposite of his imagined counterpart. Though doing no wrong he must have the repute of the greatest injustice, so that he may be put to the test as regards justice through not softening because of ill repute and the consequences thereof. But let him hold on his course unchangeable even unto death,

§ 361d  seeming all his life to be unjust though being just, that so, both men attaining to the limit, the one of injustice, the other of justice, we may pass judgement which of the two is the happier.”
“Bless me, my dear Glaucon,” said I, “how strenuously you polish off each of your two men for the competition for the prize as if it were a statue.”
“To the best of my ability,” he replied, “and if such is the nature of the two, it becomes an easy matter, I fancy, to unfold the tale of the sort of life that awaits each.

§ 361e  We must tell it, then; and even if my language is somewhat rude and brutal, you must not suppose, Socrates, that it is I who speak thus, but those who commend injustice above justice. What they will say is this: that such being his disposition the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains,

§ 362a  the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified, and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire. And the saying of Aeschylus was, it seems, far more correctly applicable to the unjust man. For it is literally true, they will say, that the unjust man, as pursuing what clings closely to reality, to truth, and not regulating his life by opinion, desires not to seem but to be unjust, “Exploiting the deep furrows of his wit
From which there grows the fruit of counsels shrewd,” (Aesch. Seven 592-594)

§ 362b  first office and rule in the state because of his reputation for justice, then a wife from any family he chooses, and the giving of his children in marriage to whomsoever he pleases, dealings and partnerships with whom he will, and in all these transactions advantage and profit for himself because he has no squeamishness about committing injustice; and so they say that if he enters into lawsuits, public or private, he wins and gets the better of his opponents, and, getting the better, is rich and benefits his friends and harms his enemies;

§ 362c  and he performs sacrifices and dedicates votive offerings to the gods adequately and magnificently, and he serves and pays court to men whom he favors and to the gods far better than the just man, so that he may reasonably expect the favor of heaven also to fall rather to him than to the just. So much better they say, Socrates, is the life that is prepared for the unjust man from gods and men than that which awaits the just.”
When Glaucon had thus spoken, I had a mind

§ 362d  to make some reply thereto, but his brother Adeimantus said, “You surely don't suppose, Socrates, that the statement of the case is complete?”
“Why, what else?” I said. “The very most essential point,” said he, “has not been mentioned.”
“Then,” said I, “as the proverb has it, 'Let a brother help a man' — and so, if Glaucon omits any word or deed, do you come to his aid. Though for my part what he has already said is quite enough to overthrow me and

§ 362e  incapacitate me for coming to the rescue of justice.”
“Nonsense,” he said, “but listen to this further point. We must set forth the reasoning and the language of the opposite party, of those who commend justice and dispraise injustice, if what I conceive to be Glaucon's meaning is to be made more clear. Fathers, when they address exhortations to their sons, and all those who have others in their charge,

§ 363a  urge the necessity of being just, not by praising justice itself, but the good repute with mankind that accrues from it, the object that they hold before us being that by seeming to be just the man may get from the reputation office and alliances and all the good things that Glaucon just now enumerated as coming to the unjust man from his good name. But those people draw out still further this topic of reputation. For, throwing in good standing with the gods, they have no lack of blessings to describe, which they affirm the gods give to pious men, even as the worthy Hesiod and Homer declare,

§ 363b  the one that the gods make the oaks bear for the just: “‘Acorns on topmost branches and swarms of bees on their mid-trunks,’ and he tells how the ‘Flocks of the fleece-bearing sheep are laden and weighted with soft wool,’” (Hes. WD 232ff) and of many other blessings akin to these; and similarly the other poet: “Even as when a good king, who rules in the fear of the high gods,
Upholds justice and right, and the black earth yields him her foison,”

§ 363c   “Barley and wheat, and his trees are laden and weighted with fair fruits,
Increase comes to his flocks and the ocean is teeming with fishes.” (Hom. Od. 19.109)
And Musaeus and his son have a more excellent song than these of the blessings that the gods bestow on the righteous. For they conduct them to the house of Hades in their tale and arrange a symposium of the saints, where, reclined on couches crowned with wreaths,

§ 363d  they entertain the time henceforth with wine, as if the fairest meed of virtue were an everlasting drunk. And others extend still further the rewards of virtue from the gods. For they say that the children's children of the pious and oath-keeping man and his race thereafter never fail. Such and such-like are their praises of justice. But the impious and the unjust they bury in mud in the house of Hades and compel them to fetch water in a sieve, and, while they still live,

§ 363e  they bring them into evil repute, and all the sufferings that Glaucon enumerated as befalling just men who are thought to be unjust, these they recite about the unjust, but they have nothing else to say. Such is the praise and the censure of the just and of the unjust.
“Consider further, Socrates, another kind of language about justice and injustice

§ 364a  employed by both laymen and poets. All with one accord reiterate that soberness and righteousness are fair and honorable, to be sure, but unpleasant and laborious, while licentiousness and injustice are pleasant and easy to win and are only in opinion and by convention disgraceful. They say that injustice pays better than justice, for the most part, and they do not scruple to felicitate bad men who are rich or have other kinds of power to do them honor in public and private, and to dishonor

§ 364b  and disregard those who are in any way weak or poor, even while admitting that they are better men than the others. But the strangest of all these speeches are the things they say about the gods and virtue, how so it is that the gods themselves assign to many good men misfortunes and an evil life but to their opposites a contrary lot; and begging priests and soothsayers go to rich men's doors and make them believe that they by means of sacrifices and incantations have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals

§ 364c  any misdeed of a man or his ancestors, and that if a man wishes to harm an enemy, at slight cost he will be enabled to injure just and unjust alike, since they are masters of spells and enchantments that constrain the gods to serve their end. And for all these sayings they cite the poets as witnesses, with regard to the ease and plentifulness of vice, quoting: “Evil-doing in plenty a man shall find for the seeking;”

§ 364d   “Smooth is the way and it lies near at hand and is easy to enter;
But on the pathway of virtue the gods put sweat from the first step,” (Hes. WD 287-289)
and a certain long and uphill road. And others cite Homer as a witness to the beguiling of gods by men, since he too said: “The gods themselves are moved by prayers,
And men by sacrifice and soothing vows,”

§ 364e   “And incense and libation turn their wills
Praying, whenever they have sinned and made transgression.” (Hom. Il. 9.497)
And they produce a bushel of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, the offspring of the Moon and of the Muses, as they affirm, and these books they use in their ritual, and make not only ordinary men but states believe that there really are remissions of sins and purifications for deeds of injustice, by means of sacrifice and pleasant sport for the living,

§ 365a  and that there are also special rites for the defunct, which they call functions, that deliver us from evils in that other world, while terrible things await those who have neglected to sacrifice.
“What, Socrates, do we suppose is the effect of all such sayings about the esteem in which men and gods hold virtue and vice upon the souls that hear them, the souls of young men who are quick-witted and capable of flitting, as it were, from one expression of opinion to another and inferring from them

§ 365b  all the character and the path whereby a man would lead the best life? Such a youth would most likely put to himself the question Pindar asks, “‘Is it by justice or by crooked deceit that I the higher tower shall scale and so live my life out in fenced and guarded security?’”Pindar, Fr. The consequences of my being just are, unless I likewise seem so, not assets, they say, but liabilities, labor and total loss; but if I am unjust and have procured myself a reputation for justice a godlike life is promised.

§ 365c  Then since it is the “‘seeming’” (Simonides, Fr. 76 Bergk, and Eur. Orest. 236) as the wise men show me, that “‘masters the reality’” and is lord of happiness, to this I must devote myself without reserve. For a front and a show I must draw about myself a shadow-line of virtue, but trail behind me the fox of most sage Archilochus, shifty and bent on gain. Nay, 'tis objected, it is not easy for a wrong-doer always to lie hid. Neither is any other big thing facile,

§ 365d  we shall reply. But all the same if we expect to be happy, we must pursue the path to which the footprints of our arguments point. For with a view to lying hid we will organize societies and political clubs, and there are teachers of cajolery who impart the arts of the popular assembly and the court-room. So that, partly by persuasion, partly by force, we shall contrive to overreach with impunity. But against the gods, it may be said, neither secrecy nor force can avail. Well, if there are no gods, or they do not concern themselves with the doings of men,

§ 365e  neither need we concern ourselves with eluding their observation. If they do exist and pay heed, we know and hear of them only from such discourses and from the poets who have described their pedigrees. But these same authorities tell us that the gods are capable of being persuaded and swerved from their course by ‘sacrifice and soothing vows’ and dedications. We must believe them in both or neither. And if we are to believe them, the thing to do is to commit injustice and offer sacrifice

§ 366a  from fruits of our wrongdoing. For if we are just, we shall, it is true, be unscathed by the gods, but we shall be putting away from us the profits of injustice; but if we are unjust, we shall win those profits, and, by the importunity of our prayers, when we transgress and sin, we shall persuade them and escape scot-free. Yes, it will be objected, but we shall be brought to judgement in the world below for our unjust deeds here, we or our children's children. 'Nay, my dear sir,' our calculating friend will say, 'here again the rites for the dead have much efficacy, and the absolving divinities,

§ 366b  as the greatest cities declare, and the sons of gods, who became the poets and prophets of the gods, and who reveal that this is the truth.
“On what further ground, then, could we prefer justice to supreme injustice? If we combine this with a counterfeit decorum, we shall prosper to our heart's desire, with gods and men in life and death, as the words of the multitude and of men of the highest authority declare. In consequence, then, of all that has been said, what possibility is there, Socrates, that any man

§ 366c  who has the power of any resources of mind, money, body, or family should consent to honor justice and not rather laugh when he hears her praised? In sooth, if anyone is able to show the falsity of these arguments, and has come to know with sufficient assurance that justice is best, he feels much indulgence for the unjust, and is not angry with them, but is aware that except a man by inborn divinity of his nature disdains injustice, or, having won to knowledge, refrains from it,

§ 366d  no one else is willingly just, but that it is from lack of manly spirit or from old age or some other weakness that men dispraise injustice, lacking the power to practise it. The fact is patent. For no sooner does such one come into the power than he works injustice to the extent of his ability. And the sole cause of all this is the fact that was the starting-point of this entire plea of my friend here and of myself to you, Socrates, pointing out how strange it is that of all you

§ 366e  self-styled advocates of justice, from the heroes of old whose discourses survive to the men of the present day, not one has ever censured injustice or commended justice otherwise than in respect of the repute, the honors, and the gifts that accrue from each. But what each one of them is in itself, by its own inherent force, when it is within the soul of the possessor and escapes the eyes of both gods and men, no one has ever adequately set forth in poetry or prose — the proof that the one is the greatest of all evils that the soul contains within itself, while justice is the greatest good.

§ 367a  For if you had all spoken in this way from the beginning and from our youth up had sought to convince us, we should not now be guarding against one another's injustice, but each would be his own best guardian, for fear lest by working injustice he should dwell in communion with the greatest of evils. This, Socrates, and perhaps even more than this, Thrasymachus and haply another might say in pleas for and against justice and injustice, inverting their true potencies, as I believe, grossly. But I —

§ 367b  for I have no reason to hide anything from you — am laying myself out to the utmost on the theory, because I wish to hear its refutation from you. Do not merely show us by argument that justice is superior to injustice, but make clear to us what each in and of itself does to its possessor, whereby the one is evil and the other good. But do away with the repute of both, as Glaucon urged. For, unless you take away from either the true repute and attach to each the false, we shall say that it is not justice that you are praising but the semblance,

§ 367c  nor injustice that you censure, but the seeming, and that you really are exhorting us to be unjust but conceal it, and that you are at one with Thrasymachus in the opinion that justice is other man's good, the advantage of the other, and that injustice is advantageous and profitible to oneself but disadvantageous to the inferior. Since, then, you have admitted that justice belongs to the class of those highest goods which are desirable both for their consequences and still more for their own sake, as sight, hearing, intelligence, yes and health too,

§ 367d  and all other goods that are productive by their very nature and not by opinion, this is what I would have you praise about justice — the benefit which it and the harm which injustice inherently works upon its possessor. But the rewards and the honors that depend on opinion, leave to others to praise. For while I would listen to others who thus commended justice and disparaged injustice, bestowing their praise and their blame on the reputation and the rewards of either, I could not accept that sort of thing from you unless you say I must, because you have passed

§ 367e  your entire life in the consideration of this very matter. Do not then, I repeat, merely prove to us in argument the superiority of justice to injustice, but show us what it is that each inherently does to its possessor — whether he does or does not escape the eyes of gods and men — whereby the one is good and the other evil.”
While I had always admired the natural parts of Glaucon and Adeimantus, I was especially

§ 368a  pleased by their words on this occasion, and said: “It was excellently spoken of you, sons of the man we know,”71 in the beginning of the elegy which the admirer of Glaucon wrote when you distinguished yourselves in the battle of Megara — 'Sons of Ariston, whose race from a glorious sire is god-like.' This, my friends, I think, was well said. For there must indeed be a touch of the god-like in your disposition if you are not convinced that injustice is preferable to justice though you can plead its case in such fashion.

§ 368b  And I believe that you are really not convinced. I infer this from your general character since from your words alone I should have distrusted you. But the more I trust you the more I am at a loss what to make of the matter. I do not know how I can come to the rescue. For I doubt my ability by reason that you have not accepted the arguments whereby I thought I proved against Thrasymachus that justice is better than injustice. Nor yet again do I know how I can refuse to come to the rescue. For I fear lest

§ 368c  it be actually impious to stand idly by when justice is reviled and be faint-hearted and not defend her so long as one has breath and can utter his voice. The best thing, then, is to aid her as best I can.” Glaucon, then, and the rest besought me by all means to come to the rescue and not to drop the argument but to pursue to the end the investigation as to the nature of each and the truth about their respective advantages. I said then as I thought: “The inquiry we are undertaking is no easy one but

§ 368d  calls for keen vision, as it seems to me. So, since we are not clever persons, I think we should employ the method of search that we should use if we, with not very keen vision, were bidden to read small letters from a distance, and then someone had observed that these same letters exist elsewhere larger and on a larger surface. We should have accounted it a godsend, I fancy, to be allowed to read those letters first, and examine the smaller, if they are the same.”
“Quite so,” said Adeimantus;

§ 368e  “but what analogy to do you detect in the inquiry about justice?”
“I will tell you,” I said: “there is a justice of one man, we say, and, I suppose, also of an entire city.”
“Assuredly,” said he. “Is not the city larger than the man?”
“It is larger,” he said. “Then, perhaps, there would be more justice in the larger object and more easy to apprehend. If it please you, then,

§ 369a  let us first look for its quality in states, and then only examine it also in the individual, looking for the likeness of the greater in the form of the less.”
“I think that is a good suggestion,” he said. “If, then,” said I, “our argument should observe the origin of a state, we should see also the origin of justice and injustice in it.”
“It may be,” said he. “And if this is done, we may expect to find more easily what we are seeking?”

§ 369b  “Much more.”
“Shall we try it, then, and go through with it? I fancy it is no slight task. Reflect, then.”
“We have reflected,” said Adeimantus; “proceed and don't refuse.”
“The origin of the city, then,” said I, “in my opinion, is to be found in the fact that we do not severally suffice for our own needs, but each of us lacks many things. Do you think any other principle establishes the state?”
“No other,” said he. “As a result of this,

§ 369c  then, one man calling in another for one service and another for another, we, being in need of many things, gather many into one place of abode as associates and helpers, and to this dwelling together we give the name city or state, do we not?”
“By all means.”
“And between one man and another there is an interchange of giving, if it so happens, and taking, because each supposes this to be better for himself.”
“Certainly.”
“Come, then, let us create a city from the beginning, in our theory. Its real creator, as it appears, will be our needs.”
“Obviously.”

§ 369d  “Now the first and chief of our needs is the provision of food for existence and life.”
“Assuredly.”
“The second is housing and the third is raiment and that sort of thing.”
“That is so.”
“Tell me, then,” said I, “how our city will suffice for the provision of all these things. Will there not be a farmer for one, and a builder, and then again a weaver? And shall we add thereto a cobbler and some other purveyor for the needs of body?”
“Certainly.”
“The indispensable minimum of a city, then, would consist of four or five men.”

§ 369e  “Apparently.”
“What of this, then? Shall each of these contribute his work for the common use of all? I mean shall the farmer, who is one, provide food for four and spend fourfold time and toil on the production of food and share it with the others, or shall he take no thought for them and provide a fourth portion

§ 370a  of the food for himself alone in a quarter of the time and employ the other three-quarters, the one in the provision of a house, the other of a garment, the other of shoes, and not have the bother of associating with other people, but, himself for himself, mind his own affairs?” And Adeimantus said, “But, perhaps, Socrates, the former way is easier.”
“It would not, by Zeus, be at all strange,” said I; “for now that you have mentioned it, it occurs to me myself that, to begin with, our several natures are not

§ 370b  all alike but different. One man is naturally fitted for one task, and another for another. Don't you think so?”
“I do.”
“Again, would one man do better working at many tasks or one at one?”
“One at one,” he said. “And, furthermore, this, I fancy, is obvious — that if one lets slip the right season, the favorable moment in any task, the work is spoiled.”
“Obvious.”
“That, I take it, is because the business will not wait upon the leisure of the workman, but the workman must

§ 370c  attend to it as his main affair, and not as a by-work.”
“He must indeed.”
“The result, then, is that more things are produced, and better and more easily when one man performs one task according to his nature, at the right moment, and at leisure from other occupations.”
“By all means.”
“Then, Adeimantus, we need more than four citizens for the provision of the things we have mentioned. For the farmer, it appears, will not make his own plough if it is to be a good one,

§ 370d  nor his hoe, nor his other agricultural implements, nor will the builder, who also needs many; and similarly the weaver and cobbler.”
“True.”
“Carpenters, then, and smiths and many similar craftsmen, associating themselves with our hamlet, will enlarge it considerably.”
“Certainly.”
“Yet it still wouldn't be very large even if we should add to them neat-herds and shepherds and other herders,

§ 370e  so that the farmers might have cattle for ploughing, and the builders oxen to use with the farmers for transportation, and the weavers and cobblers hides and fleeces for their use.”
“It wouldn't be a small city, either, if it had all these.”
“But further,” said I, “it is practically impossible to establish the city in a region where it will not need imports.”
“It is.”
“There will be a further need, then, of those who will bring in from some other city what it requires.”
“There will.”
“And again, if our servitor goes forth empty-handed, not taking with him any of the things needed by those

§ 371a  from whom they procure what they themselves require, he will come back with empty hands, will he not?”
“I think so.”
“Then their home production must not merely suffice for themselves but in quality and quantity meet the needs of those of whom they have need.”
“It must.”
“So our city will require more farmers and other craftsmen.”
“Yes, more.”
“And also of other ministrants who are to export and import the merchandise. These are traders, are they not? ““Yes.”
“We shall also need traders, then.”
“Assuredly.”
“And if the trading is carried on by sea,

§ 371b  we shall need quite a number of others who are expert in maritime business.”
“Quite a number.”
“But again, within the city itself how will they share with one another the products of their labor? This was the very purpose of our association and establishment of a state.”
“Obviously,” he said, “by buying and selling.”
“A market-place, then, and money as a token for the purpose of exchange will be the result of this.”

§ 371c  “By all means.”
“If, then, the farmer or any other craftsman taking his products to the market-place does not arrive at the same time with those who desire to exchange with him, is he to sit idle in the market-place and lose time from his own work?”
“By no means,” he said, “but there are men who see this need and appoint themselves for this service — in well-conducted cities they are generally those who are weakest in body and those who are useless for any other task. They must wait there in the Agora

§ 371d  and exchange money for goods with those who wish to sell, and goods for money with as many as desire to buy.”
“This need, then,” said I, “creates the class of shopkeepers in our city. Or is not shopkeepers the name we give to those who, planted in the agora, serve us in buying and selling, while we call those who roam from city to city merchants?”
“Certainly.”
“And there are, furthermore, I believe, other servitors who in the things of the mind

§ 371e  are not altogether worthy of our fellowship, but whose strength of body is sufficient for toil; so they, selling the use of this strength and calling the price wages, are designated, I believe, wage-earners, are they not?”
“Certainly.”
“Wage-earners, then, it seems, are the complement that helps to fill up the state.”
“I think so.”
“Has our city, then, Adeimantus, reached its full growth and is it complete?”
“Perhaps.”
“Where, then, can justice and injustice be found in it? And along with which of the constituents that we have considered does it come into the state?”

§ 372a  “I cannot conceive, Socrates,” he said, “unless it be in some need that those very constituents have of one another.”
“Perhaps that is a good suggestion,” said I; “we must examine it and not hold back. First of all, then, let us consider what will be the manner of life of men thus provided. Will they not make bread and wine and garments and shoes? And they will build themselves houses and carry on their work in summer for the most part unclad and unshod and in winter clothed and

§ 372b  shod sufficiently? And for their nourishment they will provide meal from their barley and flour from their wheat, and kneading and cooking these they will serve noble cakes and loaves on some arrangement of reeds or clean leaves, and, reclined on rustic beds strewn with bryony and myrtle, they will feast with their children, drinking of their wine thereto, garlanded and singing hymns to the gods in pleasant fellowship, not begetting offspring beyond their means lest they fall into poverty or war?”

§ 372c  Here Glaucon broke in: “No relishes apparently,” he said, “for the men you describe as feasting.”
“True” said I; “I forgot that they will also have relishes — salt, of course, and olives and cheese and onions and greens, the sort of things they boil in the country, they will boil up together. But for dessert we will serve them figs and chickpeas and beans,

§ 372d  and they will toast myrtle-berries and acorns before the fire, washing them down with moderate potations and so, living in peace and health, they will probably die in old age and hand on a like life to their offspring.” And he said, “If you were founding a city of pigs, Socrates, what other fodder than this would you provide?”
“Why, what would you have, Glaucon?” said I. “What is customary,” he replied; “They must recline on couches, I presume, if they are not to be uncomfortable,

§ 372e  and dine from tables and have made dishes and sweetmeats such as are now in use.”
“Good,” said I, “I understand. It is not merely the origin of a city, it seems, that we are considering but the origin of a luxurious city. Perhaps that isn't such a bad suggestion, either. For by observation of such a city it may be we could discern the origin of justice and injustice in states. The true state I believe to be the one we have described — the healthy state, as it were. But if it is your pleasure that we contemplate also a fevered state, there is nothing to hinder.

§ 373a  For there are some, it appears, who will not be contented with this sort of fare or with this way of life; but couches will have to be added thereto and tables and other furniture, yes, and relishes and myrrh and incense and girls and cakes — all sorts of all of them. And the requirements we first mentioned, houses and garments and shoes, will no longer be confined to necessities, but we must set painting to work and embroidery, and procure gold and ivory and similar adornments, must we not?”

§ 373b  “Yes,” he said. “Then we shall have to enlarge the city again. For that healthy state is no longer sufficient, but we must proceed to swell out its bulk and fill it up with a multitude of things that exceed the requirements of necessity in states, as, for example, the entire class of huntsmen, and the imitators, many of them occupied with figures and colors and many with music — the poets and their assistants, rhapsodists, actors, chorus-dancers, contractors — and

§ 373c  the manufacturers of all kinds of articles, especially those that have to do with women's adornment. And so we shall also want more servitors. Don't you think that we shall need tutors, nurses wet and dry, beauty-shop ladies, barbers and yet again cooks and chefs? And we shall have need, further, of swineherds; there were none of these creatures in our former city, for we had no need of them, but in this city there will be this further need; and we shall also require other cattle in great numbers if they are to be eaten, shall we not?”

§ 373d  “Yes.”
“Doctors, too, are something whose services we shall be much more likely to require if we live thus than as before?”
“Much.”
“And the territory, I presume, that was then sufficient to feed the then population, from being adequate will become too small. Is that so or not?”
“It is.”
“Then we shall have to cut out a cantle of our neighbor's land if we are to have enough for pasture and ploughing, and they in turn of ours if they too abandon themselves to the unlimited acquisition of wealth,

§ 373e  disregarding the limit set by our necessary wants.”
“Inevitably, Socrates.”
“We shall go to war as the next step, Glaucon — or what will happen?”
“What you say,” he said. “And we are not yet to speak,” said I, “of any evil or good effect of war, but only to affirm that we have further discovered the origin of war, namely, from those things from which the greatest disasters, public and private, come to states when they come.”
“Certainly.”
“Then, my friend, we must still further enlarge our city

§ 374a  by no small increment, but by a whole army, that will march forth and fight it out with assailants in defence of all our wealth and the luxuries we have just described.”
“How so?” he said; “are the citizens themselves not sufficient for it?”
“Not if you,” said I, “and we all were right in the admission we made when we were molding our city. We surely agreed, if you remember, that it is impossible for one man to do the work of many arts well.”
“True,” he said. “Well, then,” said I,

§ 374b  “don't you think that the business of fighting is an art and a profession?”
“It is indeed,” he said. “Should our concern be greater, then, for the cobbler's art than for the art of war?”
“By no means.”
“Can we suppose, then, that while we were at pains to prevent the cobbler from attempting to be at the same time a farmer, a weaver, or a builder instead of just a cobbler, to the end that we might have the cobbler's business well done, and similarly assigned to each and every one man one occupation, for which he was fit and naturally adapted and at which he was to work all his days,

§ 374c  at leisure from other pursuits and not letting slip the right moments for doing the work well, and that yet we are in doubt whether the right accomplishment of the business of war is not of supreme moment? Is it so easy that a man who is cultivating the soil will be at the same time a soldier and one who is practising cobbling or any other trade, though no man in the world could make himself a competent expert at draughts or the dice who did not practise that and nothing else from childhood but treated it as an occasional business? And are we to believe that a man who

§ 374d  takes in hand a shield or any other instrument of war springs up on that very day a competent combatant in heavy armor or in any other form of warfare — though no other tool will make a man be an artist or an athlete by his taking it in hand, nor will it be of any service to those who have neither acquired the science of it nor sufficiently practised themselves in its use?”
“Great indeed,” he said, “would be the value of tools in that case. “
“Then,” said I, “in the same degree that the task of our guardians is the greatest of all,

§ 374e  it would require more leisure than any other business and the greatest science and training.”
“I think so,” said he. “Does it not also require a nature adapted to that very pursuit?”
“Of course.”
“It becomes our task, then, it seems, if we are able, to select which and what kind of natures are suited for the guardianship of a state.”
“Yes, ours.”
“Upon my word,” said I, “it is no light task that we have taken upon ourselves. But we must not faint so far as our strength allows.”

§ 375a  “No, we mustn't.”
“Do you think,” said I, “that there is any difference between the nature of a well-bred hound for this watch-dog's work and of a well-born lad?”
“What point have you in mind?”
“I mean that each of them must be keen of perception, quick in pursuit of what it has apprehended, and strong too if it has to fight it out with its captive.”
“Why, yes,” said he, “there is need of all these qualities.”
“And it must, further, be brave if it is to fight well.”
“Of course.”
“And will a creature be ready to be brave that is not high-spirited, whether horse or dog or

§ 375b  anything else? Have you never observed what an irresistible and invincible thing is spirit, the presence of which makes every soul in the face of everything fearless and unconquerable?”
“I have.”
“The physical qualities of the guardian, then, are obvious.”
“Yes.”
“And also those of his soul, namely that he must be of high spirit.”
“Yes, this too.”
“How then, Glaucon,” said I, “will they escape being savage to one another and to the other citizens if this is to be their nature?”
“Not easily, by Zeus,” said he. “And yet

§ 375c  we must have them gentle to their friends and harsh to their enemies; otherwise they will not await their destruction at the hands of others, but will be first themselves in bringing it about.”
“True,” he said. “What, then, are we to do?”
“said I. “Where shall we discover a disposition that is at once gentle and great-spirited? For there appears to be an opposition between the spirited type and the gentle nature.”
“There does.”
“But yet if one lacks either of these qualities, a good guardian he never can be. But these requirements resemble impossibilities, and so

§ 375d  the result is that a good guardian is impossible.”
“It seems likely,” he said. And I was at a standstill, and after reconsidering what we had been saying, I said, “We deserve to be at a loss, my friend, for we have lost sight of the comparison that we set before ourselves.”
“What do you mean?”
“We failed to note that there are after all such natures as we thought impossible, endowed with these opposite qualities.”
“Where?”
“It may be observed in other animals, but especially in that which we

§ 375e  likened to the guardian. You surely have observed in well-bred hounds that their natural disposition is to be most gentle to their familiars and those whom they recognize, but the contrary to those whom they do not know.”
“I am aware of that.”
“The thing is possible, then,” said I, “and it is not an unnatural requirement that we are looking for in our guardian.”
“It seems not.”
“And does it seem to you that our guardian-to-be will also need, in addition to the being high-spirited, the further quality of having the love of wisdom in his nature?”
“How so?” he said; “I don't apprehend your meaning.”

§ 376a  “This too,” said I, “is something that you will discover in dogs and which is worth our wonder in the creature.”
“What?”
“That the sight of an unknown person angers him before he has suffered any injury, but an acquaintance he will fawn upon though he has never received any kindness from him. Have you never marvelled at that?”
“I never paid any attention to the matter before now, but that he acts in some such way is obvious.”
“But surely that is an exquisite

§ 376b  trait of his nature and one that shows a true love of wisdom.”
“In what respect, pray?”
“In respect,” said I, “that he distinguishes a friendly from a hostile aspect by nothing save his apprehension of the one and his failure to recognize the other. How, I ask you, can the love of learning be denied to a creature whose criterion of the friendly and the alien is intelligence and ignorance?”
“It certainly cannot,” he said. “But you will admit,” said I, “that the love of learning and the love of wisdom are the same?”
“The same,” he said. “Then may we not confidently lay it down in the case of man too, that if he is to be

§ 376c  in some sort gentle to friends and familiars he must be by nature a lover of wisdom and of learning?”
“Let us so assume,” he replied. “The love of wisdom, then, and high spirit and quickness and strength will be combined for us in the nature of him who is to be a good and true guardian of the state.”
“By all means,” he said. “Such, then,” I said, “would be the basis of his character. But the rearing of these men and their education, how shall we manage that? And will the consideration of this topic advance us

§ 376d  in any way towards discerning what is the object of our entire inquiry — the origin of justice and injustice in a state — our aim must be to omit nothing of a sufficient discussion, and yet not to draw it out to tiresome length?” And Glaucon's brother replied, “Certainly, I expect that this inquiry will bring us nearer to that end.”
“Certainly, then, my dear Adeimantus,” said I, “we must not abandon it even if it prove to be rather long.”
“No, we must not.”
“Come, then, just as if we were telling stories or fables and

§ 376e  had ample leisure, let us educate these men in our discourse.”
“So we must.”
“What, then, is our education? Or is it hard to find a better than that which long time has discovered? Which is, I suppose, gymnastics for the body and for the soul music.”
“It is.”
“And shall we not begin education in music earlier than in gymnastics?”
“Of course.”
“And under music you include tales, do you not?”
“I do.”
“And tales are of two species, the one true and the other false?”
“Yes.”
“And education must make use of both, but first of the false?”

§ 377a  “I don't understand your meaning.”
“Don't you understand,” I said, “that we begin by telling children fables, and the fable is, taken as a whole, false, but there is truth in it also? And we make use of fable with children before gymnastics.”
“That is so.”
“That, then, is what I meant by saying that we must take up music before gymnastics.”
“You were right,” he said. “Do you not know, then, that the beginning in every task is the chief thing, especially for any creature that is young and tender?

§ 377b  For it is then that it is best molded and takes the impression that one wishes to stamp upon it.”
“Quite so.”
“Shall we, then, thus lightly suffer our children to listen to any chance stories fashioned by any chance teachers and so to take into their minds opinions for the most part contrary to those that we shall think it desirable for them to hold when they are grown up?”
“By no manner of means will we allow it.”
“We must begin, then, it seems, by a censorship

§ 377c  over our storymakers, and what they do well we must pass and what not, reject. And the stories on the accepted list we will induce nurses and mothers to tell to the children and so shape their souls by these stories far rather than their bodies by their hands. But most of the stories they now tell we must reject.”
“What sort of stories?” he said. “The example of the greater stories,” I said, “will show us the lesser also. For surely the pattern must be the same and the greater and the less

§ 377d  must have a like tendency. Don't you think so?”
“I do,” he said; “but I don't apprehend which you mean by the greater, either.”
“Those,” I said, “that Hesiod and Homer and the other poets related. These, methinks, composed false stories which they told and still tell to mankind.”
“Of what sort?” he said; “and what in them do you find fault?”
“With that,” I said, “which one ought first and chiefly to blame, especially if the lie is not a pretty one.”

§ 377e  “What is that?”
“When anyone images badly in his speech the true nature of gods and heroes, like a painter whose portraits bear no resemblance to his models.”
“It is certainly right to condemn things like that,” he said; “but just what do we mean and what particular things?”
“There is, first of all,” I said, “the greatest lie about the things of greatest concernment, which was no pretty invention of him who told how Uranus did what Hesiod says he did to Cronos, and how Cronos in turn took his revenge;

§ 378a  and then there are the doings and sufferings of Cronos at the hands of his son. Even if they were true I should not think that they ought to be thus lightly told to thoughtless young persons. But the best way would be to bury them in silence, and if there were some necessity for relating them, that only a very small audience should be admitted under pledge of secrecy and after sacrificing, not a pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim, to the end that as few as possible should have heard these tales.”
“Why, yes,” said he, “such stories are hard sayings.”
“Yes, and they are not to be told,

§ 378b  Adeimantus, in our city, nor is it to be said in the hearing of a young man, that in doing the utmost wrong he would do nothing to surprise anybody, nor again in punishing his father's wrong-doings to the limit, but would only be following the example of the first and greatest of the gods.”
“No, by heaven,” said he, “I do not myself think that they are fit to be told.”
“Neither must we admit at all,” said I, “that gods war with gods and plot against one another and contend — for it is not true either —

§ 378c  if we wish our future guardians to deem nothing more shameful than lightly to fall out with one another; still less must we make battles of gods and giants the subject for them of stories and embroideries, and other enmities many and manifold of gods and heroes toward their kith and kin. But if there is any likelihood of our persuading them that no citizen ever quarrelled with his fellow-citizen and that the very idea of it is an impiety,

§ 378d  that is the sort of thing that ought rather to be said by their elders, men and women, to children from the beginning and as they grow older, and we must compel the poets to keep close to this in their compositions. But Hera's fetterings by her son and the hurling out of heaven of Hephaestus by his father when he was trying to save his mother from a beating, and the battles of the gods in Homer's verse are things that we must not admit into our city either wrought in allegory or without allegory. For the young are not able to distinguish what is and what is not allegory, but whatever opinions are taken into the mind at that age are wont to prove

§ 378e  indelible and unalterable. For which reason, maybe, we should do our utmost that the first stories that they hear should be so composed as to bring the fairest lessons of virtue to their ears.”
“Yes, that is reasonable,” he said; “but if again someone should ask us to be specific and say what these compositions may be and what are the tales, what could we name?” And I replied, “Adeimantus, we are not poets, you and I at present,

§ 379a  but founders of a state. And to founders it pertains to know the patterns on which poets must compose their fables and from which their poems must not be allowed to deviate; but the founders are not required themselves to compose fables.”
“Right,” he said; “but this very thing — the patterns or norms of right speech about the gods, what would they be?”
“Something like this,” I said. “The true quality of God we must always surely attribute to him whether we compose in epic, melic, or tragic verse.”
“We must.”
“And is not God of course good in reality and always to be spoken of as such?”

§ 379b  “Certainly.”
“But further, no good thing is harmful, is it?”
“I think not.”
“Can what is not harmful harm?”
“By no means.”
“Can that which does not harm do any evil?”
“Not that either.”
“But that which does no evil would not be cause of any evil either?”
“How could it?”
“Once more, is the good beneficent?”
“Yes.”
“It is the cause, then, of welfare?”
“Yes.”
“Then the good is not the cause of all things, but of things that are well it the cause — of things that are ill it is blameless.”
“Entirely so,”

§ 379c  he said. “Neither, then, could God,” said I, “since he is good, be, as the multitude say, the cause of all things, but for mankind he is the cause of few things, but of many things not the cause. For good things are far fewer with us than evil, and for the good we must assume no other cause than God, but the cause of evil we must look for in other things and not in God.”
“What you say seems to me most true,” he replied. “Then,” said I, “we must not accept

§ 379d  from Homer or any other poet the folly of such error as this about the gods when he says “Two urns stand on the floor of the palace of Zeus and are filled with
Dooms he allots, one of blessings, the other of gifts that are evil,” (Hom. Il. 24.527-8) and to whomsoever Zeus gives of both commingled — “Now upon evil he chances and now again good is his portion,” (Hom. Il. 24.530) but the man for whom he does not blend the lots, but to whom he gives unmixed evil — “Hunger devouring drives him, a wanderer over the wide world,” (Hom. Il. 24.532)

§ 379e  nor will we tolerate the saying that “Zeus is dispenser alike of good and of evil to mortals.”
“But as to the violation of the oaths and the truce by Pandarus, if anyone affirms it to have been brought about by the action of Athena and Zeus, we will not approve, nor that the strife and contention of the gods

§ 380a  was the doing of Themis and Zeus; nor again must we permit our youth to hear what Aeschylus says — “A god implants the guilty cause in men
When he would utterly destroy a house,” (Aesch.) but if any poets compose a 'Sorrows of Niobe,' the poem that contains these iambics, or a tale of the Pelopidae or of Troy, or anything else of the kind, we must either forbid them to say that these woes are the work of God, or they must devise some such interpretation as we now require, and must declare that what God

§ 380b  did was righteous and good, and they were benefited by their chastisement. But that they were miserable who paid the penalty, and that the doer of this was God, is a thing that the poet must not be suffered to say; if on the other hand he should say that for needing chastisement the wicked were miserable and that in paying the penalty they were benefited by God, that we must allow. But as to saying that God, who is good, becomes the cause of evil to anyone, we must contend in every way that neither should anyone assert this in his own city if it is to be well governed, nor anyone hear it,

§ 380c  neither younger nor older, neither telling a story in meter or without meter; for neither would the saying of such things, if they are said, be holy, nor would they be profitable to us or concordant with themselves.”
“I cast my vote with yours for this law,” he said, “and am well pleased with it.”
“This, then,” said I, “will be one of the laws and patterns concerning the gods to which speakers and poets will be required to conform, that God is not the cause of all things, but only of the good.”
“And an entirely satisfactory one,” he said.

§ 380d  “And what of this, the second. Do you think that God is a wizard and capable of manifesting himself by design, now in one aspect, now in another, at one time himself changing and altering his shape in many transformations and at another deceiving us and causing us to believe such things about him; or that he is simple and less likely than anything else to depart from his own form?”
“I cannot say offhand,” he replied. “But what of this: If anything went out from its own form, would it not be displaced and changed, either by itself or by something else?”

§ 380e  “Necessarily.”
“Is it not true that to be altered and moved by something else happens least to things that are in the best condition, as, for example, a body by food and drink and toil, and plants by the heat of the sun and winds and similar influences — is it not true that the healthiest and strongest is least altered?”

§ 381a  “Certainly.”
“And is it not the soul that is bravest and most intelligent, that would be least disturbed and altered by any external affection?”
“Yes.”
“And, again, it is surely true of all composite implements, edifices, and habiliments, by parity of reasoning, that those which are well made and in good condition are least liable to be changed by time and other influences.”
“That is so.”
“It is universally true, then, that that which is in the best state by nature or

§ 381b  art or both admits least alteration by something else.”
“So it seems.”
“But God, surely, and everything that belongs to God is in every way in the best possible state.”
“Of course.”
“From this point of view, then, it would be least of all likely that there would be many forms in God.”
“Least indeed.”
“But would he transform and alter himself?”
“Obviously,” he said, “if he is altered.”
“Then does he change himself for the better and to something fairer, or for the worse and to something uglier than himself?”

§ 381c  “It must necessarily,” said he, “be for the worse if he is changed. For we surely will not say that God is deficient in either beauty or excellence.”
“Most rightly spoken,” said I. “And if that were his condition, do you think, Adeimantus, that any one god or man would of his own will worsen himself in any way?”
“Impossible,” he replied. “It is impossible then,” said I, “even for a god to wish to alter himself, but, as it appears, each of them being the fairest and best possible abides for ever simply in his own form.”
“An absolutely necessary conclusion to my thinking.”
“No poet then,”

§ 381d  I said, “my good friend, must be allowed to tell us that “The gods, in the likeness of strangers,
Many disguises assume as they visit the cities of mortals.” (Hom. Od. 17.485-486) Nor must anyone tell falsehoods about Proteus and Thetis, nor in any tragedy or in other poems bring in Hera disguised as a priestess collecting alms “for the life-giving sons of Inachus, the Argive stream.” (Aesch.)

§ 381e  And many similar falsehoods they must not tell. Nor again must mothers under the influence of such poets terrify their children with harmful tales, how that there are certain gods whose apparitions haunt the night in the likeness of many strangers from all manner of lands, lest while they speak evil of the gods they at the same time make cowards of children.”
“They must not,” he said. “But,” said I, “may we suppose that while the gods themselves are incapable of change they cause us to fancy that they appear in many shapes deceiving and practising magic upon us?”
“Perhaps,” said he.

§ 382a  “Consider,” said I; “would a god wish to deceive, or lie, by presenting in either word or action what is only appearance?”
“I don't know,” said he. “Don't you know,” said I, “that the veritable lie, if the expression is permissible, is a thing that all gods and men abhor?”
“What do you mean?” he said. “This,” said I, “that falsehood in the most vital part of themselves, and about their most vital concerns, is something that no one willingly accepts, but it is there above all that everyone fears it.”
“I don't understand yet either.”
“That is because you suspect me of some grand meaning,”

§ 382b  I said; “but what I mean is, that deception in the soul about realities, to have been deceived and to be blindly ignorant and to have and hold the falsehood there, is what all men would least of all accept, and it is in that case that they loathe it most of all.”
“Quite so,” he said. “But surely it would be most wholly right, as I was just now saying, to describe this as in very truth falsehood — ignorance namely in the soul of the man deceived. For the falsehood in words is a copy of the affection in the soul,

§ 382c  an after-rising image of it and not an altogether unmixed falsehood. Is not that so?”
“By all means.”
“Essential falsehood, then, is hated not only by gods but by men.”
“I agree.”
“But what of the falsehood in words, when and for whom is it serviceable so as not to merit abhorrence? Will it not be against enemies? And when any of those whom we call friends owing to madness or folly attempts to do some wrong, does it not then become useful

§ 382d  to avert the evil — as a medicine? And also in the fables of which we were just now speaking owing to our ignorance of the truth about antiquity, we liken the false to the true as far as we may and so make it edifying.”
“We most certainly do,” he said. “Tell me, then, on which of these grounds falsehood would be serviceable to God. Would he because of his ignorance of antiquity make false likenesses of it?”
“An absurd supposition, that,” he said. “Then there is no lying poet in God.”
“I think not.”

§ 382e  “Well then, would it be through fear of his enemies that he would lie?”
“Far from it.”
“Would it be because of the folly or madness of his friends?”
“Nay, no fool or madman is a friend of God.”
“Then there is no motive for God to deceive.”
“None.”
“From every point of view the divine and the divinity are free from falsehood.”
“By all means.”
“Then God is altogether simple and true in deed and word, and neither changes himself nor deceives others by visions or words or the sending of signs in waking or in dreams.”

§ 383a  “I myself think so,” he said, “when I hear you say it.”
“You concur then,” I said, “this as our second norm or canon for speech and poetry about the gods, — that they are neither wizards in shape-shifting nor do they mislead us by falsehoods in words or deed?”
“I concur.”
“Then, though there are many other things that we praise in Homer, this we will not applaud, the sending of the dream by Zeus to Agamemnon, nor shall we approve of Aeschylus when his Thetis avers that

§ 383b  Apollo singing at her wedding, “‘foretold the happy fortunes of her issue’”
“Their days prolonged, from pain and sickness free,
And rounding out the tale of heaven's blessings,
Raised the proud paean, making glad my heart.
And I believed that Phoebus' mouth divine,
Filled with the breath of prophecy, could not lie.
But he himself, the singer, himself who sat
At meat with us, himself who promised all,
Is now himself the slayer of my son.” (Aesch. Frag. 350)

§ 383c  When anyone says that sort of thing about the gods, we shall be wroth with him, we will refuse him a chorus, neither will we allow teachers to use him for the education of the young if our guardians are to be god-fearing men and god-like in so far as that is possible for humanity.”
“By all means,” he said, “I accept these norms and would use them as canons and laws.”

§ 386a  BOOK3
SOCRATES: “Concerning the gods then,” said I, “this is the sort of thing that we must allow or not allow them to hear from childhood up, if they are to honor the gods and their fathers and mothers, and not to hold their friendship with one another in light esteem.”
“That was our view and I believe it right.”
“What then of this? If they are to be brave, must we not extend our prescription to include also the sayings that will make them least likely to fear death?

§ 386b  Or do you suppose that anyone could ever become brave who had that dread in his heart?”
“No indeed, I do not,” he replied. “And again if he believes in the reality of the underworld and its terrors, do you think that any man will be fearless of death and in battle will prefer death to defeat and slavery?”
“By no means.”
“Then it seems we must exercise supervision also, in the matter of such tales as these, over those who undertake to supply them and request them not to dispraise in this undiscriminating fashion the life in Hades but rather praise it,

§ 386c  since what they now tell us is neither true nor edifying to men who are destined to be warriors.”
“Yes, we must,” he said. “Then,” said I, “beginning with this verse we will expunge everything of the same kind: “Liefer were I in the fields up above to be serf to another
Tiller of some poor plot which yields him a scanty subsistence,
Than to be ruler and king over all the dead who have perished,” Aesch. Frag. 3504 and this:

§ 386d   “Lest unto men and immortals the homes of the dead be uncovered
Horrible, noisome, dank, that the gods too hold in abhorrence,” (Hom. Il. 20.645) and: “Ah me! so it is true that e'en in the dwellings of Hades
Spirit there is and wraith, but within there is no understanding,” (Hom. Il. 10.495) and this: “Sole to have wisdom and wit, but the others are shadowy phantoms,” (Hom. Il. 23.103) and: “Forth from his limbs unwilling his spirit flitted to Hades,
Wailing its doom and its lustihood lost and the May of its manhood,” (Hom. Il. 16.856)

§ 387a  and: “Under the earth like a vapor vanished the gibbering soul,” (Hom. Il. 23.100) and: “Even as bats in the hollow of some mysterious grotto
Fly with a flittermouse shriek when one of them falls from the cluster
Whereby they hold to the rock and are clinging the one to the other,
Flitted their gibbering ghosts.” (Hom. Od. 24.6-109)

§ 387b  We will beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we cancel those and all similar passages, not that they are not poetic and pleasing to most hearers, but because the more poetic they are the less are they suited to the ears of boys and men who are destined to be free and to be more afraid of slavery than of death.”
“By all means.”
“Then we must further taboo in these matters the entire vocabulary of terror and fear, Cocytus

§ 387c  named of lamentation loud, abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate, the people of the infernal pit and of the charnel-house, and all other terms of this type, whose very names send a shudder through all the hearers every year. And they may be excellent for other purposes, but we are in fear for our guardians lest the habit of such thrills make them more sensitive and soft than we would have them.”
“And we are right in so fearing.”
“We must remove those things then?”
“Yes.”
“And the opposite type to them is what we must require in speech and in verse?”
“Obviously.”
“And shall we also do away with the

§ 387d  wailings and lamentations of men of repute?”
“That necessarily follows,” he said, “from the other.”
“Consider,” said I, “whether we shall be right in thus getting rid of them or not. What we affirm is that a good man will not think that for a good man, whose friend he also is, death is a terrible thing.”
“Yes, we say that.”
“Then it would not be for his friend's sake as if he had suffered something dreadful that he would make lament.”
“Certainly not.”
“But we also say this, that such a one is most of all men sufficient unto himself

§ 387e  for a good life and is distinguished from other men in having least need of anybody else.”
“True,” he replied. “Least of all then to him is it a terrible thing to lose son or brother or his wealth or anything of the sort.”
“Least of all.”
“Then he makes the least lament and bears it most moderately when any such misfortune overtakes him.”
“Certainly.”
“Then we should be right in doing away with the lamentations of men of note and in attributing them to women,

§ 388a  and not to the most worthy of them either, and to inferior men, in that those whom we say we are breeding for the guardianship of the land may disdain to act like these.”
“We should be right,” said he. “Again then we shall request Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, the son of a goddess, as, “Lying now on his side, and then again on his back,
And again on his face,” (Hom. Il. 24.10-12) and then rising up and “‘Drifting distraught on the shore of the waste unharvested ocean,’”Hom. Il. 24.10-1221

§ 388b  nor ““clutching with both hands the sooty dust and strewing it over his head,””22 nor as weeping and lamenting in the measure and manner attributed to him by the poet; nor yet Priam, near kinsman of the gods, making supplication and rolling in the dung, “Calling aloud unto each, by name to each man appealing.” (Hom. Il. 22.414-415) And yet more than this shall we beg of them at least not to describe the gods as lamenting and crying,

§ 388c   “Ah, woe is me, woeful mother who bore to my sorrow the bravest,” (Hom. Il. 18.5424) and if they will so picture the gods at least not to have the effrontery to present so unlikely a likeness of the supreme god as to make him say: “Out on it, dear to my heart is the man whose pursuit around Troy-town
I must behold with my eyes while my spirit is grieving within me,” (Hom. Il. 22.168) and: “Ah, woe is me! of all men to me is Sarpedon the dearest,”

§ 388d   “Fated to fall by the hands of Patroclus, Menoitius' offspring.” (Hom. Il. 16.433-434)
“For if, dear Adeimantus, our young men should seriously incline to listen to such tales and not laugh at them as unworthy utterances, still less surely would any man be to think such conduct unworthy of himself and to rebuke himself if it occurred to him to do or say anything of that kind, but without shame or restraint full many a dirge for trifles would he chant and many a lament.”

§ 388e  “You say most truly,” he replied. “But that must not be, as our reasoning but now showed us, in which we must put our trust until someone convinces with a better reason.”
“No, it must not be.”
“Again, they must not be prone to laughter. For ordinarily when one abandons himself to violent laughter his condition provokes a violent reaction.”
“I think so,” he said. “Then if anyone represents men of worth as overpowered

§ 389a  by laughter we must accept it, much less if gods.”
“Much indeed,” he replied. “Then we must not accept from Homer such sayings as these either about the gods: “Quenchless then was the laughter that rose from the blessed immortals
When they beheld Hephaestus officiously puffing and panting.” (Hom. Il. 1.599-600) — we must not accept it on your view.”

§ 389b  “If it pleases you to call it mine,” he said; “at any rate we must not accept it.”
“But further we must surely prize truth most highly. For if we were right in what we were just saying and falsehood is in very deed useless to gods, but to men useful as a remedy or form of medicine, it is obvious that such a thing must be assigned to physicians and laymen should have nothing to do with it.”
“Obviously,” he replied. “The rulers then of the city may, if anybody, fitly lie on account of enemies or citizens for the benefit of the state; no others may have anything to do with it,

§ 389c  but for a layman to lie to rulers of that kind we shall affirm to be as great a sin, nay a greater, than it is for a patient not to tell physician or an athlete his trainer the truth about his bodily condition, or for a man to deceive the pilot about the ship and the sailors as to the real condition of himself or a fellow-sailor, and how they fare.”
“Most true,” he replied. “If then

§ 389d  the ruler catches anybody else in the city lying, any of the craftsmen “Whether a prophet or healer of sickness or joiner of timbers,” (Hom. Od. 17.383-384) he will chastise him for introducing a practice as subversive and destructive of a state as it is of a ship.”
“He will,” he said, “if deed follows upon word.”
“Again, will our lads not need the virtue of self-control?”
“Of course.”
“And for the multitude are not the main points of self-control these — to be obedient to their rulers and themselves to be rulers

§ 389e  over the bodily appetites and pleasures of food, drink, and the rest?”
“I think so.”
“Then, I take it, we will think well said such sayings as that of Homer's Diomede: “Friend, sit down and be silent and hark to the word of my bidding,” (Hom. Il. 4.412) and what follows: “Breathing high spirit the Greeks marched silently fearing their captains,” (Hom. Il. 3.840) and all similar passages.”

§ 390a  “Yes, well said.”
“But what of this sort of thing? “Heavy with wine with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a fleet deer,” (Hom. Il. 1.225) and the lines that follow, are these well — and other impertinences in prose or verse of private citizens to their rulers?”
“They are not well.”
“They certainly are not suitable for youth to hear for the inculcation of self-control. But if from another point of view they yield some pleasure we must not be surprised, or what is your view of it?”
“This,” he said.
“Again, to represent the wisest man as saying that this seems to him the fairest thing in the world, “When the bounteous tables are standing”

§ 390b   “Laden with bread and with meat and the cupbearer ladles the sweet wine
Out of the mixer and bears it and empties it into the beakers.” (Hom. Od. 9.8-10) — do you think the hearing of that sort of thing will conduce to a young man's temperance or self-control? or this: “Hunger is the most piteous death that a mortal may suffer.” (Hom. Od. 12.342) Or to hear how Zeus lightly forgot all the designs which he devised,

§ 390c  watching while the other gods slept, because of the excitement of his passions, and was so overcome by the sight of Hera that he is not even willing to go to their chamber, but wants to lie with her there on the ground and says that he is possessed by a fiercer desire than when they first consorted with one another, “‘Deceiving their dear parents.’”Hom. Il. 14.296 Nor will it profit them to hear of Hephaestus's fettering Ares and Aphrodite for a like motive.”
“No, by Zeus,” he said,

§ 390d  “I don't think it will.”
“But any words or deeds of endurance in the face of all odds attributed to famous men are suitable for our youth to see represented and to hear, such as: “He smote his breast and chided thus his heart,
“Endure, my heart, for worse hast thou endured.”” (Hom. Od. 20.17-18)
“By all means,” he said.
“It is certain that we cannot allow our men to be acceptors of bribes or greedy for gain.”

§ 390e  “By no means.”
“Then they must not chant: 'Gifts move the gods and gifts persuade dread kings.' Nor should we approve Achilles' attendant Phoenix as speaking fairly when he counselled him if he received gifts for it to defend the Achaeans, but without gifts not to lay aside his wrath; nor shall we think it proper nor admit that Achilles himself was so greedy as to accept gifts from Agamemnon and again to give up a dead body after receiving payment but otherwise to refuse.”

§ 391a  “It is not right,” he said, “to commend such conduct.”
“But, for Homer's sake,” said I, “I hesitate to say that it is positively impious to affirm such things of Achilles and to believe them when told by others; or again to believe that he said to Apollo 'Me thou hast baulked, Far-darter, the most pernicious of all gods,
Mightily would I requite thee if only my hands had the power.' (Hom. Il. 22.155)

§ 391b  And how he was disobedient to the river, who was a god and was ready to fight with him, and again that he said of the locks of his hair, consecrated to her river Spercheius: “‘This let me give to take with him my hair to the hero, Patroclus,’” (Hom. Il. 23.151) who was a dead body, and that he did so we must believe. And again the trailings of Hector's body round the grave of Patroclus and the slaughter of the living captives upon his pyre, all these we will affirm to be lies,

§ 391c  nor will we suffer our youth to believe that Achilles, the son of a goddess and of Peleus the most chaste of men, grandson of Zeus, and himself bred under the care of the most sage Cheiron, was of so perturbed a spirit as to be affected with two contradictory maladies, the greed that becomes no free man and at the same time overweening arrogance towards gods and men.”
“You are right,” he said.
“Neither, then,” said I, “must we believe this or suffer it to be said, that Theseus, the son of Poseidon,

§ 391d  and Peirithous, the son of Zeus, attempted such dreadful rapes, nor that any other child of a god and hero would have brought himself to accomplish the terrible and impious deeds that they now falsely relate of him. But we must constrain the poets either to deny that these are their deeds or that they are the children of gods, but not to make both statements or attempt to persuade our youth that the gods are the begetters of evil, and that heroes are no better than men.

§ 391e  For, as we were saying, such utterances are both impious and false. For we proved, I take it, that for evil to arise from gods is an impossibility.”
“Certainly.”
“And they are furthermore harmful to those that hear them. For every man will be very lenient with his own misdeeds if he is convinced that such are and were the actions of “The near-sown seed of gods,
Close kin to Zeus, for whom on Ida's top
Ancestral altars flame to highest heaven,
Nor in their life-blood fails the fire divine.” (Aesch. Niobe) For which cause we must put down such fables, lest they breed in our youth great laxity in turpitude.”

§ 392a  “Most assuredly.”
“What type of discourse remains for our definition of our prescriptions and proscriptions?”
“We have declared the right way of speaking about gods and daemons and heroes and that other world.”
“We have.”
“Speech, then, about men would be the remainder.”
“Obviously.”
“It is impossible for us, my friend, to place this here.”
“Why?”
“Because I presume we are going to say that so it is that both poets

§ 392b  and writers of prose speak wrongly about men in matters of greatest moment, saying that there are many examples of men who, though unjust, are happy, and of just men who are wretched, and that there is profit in injustice if it be concealed, and that justice is the other man's good and your own loss; and I presume that we shall forbid them to say this sort of thing and command them to sing and fable the opposite. Don't you think so?”
“Nay, I well know it,” he said. “Then, if you admit that I am right, I will say that you have conceded the original point of our inquiry?”

§ 392c  “Rightly apprehended,” he said. “Then, as regards men that speech must be of this kind, that is a point that we will agree upon when we have discovered the nature of justice and the proof that it is profitable to its possessor whether he does or does not appear to be just.”
“Most true,” he replied.
“So this concludes the topic of tales. That of diction, I take it, is to be considered next. So we shall have completely examined both the matter and the manner of speech.” And Adeimantus said, “I don't understand what you mean by this.”

§ 392d  “Well,” said I, “we must have you understand. Perhaps you will be more likely to apprehend it thus. Is not everything that is said by fabulists or poets a narration of past, present, or future things?”
“What else could it be?” he said. “Do not they proceed either by pure narration or by a narrative that is effected through imitation, or by both?”
“This too,” he said, “I still need to have made plainer.”
“I seem to be a ridiculous and obscure teacher,” I said; “so like men who are unable to express themselves

§ 392e  I won't try to speak in wholes and universals but will separate off a particular part and by the example of that try to show you my meaning. Tell me. Do you know the first lines if the Iliad in which the poet says that Chryses implored Agamemnon to release his daughter, and that the king was angry and that Chryses,

§ 393a  failing of his request, imprecated curses on the Achaeans in his prayers to the god?”
“I do.”
“You know then that as far as these verses, “And prayed unto all the Achaeans,
Chiefly to Atreus' sons, twin leaders who marshalled the people,” (Hom. Il. 1.15) the poet himself is the speaker and does not even attempt to suggest to us that anyone but himself is speaking.

§ 393b  But what follows he delivers as if he were himself Chryses and tries as far as may be to make us feel that not Homer is the speaker, but the priest, an old man. And in this manner he has carried in nearly all the rest of his narration about affairs in Ilion, all that happened in Ithaca, and the entire Odyssey.”
“Quite so,” he said. “Now, it is narration, is it not, both when he presents the several speeches and the matter between the speeches?”
“Of course.”
“But when he delivers a speech

§ 393c  as if he were someone else, shall we not say that he then assimilates thereby his own diction is far as possible to that of the person whom he announces as about to speak?”
“We shall obviously.”
“And is not likening one's self to another speech or bodily bearing an imitation of him to whom one likens one's self?”
“Surely.”
“In such case then it appears he and the other poets effect their narration through imitation.”
“Certainly.”
“But if the poet should conceal himself nowhere, then his entire poetizing and narration would have been accomplished without imitation.

§ 393d  And lest you may say again that you don't understand, I will explain to you how this would be done. If Homer, after telling us that Chryses came with the ransom of his daughter and as a suppliant of the Achaeans but chiefly of the kings, had gone on speaking not as if made or being Chryses but still as Homer, you are aware that it would not be imitation but narration, pure and simple. It would have been somewhat in this wise. I will state it without meter for I am not a poet:

§ 393e  the priest came and prayed that to them the gods should grant to take Troy and come safely home, but that they should accept the ransom and release his daughter, out of reverence for the god, and when he had thus spoken the others were of reverent mind and approved, but Agamemnon was angry and bade him depart and not come again lest the scepter and the fillets of the god should not avail him. And ere his daughter should be released, he said, she would grow old in Argos with himself, and he ordered him to be off and not vex him if he wished to get home safe.

§ 394a  And the old man on hearing this was frightened and departed in silence, and having gone apart from the camp he prayed at length to Apollo, invoking the appellations of the god, and reminding him of and asking requital for any of his gifts that had found favor whether in the building of temples or the sacrifice of victims. In return for these things he prayed that the Achaeans should suffer for his tears by the god's shafts. It is in this way, my dear fellow,” I said, “that

§ 394b  without imitation simple narration results.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Understand then,” said I, “that the opposite of this arises when one removes the words of the poet between and leaves the alternation of speeches.”
“This too I understand,” he said, “ — it is what happens in tragedy.”
“You have conceived me most rightly,” I said, “and now I think I can make plain to you what I was unable to before, that there is one kind of poetry and tale-telling which works wholly through imitation,

§ 394c  as you remarked, tragedy and comedy; and another which employs the recital of the poet himself, best exemplified, I presume, in the dithyramb; and there is again that which employs both, in epic poetry and in many other places, if you apprehend me.”
“I understand now,” he said, “what you then meant.”
“Recall then also the preceding statement that we were done with the 'what' of speech and still had to consider the 'how.'”
“I remember.”

§ 394d  “What I meant then was just this, that we must reach a decision whether we are to suffer our poets to narrate as imitators or in part as imitators and in part not, and what sort of things in each case, or not allow them to imitate at all.”
“I divine,” he said, “that you are considering whether we shall admit tragedy and comedy into our city or not.”
“Perhaps,” said I, “and perhaps even more than that. For I certainly do not yet know myself, but whithersoever the wind, as it were, of the argument blows, there lies our course.”

§ 394e  “Well said,” he replied. “This then, Adeimantus, is the point we must keep in view, do we wish our guardians to be good mimics or not? Or is this also a consequence of what we said before, that each one could practise well only one pursuit and not many, but if he attempted the latter, dabbling in many things, he would fail of distinction in all?”
“Of course it is.”
“And does not the same rule hold for imitation, that the same man is not able to imitate many things well as he can one?”
“No, he is not.”
“Still less, then, will he be able to combine

§ 395a  the practice of any worthy pursuit with the imitation of many things and the quality of a mimic; since, unless I mistake, the same men cannot practise well at once even the two forms of imitation that appear most nearly akin, as the writing of tragedy and comedy? Did you not just now call these two imitations?”
“I did, and you are right in saying that the same men are not able to succeed in both, nor yet to be at once good rhapsodists and actors.”
“True.”
“But

§ 395b  neither can the same men be actors for tragedies and comedies — and all these are imitations, are they not?”
“Yes, imitations.”
“And to still smaller coinage than this, in my opinion, Adeimantus, proceeds the fractioning of human faculty, so as to be incapable of imitating many things or of doing the things themselves of which the imitations are likenesses.”
“Most true,” he replied.
“If, then, we are to maintain our original principle, that our guardians, released from all other crafts,

§ 395c  are to be expert craftsmen of civic liberty, and pursue nothing else that does not conduce to this, it would not be fitting for these to do nor yet to imitate anything else. But if they imitate they should from childhood up imitate what is appropriate to them — men, that is, who are brave, sober, pious, free and all things of that kind; but things unbecoming the free man they should neither do nor be clever at imitating, nor yet any other shameful thing, lest from the imitation

§ 395d  they imbibe the reality. Or have you not observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and (second) nature in the body, the speech, and the thought?”
“Yes, indeed,” said he. “We will not then allow our charges, whom we expect to prove good men, being men, to play the parts of women and imitate a woman young or old wrangling with her husband, defying heaven, loudly boasting, fortunate in her own conceit, or involved in misfortune

§ 395e  and possessed by grief and lamentation — still less a woman that is sick, in love, or in labor.”
“Most certainly not,” he replied. “Nor may they imitate slaves, female and male, doing the offices of slaves.”
“No, not that either.”
“Nor yet, as it seems, bad men who are cowards and who do the opposite of the things we just now spoke of, reviling and lampooning one another, speaking foul words in their cups or when sober

§ 396a  and in other ways sinning against themselves and others in word and deed after the fashion of such men. And I take it they must not form the habit of likening themselves to madmen either in words nor yet in deeds. For while knowledge they must have both of mad and bad men and women, they must do and imitate nothing of this kind.”
“Most true,” he said. “What of this?” I said, “ — are they to imitate smiths and other craftsmen or the rowers of triremes and those who call the time to them or other things connected therewith?”

§ 396b  “How could they,” he said, “since it will be forbidden them even to pay any attention to such things?”
“Well, then, neighing horses and lowing bulls, and the noise of rivers and the roar of the sea and the thunder and everything of that kind — will they imitate these?”
“Nay, they have been forbidden,” he said, “to be mad or liken themselves to madmen.”
“If, then, I understand your meaning,” said I, “there is a form of diction and narrative in which

§ 396c  the really good and true man would narrate anything that he had to say, and another form unlike this to which the man of the opposite birth and breeding would cleave and which he would tell his story.”
“What are these forms?” he said. “A man of the right sort, I think, when he comes in the course of his narrative to some word or act of a good man will be willing to impersonate the other in reporting it, and will feel no shame at that kind of mimicry, by preference imitating the good man

§ 396d  when he acts steadfastly and sensibly, and less and more reluctantly when he is upset by sickness or love or drunkenness or any other mishap. But when he comes to someone unworthy of himself, he will not wish to liken himself in earnest to one who is inferior, except in the few cases where he is doing something good, but will be embarrassed both because he is unpractised in the mimicry of such characters, and also because he shrinks in distaste from molding and fitting himself the types of baser things.

§ 396e  His mind disdains them, unless it be for jest.”
“Naturally,” he said.
“Then the narrative that he will employ will be the kind that we just now illustrated by the verses of Homer, and his diction will be one that partakes of both, of imitation and simple narration, but there will be a small portion of imitation in a long discourse — or is there nothing in what I say?”
“Yes, indeed,” he said, that is the type and pattern of such a speaker.”
“Then,” said I,

§ 397a  “the other kind speaker, the more debased he is the less will he shrink from imitating anything and everything. He will think nothing unworthy of himself, so that he will attempt, seriously and in the presence of many, to imitate all things, including those we just now mentioned — claps of thunder, and the noise of wind and hail and axles and pulleys, and the notes of trumpets and flutes and pan-pipes, and the sounds of all instruments, and the cries of dogs, sheep, and birds; and so his style will depend wholly on imitation

§ 397b  in voice and gesture, or will contain but a little of pure narration.”
“That too follows of necessity,” he said. “These, then,” said I, “were the two types of diction of which I was aking.”
“There are those two,” he replied. “Now does not one of the two involve slight variations, and if we assign a suitable pitch and rhythm to the diction, is not the result that the right speaker speaks almost on the same note and in one cadence — for the changes are slight —

§ 397c  and similarly in a rhythm of nearly the same kind?”
“Quite so.”
“But what of the other type? Does it not require the opposite, every kind of pitch and all rhythms, if it too is to have appropriate expression, since it involves manifold forms of variation?”
“Emphatically so.”
“And do all poets and speakers hit upon one type or the other of diction or some blend which they combine of both?”

§ 397d  “They must,” he said. “What, then,” said I, are we to do? Shall we admit all of these into the city, or one of the unmixed types, or the mixed type?”
“If my vote prevails,” he said, “the unmixed imitator of the good.”
“Nay, but the mixed type also is pleasing, Adeimantus, and far most pleasing to boys and their tutors and the great mob is the opposite of your choice.”
“Most pleasing it is.”
“But perhaps,” said I, “you would affirm it to be ill-suited

§ 397e  to our polity, because there is no twofold or manifold man among us, since every man does one thing.”
“It is not suited.”
“And is this not the reason why such a city is the only one in which we shall find the cobbler a cobbler and not a pilot in addition to his cobbling, and the farmer a farmer and not a judge added to his farming, and the soldier a soldier and not a money-maker in addition to his soldiery, and so of all the rest?”
“True,” he said. “If a man, then, it seems,

§ 398a  who was capable by his cunning of assuming every kind of shape and imitating all things should arrive in our city, bringing with himself the poems which he wished to exhibit, we should fall down and worship him as a holy and wondrous and delightful creature, but should say to him that there is no man of that kind among us in our city, nor is it lawful for such a man to arise among us, and we should send him away to another city, after pouring myrrh down over his head and crowning him with fillets of wool, but we ourselves, for our souls' good, should continue to employ

§ 398b  the more austere and less delightful poet and tale-teller, who would imitate the diction of the good man and would tell his tale in the patterns which we prescribed in the beginning, when we set out to educate our soldiers.”
“We certainly should do that if it rested with us.”
“And now, my friend,” said I, “we may say that we have completely finished the part of music that concerns speeches and tales. For we have set forth what is to be said and how it is to be said.”
“I think so too,” he replied.

§ 398c  “After this, then,” said I, “comes the manner of song and tunes?”
“Obviously.”
“And having gone thus far, could not everybody discover what we must say of their character in order to conform to what has already been said?”
“I am afraid that 'everybody' does not include me,” laughed Glaucon; “I cannot sufficiently divine off-hand what we ought to say, though I have a suspicion.”
“You certainly, I presume,” said I,

§ 398d  “have sufficient a understanding of this — that the song is composed of three things, the words, the tune, and the rhythm?”
“Yes,” said he, “that much.”
“And so far as it is words, it surely in no manner differs from words not sung in the requirement of conformity to the patterns and manner that we have prescribed?”
“True,” he said. “And again, the music and the rhythm must follow the speech.”
“Of course.”
“But we said we did not require dirges and lamentations in words.”
“We do not.”
“What, then,

§ 398e  are the dirge-like modes of music? Tell me, for you are a musician.”
“The mixed Lydian,” he said, “and the tense or higher Lydian, and similar modes.”
“These, then,” said I, “we must do away with. For they are useless even to women who are to make the best of themselves, let alone to men.”
“Assuredly.”
“But again, drunkenness is a thing most unbefitting guardians, and so is softness and sloth.”
“Yes.”
“What, then, are the soft and convivial modes?”
“There are certain Ionian and also Lydian modes that are called lax.”

§ 399a  “Will you make any use of them for warriors?”
“None at all,” he said; “but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the Phrygian.”
“I don't know the musical modes,” I said, “but leave us that mode that would fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed, either meeting wounds or death or having fallen into some other mishap,

§ 399b  in all these conditions confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes. And another for such a man engaged in works of peace, not enforced but voluntary, either trying to persuade somebody of something and imploring him — whether it be a god, through prayer, or a man, by teaching and admonition — or contrariwise yielding himself to another who petitioning or teaching him or trying to change his opinions, and in consequence faring according to his wish, and not bearing himself arrogantly, but in all this acting modestly and moderately

§ 399c  and acquiescing in the outcome. Leave us these two modes — the forced and the voluntary — that will best imitate the utterances of men failing or succeeding, the temperate, the brave — leave us these.”
“Well,” said he, “you are asking me to leave none other than those I just spoke of.”
“Then,” said I, “we shall not need in our songs and airs instruments of many strings or whose compass includes all the harmonies.”
“Not in my opinion,” said he. “Then we shall not maintain makers of triangles and harps and all other

§ 399d  many stringed and poly-harmonic instruments.”
“Apparently not.”
“Well, will you admit to the city flute-makers and flute-players? Or is not the flute the most 'many-stringed' of instruments and do not the pan-harmonics themselves imitate it?”
“Clearly,” he said. “You have left,” said I, “the lyre and the cither. These are useful in the city, and in the fields the shepherds would have a little piccolo to pipe on.”
“So our argument indicates,” he said.

§ 399e  “We are not innovating, my friend, in preferring Apollo and the instruments of Apollo to Marsyas and his instruments.”
“No, by heaven!” he said, “I think not.”
“And by the dog,” said I, “we have all unawares purged the city which a little while ago we said was wanton.”
“In that we show our good sense,” he said.
“Come then, let us complete the purification. For upon harmonies would follow the consideration of rhythms: we must not pursue complexity nor great variety in the basic movements, but must observe what are the rhythms of a life that is orderly and brave, and after observing them

§ 400a  require the foot and the air to conform to that kind of man's speech and not the speech to the foot and the tune. What those rhythms would be, it is for you to tell us as you did the musical modes.”
“Nay, in faith,” he said, “I cannot tell. For that there are some three forms from which the feet are combined, just as there are four in the notes of the voice whence come all harmonies, is a thing that I have observed and could tell. But which are imitations of which sort of life, I am unable to say.”

§ 400b  “Well,” said I, “on this point we will take counsel with Damon, too, as to which are the feet appropriate to illiberality, and insolence or madness or other evils, and what rhythms we must leave for their opposites; and I believe I have heard him obscurely speaking of a foot that he called the enoplios, a composite foot, and a dactyl and an heroic foot, which he arranged, I know not how, to be equal up and down in the interchange of long and short, and unless I am mistaken he used the term iambic, and there was another foot that he called the trochaic,

§ 400c  and he added the quantities long and short. And in some of these, I believe, he censured and commended the tempo of the foot no less than the rhythm itself, or else some combination of the two; I can't say. But, as I said, let this matter be postponed for Damon's consideration. For to determine the truth of these would require no little discourse. Do you think otherwise?”
“No, by heaven, I do not.”
“But this you are able to determine — that seemliness and unseemliness are attendant upon the good rhythm and the bad.”
“Of course.”
“And, further, that

§ 400d  good rhythm and bad rhythm accompany, the one fair diction, assimilating itself thereto, and the other the opposite, and so of the apt and the unapt, if, as we were just now saying, the rhythm and harmony follow the words and not the words these.”
“They certainly must follow the speech,” he said. “And what of the manner of the diction, and the speech?” said I. “Do they not follow and conform to the disposition of the soul?”
“Of course.”
“And all the rest to the diction?”
“Yes.”
“Good speech, then, good accord, and good grace,

§ 400e  and good rhythm wait upon good disposition, not that weakness of head which we euphemistically style goodness of heart, but the truly good and fair disposition of the character and the mind.”
“By all means,” he said. “And must not our youth pursue these everywhere if they are to do what it is truly theirs to do?”
“They must indeed.”
“And there is surely much of these qualities in painting

§ 401a  and in all similar craftsmanship — weaving is full of them and embroidery and architecture and likewise the manufacture of household furnishings and thereto the natural bodies of animals and plants as well. For in all these there is grace or gracelessness. And gracelessness and evil rhythm and disharmony are akin to evil speaking and the evil temper but the opposites are the symbols and the kin of the opposites, the sober and good disposition.”
“Entirely so,” he said.

§ 401b  “Is it, then, only the poets that we must supervise and compel to embody in their poems the semblance of the good character or else not write poetry among us, or must we keep watch over the other craftsmen, and forbid them to represent the evil disposition, the licentious, the illiberal, the graceless, either in the likeness of living creatures or in buildings or in any other product of their art, on penalty, if unable to obey, of being forbidden to practise their art among us, that our guardians may not be bred among symbols of evil, as it were

§ 401c  in a pasturage of poisonous herbs, lest grazing freely and cropping from many such day by day they little by little and all unawares accumulate and build up a huge mass of evil in their own souls. But we must look for those craftsmen who by the happy gift of nature are capable of following the trail of true beauty and grace, that our young men, dwelling as it were in a salubrious region, may receive benefit from all things about them, whence the influence that emanates from works of beauty may waft itself to eye or ear like a breeze that brings from wholesome places health,

§ 401d  and so from earliest childhood insensibly guide them to likeness, to friendship, to harmony with beautiful reason.”
“Yes,” he said, “that would be far the best education for them.”
“And is it not for this reason, Glaucon,” said I, “that education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained,

§ 401e  and otherwise the contrary? And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth and become himself beautiful and good.

§ 402a  The ugly he would rightly disapprove of and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but when reason came the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her welcome, for by this affinity he would know her.”
“I certainly think,” he said, “that such is the cause of education in music.”
“It is, then,” said I, “as it was when we learned our letters and felt that we knew them sufficiently only when the separate letters did not elude us, appearing as few elements in all the combinations that convey them, and when we did not disregard them

§ 402b  in small things or great and think it unnecessary to recognize them, but were eager to distinguish them everywhere, in the belief that we should never be literate and letter-perfect till we could do this.”
“True.”
“And is it not also true that if there are any likenesses of letters reflected in water or mirrors, we shall never know them until we know the originals, but such knowledge belongs to the same art and discipline?”
“By all means.”
“Then, by heaven, am I not right in saying that by the same token we shall never be true musicians, either —

§ 402c  neither we nor the guardians that we have undertaken to educate — until we are able to recognize the forms of soberness, courage, liberality, and high-mindedness and all their kindred and their opposites, too, in all the combinations that contain and convey them, and to apprehend them and their images wherever found, disregarding them neither in trifles nor in great things, but believing the knowledge of them to belong to the same art and discipline?”
“The conclusion is inevitable,” he said.

§ 402d  “Then,” said I, “when there is a coincidence of a beautiful disposition in the soul and corresponding and harmonious beauties of the same type in the bodily form — is not this the fairest spectacle for one who is capable of its contemplation?”
“Far the fairest.”
“And surely the fairest is the most lovable.”
“Of course.”
“The true musician, then, would love by preference persons of this sort; but if there were disharmony he would not love this.”
“No,” he said, “not if there was a defect in the soul; but if it were in the body he would bear with it and still be willing to bestow his love.”

§ 402e  “I understand,” I said, “that you have or have had favorites of this sort and I grant your distinction. But tell me this — can there be any communion between soberness and extravagant pleasure?”
“How could there be,” he said, “since such pleasure puts a man beside himself no less than pain?”

§ 403a  “Or between it and virtue generally?”
“By no means.”
“But is there between pleasure and insolence and licence?”
“Most assuredly.”
“Do you know of greater or keener pleasure than that associated with Aphrodite?”
“I don't,” he said, “nor yet of any more insane.”
“But is not the right love a sober and harmonious love of the orderly and the beautiful?”
“It is indeed,” said he. “Then nothing of madness, nothing akin to licence, must be allowed to come nigh the right love?”
“No.”
“Then this kind of pleasure

§ 403b  may not come nigh, nor may lover and beloved who rightly love and are loved have anything to do with it?”
“No, by heaven, Socrates,” he said, “it must not come nigh them.”
“Thus, then, as it seems, you will lay down the law in the city that we are founding, that the lover may kiss and pass the time with and touch the beloved as a father would a son, for honorable ends, if he persuade him. But otherwise he must so associate with the objects of his care that there should never be any suspicion of anything further,

§ 403c  on penalty of being stigmatized for want of taste and true musical culture.”
“Even so,” he said. “Do you not agree, then, that our discourse on music has come to an end? It has certainly made a fitting end, for surely the end and consummation of culture be love of the beautiful.”
“I concur,” he said.
“After music our youth are to be educated by gymnastics?”
“Certainly.”
“In this too they must be carefully trained

§ 403d  from boyhood through life, and the way of it is this, I believe; but consider it yourself too. For I, for my part, do not believe that a sound body by its excellence makes the soul good, but on the contrary that a good soul by its virtue renders the body the best that is possible. What is your opinion?”
“I think so too.”
“Then if we should sufficiently train the mind and turn over to it the minutiae of the care of the body,

§ 403e  and content ourselves with merely indicating the norms or patterns, not to make a long story of it, we should acting rightly?”
“By all means.”
“From intoxication we said that they must abstain. For a guardian is surely the last person in the world to whom it is allowable to get drunk and not know where on earth he is.”
“Yes,” he said, “it would absurd that a guardian should need a guard.”
“What next about their food? These men are athletes in the greatest of contests, are they not?”
“Yes.”
“Is, then, the bodily habit of the athletes we see about us suitable for such?”

§ 404a  “Perhaps.”
“Nay,” said I, “that is a drowsy habit and precarious for health. Don't you observe that they sleep away their lives, and that if they depart ever so little from their prescribed regimen these athletes are liable to great and violent diseases?”
“I do.”
“Then,” said I, “we need some more ingenious form of training for our athletes of war, since these must be as it were sleepless hounds, and have the keenest possible perceptions of sight and hearing, and in their campaigns undergo many changes

§ 404b  in their drinking water, their food, and in exposure to the heat of the sun and to storms, without disturbance of their health.”
“I think so.”
“Would not, then, the best gymnastics be akin to the music that we were just now describing?”
“What do you mean?”
“It would be a simple and flexible gymnastic, and especially so in the training for war.”
“In what way?”
“One could learn that,” said I, “even from Homer. For you are aware that in the banqueting of the heroes on campaign he does not

§ 404c  feast them on fish, nor on boiled meat, but only on roast, which is what soldiers could most easily procure. For everywhere, one may say, it is of easier provision to use the bare fire than to convey pots and pans along.”
“Indeed it is.”
“Neither, as I believe, does Homer ever make mention of sweet meats. Is not that something which all men in training understand — that if one is to keep his body in good condition he must abstain from such things altogether?”
“They are right,”

§ 404d  he said, “in that they know it and do abstain.”
“Then, my friend, if you think this is the right way, you apparently do not approve of a Syracusan table and Sicilian variety of made dishes.”
“I think not.”
“You would frown, then, on a little Corinthian maid as the chère amie of men who were to keep themselves fit?”
“Most certainly.”
“And also on the seeming delights of Attic pastry?”
“Inevitably.”
“In general, I take it, if we likened that kind of food and regimen to music and song expressed in the pan-harmonic mode and

§ 404e  in every variety of rhythm it would be a fair comparison.”
“Quite so.”
“And here variety engendered licentiousness, did it not, but here disease? While simplicity in music begets sobriety in the souls, and in gymnastic training it begets health in bodies.”
“Most true,” he said. “And when licentiousness

§ 405a  and disease multiply in a city, are not many courts of law and dispensaries opened, and the arts of chicane and medicine give themselves airs when even free men in great numbers take them very seriously?”
“How can they help it?” he said.
“Will you be able to find a surer proof of an evil and shameful state of education in a city than the necessity of first-rate physicians and judges, not only for the base and mechanical, but for those who claim to have been bred in the fashion of free men? Do you not think

§ 405b  it disgraceful and a notable mark of bad breeding to have to make use of a justice imported from others, who thus become your masters and judges, from lack of such qualities in yourself?”
“The most shameful thing in the world.”
“Is it?” said I, “or is this still more shameful — when a man only wears out the better part of his days in the courts of law as defendant or accuser, but from the lack of all true sense of values is led to plume himself on this very thing, as being a smart fellow to 'put over' an unjust act

§ 405c  and cunningly to try every dodge and practice, every evasion, and wriggle out of every hold in defeating justice, and that too for trifles and worthless things, because he does not know how much nobler and better it is to arrange his life so as to have no need of a nodding juryman?”
“That is,” said he, “still more shameful than the other.”
“And to require medicine,” said I, “not merely for wounds or the incidence of some seasonal maladies,

§ 405d  but, because of sloth and such a regimen as we described, to fill one's body up with winds and humors like a marsh and compel the ingenious sons of Aesculapius to invent for diseases such names as fluxes and flatulences — don't you think that disgraceful?”
“Those surely are,” he said, “new-fangled and monstrous strange names of diseases.”
“There was nothing of the kind, I fancy,” said I, “in the days of Aesculapius. I infer this from the fact that at Troy his sons

§ 405e  did not find fault with the damsel who gave to the wounded Eurypylus to drink a posset of Pramnian wine plentifully sprinkled with barley and gratings of cheese,

§ 406a  inflammatory ingredients of a surety, nor did they censure Patroclus, who was in charge of the case.”
“It was indeed,” said he, “a strange potion for a man in that condition.”
“Not strange,” said I, “if you reflect that the former Asclepiads made no use of our modern coddling medication of diseases before the time of Herodicus. But Herodicus was a trainer and became a valetudinarian, and blended

§ 406b  gymnastics and medicine, for the torment first and chiefly of himself and then of many successors.”
“How so?” he said. “By lingering out his death,” said I; “for living in perpetual observance of his malady, which was incurable, he was not able to effect a cure, but lived through his days unfit for the business of life, suffering the tortures of the damned if he departed a whit from his fixed regimen, and struggling against death by reason of his science he won the prize of a doting old age.”
“A noble prize indeed for his science,” he said.

§ 406c  “The appropriate one,” said I, “for a man who did not know that it was not from ignorance or inacquaintance with this type of medicine that Aesculapius did not discover it to his descendants, but because he knew that for all well-governed peoples there is a work assigned to each man in the city which he must perform, and no one has leisure to be sick and doctor himself all his days. And this we absurdly enough perceive in the case of a craftsman, but don't see in the case of the rich and so-called fortunate.”
“How so?” he said.

§ 406d  “A carpenter,” said I, “when he is sick expects his physician to give him a drug which will operate as an emetic on the disease, or to get rid of it by purging or the use of cautery or the knife. But if anyone prescribes for him a long course of treatment with swathings about the head and their accompaniments, he hastily says that he has no leisure to be sick and that such a life of preoccupation with his illess and neglect of the work that lies before him isn't worth living. And thereupon he bids farewell to that kind of physician,

§ 406e  enters upon his customary way of life, regains his health, and lives attending to his affairs — or, if his body is not equal to strain, he dies and is freed from all his troubles.”
“For such a man,” he said, “that appears to be the right use of medicine.”
“And is not the reason,” I said,

§ 407a  “that he had a task and that life wasn't worth acceptance on condition of not doing his work?”
“Obviously,” he said. “But the rich man, we say, has no such appointed task, the necessity of abstaining from which renders life intolerable.”
“I haven't heard of any.”
“Why, haven't you heard that saying of Phocylides, that after a man has 'made his pile' he ought to practice virtue?”
“Before, too, I fancy,” he said. “Let us not quarrel with him on that point,” I said, “but inform ourselves whether this virtue is something for the rich man to practise,

§ 407b  and life is intolerable if he does not, or whether we are to suppose that while valetudinarianism is a hindrance to single-minded attention to carpentry and the other arts, it is no obstacle to the fulfilment of Phocylides' exhortation.”
“Yes, indeed,” he said, “this excessive care for the body that goes beyond simple gymnastics is the greatest of all obstacles. For it is troublesome in household affairs and military service and sedentary offices in the city.”
“And, chief of all, it puts difficulties in the way of any kind of instruction, thinking, or private meditation,

§ 407c  forever imagining headaches and dizziness and attributing their origin to philosophy. So that wherever this kind of virtue is practiced and tested it is in every way a hindrance. For it makes the man always fancy himself sick and never cease from anguishing about his body.”
“Naturally,” he said. “Then, shall we not say that it was because Asclepius knew this — that for those who were by nature and course of life sound of body

§ 407d  but had some localized disease, that for such, I say, and for this habit he revealed the art of medicine, and, driving out their disease by drugs and surgery, prescribed for them their customary regimen in order not to interfere with their civic duties, but that, when bodies were diseased inwardly and throughout, he did not attempt by diet and by gradual evacuations and infusions to prolong a wretched existence for the man and have him beget in all likelihood similar wretched offspring?

§ 407e  But if a man was incapable of living in the established round and order of life, he did not think it worth while to treat him, since such a fellow is of no use either to himself or to the state.”
“A most politic Asclepius you're telling us of,” he said. “Obviously,” said I, “that was his character. And his sons too, don't you in see that at Troy they approved

§ 408a  themselves good fighting-men and practised medicine as I described it? Don't you remember that in the case of Menelaus too from the wound that Pandarus inflicted “‘They sucked the blood, and soothing simples sprinkled?’” (Hom. Il. 4.218) But what he was to eat or drink thereafter they no more prescribed than for Eurypylus, taking it for granted that the remedies sufficed to heal men who before their wounds were healthy and temperate in diet

§ 408b  even if they did happen for the nonce to drink a posset; but they thought that the life of a man constitutionally sickly and intemperate was of no use to himself or others, and that the art of medicine should not be for such nor should they be given treatment even if they were richer than Midas.”
“Very ingenious fellows,” he said, “you make out these sons of Asclepius to be.”
“'Tis fitting,” said I; “and yet in disregard of our principles the tragedians and Pindar affirm that Asclepius, though he was the son of Apollo, was bribed by gold

§ 408c  to heal a man already at the point of death, and that for this cause he was struck by the lightning. But we in accordance with the aforesaid principles refuse to believe both statements, but if he was the son of a god he was not avaricious, we will insist, and if he was greedy of gain he was not the son of a god.”
“That much,” said he, “is most certainly true. But what have you to say to this, Socrates, must we not have good physicians in our city? And they would be the most likely to be good who had treated the greatest number of healthy and diseased men,

§ 408d  and so good judges would be those who had associated with all sorts and conditions of men.”
“Most assuredly I want them good,” I said; “but do you know whom I regard as such?”
“I'll know if you tell,” he said. “Well, I will try,” said I. “You, however, have put unlike cases in one question.”
“How so?” said he. “Physicians, it is true,” I said, “would prove most skilled if, from childhood up, in addition to learning the principles of the art they had familiarized themselves with the greatest possible number of the most sickly bodies,

§ 408e  and if they themselves had suffered all diseases and were not of very healthy constitution. For you see they do not treat the body by the body. If they did, it would not be allowable for their bodies to be or to have been in evil condition. But they treat the body with the mind — and it is not competent for a mind that is or has been evil to treat anything well.”
“Right,” he said. “But a judge, mark you, my friend,

§ 409a  rules soul with soul and it is not allowable for a soul to have been bred from youth up among evil souls and to have grown familiar with them, and itself to have run the gauntlet of every kind of wrong-doing and injustice so as quickly to infer from itself the misdeeds of others as it might diseases in the body, but it must have been inexperienced in evil natures and uncontaminated by them while young, if it is to be truly fair and good and judge soundly of justice. For which cause the better sort seem to be simple-minded in youth and are easily deceived by the wicked,

§ 409b  since they do not have within themselves patterns answering to the affections of the bad.”
“That is indeed their experience,” he said. “Therefore it is,” said I, that the good judge must not be a youth but an old man, a late learner of the nature of injustice, one who has not become aware of it as a property in his own soul, but one who has through the long years trained himself to understand it as an alien thing in alien souls, and to discern how great an evil it is

§ 409c  by the instrument of mere knowledge and not by experience of his own.”
“That at any rate,” he said, “appears to be the noblest kind of judge.”
“And what is more, a good one,” I said, “which was the gist of your question. For he who has a good soul is good. But that cunning fellow quick to suspect evil, and who has himself done many unjust acts and who thinks himself a smart trickster, when he associates with his like does appear to be clever, being on his guard and fixing his eyes on the patterns within himself. But when the time comes for him to mingle with the good and his elders,

§ 409d  then on the contrary he appears stupid. He is unseasonably distrustful and he cannot recognize a sound character because he has no such pattern in himself. But since he more often meets with the bad than the good, he seems to himself and to others to be rather wise than foolish.”
“That is quite true,” he said.
“Well then,” said I, “such a one must not be our ideal of the good and wise judge but the former. For while badness could never come to know both virtue and itself, native virtue through education

§ 409e  will at last acquire the science both of itself and badness. This one, then, as I think, is the man who proves to be wise and not the bad man.”
“And I concur,” he said. “Then will you not establish by law in your city such an art of medicine as we have described in conjunction with this kind of justice? And these arts will care for the bodies and souls of such of your citizens as are truly well born,

§ 410a  but of those who are not, such as are defective in body they will suffer to die and those who are evil-natured and incurable in soul they will themselves put to death.”
“This certainly,” he said, “has been shown to be the best thing for the sufferers themselves and for the state.”
“And so your youths,” said I, “employing that simple music which we said engendered sobriety will, it is clear, guard themselves against falling into the need of the justice of the court-room.”
“Yes,” he said. “And will not our musician, pursuing the same trail

§ 410b  in his use of gymnastics, if he please, get to have no need of medicine save when indispensable?”
“I think so.”
“And even the exercises and toils of gymnastics he will undertake with a view to the spirited part of his nature to arouse that rather than for mere strength, unlike ordinary athletes, who treat diet and exercise only as a means to muscle.”
“Nothing could be truer,” he said. “Then may we not say, Glaucon,” said I, “that those who established an education in music and gymnastics

§ 410c  had not the purpose in view that some attribute to them in so instituting, namely to treat the body by one and the soul by the other?”
“But what?” he said. “It seems likely,” I said, “that they ordained both chiefly for the soul's sake.”
“How so?”
“Have you not observed,” said I, “the effect on the disposition of the mind itself of lifelong devotion to gymnastics with total neglect of music? Or the disposition of those of the opposite habit?”
“In what respect do you mean?” he said.

§ 410d  “In respect of savagery and hardness or, on the other hand, of softness and gentleness?”
“I have observed,” he said, “that the devotees of unmitigated gymnastics turn out more brutal than they should be and those of music softer than is good for them.”
“And surely,” said I, “this savagery is a quality derived from the high-spirited element in our nature, which, if rightly trained, becomes brave, but if overstrained, would naturally become hard and harsh.”
“I think so,” he said. “And again, is not the gentleness

§ 410e  a quality which the philosophic nature would yield? This if relaxed too far would be softer than is desirable but if rightly trained gentle and orderly?”
“That is so.”
“But our requirement, we say, is that the guardians should possess both natures.”
“It is.”
“And must they not be harmoniously adjusted to one another?”
“Of course.”
“And the soul of the man thus attuned is sober and brave?”

§ 411a  “Certainly.”
“And that of the ill adjusted is cowardiy and rude?”
“It surely is.”
“Now when a man abandons himself to music to play upon him and pour into his soul as it were through the funnel of his ears those sweet, soft, and dirge-like airs of which we were just now speaking, and gives his entire time to the warblings and blandishments of song, the first result is that the principle of high spirit, if he had it,

§ 411b  is softened like iron and is made useful instead of useless and brittle. But when he continues the practice without remission and is spellbound, the effect begins to be that he melts and liquefies till he completely dissolves away his spirit, cuts out as it were the very sinews of his soul and makes of himself a 'feeble warrior.'”
“Assuredly,” he said. “And if,” said I, “he has to begin with a spiritless nature he reaches this result quickly, but if high-spirited, by weakening the spirit he makes it unstable,

§ 411c  quickly irritated by slight stimuli, and as quickly quelled. The outcome is that such men are choleric and irascible instead of high-spirited, and are peevish and discontented.”
“Precisely so.”
“On the other hand, if a man toils hard at gymnastics and eats right lustily and holds no truck with music and philosophy, does he not at first get very fit and full of pride and high spirit and become more brave and bold than he was?”
“He does indeed.”
“But what if he does nothing but this and has no contact with the Muse in any way,

§ 411d  is not the result that even if there was some principle of the love of knowledge in his soul, since it tastes of no instruction nor of any inquiry and does not participate in any discussion or any other form of culture, it becomes feeble, deaf, and blind, because it is not aroused or fed nor are its perceptions purified and quickened?”
“That is so,” he said. “And so such a man, I take it, becomes a misologist and stranger to the Muses. He no longer makes any use of persuasion by speech but achieves all his ends

§ 411e  like a beast by violence and savagery, and in his brute ignorance and ineptitude lives a life of disharmony and gracelessness.”
“That is entirely true,” he said. “For these two, then, it seems there are two arts which I would say some god gave to mankind, music and gymnastics for the service of the high-spirited principle and the love of knowledge in them — not for the soul and the body except incidentally, but for the harmonious adjustment of these two principles

§ 412a  by the proper degree of tension and relaxation of each.”
“Yes, so it appears,” he said. “Then he who best blends gymnastics with music and applies them most suitably to the soul is the man whom we should most rightly pronounce to be the most perfect and harmonious musician, far rather than the one who brings the strings into unison with one another.”
“That seems likely, Socrates,” he said. “And shall we not also need in our city, Glaucon, a permanent overseer of this kind if its constitution is to be preserved?”

§ 412b  “We most certainly shall.”
“Such would be the outlines of their education and breeding. For why should one recite the list of the dances of such citizens, their hunts and chases with hounds, their athletic contests and races? It is pretty plain that they must conform to these principles and there is no longer any difficulty in discovering them.”
“There is, it may be, no difficulty,” he said. “Very well,” said I; “what, then, have we next to determine? Is it not which ones among them shall be the rulers and the ruled?”

§ 412c  “Certainly.”
“That the rulers must be the elder and the ruled the younger is obvious.”
“It is.”
“And that the rulers must be their best?”
“This too.”
“And do not the best of the farmers prove the best farmers?”
“Yes.”
“And in this case, since we want them to be the best of the guardians, must they not be the best guardians, the most regardful of the state?”
“Yes.”
“They must then to begin with be intelligent in such matters and capable,

§ 412d  and furthermore careful of the interests of the state?”
“That is so.”
“But one would be most likely to be careful of that which he loved.”
“Necessarily.”
“And again, one would be most likely to love that whose interests he supposed to coincide with his own, and thought that when it prospered, he too would prosper and if not, the contrary.”
“So it is,” he said. “Then we must pick out from the other guardians such men as to our observation appear most inclined through the entire course of their lives to be zealous to do what they think

§ 412e  for the interest of the state, and who would be least likely to consent to do the opposite.”
“That would be a suitable choice,” he said. “I think, then, we shall have to observe them at every period of life, to see if they are conservators and guardians of this conviction in their minds and never by sorcery nor by force can be brought to expel from their souls unawares this conviction that they must do what is best for the state.”
“What do you mean by the 'expelling'?” he said. “I will tell you, said I; “it seems to me that the exit of a belief from the mind is either voluntary or involuntary.

§ 413a  Voluntary is the departure of the false belief from one who learns better, involuntary that of every true belief.”
“The voluntary,” he said, “I understand, but I need instruction about the involuntary.”
“How now,” said I, “don't you agree with me in thinking that men are unwillingly deprived of good things but willingly of evil? Or is it not an evil to be deceived in respect of the truth and a good to possess truth? And don't you think that to opine the things that are is to possess the truth?”
“Why, yes,” said he, “you are right, and I agree that men are unwillingly deprived of true opinions.”
“And doesn't this happen to them by theft, by the spells of sorcery or by force?”
“I don't understand now either,” he said. “I must be talking in high tragic style,” I said;

§ 413b  “by those who have their opinions stolen from them I mean those who are over-persuaded and those who forget, because in the one case time, in the other argument strips them unawares of their beliefs. Now I presume you understand, do you not?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, by those who are constrained or forced I mean those whom some pain or suffering compels to change their minds.”
“That too I understand and you are right.”
“And the victims of sorcery

§ 413c  I am sure you too would say are they who alter their opinions under the spell of pleasure or terrified by some fear.”
“Yes,” he said: “everything that deceives appears to cast a spell upon the mind.”
“Well then, as I was just saying, we must look for those who are the best guardians of the indwelling conviction that what they have to do is what they at any time believe to be best for the state. Then we must observe them from childhood up and propose them tasks in which one would be most likely to forget this principle or be deceived, and he whose memory is sure

§ 413d  and who cannot be beguiled we must accept and the other kind we must cross off from our list. Is not that so?”
“Yes.”
“And again we must subject them to toils and pains and competitions in which we have to watch for the same traits.”
“Right,” he said. “Then,” said I, “must we not institute a third kind of competitive test with regard to sorcery and observe them in that? Just as men conduct colts to noises and uproar to see if they are liable to take fright, so we must bring these lads while young into fears

§ 413e  and again pass them into pleasures, testing them much more carefully than men do gold in the fire, to see if the man remains immune to such witchcraft and preserves his composure throughout, a good guardian of himself and the culture which he has received, maintaining the true rhythm and harmony of his being in all those conditions, and the character that would make him most useful to himself and to the state. And he who as boy, lad, and man endures the test

§ 414a  and issues from it unspoiled we must establish as ruler over our city and its guardian, and bestow rewards upon him in life, and in death the allotment of the supreme honors of burial-rites and other memorials. But the man of the other type we must reject. Such,” said I, “appears to me, Glaucon, the general notion of our selection and appointment of rulers and guardians as sketched in outline, but not drawn out in detail.”
“I too,” he said, “think much the same.”
“Then would it not truly

§ 414b  be most proper to designate these as guardians in the full sense of the word, watchers against foemen without and friends within, so that the latter shall not wish and the former shall not be able to work harm, but to name those youths whom we were calling guardians just now, helpers and aids for the decrees of the rulers?”
“I think so,” he replied.
“How, then,” said I, “might we contrive one of those opportune falsehoods of which we were just now speaking,

§ 414c  so as by one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?”
“What kind of a fiction do you mean?” said he. “Nothing unprecedented,” said I, “but a sort of Phoenician tale, something that has happened ere now in many parts of the world, as the poets aver and have induced men to believe, but that has not happened and perhaps would not be likely to happen in our day and demanding no little persuasion to make it believable.”
“You act like one who shrinks from telling his thought,” he said. “You will think that I have right good reason for shrinking when I have told,” I said.

§ 414d  “Say on,” said he, “and don't be afraid.”
“Very well, I will. And yet I hardly know how to find the audacity or the words to speak and undertake to persuade first the rulers themselves and the soldiers and then the rest of the city, that in good sooth all our training and educating of them were things that they imagined and that happened to them as it were in a dream; but that in reality at that time they were down within the earth being molded and fostered themselves while

§ 414e  their weapons and the rest of their equipment were being fashioned. And when they were quite finished the earth as being their mother delivered them, and now as if their land were their mother and their nurse they ought to take thought for her and defend her against any attack and regard the other citizens as their brothers and children of the self-same earth.”
“It is not for nothing,” he said, “that you were so bashful about coming out with your lie.”
“It was quite natural that I should be,”

§ 415a  I said; “but all the same hear the rest of the story. While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled gold in their generation, for which reason they are the most precious — but in the helpers silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen. And as you are all akin, though for the most part you will breed after your kinds,

§ 415b  it may sometimes happen that a golden father would beget a silver son and that a golden offspring would come from a silver sire and that the rest would in like manner be born of one another. So that the first and chief injunction that the god lays upon the rulers is that of nothing else are they to be such careful guardians and so intently observant as of the intermixture of these metals in the souls of their offspring, and if sons are born to them with an infusion of brass or iron

§ 415c  they shall by no means give way to pity in their treatment of them, but shall assign to each the status due to his nature and thrust them out among the artisans or the farmers. And again, if from these there is born a son with unexpected gold or silver in his composition they shall honor such and bid them go up higher, some to the office of guardian, some to the assistanceship, alleging that there is an oracle that the state shall then be overthrown when the man of iron or brass is its guardian. Do you see any way of getting them to believe this tale?”

§ 415d  “No, not these themselves,” he said, “but I do, their sons and successors and the rest of mankind who come after.”
“Well,” said I, “even that would have a good effect making them more inclined to care for the state and one another. For I think I apprehend your meaning. XXII. And this shall fall out as tradition guides.”
“But let us arm these sons of earth and conduct them under the leadership of their rulers. And when they have arrived they must look out for the fairest site in the city for their encampment,

§ 415e  a position from which they could best hold down rebellion against the laws from within and repel aggression from without as of a wolf against the fold. And after they have encamped and sacrificed to the proper gods they must make their lairs, must they not?”
“Yes,” he said. “And these must be of a character keep out the cold in winter and be sufficient in summer?”
“Of course. For I presume you are speaking of their houses.”
“Yes,” said I, “the houses of soldiers not of money-makers.”

§ 416a  “What distinction do you intend by that?” he said. “I will try to tell you,” I said. “It is surely the most monstrous and shameful thing in the world for shepherds to breed the dogs who are to help them with their flocks in such wise and of such a nature that from indiscipline or hunger or some other evil condition the dogs themselves shall attack the sheep and injure them and be likened to wolves instead of dogs.”
“A terrible thing, indeed,” he said.

§ 416b  “Must we not then guard by every means in our power against our helpers treating the citizens in any such way and, because they are the stronger, converting themselves from benign assistants into savage masters?”
“We must,” he said. “And would they not have been provided with the chief safeguard if their education has really been a good one?”
“But it surely has,” he said. “That,” said I, “dear Glaucon, we may not properly affirm, but what we were just now saying we may,

§ 416c  that they must have the right education, whatever it is, if they are to have what will do most to make them gentle to one another and to their charges.”
“That is right,” he said. “In addition, moreover, to such an education a thoughtful man would affirm that their houses and the possessions provided for them ought to be such as not to interfere with the best performance of their own work as guardians and not to incite them to wrong the other citizens.”

§ 416d  “He will rightly affirm that.”
“Consider then,” said I, “whether, if that is to be their character, their habitations and ways of life must not be something after this fashion. In the first place, none must possess any private property save the indispensable. Secondly, none must have any habitation or treasure-house which is not open for all to enter at will. Their food, in such quantities as are needful for athletes of war sober and brave,

§ 416e  they must receive as an agreed stipend from the other citizens as the wages of their guardianship, so measured that there shall be neither superfluity at the end of the year nor any lack. And resorting to a common mess like soldiers on campaign they will live together. Gold and silver, we will tell them, they have of the divine quality from the gods always in their souls, and they have no need of the metal of men nor does holiness suffer them to mingle and contaminate that heavenly possession with the acquisition of mortal gold, since many impious deeds have been done about

§ 417a  the coin of the multitude, while that which dwells within them is unsullied. But for these only of all the dwellers in the city it is not lawful to handle gold and silver and to touch them nor yet to come under the same roof with them, nor to hang them as ornaments on their limbs nor to drink from silver and gold. So living they would save themselves and save their city. But whenever they shall acquire for themselves land of their own and houses and coin, they will be house-holders and farmers instead of guardians, and will be transformed

§ 417b  from the helpers of their fellow citizens to their enemies and masters, and so in hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against they will pass their days fearing far more and rather the townsmen within than the foemen without — and then even then laying the course of near shipwreck for themselves and the state. For all these reasons,” said I, “let us declare that such must be the provision for our guardians in lodging and other respects and so legislate. Shall we not?”
“By all means,” said Glaucon.

§ 419a  BOOK 4
And Adeimantus broke in and said, “What will be your defence, Socrates, if anyone objects that you are not making these men very happy, and that through their own fault? For the city really belongs to them and yet they get no enjoyment out of it as ordinary men do by owning lands and building fine big houses and providing them with suitable furniture and winning the favor of the gods by private sacrifices and entertaining guests and enjoying too those possessions which you just now spoke of, gold and silver and all that is customary for those who are expecting to be happy? But they seem, one might say, to be established in idleness in the city,

§ 420a  exactly like hired mercenaries, with nothing to do but keep guard.”
“Yes,” said I, “and what is more, they serve for board-wages and do not even receive pay in addition to their food as others do, so that they will not even be able to take a journey on their own account, if they wish to, or make presents to their mistresses, or spend money in other directions according to their desires like the men who are thought to be happy. These and many similar counts of the indictment you are omitting.”
“Well,” said he, “assume these counts too.”

§ 420b  “What then will be our apology you ask?”
“Yes.”
“By following the same path I think we shall find what to reply. For we shall say that while it would not surprise us if these men thus living prove to be the most happy, yet the object on which we fixed our eyes in the establishment of our state was not the exceptional happiness of any one class but the greatest possible happiness of the city as a whole. For we thought that in a state so constituted we should be most likely to discover justice as we should injustice

§ 420c  in the worst governed state, and that when we had made these out we could pass judgement on the issue of our long inquiry. Our first task then, we take it, is to mold the model of a happy state — we are not isolating a small class in it and postulating their happiness, but that of the city as a whole. But the opposite type of state we will consider presently. It is as if we were coloring a statue and someone approached and censured us, saying that we did not apply the most beautiful pigments to the most beautiful parts of the image, since the eyes, which are the most beautiful part, have not been painted with purple but with black —

§ 420d  we should think it a reasonable justification to reply, ‘Don't expect us, quaint friend, to paint the eyes so fine that they will not be like eyes at all, nor the other parts. But observe whether by assigning what is proper to each we render the whole beautiful.10’ And so in the present case you must not require us to attach to the guardians a happiness that will make them anything but guardians.

§ 420e  For in like manner we could clothe the farmers in robes of state and deck them with gold and bid them cultivate the soil at their pleasure, and we could make the potters recline on couches from left to right before the fire drinking toasts and feasting with their wheel alongside to potter with when they are so disposed, and we can make all the others happy in the same fashion, so that thus the entire city may be happy. But urge us not to this,

§ 421a  since, if we yield, the farmer will not be a farmer nor the potter a potter, nor will any other of the types that constitute state keep its form. However, for the others it matters less. For cobblers who deteriorate and are spoiled and pretend to be the workmen that they are not are no great danger to a state. But guardians of laws and of the city who are not what they pretend to be, but only seem, destroy utterly, I would have you note, the entire state, and on the other hand, they alone are decisive of its good government and happiness. If then we are forming true guardians

§ 421b  and keepers of our liberties, men least likely to harm the commonwealth, but the proponent of the other ideal is thinking of farmers and 'happy' feasters as it were in a festival and not in a civic community, he would have something else in mind than a state. Consider, then, whether our aim in establishing the guardians is the greatest possible happiness among them or whether that is something we must look to see develop in the city as a whole, but these helpers and guardians

§ 421c  are to be constrained and persuaded to do what will make them the best craftsmen in their own work, and similarly all the rest. And so, as the entire city develops and is ordered well, each class is to be left, to the share of happiness that its nature comports.
“Well,” he said, “I think you are right.”
“And will you then,” I said, “also think me reasonable in another point akin to this?”
“What pray?”
“Consider whether

§ 421d  these are the causes that corrupt other craftsmen too so as positively to spoil them.”
“What causes?”
“Wealth and poverty,”17 said I. “How so?”
“Thus! do you think a potter who grew rich would any longer be willing to give his mind to his craft?”
“By no means,” said he. “But will he become more idle and negligent than he was?”
“Far more.”
“Then he becomes a worse potter?”
“Far worse too.”
“And yet again, if from poverty he is unable to provide himself with tools and other requirements of his art,

§ 421e  the work that he turns out will be worse, and he will also make inferior workmen of his sons or any others whom he teaches.”
“Of course.”
“From both causes, then, poverty and wealth, the products of the arts deteriorate, and so do the artisans?”
“So it appears.”
“Here, then, is a second group of things it seems that our guardians must guard against and do all in their power to keep from slipping into the city without their knowledge.”
“What are they?”

§ 422a  “Wealth and poverty,” said I, “since the one brings luxury, idleness and innovation, and the other illiberality and the evil of bad workmanship in addition to innovation.”
“Assuredly,” he said; “yet here is a point for your consideration, Socrates, how our city, possessing no wealth, will be able to wage war, especially if compelled to fight a large and wealthy state.”
“Obviously,” said I, “it would be rather difficult to fight one such, but easier to fight two.”

§ 422b  “What did you mean by that?” he said. “Tell me first,” I said, “whether, if they have to fight, they will not be fighting as athletes of war against men of wealth?”
“Yes, that is true,” he said. “Answer me then, Adeimantus. Do you not think that one boxer perfectly trained in the art could easily fight two fat rich men who knew nothing of it?”
“Not at the same time perhaps,” said he. “Not even,” said I, “if he were allowed to retreat

§ 422c  and then turn and strike the one who came up first, and if he repeated the procedure many times under a burning and stifling sun? Would not such a fighter down even a number of such opponents?”
“Doubtless,” he said; “it wouldn't be surprising if he did.”
“Well, don't you think that the rich have more of the skill and practice of boxing than of the art of war?”
“I do,” he said. “It will be easy, then, for our athletes in all probability to fight with double and triple their number.”
“I shall have to concede the point,” he said, “for I believe you are right.”

§ 422d  “Well then, if they send an embassy to the other city and say what is in fact true: ‘We make no use of gold and silver nor is it lawful for us but it is for you: do you then join us in the war and keep the spoils of the enemy,’23 — do you suppose any who heard such a proposal would choose to fight against hard and wiry hounds rather than with the aid of the hounds against fat and tender sheep?”
“I think not.”
“Yet consider whether the accumulation

§ 422e  of all the wealth of other cities in one does not involve danger for the state that has no wealth.”
“What happy innocence,” said I, “to suppose that you can properly use the name city of any other than the one we are constructing.”
“Why, what should we say?” he said. “A greater predication,” said I, “must be applied to the others. For they are each one of them many cities, not a city, as it goes in the game. There are two at the least at enmity with one another, the city of the rich

§ 423a  and the city of the poor, and in each of these there are many. If you deal with them as one you will altogether miss the mark, but if you treat them as a multiplicity by offering to the one faction the property, the power, the very persons of the other, you will continue always to have few enemies and many allies. And so long as your city is governed soberly in the order just laid down, it will be the greatest of cities. I do not mean greatest in repute, but in reality, even though it have only a thousand defenders. For a city of this size

§ 423b  that is really one you will not easily discover either among Greeks or barbarians — but of those that seem so you will find many and many times the size of this. Or do you think otherwise?”
“No, indeed I don't,” said he.
“Would not this, then, be the best rule and measure for our governors of the proper size of the city and of the territory that they should mark off for a city of that size and seek no more?”
“What is the measure?”
“I think,” said I, “that they should let it grow so long as in its growth it consents to remain a unity, but no further.”

§ 423c  “Excellent,” he said. “Then is not this still another injunction that we should lay upon our guardians, to keep guard in every way that the city shall not be too small, nor great only in seeming, but that it shall be a sufficient city and one?”
“That behest will perhaps be an easy one for them,” he said. “And still easier, haply,” I said, “is this that we mentioned before when we said that if a degenerate offspring was born to the guardians he must be sent away to the other classes,

§ 423d  and likewise if a superior to the others he must be enrolled among the guardians; and the purport of all this was that the other citizens too must be sent to the task for which their natures were fitted, one man to one work, in order that each of them fulfilling his own function may be not many men, but one, and so the entire city may come to be not a multiplicity but a unity.”
“Why yes,” he said, “this is even more trifling than that.”
“These are not, my good Adeimantus, as one might suppose, numerous and difficult injunctions that

§ 423e  we are imposing upon them, but they are all easy, provided they guard, as the saying is, the one great thing — or instead of great let us call it sufficient.”
“What is that?” he said. “Their education and nurture,” I replied. “For if a right education makes of them reasonable men they will easily discover everything of this kind — and other principles that we now pass over, as that the possession of wives and marriage,

§ 424a  and the procreation of children and all that sort of thing should be made as far as possible the proverbial goods of friends that are common.”
“Yes, that would be the best way,” he said. “And, moreover,” said I, “the state, if it once starts well, proceeds as it were in a cycle of growth. I mean that a sound nurture and education if kept up creates good natures in the state, and sound natures in turn receiving an education of this sort develop into better men than their predecessors

§ 424b  both for other purposes and for the production of offspring as among animals also.”
“It is probable,” he said. “To put it briefly, then,” said I, “it is to this that the overseers of our state must cleave and be watchful against its insensible corruption. They must throughout be watchful against innovations in music and gymnastics counter to the established order, and to the best of their power guard against them, fearing when anyone says that “That song is most regarded among men
Which hovers newest on the singer's lips,” (Hom. Od. 1.351)

§ 424c  lest haply it be supposed that the poet means not new songs but a new way of song and is commending this. But we must not praise that sort of thing nor conceive it to be the poet's meaning. For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions, as Damon affirms and as I am convinced.”
“Set me too down in the number of the convinced,” said Adeimantus.

§ 424d  “It is here, then,” I said, “in music, as it seems, that our guardians must build their guard-house and post of watch.”
“It is certain,” he said, “that this is the kind of lawlessness that easily insinuates itself unobserved.”
“Yes,” said I, “because it is supposed to be only a form of play and to work no harm.”
“Nor does it work any,” he said, “except that by gradual infiltration it softly overflows upon the characters and pursuits of men and from these issues forth grown greater to attack their business dealings, and from these relations

§ 424e  it proceeds against the laws and the constitution with wanton licence, Socrates, till finally it overthrows all things public and private.”
“Well,” said I, “are these things so?”
“I think so,” he said. “Then, as we were saying in the beginning, our youth must join in a more law-abiding play, since, if play grows lawless and the children likewise,

§ 425a  it is impossible that they should grow up to be men of serious temper and lawful spirit.”
“Of course,” he said. “And so we may reason that when children in their earliest play are imbued with the spirit of law and order through their music, the opposite of the former supposition happens — this spirit waits upon them in all things and fosters their growth, and restores and sets up again whatever was overthrown in the other type of state.”
“True, indeed,” he said. “Then such men rediscover for themselves those seemingly trifling conventions which their predecessors abolished altogether.”
“Of what sort?”
“Such things as

§ 425b  the becoming silence of the young in the presence of their elders; the giving place to them and rising up before them, and dutiful service of parents, and the cut of the hair and the garments and the fashion of the foot-gear, and in general the deportment of the body and everything of the kind. Don't you think so?”
“I do.”
“Yet to enact them into laws would, I think, be silly. For such laws are not obeyed nor would they last, being enacted only in words and on paper.”
“How could they?”
“At any rate, Adeimantus,” I said, “the direction of the education from whence one starts is likely to determine

§ 425c  the quality of what follows. Does not like ever summon like?”
“Surely.”
“And the final outcome, I presume, we would say is one complete and vigorous product of good or the reverse.”
“Of course,” said he. “For my part, then,” I said, “for these reasons I would not go on to try to legislate on such matters.”
“With good reason,” said he. “But what, in heaven's name,” said I, “about business matters, the deals that men make with one another in the Agora —

§ 425d  and, if you please, contracts with workmen and actions for foul language and assault, the filing of declarations, the impanelling of juries, the payment and exaction of any dues that may be needful in markets or harbors and in general market, police or harbor regulations and the like, can we bring ourselves to legislate about these?”
“Nay, ‘twould not be fitting,” he said, “to dictate to good and honorable men. For most of the enactments that are needed about these things they will easily, I presume, discover.”

§ 425e  “Yes, my friend, provided God grants them the preservation of the principles of law that we have already discussed.”
“Failing that,” said he, “they will pass their lives multiplying such petty laws and amending them in the expectation of attaining what is best.”
“You mean,” said I, “that the life of such citizens will resemble that of men who are sick, yet from intemperance are unwilling to abandon their unwholesome regimen.”

§ 426a  “By all means.” And truly,” said I, “these latter go on in a most charming fashion. For with all their doctoring they accomplish nothing except to complicate and augment their maladies. And they are always hoping that some one will recommend a panacea that will restore their health.”
“A perfect description,” he said, “of the state of such invalids.”
“And isn't this a charming trait in them, that they hate most in all the world him who tells them the truth that until a man stops drinking and gorging and wenching

§ 426b  and idling, neither drugs nor cautery nor the knife, no, nor spells nor periapts will be of any avail?”
“Not altogether charming,” he said, “for there is no grace or charm in being angry with him who speaks well.”
“You do not seem to be an admirer of such people,” said I. “No, by heaven, I am not.”
“Neither then, if an entire city, as we were just now saying, acts in this way, will it have your approval, or don't you think that the way of such invalids is precisely that of those cities

§ 426c  which being badly governed forewarn their citizens not to meddle with the general constitution of the state, denouncing death to whosoever attempts that — while whoever most agreeably serves them governed as they are and who curries favor with them by fawning upon them and anticipating their desires and by his cleverness in gratifying them, him they will account the good man, the man wise in worthwhile things, the man they will delight to honor?”
“Yes,” he said, “I think their conduct is identical, and I don't approve it in the very least.”

§ 426d  “And what again of those who are willing and eager to serve such states? Don't you admire their valiance and light-hearted irresponsibility?”
“I do,” he said, “except those who are actually deluded and suppose themselves to be in truth statesmen because they are praised by the many.”
“What do you mean? “Can't you make allowances for the men? Do you think it possible for a man who does not know how to measure when a multitude of others equally ignorant assure him that he is four cubits tall

§ 426e  not to suppose this to be the fact about himself?”
“Why no,” he said, “I don't think that.”
“Then don't be harsh with them. For surely such fellows are the most charming spectacle in the world when they enact and amend such laws as we just now described and are perpetually expecting to find a way of putting an end to frauds in business and in the other matters of which I was speaking because they can't see that they are in very truth trying to cut off a Hydra's head.”

§ 427a  “Indeed,” he said, “that is exactly what they are doing.”
“I, then,” said I, “should not have supposed that the true lawgiver ought to work out matters of that kind in the laws and the constitution either of an ill-governed or a well-governed state — in the one because they are useless and accomplish nothing, in the other because some of them anybody could discover and others will result spontaneously from the pursuits already described.”

§ 427b  “What part of legislation, then,” he said, “is still left for us?” And I replied, “For us nothing, but for the Apollo of Delphi, the chief, the fairest and the first of enactments.”
“What are they?” he said. “The founding of temples, and sacrifices, and other forms of worship of gods, daemons, and heroes; and likewise the burial of the dead and the services we must render to the dwellers in the world beyond to keep them gracious.

§ 427c  For of such matters we neither know anything nor in the founding of our city if we are wise shall we entrust them to any other or make use of any other interpreter than the God of our fathers. For this God surely is in such matters for all mankind the interpreter of the religion of their fathers who from his seat in the middle and at the very navel of the earth delivers his interpretation.”
“Excellently said,” he replied; “and that is what we must do.”

§ 427d  “At last, then, son of Ariston,” said I, “your city may be considered as established. The next thing is to procure a sufficient light somewhere and to look yourself, and call in the aid of your brother and of Polemarchus and the rest, if we may in any wise discover where justice and injustice should be in it, wherein they differ from one another and which of the two he must have who is to be happy, alike whether his condition is known or not known to all gods and men.”
“Nonsense,” said Glaucon, “you promised that you would carry on the search yourself,

§ 427e  admitting that it would be impious for you not to come to the aid of justice by every means in your power.”
“A true reminder,” I said, “and I must do so, but you also must lend a hand.”
“Well,” he said, “we will.”
“I expect then,” said I, “that we shall find it in this way. I think our city, if it has been rightly founded is good in the full sense of the word.”
“Necessarily,” he said. “Clearly, then, it will be wise, brave, sober, and just.”
“Clearly.”
“Then if we find any of these qualities in it, the remainder will be that which we have not found?”

§ 428a  “Surely.”
“Take the case of any four other things. If we were looking for any one of them in anything and recognized the object of our search first, that would have been enough for us, but if we had recognized the other three first, that in itself would have made known to us the thing we were seeking. For plainly there was nothing left for it to be but the remainder.”
“Right,” he said. “And so, since these are four, we must conduct the search in the same way.”
“Clearly.”
“And, moreover,

§ 428b  the first thing that I think I clearly see therein is the wisdom, and there is something odd about that, it appears.”
“What?” said he. “Wise in very deed I think the city that we have described is, for it is well counselled, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“And surely this very thing, good counsel, is a form of wisdom. For it is not by ignorance but by knowledge that men counsel well.”
“Obviously.”
“But there are many and manifold knowledges or sciences in the city.”
“Of course.”
“Is it then owing to the science of her carpenters that

§ 428c  a city is to be called wise and well advised?”
“By no means for that, but rather mistress of the arts of building.”
“Then a city is not to be styled wise because of the deliberations of the science of wooden utensils for their best production?”
“No, I grant you.”
“Is it, then, because of that of brass implements or any other of that kind?”
“None whatsoever,” he said. “Nor yet because of the science of the production of crops from the soil, but the name it takes from that is agricultural.”
“I think so.”
“Then,” said I, “is there any science in the city just founded by us residing in any of its citizens which does not take counsel about some particular thing

§ 428d  in the city but about the city as a whole and the betterment of its relations with itself and other states?”
“Why, there is.”
“What is it,” said I, “and in whom is it found?”
“It is the science of guardianship or government and it is to be found in those rulers to whom we just now gave the name of guardians in the full sense of the word.”
“And what term then do you apply to the city because of this knowledge?”
“Well advised,” he said, “and truly wise.”
“Which class, then,” said I,

§ 428e  “do you suppose will be the more numerous in our city, the smiths or these true guardians?”
“The smiths, by far,” he said. “And would not these rulers be the smallest of all the groups of those who possess special knowledge and receive distinctive appellations?”
“By far.”
“Then it is by virtue of its smallest class and minutest part of itself, and the wisdom that resides therein, in the part which takes the lead and rules, that a city established on principles of nature would be wise as a whole. And as it appears

§ 429a  these are by nature the fewest, the class to which it pertains to partake of the knowledge which alone of all forms of knowledge deserves the name of wisdom.”
“Most true,” he said. “This one of our four, then, we have, I know not how, discovered, the thing itself and its place in the state.”
“I certainly think,” said he, “that it has been discovered sufficiently.”
“But again there is no difficulty in seeing bravery itself and the part of the city in which it resides for which the city is called brave.”
“How so?”
“Who,” said I,

§ 429b  “in calling a city cowardly or brave would fix his eyes on any other part of it than that which defends it and wages war in its behalf?”
“No one at all,” he said. “For the reason, I take it,” said I, “that the cowardice or the bravery of the other inhabitants does not determine for it the one quality or the other.”
“It does not.”
“Bravery too, then, belongs to a city by virtue of a part of itself owing to its possession in that part of a quality that under all conditions will preserve the conviction

§ 429c  that things to be feared are precisely those which and such as the lawgiver inculcated in their education. Is not that what you call bravery?”
“I don't altogether understand what you said,” he replied; “but say it again.”
“A kind of conservation,” I said, “is what I mean by bravery.”
“What sort of a conservation?”
“The conservation of the conviction which the law has created by education about fearful things — what and what sort of things are to be feared. And by the phrase ‘under all conditions’ I mean that the brave man preserves it both in pain

§ 429d  and pleasures and in desires and fears and does not expel it from his soul. And I may illustrate it by a similitude if you please.”
“I do.”
“You are aware that dyers when they wish to dye wool so as to hold the purple hue begin by selecting from the many colors there be the one nature of the white and then give it a careful preparatory treatment so that it will take the hue in the best way, and after the treatment, then and then only, dip it in the dye.

§ 429e  And things that are dyed by this process become fast-colored and washing either with or without lyes cannot take away the sheen of their hues. But otherwise you know what happens to them, whether anyone dips other colors or even these without the preparatory treatment.”
“I know,” he said, “that they present a ridiculous and washed-out appearance.”
“By this analogy, then,” said I, “you must conceive what we too to the best of our ability were doing when we selected our soldiers and educated them in music

§ 430a  and exercises of the body. The sole aim of our contrivance was that they should be convinced and receive our laws like a dye as it were, so that their belief and faith might be fast-colored both about the things that are to be feared and all other things because of the fitness of their nature and nurture, and that so their dyes might not be washed out by those lyes that have such dread power to scour our faiths away, pleasure more potent than any detergent or abstergent

§ 430b  to accomplish this, and pain and fear and desire more sure than any lye. This power in the soul, then, this unfailing conservation of right and lawful belief about things to be and not to be feared is what I call and would assume to be courage, unless you have something different to say.”
“No, nothing,” said he; “for I presume that you consider mere right opinion about the same matters not produced by education, that which may manifest itself in a beast or a slave, to have little or nothing to do with law and that you would call it by another name than courage.”

§ 430c  “That is most true,” said I. “Well then,” he said, “I accept this as bravery.”
“Do so,” said I, “and you will be right with the reservation that it is the courage of a citizen. Some other time, if it please you, we will discuss it more fully. At present we were not seeking this but justice; and for the purpose of that inquiry I believe we have done enough.”
“You are quite right,” he said.

§ 430d  “Two things still remain,” said I, “to make out in our city, soberness and the object of the whole inquiry, justice.”
“Quite so.”
“If there were only some way to discover justice so that we need not further concern ourselves about soberness.”
“Well, I, for my part,” he said, “neither know of any such way nor would I wish justice to be discovered first if that means that we are not to go on to the consideration of soberness. But if you desire to please me, consider this before that.”
“It would certainly

§ 430e  be very wrong of me not to desire it,” said I. “Go on with the inquiry then,” he said. “I must go on,” I replied, “and viewed from here it bears more likeness to a kind of concord and harmony than the other virtues did.”
“How so?”
“Soberness is a kind of beautiful order and a continence of certain pleasures and appetites, as they say, using the phrase ‘master of himself’ I know not how; and there are other similar expressions that as it were point us to the same trail. Is that not so?”
“Most certainly.”
“Now the phrase ‘master of himself’ is an absurdity, is it not? For he who is master of himself would also be subject to himself,

§ 431a  and he who is subject to himself would be master. For the same person is spoken of in all these expressions.”
“Of course.”
“But,” said I, “the intended meaning of this way of speaking appears to me to be that the soul of a man within him has a better part and a worse part, and the expression self-mastery means the control of the worse by the naturally better part. It is, at any rate, a term of praise. But when, because of bad breeding or some association, the better part, which is the smaller, is dominated by the multitude of the worse, I think that our speech

§ 431b  censures this as a reproach, and calls the man in this plight unselfcontrolled and licentious.”
“That seems likely,” he said. “Turn your eyes now upon our new city,” said I, “and you will find one of these conditions existent in it. For you will say that it is justly spoken of as master of itself if that in which the superior rules the inferior is to be called sober and self-mastered.”
“I do turn my eyes upon it,” he said, “and it is as you say.”
“And again, the mob of motley

§ 431c  appetites and pleasures and pains one would find chiefly in children and women and slaves and in the base rabble of those who are freemen in name.”
“By all means.”
“But the simple and moderate appetites which with the aid of reason and right opinion are guided by consideration you will find in few and those the best born and best educated.”
“True,” he said. “And do you not find this too in your city and a domination there of the desires

§ 431d  in the multitude and the rabble by the desires and the wisdom that dwell in the minority of the better?”
“I do,” he said.
“If, then, there is any city that deserves to be described as master of its pleasures and desires and self-mastered, this one merits that designation.”
“Most assuredly,” he said. “And is it not also to be called sober in all these respects?”
“Indeed it is,” he said. “And yet again, if there is any city in which

§ 431e  the rulers and the ruled are of one mind as to who ought to rule, that condition will be found in this. Don't you think so?”
“I most emphatically do,” he said. “In which class of the citizens, then, will you say that the virtue of soberness has its seat when this is their condition? In the rulers or in the ruled?”
“In both, I suppose,” he said. “Do you see then,” said I, “that our intuition was not a bad one just now that discerned a likeness between soberness and a kind of harmony?”
“Why so?”
“Because its operation is unlike that of courage and wisdom, which residing in separate parts

§ 432a  respectively made the city, the one wise and the other brave. That is not the way of soberness, but it extends literally through the entire gamut throughout, bringing about the unison in the same chant of the strongest, the weakest and the intermediate, whether in wisdom or, if you please, in strength, or for that matter in numbers, wealth, or any similar criterion. So that we should be quite right in affirming this unanimity to be soberness, the concord of the naturally superior and inferior

§ 432b  as to which ought to rule both in the state and the individual.”
“I entirely concur,” he said. “Very well,” said I. “We have made out these three forms in our city to the best of our present judgement. What can be the remaining form that would give the city still another virtue? For it is obvious that the remainder is justice.”
“Obvious.”
“Now then, Glaucon, is the time for us like huntsmen to surround the covert and keep close watch that justice may not slip through and get away from us and vanish

§ 432c  from our sight. It plainly must be somewhere hereabouts. Keep your eyes open then and do your best to descry it. You may see it before I do and point it out to me.”
“Would that I could,” he said; “but I think rather that if you find in me one who can follow you and discern what you point out to him you will be making a very fair use of me.”
“Pray for success then,” said I, “and follow along with me.”
“That I will do, only lead on,” he said. “And truly,” said I, “it appears to be an inaccessible place, lying in deep shadows.”
“It certainly is a dark covert, not easy to beat up.”

§ 432d  “But all the same on we must go.”
“Yes, on.” And I caught view and gave a hulloa and said, “Glaucon, I think we have found its trail and I don't believe it will get away from us.”
“I am glad to hear that,” said he. “Truly,” said I, “we were slackers indeed.”
“How so?”
“Why, all the time, bless your heart, the thing apparently was tumbling about our feet from the start and yet we couldn't see it, but were most ludicrous, like

§ 432e  people who sometimes hunt for what they hold in their hands. So we did not turn our eyes upon it, but looked off into the distance, which perhaps was the reason it escaped us.”
“What do you mean?” he said. “This,” I replied, “that it seems to me that though we were speaking of it and hearing about it all the time we did not understand ourselves or realize that we were speaking of it in a sense.”
“That is a tedious prologue,” he said, “for an eager listener.”

§ 433a  “Listen then,” said I, “and learn if there is anything in what I say. For what we laid down in the beginning as a universal requirement when we were founding our city, this I think, or some form of this, is justice. And what we did lay down, and often said, you recall, was that each one man must perform one social service in the state for which his nature is best adapted.”
“Yes, we said that.”
“And again that to do one's own business and not to be a busybody is justice,

§ 433b  is a saying that we have heard from many and have often repeated ourselves.”
“We have.”
“This, then,” I said, “my friend, if taken in a certain sense appears to be justice, this principle of doing one's own business. Do you know whence I infer this?”
“No, but tell me,” he said. “I think that this is the remaining virtue in the state after our consideration of soberness, courage, and intelligence, a quality which made it possible for them all to grow up in the body politic and which when they have sprung up preserves them as long as it is present. And I hardly need to remind you that

§ 433c  we said that justice would be the residue after we had found the other three.”
“That is an unavoidable conclusion,” he said. “But moreover,” said I, “if we were required to decide what it is whose indwelling presence will contribute most to making our city good, it would be a difficult decision whether it was the unanimity of rulers and ruled or the conservation in the minds of the soldiers of the convictions produced by law as to what things are or are not to be feared, or the watchful intelligence

§ 433d  that resides in the guardians, or whether this is the chief cause of its goodness, the principle embodied in child, woman, slave, free, artisan, ruler, and ruled, that each performed his one task as one man and was not a versatile busybody.”
“Hard to decide indeed,” he said. “A thing, then, that in its contribution to the excellence of a state vies with and rivals its wisdom, its soberness, its bravery, is this principle of everyone in it doing his own task.”
“It is indeed,” he said. “And is not justice the name you would have to give to the principle that rivals these as conducing to the virtue of state?”

§ 433e  “By all means.”
“Consider it in this wise too if so you will be convinced. Will you not assign the conduct of lawsuits in your state to the rulers?”
“Of course.”
“Will not this be the chief aim of their decisions, that no one shall have what belongs to others or be deprived of his own? Nothing else but this.”
“On the assumption that this is just?”
“Yes.”
“From this point of view too, then, the having and doing

§ 434a  of one's own and what belongs to oneself would admittedly be justice.”
“That is so.”
“Consider now whether you agree with me. A carpenter undertaking to do the work of a cobbler or a cobbler of a carpenter or their interchange of one another's tools or honors or even the attempt of the same man to do both — the confounding of all other functions would not, think you, greatly injure a state, would it?”
“Not much,” he said. “But when I fancy one who is by nature an artisan or some kind of money-maker

§ 434b  tempted and incited by wealth or command of votes or bodily strength or some similar advantage tries to enter into the class of the soldiers or one of the soldiers into the class of counsellors and guardians, for which he is not fitted, and these interchange their tools and their honors or when the same man undertakes all these functions at once, then, I take it, you too believe that this kind of substitution and meddlesomeness is the ruin of a state.”
“By all means.”
“The interference with one another's business, then, of three existent classes and the substitution of the one for the other

§ 434c  is the greatest injury to a state and would most rightly be designated as the thing which chiefly works it harm.”
“Precisely so.”
“And the thing that works the greatest harm to one's own state, will you not pronounce to be injustice?”
“Of course.”
“This, then, is injustice.”
“Again, let us put it in this way. The proper functioning of the money-making class, the helpers and the guardians, each doing its own work in the state, being the reverse of that just described, would be justice and would render the city just.”

§ 434d  “I think the case is thus and no otherwise,” said he. “Let us not yet affirm it quite fixedly,” I said, “but if this form when applied to the individual man, accepted there also as a definition of justice, we will then concede the point — for what else will there be to say? But if not, then we will look for something else. But now let us work out the inquiry in which we supposed that, if we found some larger thing that contained justice and viewed it there, we should more easily discover its nature in the individual man.

§ 434e  And we agreed that this larger thing is the city, and so we constructed the best city in our power, well knowing that in the good city it would of course be found. What, then, we thought we saw there we must refer back to the individual and, if it is confirmed, all will be well. But if something different manifests itself in the individual, we will return again

§ 435a  to the state and test it there and it may be that, by examining them side by side and rubbing them against one another, as it were from the fire-sticks we may cause the spark of justice to flash forth, and when it is thus revealed confirm it in our own minds.”
“Well,” he said, “that seems a sound method and that is what we must do.”
“Then,” said I, “if you call a thing by the same name whether it is big or little, is it unlike in the way in which it is called the same or like?”
“Like,” he said. “Then a just man too

§ 435b  will not differ at all from a just city in respect of the very form of justice, but will be like it.”
“Yes, like.”
“But now the city was thought to be just because three natural kinds existing in it performed each its own function, and again it was sober, brave, and wise because of certain other affections and habits of these three kinds.”
“True,” he said. “Then, my friend, we shall thus expect the individual also to have these same forms

§ 435c  in his soul, and by reason of identical affections of these with those in the city to receive properly the same appellations.”
“Inevitable,” he said. “Goodness gracious,” said I, “here is another trifling inquiry into which we have plunged, the question whether the soul really contains these three forms in itself or not.”
“It does not seem to me at all trifling,” he said, “for perhaps, Socrates, the saying is true that 'fine things are difficult.'”
“Apparently,” said I;

§ 435d  “and let me tell you, Glaucon, that in my opinion we shall never in the world apprehend this matter from such methods as we are now employing in discussion. For there is another longer and harder way that conducts to this. Yet we may perhaps discuss it on the level of previous statements and inquiries.”
“May we acquiesce in that?” he said. “I for my part should be quite satisfied with that for the present.”
“And I surely should be more than satisfied,” I replied. “Don't you weary then,” he said, “but go on with the inquiry.”
“Is it not, then,”

§ 435e  said I, “impossible for us to avoid admitting this much, that the same forms and qualities are to be found in each one of us that are in the state? They could not get there from any other source. It would be absurd to suppose that the element of high spirit was not derived in states from the private citizens who are reputed to have this quality as the populations of the Thracian and Scythian lands and generally of northern regions; or the quality of love of knowledge, which would chiefly be attributed to the region where we dwell,

§ 436a  or the love of money which we might say is not least likely to be found in Phoenicians and the population of Egypt.”
“One certainly might,” he replied. “This is the fact then,” said I, “and there is no difficulty in recognizing it.”
“Certainly not.”
“But the matter begins to be difficult when you ask whether we do all these things with the same thing or whether there are three things and we do one thing with one and one with another — learn with one part of ourselves, feel anger with another, and with yet a third desire the pleasures of nutrition

§ 436b  and generation and their kind, or whether it is with the entire soul that we function in each case when we once begin. That is what is really hard to determine properly.”
“I think so too,” he said. “Let us then attempt to define the boundary and decide whether they are identical with one another in this way.”
“How?”
“It is obvious that the same thing will never do or suffer opposites in the same respect in relation to the same thing and at the same time. So that if ever we find these contradictions in the functions of the mind

§ 436c  we shall know that it was not the same thing functioning but a plurality.”
“Very well.”
“Consider, then, what I am saying.”
“Say on,” he replied. “Is it possible for the same thing at the same time in the same respect to be at rest and in motion?”
“By no means.”
“Let us have our understanding still more precise, lest as we proceed we become involved in dispute. If anyone should say of a man standing still but moving his hands and head that the same man is at the same time at rest and in motion we should not, I take it, regard that as the right way of expressing it, but rather that a part of him is at rest and a part in motion. Is not that so?”

§ 436d  “It is.”
“Then if the disputant should carry the jest still further with the subtlety that tops at any rate stand still as a whole at the same time that they are in motion when with the peg fixed in one point they revolve, and that the same is true of any other case of circular motion about the same spot — we should reject the statement on the ground that the repose and the movement in such cases were not in relation to the same parts of the objects, but we would say

§ 436e  that there was a straight line and a circumference in them and that in respect of the straight line they are standing still since they do not incline to either side, but in respect of the circumference they move in a circle; but that when as they revolve they incline the perpendicular to right or left or forward or back, then they are in no wise at rest.”
“And that would be right,” he said. “No such remarks then will disconcert us or any whit the more make us believe that it is ever possible for the same thing at the same time in the same respect and the same relation to suffer, be, or do opposites.”

§ 437a  “They will not me, I am sure,” said he. “All the same, said I, “that we may not be forced to examine at tedious length the entire list of such contentions and convince ourselves that they are false, let us proceed on the hypothesis that this is so, with the understanding that, if it ever appear otherwise, everything that results from the assumption shall be invalidated.”
“That is what we must do,” he said.

§ 437b  “Will you not then,” said I, “set down as opposed to one another assent and dissent, and the endeavor after a thing to the rejection of it, and embracing to repelling — do not these and all things like these belong to the class of opposite actions or passions; it will make no difference which?”
“None,” said he, “but they are opposites.”
“What then,” said I, “of thirst and hunger and the appetites generally, and again consenting and willing, would you not put them all somewhere in the classes

§ 437c  just described? Will you not say, for example, that the soul of one who desires either strives for that which he desires or draws towards its embrace what it wishes to accrue to it; or again, in so far as it wills that anything be presented to it, nods assent to itself thereon as if someone put the question, striving towards its attainment?”
“I would say so,” he said. “But what of not-willing and not consenting nor yet desiring, shall we not put these under the soul's rejection and repulsion from itself and

§ 437d  generally into the opposite class from all the former?”
“Of course.”
“This being so, shall we say that the desires constitute a class and that the most conspicuous members of that class are what we call thirst and hunger?”
“We shall,” said he. “Is not the one desire of drink, the other of food?”
“Yes.”
“Then in so far as it is thirst, would it be of anything more than that of which we say it is a desire in the soul? I mean is thirst thirst for hot drink or cold or much or little or in a word for a draught of any particular quality, or is it the fact that if heat

§ 437e  is attached to the thirst it would further render the desire — a desire of cold, and if cold of hot? But if owing to the presence of muchness the thirst is much it would render it a thirst for much and if little for little. But mere thirst will never be desire of anything else than that of which it is its nature to be, mere drink, and so hunger of food.”
“That is so,” he said; “each desire in itself is of that thing only of which it is its nature to be. The epithets belong to the quality — such or such.”

§ 438a  “Let no one then,” said I, “disconcert us when off our guard with the objection that everybody desires not drink but good drink and not food but good food, because (the argument will run) all men desire good, and so, if thirst is desire, it would be of good drink or of good whatsoever it is; and so similarly of other desires.”
“Why,” he said, “there perhaps would seem to be something in that objection.”
“But I need hardly remind you,” said I,

§ 438b  “that of relative terms those that are somehow qualified are related to a qualified correlate, those that are severally just themselves to a correlate that is just itself.”
“I don't understand,” he said. “Don't you understand,” said I, “that the greater is such as to be greater than something?”
“Certainly.”
“Is it not than the less?”
“Yes.”
“But the much greater than the much less. Is that not so?”
“Yes.”
“And may we add the one time greater than the one time less and that which will be greater than that which will be less?”
“Surely.”

§ 438c  “And similarly of the more towards the fewer, and the double towards the half and of all like cases, and again of the heavier towards the lighter, the swifter towards the slower, and yet again of the hot towards the cold and all cases of that kind, does not the same hold?”
“By all means.”
“But what of the sciences? Is not the way of it the same? Science which is just that, is of knowledge which is just that, or is of whatsoever we must assume the correlate of science to be. But a particular science of a particular kind is of some particular thing of a particular kind.

§ 438d  I mean something like this: As there was a science of making a house it differed from other sciences so as to be named architecture.”
“Certainly.”
“Was not this by reason of its being of a certain kind such as no other of all the rest?”
“Yes.”
“And was it not because it was of something of a certain kind that it itself became a certain kind of science? And similarly of the other arts and sciences?”
“That is so.
“This then,” said I, “if haply you now understand, is what you must say I then meant, by the statement that of all things that are such as to be of something those that are just themselves only are of things just themselves only,

§ 438e  but things of a certain kind are of things of a kind. And I don't at all mean that they are of the same kind as the things of which they are, so that we are to suppose that the science of health and disease is a healthy and diseased science and that of evil and good, evil and good. I only mean that as science became the science not of just the thing of which science is but of some particular kind of thing, namely, of health and disease, the result was that it itself became some kind of science and this caused it to be no longer called simply science but with the addition of the particular kind, medical science.”
“I understand,” he said, “and agree that it is so.”
“To return to thirst, then,” said I,

§ 439a  “will you not class it with the things that are of something and say that it is what it is in relation to something — and it is, I presume, thirst?”
“I will,” said he, “ — namely of drink.”
“Then if the drink is of a certain kind, so is the thirst, but thirst that is just thirst is neither of much nor little nor good nor bad, nor in a word of any kind, but just thirst is naturally of just drink only.”
“By all means.”
“The soul of the thirsty then, in so far as it thirsts, wishes nothing else than to drink, and

§ 439b  yearns for this and its impulse is towards this.”
“Obviously.”
“Then if anything draws it back when thirsty it must be something different in it from that which thirsts and drives it like a beast to drink. For it cannot be, we say, that the same thing with the same part of itself at the same time acts in opposite ways about the same thing.”
“We must admit that it does not.”
“So I fancy it is not well said of the archer that his hands at the same time thrust away the bow and draw it nigh, but we should rather say that there is one hand that puts it away and another that draws it to.”

§ 439c  “By all means,” he said. “Are we to say, then, that some men sometimes though thirsty refuse to drink?”
“We are indeed,” he said, “many and often.”
“What then,” said I, “should one affirm about them?”
“Is it not that there is something in the soul that bids them drink and a something that forbids, a different something that masters that which bids?”
“I think so.”
“And is it not the fact that that which inhibits such actions arises when it arises from the calculations of reason,

§ 439d  but the impulses which draw and drag come through affections and diseases?”
“Apparently.”
“Not unreasonably,” said I, “shall we claim that they are two and different from one another, naming that in the soul whereby it reckons and reasons the rational and that with which it loves, hungers, thirsts, and feels the flutter and titillation of other desires, the irrational and appetitive — companion of various repletions and pleasures.”
“It would not be unreasonable but quite natural,” he said, “for us to think this.”

§ 439e  “These two forms, then, let us assume to have been marked off as actually existing in the soul. But now the Thumos or principle of high spirit, that with which we feel anger, is it a third, or would it be identical in nature with one of these?”
“Perhaps,” he said, “with one of these, the appetitive.”
“But,” I said, “I once heard a story which I believe, that Leontius the son of Aglaion, on his way up from the Peiraeus under the outer side of the northern wall, becoming aware of dead bodies that lay at the place of public execution at the same time felt a desire to see them and a repugnance and aversion, and that for a time

§ 440a  he resisted and veiled his head, but overpowered in despite of all by his desire, with wide staring eyes he rushed up to the corpses and cried, ‘There, ye wretches, take your fill of the fine spectacle!'”
“I too,” he said, “have heard the story.”
“Yet, surely, this anecdote,” I said, “signifies that the principle of anger sometimes fights against desires as an alien thing against an alien.”
“Yes, it does,” he said.
“And do we not,” said I, “on many other occasions observe when his desires constrain a man contrary to his reason

§ 440b  that he reviles himself and is angry with that within which masters him and that as it were in a faction of two parties the high spirit of such a man becomes the ally of his reason? But its making common cause with the desires against the reason when reason whispers low‘Thou must not’ — that, I think, is a kind of thing you would not affirm ever to have perceived in yourself, nor, I fancy, in anybody else either.”

§ 440c  “No, by heaven,” he said. “Again, when a man thinks himself to be in the wrong, is it not true that the nobler he is the less is he capable of anger though suffering hunger and cold and whatsoever else at the hands of him whom he believes to be acting justly therein, and as I say his spirit refuses to be aroused against such a one?”
“True,” he said. “But what when a man believes himself to be wronged, does not his spirit in that case seethe and grow fierce (and also because of his suffering hunger,

§ 440d  cold and the like) and make itself the ally of what he judges just, and in noble souls it endures and wins the victory and will not let go until either it achieves its purpose, or death ends all, or, as a dog is called back by a shepherd, it is called back by the reason within and calmed.”
“Your similitude is perfect,” he said, “and it confirms our former statements that the helpers are as it were dogs subject to the rulers who are as it were the shepherds of the city.”
“You apprehend my meaning excellently,” said I. “But do you also take note of this?”

§ 440e  “Of what?”
“That what we now think about the spirited element is just the opposite of our recent surmise. For then we supposed it to be a part of the appetitive, but now, far from that, we say that, in the factions of the soul, it much rather marshals itself on the side of the reason.”
“By all means,” he said. “Is it then distinct from this too, or is it a form of the rational, so that there are not three but two kinds in the soul, the rational and the appetitive, or just as in the city there were

§ 441a  three existing kinds that composed its structure, the moneymakers, the helpers, the counsellors, so also in the soul there exists a third kind, this principle of high spirit, which is the helper of reason by nature unless it is corrupted by evil nurture?”
“We have to assume it as a third,” he said. “Yes,” said I, “provided it shall have been shown to be something different from the rational, as it has been shown to be other than the appetitive.”
“That is not hard to be shown,” he said; “for that much one can see in children, that they are from their very birth chock-full of rage and high spirit, but as for reason,

§ 441b  some of them, to my thinking, never participate in it, and the majority quite late.”
“Yes, by heaven, excellently said,” I replied; “and further, one could see in animals that what you say is true. And to these instances we may add the testimony of Homer quoted above: “He smote his breast and chided thus his heart.” (Hom. Od. 20.17) For there Homer has clearly represented that in us

§ 441c  which has reflected about the better and the worse as rebuking that which feels unreasoning anger as if it were a distinct and different thing.”
“You are entirely right,” he said.
“Through these waters, then,” said I, “we have with difficulty made our way and we are fairly agreed that the same kinds equal in number are to be found in the state and in the soul of each one of us.”
“That is so.”
“Then does not the necessity of our former postulate immediately follow, that as and whereby the state was wise so and thereby is the individual wise?”
“Surely.”
“And so whereby and as

§ 441d  the individual is brave, thereby and so is the state brave, and that both should have all the other constituents of virtue in the same way?”
“Necessarily.”
“Just too, then, Glaucon, I presume we shall say a man is in the same way in which a city was just.”
“That too is quite inevitable.”
“But we surely cannot have forgotten this, that the state was just by reason of each of the three classes found in it fulfilling its own function.”
“I don't think we have forgotten,” he said. “We must remember, then, that each of us also in whom the several parts within him

§ 441e  perform each their own task — he will be a just man and one who minds his own affair.”
“We must indeed remember,” he said. “Does it not belong to the rational part to rule, being wise and exercising forethought in behalf of the entire soul, and to the principle of high spirit to be subject to this and its ally?”
“Assuredly.”
“Then is it not, as we said, the blending of music and gymnastics that will render them concordant, intensifying

§ 442a  and fostering the one with fair words and teachings and relaxing and soothing and making gentle the other by harmony and rhythm?”
“Quite so,” said he. “And these two thus reared and having learned and been educated to do their own work in the true sense of the phrase, will preside over the appetitive part which is the mass of the soul in each of us and the most insatiate by nature of wealth. They will keep watch upon it, lest, by being filled and infected with the so-called pleasures associated with the body and so waxing big and strong, it may not keep to its own work

§ 442b  but may undertake to enslave and rule over the classes which it is not fitting that it should, and so overturn the entire life of all.”
“By all means,” he said. “Would not these two, then, best keep guard against enemies from without also in behalf of the entire soul and body, the one taking counsel, the other giving battle, attending upon the ruler, and by its courage executing the ruler's designs?”
“That is so.”
“Brave, too, then, I take it, we call

§ 442c  each individual by virtue of this part in him, when, namely, his high spirit preserves in the midst of pains and pleasures the rule handed down by the reason as to what is or is not to be feared.”
“Right,” he said. “But wise by that small part that ruled in him and handed down these commands, by its possession in turn within it of the knowledge of what is beneficial for each and for the whole, the community composed of the three.”
“By all means.”
“And again, was he not sober

§ 442d  by reason of the friendship and concord of these same parts, when, namely, the ruling principle and its two subjects are at one in the belief that the reason ought to rule, and do not raise faction against it?”
“The virtue of soberness certainly,” said he, “is nothing else than this, whether in a city or an individual.”
“But surely, now, a man is just by that which and in the way we have so often described.”
“That is altogether necessary.”
“Well then,” said I, “has our idea of justice in any way lost the edge of its contour so as to look like anything else than precisely what it showed itself to be in the state?”
“I think not,” he said.

§ 442e  “We might,” I said, “completely confirm your reply and our own conviction thus, if anything in our minds still disputes our definition — by applying commonplace and vulgar tests to it.”
“What are these?”
“For example, if an answer were demanded to the question concerning that city and the man whose birth and breeding was in harmony with it, whether we believe that such a man, entrusted with a deposit of gold or silver, would withhold it and embezzle it, who do you suppose would think that he would be more likely so to act than men of a different kind?”

§ 443a  “No one would,” he said. “And would not he be far removed from sacrilege and theft and betrayal of comrades in private life or of the state in public?”
“He would.”
“And, moreover, he would not be in any way faithless either in the keeping of his oaths or in other agreements.”
“How could he?”
“Adultery, surely, and neglect of parents and of the due service of the gods would pertain to anyone rather than to such a man.”
“To anyone indeed,”

§ 443b  he said. “And is not the cause of this to be found in the fact that each of the principles within him does its own work in the matter of ruling and being ruled?”
“Yes, that and nothing else.”
“Do you still, then, look for justice to be anything else than this potency which provides men and cities of this sort?”
“No, by heaven,” he said, “I do not.”
“Finished, then, is our dream and perfected — the surmise we spoke of, that, by some Providence, at the very beginning of our foundation of the state,

§ 443c  we chanced to hit upon the original principle and a sort of type of justice.”
“Most assuredly.”
“It really was, it seems, Glaucon, which is why it helps, a sort of adumbration of justice, this principle that it is right for the cobbler by nature to cobble and occupy himself with nothing else, and the carpenter to practice carpentry, and similarly all others. But the truth of the matter was, as it seems,

§ 443d  that justice is indeed something of this kind, yet not in regard to the doing of one's own business externally, but with regard to that which is within and in the true sense concerns one's self, and the things of one's self — it means that a man must not suffer the principles in his soul to do each the work of some other and interfere and meddle with one another, but that he should dispose well of what in the true sense of the word is properly his own, and having first attained to self-mastery and beautiful order within himself, and having harmonized these three principles, the notes or intervals of three terms quite literally the lowest, the highest, and the mean,

§ 443e  and all others there may be between them, and having linked and bound all three together and made of himself a unit, one man instead of many, self-controlled and in unison, he should then and then only turn to practice if he find aught to do either in the getting of wealth or the tendance of the body or it may be in political action or private business, in all such doings believing and naming the just and honorable action to be that which preserves and helps to produce this condition of soul, and wisdom the science

§ 444a  that presides over such conduct; and believing and naming the unjust action to be that which ever tends to overthrow this spiritual constitution, and brutish ignorance, to be the opinion that in turn presides over this.”
“What you say is entirely true, Socrates.”
“Well,” said I, “if we should affirm that we had found the just man and state and what justice really is in them, I think we should not be much mistaken.”
“No indeed, we should not,” he said. “Shall we affirm it, then?”
“Let us so affirm.”
“So be it, then,” said I; “next after this, I take it, we must consider injustice.”
“Obviously.”

§ 444b  “Must not this be a kind of civil war of these three principles, their meddlesomeness and interference with one another's functions, and the revolt of one part against the whole of the soul that it may hold therein a rule which does not belong to it, since its nature is such that it befits it to serve as a slave to the ruling principle? Something of this sort, I fancy, is what we shall say, and that the confusion of these principles and their straying from their proper course is injustice and licentiousness and cowardice and brutish ignorance and, in general, all turpitude.”
“Precisely this,”

§ 444c  he replied. “Then,” said I, “to act unjustly and be unjust and in turn to act justly the meaning of all these terms becomes at once plain and clear, since injustice and justice are so.”
“How so?”
“Because,” said I, “these are in the soul what the healthful and the diseaseful are in the body; there is no difference.”
“In what respect?” he said. “Healthful things surely engender health and diseaseful disease.”
“Yes.”
“Then does not doing just acts engender justice and unjust injustice?”

§ 444d  “Of necessity.”
“But to produce health is to establish the elements in a body in the natural relation of dominating and being dominated by one another, while to cause disease is to bring it about that one rules or is ruled by the other contrary to nature.”
“Yes, that is so.”
“And is it not likewise the production of justice in the soul to establish its principles in the natural relation of controlling and being controlled by one another, while injustice is to cause the one to rule or be ruled by the other contrary to nature?”
“Exactly so,” he said. “Virtue, then, as it seems, would be a kind of health

§ 444e  and beauty and good condition of the soul, and vice would be disease, ugliness, and weakness.”
“It is so.”
“Then is it not also true that beautiful and honorable pursuits tend to the winning of virtue and the ugly to vice?”
“Of necessity.”
“And now at last, it seems, it remains for us to consider whether it is profitable to do justice

§ 445a  and practice honorable pursuits and be just, whether one is known to be such or not, or whether injustice profits, and to be unjust, if only a man escape punishment and is not bettered by chastisement.”
“Nay, Socrates,” he said, “I think that from this point on our inquiry becomes an absurdity — if, while life is admittedly intolerable with a ruined constitution of body even though accompanied by all the food and drink and wealth and power in the world, we are yet to be asked to suppose that, when the very nature and constitution of that whereby we live is disordered

§ 445b  and corrupted, life is going to be worth living, if a man can only do as he pleases, and pleases to do anything save that which will rid him of evil and injustice and make him possessed of justice and virtue — now that the two have been shown to be as we have described them.”
“Yes, it is absurd,” said I; “but nevertheless, now that we have won to this height, we must not grow weary in endeavoring to discover with the utmost possible clearness that these things are so.”
“That is the last thing in the world we must do,” he said.

§ 445c  “Come up here then,” said I, “that you may see how many are the kinds of evil, I mean those that it is worth while to observe and distinguish.”
“I am with you,” he said; “only do you say on.”
“And truly,” said I, “now that we have come to this height of argument I seem to see as from a point of outlook that there is one form of excellence, and that the forms of evil are infinite, yet that there are some four among them that it is worth while to take note of.”
“What do you mean?” he said. “As many as are the varieties of political constitutions that constitute specific types, so many, it seems likely, are the characters of soul.”

§ 445d  “How many, pray?”
“There are five kinds of constitutions,” said I, “and five kinds of soul.”
“Tell me what they are,” he said. “I tell you,” said I, “that one way of government would be the constitution that we have just expounded, but the names that might be applied to it are two. If one man of surpassing merit rose among the rulers, it would be denominated royalty; if more than one, aristocracy.”
“True,” he said. “Well, then,” I said, “this is one of the forms I have in mind.

§ 445e  For neither would a number of such men, nor one if he arose among them, alter to any extent worth mentioning the laws of our city — if he preserved the breeding and the education that we have described.”
“It is not likely,” he said.

§ 449a  BOOK 5
SOCRATES: “To such a city, then, or constitution I apply the terms good and right — and to the corresponding kind of man; but the others I describe as bad and mistaken, if this one is right, in respect both to the administration of states and to the formation of the character of the individual soul, they falling under four forms of badness.”
“What are these,” he said. And I was going on to enumerate them in what seemed to me the order of their evolution from one another,

§ 449b  when Polemarchus — he sat at some little distance from Adeimantus — stretched forth his hand, and, taking hold of his garment from above by the shoulder, drew the other toward him and, leaning forward himself, spoke a few words in his ear, of which we overheard nothing else save only this, “Shall we let him off, then,” he said, “or what shall we do?”
“By no means,” said Adeimantus, now raising his voice. “What, pray,”9 said I, “is it that you are not letting off?”

§ 449c  “You,” said he. “And for what reason, pray?” said I. “We think you are a slacker,” he said, and are trying to cheat us out of a whole division, and that not the least, of the argument to avoid the trouble of expounding it, and expect to ‘get away with it’ by observing thus lightly that, of course, in respect to women and children it is obvious to everybody that the possessions of friends will be in common.”
“Well, isn't that right, Adeimantus?” I said. “Yes,” said he, “but this word ‘right,’ like other things, requires defining as to the way and manner of such a community. There might be many ways. Don't, then, pass over the one

§ 449d  that you have in mind. For we have long been lying in wait for you, expecting that you would say something both of the procreation of children and their bringing up, and would explain the whole matter of the community of women and children of which you speak. We think that the right or wrong management of this makes a great difference, all the difference in the world, in the constitution of a state; so now, since you are beginning on another constitution before sufficiently defining this, we are firmly resolved,

§ 450a  as you overheard, not to let you go till you have expounded all this as fully as you did the rest.”
“Set me down, too,” said Glaucon, “as voting this ticket.”
“Surely,” said Thrasymachus, “you may consider it a joint resolution of us all, Socrates.”
“What a thing you have done,” said I, “in thus challenging me! What a huge debate you have started afresh, as it were, about this polity, in the supposed completion of which I was rejoicing, being only too glad to have it accepted

§ 450b  as I then set it forth! You don't realize what a swarm of arguments you are stirring up by this demand, which I foresaw and evaded to save us no end of trouble.”
“Well,” said Thrasymachus,23“do you suppose this company has come here to prospect for gold and not to listen to discussions?”
“Yes,” I said, “in measure.”
“Nay, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “the measure of listening to such discussions is the whole of life for reasonable men. So don't consider us, and do not you yourself grow weary

§ 450c  in explaining to us what we ask or, your views as to how this communion of wives and children among our guardians will be managed, and also about the rearing of the children while still young in the interval between birth and formal schooling which is thought to be the most difficult part of education. Try, then, to tell us what must be the manner of it.”
“It is not an easy thing to expound, my dear fellow,” said I, “for even more than the provisions that precede it, it raises many doubts. For one might doubt whether what is proposed is possible and, even conceding the possibility, one might still be sceptical whether it is best.

§ 450d  For which reason one as it were, shrinks from touching on the matter lest the theory be regarded as nothing but a ‘wish-thought,’29 my dear friend.”
“Do not shrink,” he said, “for your hearers will not be inconsiderate nor distrustful nor hostile.” And I said, “My good fellow, is that remark intended to encourage me?”
“It is,” he said. “Well, then,” said I, “it has just the contrary effect. For, if I were confident that I was speaking with knowledge, it would be an excellent encouragement.

§ 450e  For there is both safety and security in speaking the truth with knowledge about our greatest and dearest concerns to those who are both wise and dear. But to speak when one doubts himself and is seeking while he talks is

§ 451a  a fearful and slippery venture. The fear is not of being laughed at, for that is childish, but, lest, missing the truth, I fall down and drag my friends with me in matters where it most imports not to stumble. So I salute Nemesis, Glaucon, in what I am about to say. For, indeed, I believe that involuntary homicide is a lesser fault than to mislead opinion about the honorable, the good, and the just. This is a risk that it is better to run with enemies

§ 451b  than with friends, so that your encouragement is none.” And Glaucon, with a laugh, said, “Nay, Socrates, if any false note in the argument does us any harm, we release you as in a homicide case, and warrant you pure of hand and no deceiver of us. So speak on with confidence.”
“Well,” said I, “he who is released in that case is counted pure as the law bids, and, presumably, if there, here too.”
“Speak on, then,” he said, “for all this objection.”
“We must return then,” said I, “and say now what perhaps ought to have been said in due sequence there.

§ 451c  But maybe this way is right, that after the completion of the male drama we should in turn go through with the female, especially since you are so urgent.”
“For men, then, born and bred as we described there is in my opinion no other right possession and use of children and women than that which accords with the start we gave them. Our endeavor, I believe, was to establish these men in our discourse as the guardians of a flock?”
“Yes.”

§ 451d  “Let us preserve the analogy, then, and assign them a generation and breeding answering to it, and see if it suits us or not.”
“In what way?” he said. “In this. Do we expect the females of watch-dogs to join in guarding what the males guard and to hunt with them and share all their pursuits or do we expect the females to stay indoors as being incapacitated by the bearing and the breeding of the whelps while the males toil and have all the care of the flock?”
“They have all things in common,”

§ 451e  he replied, “except that we treat the females as weaker and the males as stronger.”
“Is it possible, then,” said I, “to employ any creature for the same ends as another if you do not assign it the same nurture and education?”
“It is not possible.”
“If, then, we are to use the women for the same things as the men, we must also teach them the same things.”

§ 452a  “Yes.”
“Now music together with gymnastic was the training we gave the men.”
“Yes.”
“Then we must assign these two arts to the women also and the offices of war and employ them in the same way.”
“It would seem likely from what you say,” he replied. “Perhaps, then,” said I, “the contrast with present custom would make much in our proposals look ridiculous if our words are to be realized in fact.”
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “What then,” said I, “is the funniest thing you note in them? Is it not obviously the women exercising unclad in the palestra

§ 452b  together with the men, not only the young, but even the older, like old men in gymnasiums, when, though wrinkled and unpleasant to look at, they still persist in exercising?”
“Yes, on my word,” he replied, “it would seem ridiculous under present conditions.”
“Then,” said I, “since we have set out to speak our minds, we must not fear all the jibes with which the wits would greet so great a revolution, and the sort of things they would say about gymnastics

§ 452c  and culture, and most of all about the bearing of arms and the bestriding of horses.”
“You're right,” he said. “But since we have begun we must go forward to the rough part of our law, after begging these fellows not to mind their own business but to be serious, and reminding them that it is not long since the Greeks thought it disgraceful and ridiculous, as most of the barbarians do now, for men to be seen naked. And when the practice of athletics began, first with the Cretans

§ 452d  and then with the Lacedaemonians, it was open to the wits of that time to make fun of these practices, don't you think so?”
“I do.”
“But when, I take it, experience showed that it is better to strip than to veil all things of this sort, then the laughter of the eyes faded away before that which reason revealed to be best, and this made it plain that he talks idly who deems anything else ridiculous but evil, and who tries to raise a laugh by looking to any other pattern of absurdity than

§ 452e  that of folly and wrong or sets up any other standard of the beautiful as a mark for his seriousness than the good.”
“Most assuredly,” said he.
“Then is not the first thing that we have to agree upon with regard to these proposals whether they are possible or not? And we must throw open the debate to anyone who wishes either in jest or earnest to raise the question

§ 453a  whether female human nature is capable of sharing with the male all tasks or none at all, or some but not others, and under which of these heads this business of war falls. Would not this be that best beginning which would naturally and proverbially lead to the best end?”
“Far the best,” he said. “Shall we then conduct the debate with ourselves in behalf of those others so that the case of the other side may not be taken defenceless and go by default?”

§ 453b  “Nothing hinders,” he said. “Shall we say then in their behalf: ‘There is no need, Socrates and Glaucon, of others disputing against you, for you yourselves at the beginning of the foundation of your city agreed that each one ought to mind as his own business the one thing for which he was fitted by nature?’ ‘We did so agree, I think; certainly!' ‘Can it be denied then that there is by nature a great difference between men and women?’ ‘Surely there is.’ ‘Is it not fitting, then, that a different function should be appointed

§ 453c  for each corresponding to this difference of nature?’ ‘Certainly.’ ‘How, then, can you deny that you are mistaken and in contradiction with yourselves when you turn around and affirm that the men and the women ought to do the same thing, though their natures are so far apart?’ Can you surprise me with an answer to that question?”
“Not easily on this sudden challenge,” he replied: “but I will and do beg you to lend your voice to the plea in our behalf, whatever it may be.”
“These and many similar difficulties, Glaucon,” said I,

§ 453d  “I foresaw and feared, and so shrank from touching on the law concerning the getting and breeding of women and children.”
“It does not seem an easy thing, by heaven,” he said, “no, by heaven.”
“No, it is not,” said I; “but the fact is that whether one tumbles into a little diving-pool or plump into the great sea he swims all the same.”
“By all means.”
“Then we, too, must swim and try to escape out of the sea of argument in the hope that either some dolphin will take us on its back or some other desperate rescue.”

§ 453e  “So it seems,” he said. “Come then, consider,” said I, “if we can find a way out. We did agree that different natures should have differing pursuits and that the nature of men and women differ. And yet now we affirm that these differing natures should have the same pursuits. That is the indictment.”
“It is.”
“What a grand thing, Glaucon,” said I,

§ 454a  “is the power of the art of contradiction!”
“Why so?”
“Because,” said I, “many appear to me to fall into it even against their wills, and to suppose that they are not wrangling but arguing, owing to their inability to apply the proper divisions and distinctions to the subject under consideration. They pursue purely verbal oppositions, practising eristic, not dialectic on one another.”
“Yes, this does happen to many,” he said; “but does this observation apply to us too at present?”

§ 454b  “Absolutely,” said I; “at any rate I am afraid that we are unawares slipping into contentiousness.”
“In what way?”
“The principle that natures not the same ought not to share in the same pursuits we are following up most manfully and eristically in the literal and verbal sense but we did not delay to consider at all what particular kind of diversity and identity of nature we had in mind and with reference to what we were trying to define it when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same to the same.”
“No, we didn't consider that,” he said.

§ 454c  “Wherefore, by the same token,” I said, “we might ask ourselves whether the natures of bald and long-haired men are the same and not, rather, contrary. And, after agreeing that they were opposed, we might, if the bald cobbled, forbid the long-haired to do so, or vice versa.”
“That would be ridiculous,” he said. “Would it be so,” said I, “for any other reason than that we did not then posit likeness and difference of nature in any and every sense, but were paying heed solely to the kind of diversity

§ 454d  and homogeneity that was pertinent to the pursuits themselves?”
“We meant, for example, that a man and a woman who have a physician's mind have the same nature. Don't you think so?”
“I do.”
“But that a man physician and a man carpenter have different natures?”
“Certainly, I suppose.”
“Similarly, then,” said I, “if it appears that the male and the female sex have distinct qualifications for any arts or pursuits, we shall affirm that they ought to be assigned respectively to each. But if it appears that they differ only in just this respect that the female bears

§ 454e  and the male begets, we shall say that no proof has yet been produced that the woman differs from the man for our purposes, but we shall continue to think that our guardians and their wives ought to follow the same pursuits.”
“And rightly,” said he. “Then, is it not the next thing to bid our opponent tell us

§ 455a  precisely for what art or pursuit concerned with the conduct of a state the woman's nature differs from the man's?”
“That would be at any rate fair.”
“Perhaps, then, someone else, too, might say what you were saying a while ago, that it is not easy to find a satisfactory answer on a sudden, but that with time for reflection there is no difficulty.”
“He might say that.”
“Shall we, then, beg the raiser of such objections to follow us,

§ 455b  if we may perhaps prove able to make it plain to him that there is no pursuit connected with the administration of a state that is peculiar to woman?”
“By all means.”
“Come then, we shall say to him, answer our question. Was this the basis of your distinction between the man naturally gifted for anything and the one not so gifted — that the one learned easily, the other with difficulty; that the one with slight instruction could discover much for himself in the matter studied, but the other, after much instruction and drill, could not even remember what he had learned; and that the bodily faculties of the one adequately served his mind,

§ 455c  while, for the other, the body was a hindrance? Were there any other points than these by which you distinguish the well endowed man in every subject and the poorly endowed?”
“No one,” said he, “will be able to name any others.”
“Do you know, then, of anything practised by mankind in which the masculine sex does not surpass the female on all these points? Must we make a long story of it by alleging weaving and the watching of pancakes

§ 455d  and the boiling pot, whereon the sex plumes itself and wherein its defeat will expose it to most laughter?”
“You are right,” he said, “that the one sex is far surpassed by the other in everything, one may say. Many women, it is true, are better than many men in many things, but broadly speaking, it is as you say.”
“Then there is no pursuit of the administrators of a state that belongs to a woman because she is a woman or to a man because he is a man. But the natural capacities are distributed alike among both creatures, and women naturally share in all pursuits and men in all —

§ 455e  yet for all the woman is weaker than the man.”
“Assuredly.”
“Shall we, then, assign them all to men and nothing to women?”
“How could we?”
“We shall rather, I take it, say that one woman has the nature of a physician and another not, and one is by nature musical, and another unmusical?”
“Surely.”
“Can we, then, deny that one woman is naturally athletic

§ 456a  and warlike and another unwarlike and averse to gymnastics?”
“I think not.”
“And again, one a lover, another a hater, of wisdom? And one high-spirited, and the other lacking spirit?”
“That also is true.”
“Then it is likewise true that one woman has the qualities of a guardian and another not. Were not these the natural qualities of the men also whom we selected for guardians?”
“They were.”
“The women and the men, then, have the same nature in respect to the guardianship of the state, save in so far as the one is weaker, the other stronger.”
“Apparently.”

§ 456b  “Women of this kind, then, must be selected to cohabit with men of this kind and to serve with them as guardians since they are capable of it and akin by nature.”
“By all means.”
“And to the same natures must we not assign the same pursuits?”
“The same.”
“We come round, then, to our previous statement, and agree that it does not run counter to nature to assign music and gymnastics to the wives of the guardians.”

§ 456c  “By all means.”
“Our legislation, then, was not impracticable or utopian, since the law we proposed accorded with nature. Rather, the other way of doing things, prevalent today, proves, as it seems, unnatural.”
“Apparently.”
“The object of our inquiry was the possibility and the desirability of what we were proposing.”
“It was.”
“That it is possible has been admitted.”
“Yes.”
“The next point to be agreed upon is that it is the best way.”
“Obviously.”
“For the production of a guardian, then, education will not be one thing for our men and another for our women, especially since

§ 456d  the nature which we hand over to it is the same.”
“There will be no difference.”
“How are you minded, now, in this matter?”
“In what?”
“In the matter of supposing some men to be better and some worse, or do you think them all alike?”
“By no means.”
“In the city, then, that we are founding, which do you think will prove the better men, the guardians receiving the education which we have described or the cobblers educated by the art of cobbling?”
“An absurd question,” he said.

§ 456e  “I understand,” said I; “and are not these the best of all the citizens?”
“By far.”
“And will not these women be the best of all the women?”
“They, too, by far.”
“Is there anything better for a state than the generation in it of the best possible women and men?”
“There is not.”
“And this, music and gymnastics applied as we described will effect.”

§ 457a  “Surely.”
“Then the institution we proposed is not only possible but the best for the state.”
“That is so.”
“The women of the guardians, then, must strip, since they will be clothed with virtue as a garment, and must take their part with the men in war and the other duties of civic guardianship and have no other occupation. But in these very duties lighter tasks must be assigned to the women than to the men

§ 457b  because of their weakness as a class. But the man who ridicules unclad women, exercising because it is best that they should, ‘plucks the unripe fruit’ of laughter and does not know, it appears, the end of his laughter nor what he would be at. For the fairest thing that is said or ever will be said is this, that the helpful is fair and the harmful foul.”
“Assuredly.”
“In this matter, then, of the regulation of women, we may say that we have surmounted one of the waves of our paradox

§ 457c  and have not been quite swept away by it in ordaining that our guardians and female guardians must have all pursuits in common, but that in some sort the argument concurs with itself in the assurance that what it proposes is both possible and beneficial.”
“It is no slight wave that you are thus escaping.”
“You will not think it a great one,” I said, “when you have seen the one that follows.”
“Say on then and show me,” said he. “This,” said I, “and all that precedes has for its sequel, in my opinion, the following law.”
“What? “That these women shall all be common to all the men,

§ 457d  and that none shall cohabit with any privately; and that the children shall be common, and that no parent shall know its own offspring nor any child its parent.”
“This is a far bigger paradox than the other, and provokes more distrust as to its possibility and its utility.”
“I presume,” said I, “that there would be no debate about its utility, no denial that the community of women and children would be the greatest good, supposing it possible. But I take it that its possibility or the contrary would be the chief topic of contention.”

§ 457e  “Both,” he said, “would be right sharply debated.”
“You mean,” said I, “that I have to meet a coalition of arguments. But I expected to escape from one of them, and that if you agreed that the thing was beneficial, it would remain for me to speak only of its feasibility.”
“You have not escaped detection,” he said, “in your attempted flight, but you must render an account of both.”
“I must pay the penalty,” I said, “yet do me this much grace:

§ 458a  Permit me to take a holiday, just as men of lazy minds are wont to feast themselves on their own thoughts when they walk alone. Such persons, without waiting to discover how their desires may be realized, dismiss that topic to save themselves the labor of deliberating about possibilities and impossibilities, assume their wish fulfilled, and proceed to work out the details in imagination, and take pleasure in portraying what they will do when it is realized, thus making still more idle a mind that is idle without that. I too now succumb to this weakness

§ 458b  and desire to postpone and examine later the question of feasibility, but will at present assume that, and will, with your permission, inquire how the rulers will work out the details in practice, and try to show that nothing could be more beneficial to the state and its guardians than the effective operation of our plan. This is what I would try to consider first together with you, and thereafter the other topic, if you allow it.”
“I do allow it,” he said: “proceed with the inquiry.”
“I think, then,” said I, “that the rulers,

§ 458c  if they are to deserve that name, and their helpers likewise, will, the one, be willing to accept orders, and the other, to give them, in some things obeying our laws, and imitating them in others which we leave to their discretion.”
“Presumably.”
“You, then, the lawgiver,” I said, “have picked these men and similarly will select to give over to them women as nearly as possible of the same nature. And they, having houses and meals in common, and no private possessions of that kind,

§ 458d  will dwell together, and being commingled in gymnastics and in all their life and education, will be conducted by innate necessity to sexual union. Is not what I say a necessary consequence?”
“Not by the necessities of geometry,” he said, “but by those of love, which are perhaps keener and more potent than the other to persuade and constrain the multitude.”
“They are, indeed,” I said; “but next, Glaucon, disorder and promiscuity in these unions or

§ 458e  in anything else they do would be an unhallowed thing in a happy state and the rulers will not suffer it.”
“It would not be right,” he said. “Obviously, then, we must arrange marriages, sacramental so far as may be. And the most sacred marriages would be those that were most beneficial.”

§ 459a  “By all means.”
“How, then, would the greatest benefit result? Tell me this, Glaucon. I see that you have in your house hunting-dogs and a number of pedigree cocks. Have you ever considered something about their unions and procreations?”
“What?”89 he said. “In the first place,” I said, “among these themselves, although they are a select breed, do not some prove better than the rest?”
“They do.”
“Do you then breed from all indiscriminately, or are you careful to breed from the best?”

§ 459b  “From the best.”
“And, again, do you breed from the youngest or the oldest, or, so far as may be, from those in their prime?”
“From those in their prime.”
“And if they are not thus bred, you expect, do you not, that your birds and hounds will greatly degenerate?”
“I do,” he said. “And what of horses and other animals?” I said; “is it otherwise with them?”
“It would be strange if it were,” said he. “Gracious,” said I, “dear friend, how imperative, then, is our need of the highest skill in our rulers, if the principle holds also for mankind.”

§ 459c  “Well, it does,” he said, “but what of it?”
“This,” said I, “that they will have to employ many of those drugs of which we were speaking. We thought that an inferior physician sufficed for bodies that do not need drugs but yield to diet and regimen. But when it is necessary to prescribe drugs we know that a more enterprising and venturesome physician is required.”
“True; but what is the pertinency?”
“This,” said I: “it seems likely that our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception

§ 459d  for the benefit of their subjects. We said, I believe, that the use of that sort of thing was in the category of medicine.”
“And that was right,” he said. “In our marriages, then, and the procreation of children, it seems there will be no slight need of this kind of ‘right.'”
“How so?”
“It follows from our former admissions,” I said, “that the best men must cohabit with the best women in as many cases as possible and the worst with the worst in the fewest,

§ 459e  and that the offspring of the one must be reared and that of the other not, if the flock is to be as perfect as possible. And the way in which all this is brought to pass must be unknown to any but the rulers, if, again, the herd of guardians is to be as free as possible from dissension.”
“Most true,” he said. “We shall, then, have to ordain certain festivals and sacrifices, in which we shall bring together the brides and the bridegrooms, and our poets must compose hymns

§ 460a  suitable to the marriages that then take place. But the number of the marriages we will leave to the discretion of the rulers, that they may keep the number of the citizens as nearly as may be the same, taking into account wars and diseases and all such considerations, and that, so far as possible, our city may not grow too great or too small.”
“Right,” he said. “Certain ingenious lots, then, I suppose, must be devised so that the inferior man at each conjugation may blame chance and not the rulers.”
“Yes, indeed,” he said.

§ 460b  “And on the young men, surely, who excel in war and other pursuits we must bestow honors and prizes, and, in particular, the opportunity of more frequent intercourse with the women, which will at the same time be a plausible pretext for having them beget as many of the children as possible.”
“Right.”
“And the children thus born will be taken over by the officials appointed for this, men or women or both, since, I take it, the official posts too are common to women and men.

§ 460c  The offspring of the good, I suppose, they will take to the pen or créche, to certain nurses who live apart in a quarter of the city, but the offspring of the inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they will properly dispose of in secret, so that no one will know what has become of them.”
“That is the condition,” he said, “of preserving the purity of the guardians' breed.”
“They will also supervise the nursing of the children, conducting the mothers to the pen when their breasts are full, but employing every device

§ 460d  to prevent anyone from recognizing her own infant. And they will provide others who have milk if the mothers are insufficient. But they will take care that the mothers themselves shall not suckle too long, and the trouble of wakeful nights and similar burdens they will devolve upon the nurses, wet and dry.”
“You are making maternity a soft job for the women of the guardians.”
“It ought to be,” said I, “but let us pursue our design. We said that the offspring should come from parents in their prime.”

§ 460e  “True.”
“Do you agree that the period of the prime may be fairly estimated at twenty years for a woman and thirty for a man?”
“How do you reckon it?”98 he said. “The women,” I said, “beginning at the age of twenty, shall bear for the state to the age of forty, and the man shall beget for the state from the time he passes his prime in swiftness in running to the age of fifty-five.”

§ 461a  “That is,” he said, “the maturity and prime for both of body and mind.”
“Then, if anyone older or younger than the prescribed age meddles with procreation for the state, we shall say that his error is an impiety and an injustice, since he is begetting for the city a child whose birth, if it escapes discovery, will not be attended by the sacrifices and the prayers which the priests and priestesses and the entire city prefer at the ceremonial marriages, that ever better offspring may spring from good sires and from fathers helpful to the state

§ 461b  sons more helpful still. But this child will be born in darkness and conceived in foul incontinence.”
“Right,” he said. “And the same rule will apply,” I said, “if any of those still within the age of procreation goes in to a woman of that age with whom the ruler has not paired him. We shall say that he is imposing on the state a base-born, uncertified, and unhallowed child.”
“Most rightly,” he said. “But when, I take it, the men and the women have passed the age of lawful procreation, we shall leave the men free to form such relations

§ 461c  with whomsoever they please, except daughter and mother and their direct descendants and ascendants, and likewise the women, save with son and father, and so on, first admonishing them preferably not even to bring to light anything whatever thus conceived, but if they are unable to prevent a birth to dispose of it on the understanding that we cannot rear such an offspring.”
“All that sounds reasonable,” he said; “but how are they to distinguish one another's fathers and daughters,

§ 461d  and the other degrees of kin that you have just mentioned?”
“They won't,” said I, “except that a man will call all male offspring born in the tenth and in the seventh month after he became a bridegroom his sons, and all female, daughters, and they will call him father. And, similarly, he will call their offspring his grandchildren and they will call his group grandfathers and grandmothers. And all children born in the period in which their fathers and mothers were procreating will regard one another as brothers and sisters.

§ 461e  This will suffice for the prohibitions of intercourse of which we just now spoke. But the law will allow brothers and sisters to cohabit if the lot so falls out and the Delphic oracle approves.”
“Quite right,” said he.
“This, then, Glaucon, is the manner of the community of wives and children among the guardians. That it is consistent with the rest of our polity and by far the best way is the next point that we must get confirmed by the argument. Is not that so?”

§ 462a  “It is, indeed,” he said. “Is not the logical first step towards such an agreement to ask ourselves what we could name as the greatest good for the constitution of a state and the proper aim of a lawgiver in his legislation, and what would be the greatest evil, and then to consider whether the proposals we have just set forth fit into the footprints of the good and do not suit those of the evil?”
“By all means,” he said. “Do we know of any greater evil for a state than the thing that distracts it

§ 462b  and makes it many instead of one, or a greater good than that which binds it together and makes it one?”
“We do not.”
“Is not, then, the community of pleasure and pain the tie that binds, when, so far as may be, all the citizens rejoice and grieve alike at the same births and deaths?”
“By all means,” he said. “But the individualization of these feelings is a dissolvent, when some grieve exceedingly and others rejoice at the same happenings to the city and its inhabitants?”

§ 462c  “Of course.”
“And the chief cause of this is when the citizens do not utter in unison such words as ‘mine’ and ‘not mine,’ and similarly with regard to the word ‘alien’?”
“Precisely so.”
“That city, then, is best ordered in which the greatest number use the expression ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ of the same things in the same way.”
“Much the best.”
“And the city whose state is most like that of an individual man. For example, if the finger of one of us is wounded, the entire community of bodily connections stretching to the soul for ‘integration’108

§ 462d  with the dominant part is made aware, and all of it feels the pain as a whole, though it is a part that suffers, and that is how we come to say that the man has a pain in his finger. And for any other member of the man the same statement holds, alike for a part that labors in pain or is eased by pleasure.”
“The same,” he said, “and, to return to your question, the best governed state most nearly resembles such an organism.”
“That is the kind of a state,

§ 462e  then, I presume, that, when anyone of the citizens suffers aught of good or evil, will be most likely to speak of the part that suffers as its own and will share the pleasure or the pain as a whole.”
“Inevitably,” he said, “if it is well governed.”
“It is time,” I said, “to return to our city and observe whether it, rather than any other, embodies the qualities agreed upon in our argument.”
“We must,” he said. “Well, then,

§ 463a  there are to be found in other cities rulers and the people as in it, are there not?”
“There are.”
“Will not all these address one another as fellow-citizens?”
“Of course.”
“But in addition to citizens, what does the people in other states call its rulers.”
“In most cities, masters. In democratic cities, just this, rulers.”
“But what of the people in our city. In addition to citizens, what do they call their rulers?”

§ 463b  “Saviors and helpers,” he said. “And what term do these apply to the people?”
“Payers of their wage and supporters.”
“And how do the rulers in other states denominate the populace?”
“Slaves,” he said. “And how do the rulers describe one another?”
“Co-rulers,” he said. “And ours?”
“Co-guardians.”
“Can you tell me whether any of the rulers in other states would speak of some of their co-rulers as ‘belonging’ and others as outsiders?”
“Yes, many would.”
“And such a one thinks and speaks of the one that ‘belongs’ as his own, doesn't he, and of the outsider as not his own?”
“That is so.”
“But what of your guardians. Could any of them think or speak of his co-guardian as an outsider?”

§ 463c  “By no means,” he said; “for no matter whom he meets, he will feel that he is meeting a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, or the offspring or forebears of these.”
“Excellent,” said I; “but tell me this further,

§ 463d  will it be merely the names of this kinship that you have prescribed for them or must all their actions conform to the names in all customary observance toward fathers and in awe and care and obedience for parents, if they look for the favor of either gods or men, since any other behaviour would be neither just nor pious? Shall these be the unanimous oracular voices that they hear from all the people, or shall some other kind of teaching beset the ears of your children from their birth, both concerning what is due to those who are pointed out as their fathers and to their other kin?”

§ 463e  “These,” he said; “for it would be absurd for them merely to pronounce with their lips the names of kinship without the deeds.”
“Then, in this city more than in any other, when one citizen fares well or ill, men will pronounce in unison the word of which we spoke: ‘It is mine that does well; it is mine that does ill.'”
“That is most true,” he said.

§ 464a  “And did we not say that this conviction and way of speech brings with it a community in pleasures and pains?”
“And rightly, too.”
“Then these citizens, above all others, will have one and the same thing in common which they will name mine, and by virtue of this communion they will have their pleasures and pains in common.”
“Quite so.”
“And is not the cause of this, besides the general constitution of the state, the community of wives and children among the guardians?”
“It will certainly be the chief cause,” he said.

§ 464b  “But we further agreed that this unity is the greatest blessing for a state, and we compared a well governed state to the human body in its relation to the pleasure and pain of its parts.”
“And we were right in so agreeing.”
“Then it is the greatest blessing for a state of which the community of women and children among the helpers has been shown to be the cause.”
“Quite so,” he said. “And this is consistent with what we said before. For we said, I believe, that these helpers must not possess houses of their own or

§ 464c  land or any other property, but that they should receive from the other citizens for their support the wage of their guardianship and all spend it in common. That was the condition of their being true guardians.”
“Right,” he said. “Is it not true, then, as I am trying to say, that those former and these present prescriptions tend to make them still more truly guardians and prevent them from distracting the city by referring ‘mine’ not to the same but to different things, one man dragging off to his own house anything he is able to acquire apart from the rest,

§ 464d  and another doing the same to his own separate house, and having women and children apart, thus introducing into the state the pleasures and pains of individuals? They should all rather, we said, share one conviction about their own, tend to one goal, and so far as practicable have one experience of pleasure and pain.”
“By all means,” he said. “Then will not law-suits and accusations against one another vanish, one may say, from among them, because they have nothing in private possession but their bodies, but all else in common?

§ 464e  So that we can count on their being free from the dissensions that arise among men from the possession of property, children, and kin.”
“They will necessarily be quit of these,” he said. “And again, there could not rightly arise among them any law-suit for assault or bodily injury. For as between age-fellows we shall say that self-defence is honorable and just, thereby compelling them to keep their bodies in condition.”
“Right,” he said.

§ 465a  “And there will be the further advantage in such a law that an angry man, satisfying his anger in such wise, would be less likely to carry the quarrel to further extremes.”
“Assuredly.”
“As for an older man, he will always have the charge of ruling and chastising the younger.”
“Obviously.”
“Again, it is plain that the young man, except by command of the rulers, will probably not do violence to an elder or strike him, or, I take it, dishonor him in any other way. Two guardians sufficient to prevent that

§ 465b  there are, fear and awe, awe restraining him from laying hands on one who may be his parent, and fear in that the others will rush to the aid of the sufferer, some as sons, some as brothers, some as fathers.”
“That is the way it works out,” he said. “Then in all cases the laws will leave these men to dwell in peace together.”
“Great peace.”
“And if these are free from dissensions among themselves, there is no fear that the rest of the city will ever start faction against them or with one another.”
“No, there is not.”

§ 465c  “But I hesitate, so unseemly are they, even to mention the pettiest troubles of which they would be rid, the flatterings of the rich, the embarrassments and pains of the poor in the bringing-up of their children and the procuring of money for the necessities of life for their households, the borrowings, the repudiations, all the devices with which they acquire what they deposit with wives and servitors to husband, and all the indignities that they endure in such matters, which are obvious and ignoble and not deserving of mention.”

§ 465d  “Even a blind man can see these,” he said.
“From all these, then, they will be finally free, and they will live a happier life than that men count most happy, the life of the victors at Olympia.”
“How so?”
“The things for which those are felicitated are a small part of what is secured for these. Their victory is fairer and their public support more complete. For the prize of victory that they win is the salvation of the entire state, the fillet that binds their brows is the public support of themselves and their children —

§ 465e  they receive honor from the city while they live and when they die a worthy burial.”
“A fair guerdon, indeed,” he said. “Do you recall,” said I, “that in the preceding argument the objection of somebody or other rebuked us for not making our guardians happy,

§ 466a  since, though it was in their power to have everything of the citizens, they had nothing, and we, I believe, replied that this was a consideration to which we would return if occasion offered, but that at present we were making our guardians guardians and the city as a whole as happy as possible, and that we were not modelling our ideal of happiness with reference to any one class?”
“I do remember,” he said. “Well then, since now the life of our helpers has been shown to be fairer and better than that of the victors at Olympia,

§ 466b  need we compare it with the life of cobblers and other craftsmen and farmers?”
“I think not,” he said. “But further, we may fairly repeat what I was saying then also, that if the guardian shall strive for a kind of happiness that will unmake him as a guardian and shall not be content with the way of life that is moderate and secure and, as we affirm, the best, but if some senseless and childish opinion about happiness shall beset him and impel him to use his power to appropriate

§ 466c  everything in the city for himself, then he will find out that Hesiod was indeed wise, who said that “‘the half was in some sort more than the whole.’”Hes. WD 40 “If he accepts my counsel,” he said, “he will abide in this way of life.”
“You accept, then, as we have described it, this partnership of the women with our men in the matter of education and children and the guardianship of the other citizens, and you admit that both within the city and when they go forth to war they ought to keep guard together and hunt together as it were like hounds,

§ 466d  and have all things in every way, so far as possible, in common, and that so doing they will do what is for the best and nothing that is contrary to female human nature in comparison with male or to their natural fellowship with one another.”
“I do admit it,” he said.
“Then,” I said, “is not the thing that it remains to determine this, whether, namely, it is possible for such a community to be brought about among men as it is in the other animals, and in what way it is possible?”
“You have anticipated,” he said, “the point I was about to raise.”
“For as for their wars,” I said,

§ 466e  “the manner in which they will conduct them is too obvious for discussion.”
“How so,” said he. “It is obvious that they will march out together, and, what is more, will conduct their children to war when they are sturdy, in order that, like the children of other craftsmen, they may observe the processes of which they must be masters in their maturity; and in addition to looking on

§ 467a  they must assist and minister in all the business of war and serve their fathers and mothers. Or have you never noticed the practice in the arts, how for example the sons of potters look on as helpers a long time before they put their hands to the clay?”
“They do, indeed.”
“Should these then be more concerned than our guardians to train the children by observation and experience of what is to be their proper business?”
“That would be ridiculous,” he said. “But, further, when it comes to fighting,

§ 467b  every creature will do better in the presence of its offspring?”
“That is so, but the risk, Socrates, is not slight, in the event of disasters such as may happen in war, that, losing their children as well as themselves, they make it impossible for the remnant of the state to recover.”
“What you say is true,” I replied; “but, in the first place, is it your idea that the one thing for which we must provide is the avoidance of all danger?”
“By no means.”
“And, if they are to take chances, should it not be for something success in which will make them better?”

§ 467c  “Clearly.”
“Do you think it makes a slight difference and not worth some risk whether men who are to be warriors do or do not observe war as boys?”
“No, it makes a great difference for the purpose of which you speak.”
“Starting, then, from this assumption that we are to make the boys spectators of war, we must further contrive security for them and all will be well, will it not?”
“Yes.”
“To begin with, then,” said I, “will not the fathers be, humanly speaking, not ignorant of war

§ 467d  and shrewd judges of which campaigns are hazardous and which not?”
“Presumably,” he said. “They will take the boys with them to the one and avoid the others?”
“Rightly.”
“And for officers, I presume,” said I, “they will put in charge of them not those who are good for nothing else but men who by age and experience are qualified to serve at once as leaders and as caretakers of children.”
“Yes, that would be the proper way.”
“Still, we may object, it is the unexpected that happens to many in many cases.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“To provide against such chances, then, we must wing the children from the start so that if need arises they may fly away and escape.”

§ 467e  “What do you mean?” he said. “We must mount them when very young,” said I, “and first have them taught to ride, and then conduct them to the scene of war, not on mettlesome war-steeds, but on the swiftest and gentlest horses possible; for thus they will have the best view of their own future business and also, if need arises, will most securely escape to safety in the train of elder guides.”
“I think you are right,” he said.

§ 468a  “But now what of the conduct of war? What should be the attitude of the soldiers to one another and the enemy? Am I right in my notions or not?”
“Tell me what notions,” he said. “Anyone of them who deserts his post, or flings away his weapons, or is guilty of any similar act of cowardice, should be reduced to the artisan or farmer class, should he not?”
“By all means.”
“And anyone who is taken alive by the enemy we will make a present of to his captors, shall we not, to deal with their catch as they please?”

§ 468b  “Quite so.”
“And don't you agree that the one who wins the prize of valor and distinguishes himself shall first be crowned by his fellows in the campaign, by the lads and boys each in turn?”
“I do.”
“And be greeted with the right hand?”
“That, too.”
“But I presume you wouldn't go as far as this?”
“What?”
“That he should kiss and be kissed by everyone?”
“By all means,” he said, “and I add to the law the provision that during that

§ 468c  campaign none whom he wishes to kiss be allowed to refuse, so that if one is in love with anyone, male or female, he may be the more eager to win the prize.”
“Excellent,” said I, “and we have already said that the opportunity of marriage will be more readily provided for the good man, and that he will be more frequently selected than the others for participation in that sort of thing, in order that as many children as possible may be born from such stock.”
“We have,” he replied.
“But, furthermore, we may cite Homer

§ 468d  too for the justice of honoring in such ways the valiant among our youth. For Homer says that Ajax, who had distinguished himself in the war, was honored with the long chine, assuming that the most fitting meed for a brave man in the prime of his youth is that from which both honor and strength will accrue to him.”
“Most rightly,” he said. “We will then,” said I, “take Homer as our guide in this at least. We, too, at sacrifices and on other like occasions, will reward the good so far as they have proved themselves good with hymns and the other privileges of which we have just spoken,

§ 468e  and also with “‘seats of honor and meat and full cups’”Hom. Il. 8.162, so as to combine physical training with honor for the good, both men and women.”
“Nothing could be better,” he said. “Very well; and of those who die on campaign, if anyone's death has been especially glorious, shall we not, to begin with, affirm that he belongs to the golden race?”
“By all means.”
“And shall we not believe Hesiod who tells us that when anyone of this race dies, so it is that they become

§ 469a   “Hallowed spirits dwelling on earth, averters of evil,
Guardians watchful and good of articulate-speaking mortals?”” Hes. WD 121“We certainly shall believe him.”
“We will inquire of Apollo, then, how and with what distinction we are to bury men of more than human, of divine, qualities, and deal with them according to his response.”
“How can we do otherwise?”
“And ever after we will bestow on their graves the tendance and

§ 469b  worship paid to spirits divine. And we will practice the same observance when any who have been adjudged exceptionally good in the ordinary course of life die of old age or otherwise.”
“That will surely be right,” he said. “But again, how will our soldiers conduct themselves toward enemies?”
“In what respect?”
“First, in the matter of making slaves of the defeated, do you think it right for Greeks to reduce Greek cities to slavery, or rather that so far as they are able, they should not suffer any other city to do so, but should accustom Greeks

§ 469c  to spare Greeks, foreseeing the danger of enslavement by the barbarians?”
“Sparing them is wholly and altogether the better,” said he. “They are not, then, themselves to own Greek slaves, either, and they should advise the other Greeks not to?”
“By all means,” he said; “at any rate in that way they would be more likely to turn against the barbarians and keep their hands from one another.”
“And how about stripping the dead after victory of anything except their weapons: is that well? Does it not furnish a pretext to cowards

§ 469d  not to advance on the living foe, as if they were doing something needful when poking about the dead? Has not this snatching at the spoils ere new destroyed many an army?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“And don't you think it illiberal and greedy to plunder a corpse, and is it not the mark of a womanish and petty spirit to deem the body of the dead an enemy when the real foeman has flown away and left behind only the instrument with which he fought?

§ 469e  Do you see any difference between such conduct and that of the dogs who snarl at the stones that hit them but don't touch the thrower?”
“Not the slightest.”
“We must abandon, then, the plundering of corpses and the refusal to permit their burial.”
“By heaven, we certainly must,” he said.
“And again, we will not take weapons to the temples for dedicatory offerings, especially the weapons of Greeks,

§ 470a  if we are at all concerned to preserve friendly relations with the other Greeks. Rather we shall fear that there is pollution in bringing such offerings to the temples from our kind unless in a case where the god bids otherwise.”
“Most rightly,” he said. “And in the matter of devastating the land of Greeks and burning their houses, how will your soldiers deal with their enemies.”
“I would gladly hear your opinion of that.”
“In my view,”

§ 470b  said I, “they ought to do neither, but confine themselves to taking away the annual harvest. Shall I tell you why?”
“Do.”
“In my opinion, just as we have the two terms, war and faction, so there are also two things, distinguished by two differentiae. The two things I mean are the friendly and kindred on the one hand and the alien and foreign on the other. Now the term employed for the hostility of the friendly is faction, and for that of the alien is war.”
“What you say is in nothing beside the mark,” he replied. “Consider, then,

§ 470c  if this goes to the mark. I affirm that the Hellenic race is friendly to itself and akin, and foreign and alien to the barbarian.”
“Rightly,” he said. “We shall then say that Greeks fight and wage war with barbarians, and barbarians with Greeks, and are enemies by nature, and that war is the fit name for this enmity and hatred. Greeks, however, we shall say, are still by nature the friends of Greeks when they act in this way, but that Greece is sick in that case and divided by faction,

§ 470d  and faction is the name we must give to that enmity.”
“I will allow you that habit of speech,” he said. “Then observe,” said I, “that when anything of this sort occurs in faction, as the word is now used, and a state is divided against itself, if either party devastates the land and burns the houses of the other such factional strife is thought to be an accursed thing and neither party to be true patriots. Otherwise, they would never have endured thus to outrage their nurse and mother. But the moderate and reasonable thing is thought to be that the victors

§ 470e  shall take away the crops of the vanquished, but that their temper shall be that of men who expect to be reconciled and not always to wage war.”
“That way of feeling,” he said, “is far less savage than the other.”
“Well, then,” said I, “is not the city that you are founding to be a Greek city?”
“It must be,” he said. “Will they then not be good and gentle?”
“Indeed they will.”
“And won't they be philhellenes, lovers of Greeks, and will they not regard all Greece as their own and not renounce their part in the holy places common to all Greeks ?”
“Most certainly.”
“Will they not then regard any difference with Greeks

§ 471a  who are their own people as a form of faction and refuse even to speak of it as war?”
“Most certainly.”
“And they will conduct their quarrels always looking forward to a reconciliation?”
“By all means.”
“They will correct them, then, for their own good, not chastising them with a view to their enslavement or their destruction, but acting as correctors, not as enemies.”
“They will,” he said. “They will not, being Greeks, ravage Greek territory nor burn habitations, and they will not admit that in any city all the population are their enemies, men, women and children, but will say that only a few at any time are their foes,

§ 471b  those, namely, who are to blame for the quarrel. And on all these considerations they will not be willing to lay waste the soil, since the majority are their friends, nor to destroy the houses, but will carry the conflict only to the point of compelling the guilty to do justice by the pressure of the suffering of the innocent.”
“I,” he said, “agree that our citizens ought to deal with their Greek opponents on this wise, while treating barbarians as Greeks now treat Greeks.”
“Shall we lay down this law also, then,

§ 471c  for our guardians that they are not to lay waste the land or burn the houses?”
“Let us so decree,” he said, “and assume that this and our preceding prescriptions are right.
“But I fear, Socrates,that if you are allowed to go on in this fashion, you will never get to speak of the matter you put aside in order to say all this, namely, the possibility of such a polity coming into existence, and the way in which it could be brought to pass. I too am ready to admit that if it could be realized everything would be lovely for the state that had it, and I will add what you passed by, that they would also be

§ 471d  most successful in war because they would be least likely to desert one another, knowing and addressing each other by the names of brothers, fathers, sons. And if the females should also join in their campaigns, whether in the ranks or marshalled behind to intimidate the enemy, or as reserves in case of need, I recognize that all this too would make them irresistible. And at home, also, I observe all the benefits that you omit to mention. But, taking it for granted that I concede

§ 471e  these and countless other advantages, consequent on the realization of this polity, don't labor that point further; but let us at once proceed to try to convince ourselves of just this, that it is possible and how it is possible, dismissing everything else.”

§ 472a  “This is a sudden assault, indeed,” said I, “that you have made on my theory, without any regard for my natural hesitation. Perhaps you don't realize that when I have hardly escaped the first two waves, you are now rolling up against me the ‘great third wave’ of paradox, the worst of all. When you have seen and heard that, you will be very ready to be lenient, recognizing that I had good reason after all for shrinking and fearing to enter upon the discussion of so paradoxical a notion.”
“The more such excuses you offer,” he said, “the less

§ 472b  you will be released by us from telling in what way the realization of this polity is possible. Speak on, then, and do not put us off.”
“The first thing to recall, then,” I said, “is that it was the inquiry into the nature of justice and injustice that brought us to this pass.”
“Yes; but what of it?” he said. “Oh, nothing,” I replied, “only this: if we do discover what justice is, are we to demand that the just man shall differ from it in no respect,

§ 472c  but shall conform in every way to the ideal? Or will it suffice us if he approximate to it as nearly as possible and partake of it more than others?”
“That will content us,” he said. “A pattern, then,” said I, “was what we wanted when we were inquiring into the nature of ideal justice and asking what would be the character of the perfectly just man, supposing him to exist, and, likewise, in regard to injustice and the completely unjust man. We wished to fix our eyes upon them as types and models, so that whatever we discerned in them of happiness or the reverse would necessarily apply to ourselves

§ 472d  in the sense that whosoever is likest them will have the allotment most like to theirs. Our purpose was not to demonstrate the possibility of the realization of these ideals.”
“In that,” he said, “you speak truly.”
“Do you think, then, that he would be any the less a good painter, who, after portraying a pattern of the ideally beautiful man and omitting no touch required for the perfection of the picture, should not be able to prove that it is actually possible for such a man to exist?”
“Not I, by Zeus,” he said. “Then were not we,

§ 472e  as we say, trying to create in words the pattern of a good state?”
“Certainly.”
“Do you think, then, that our words are any the less well spoken if we find ourselves unable to prove that it is possible for a state to be governed in accordance with our words?”
“Of course not,” he said. “That, then,” said I, “is the truth of the matter. But if, to please you, we must do our best to show how most probably and in what respect these things would be most nearly realized, again, with a view to such a demonstration, grant me the same point.”
“What?”

§ 473a  “Is it possible for anything to be realized in deed as it is spoken in word, or is it the nature of things that action should partake of exact truth less than speech, even if some deny it? Do you admit it or not?”
“I do,” he said. “Then don't insist,” said I, “that I must exhibit as realized in action precisely what we expounded in words. But if we can discover how a state might be constituted most nearly answering to our description, you must say that we have discovered that possibility of realization which you demanded.

§ 473b  Will you not be content if you get this?”
“I for my part would.”
“And I too,” he said.
“Next, it seems, we must try to discover and point out what it is that is now badly managed in our cities, and that prevents them from being so governed, and what is the smallest change that would bring a state to this manner of government, preferably a change in one thing, if not, then in two, and, failing that, the fewest possible in number and the slightest in potency.”

§ 473c  “By all means,” he said. “There is one change, then,” said I, “which I think that we can show would bring about the desired transformation. It is not a slight or an easy thing but it is possible.”
“What is that?” said he. “I am on the very verge,” said I, “of what we likened to the greatest wave of paradox. But say it I will, even if, to keep the figure, it is likely to wash us away on billows of laughter and scorn. Listen.”
“I am all attention,” he said. “Unless,” said I, “either philosophers become kings

§ 473d  in our states or those whom we now call our kings and rulers take to the pursuit of philosophy seriously and adequately, and there is a conjunction of these two things, political power and philosophic intelligence, while the motley horde of the natures who at present pursue either apart from the other are compulsorily excluded, there can be no cessation of troubles, dear Glaucon, for our states, nor, I fancy, for the human race either. Nor, until this happens, will this constitution which we have been expounding in theory

§ 473e  ever be put into practice within the limits of possibility and see the light of the sun. But this is the thing that has made me so long shrink from speaking out, because I saw that it would be a very paradoxical saying. For it is not easy to see that there is no other way of happiness either for private or public life.” Whereupon he, “Socrates,” said he, “after hurling at us such an utterance and statement as that, you must expect to be attacked by a great multitude of our men of light and leading, who forthwith will, so to speak, cast off their garments

§ 474a  and strip and, snatching the first weapon that comes to hand, rush at you with might and main, prepared to do dreadful deeds. And if you don't find words to defend yourself against them, and escape their assault, then to be scorned and flouted will in very truth be the penalty you will have to pay.”
“And isn't it you,” said I, “that have brought this upon me and are to blame?”
“And a good thing, too,” said he; “but I won't let you down, and will defend you with what I can. I can do so with my good will and my encouragement, and perhaps I might answer your questions more suitably than another.

§ 474b  So, with such an aid to back you, try to make it plain to the doubters that the truth is as you say.”
“I must try,” I replied, “since you proffer so strong an alliance. I think it requisite, then, if we are to escape the assailants you speak of, that we should define for them whom we mean by the philosophers, who we dare to say ought to be our rulers. When these are clearly discriminated it will be possible to defend ourselves by showing that to them by their very nature belong the study of philosophy

§ 474c  and political leadership, while it befits the other sort to let philosophy alone and to follow their leader.”
“It is high time,” he said, “to produce your definition.”
“Come, then, follow me on this line, if we may in some fashion or other explain our meaning.”
“Proceed,” he said. “Must I remind you, then,” said I, “or do you remember, that when we affirm that a man is a lover of something, it must be apparent that he is fond of all of it? It will not do to say that some of it he likes and some does not.”
“I think you will have to remind me,” he said,

§ 474d  “for I don't apprehend at all.”
“That reply, Glaucon,” said I, “befits another rather than you. It does not become a lover to forget that all adolescents in some sort sting and stir the amorous lover of youth and appear to him deserving of his attention and desirable. Is not that your ‘reaction’ to the fair? One, because his nose is tip-tilted, you will praise as piquant, the beak of another you pronounce right-royal, the intermediate type you say strikes the harmonious mean,

§ 474e  the swarthy are of manly aspect, the white are children of the gods divinely fair, and as for honey-hued, do you suppose the very word is anything but the euphemistic invention of some lover who can feel no distaste for sallowness when it accompanies the blooming time of youth? And, in short, there is no pretext

§ 475a  you do not allege and there is nothing you shrink from saying to justify you in not rejecting any who are in the bloom of their prime.”
“If it is your pleasure,” he said, “to take me as your example of this trait in lovers, I admit it for the sake of the argument.”
“Again,” said I, “do you not observe the same thing in the lovers of wine? They welcome every wine on any pretext.”
“They do, indeed.” And so I take it you have observed that men who are covetous of honor, if they can't get themselves elected generals, are captains of a company. And if they can't be honored

§ 475b  by great men and dignitaries, are satisfied with honor from little men and nobodies. But honor they desire and must have.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Admit, then, or reject my proposition. When we say a man is keen about something, shall we say that he has an appetite for the whole class or that he desires only a part and a part not?”
“The whole,” he said. “Then the lover of wisdom, too, we shall affirm, desires all wisdom, not a part and a part not.”

§ 475c  “Certainly.”
“The student, then, who is finical about his studies, especially when he is young and cannot yet know by reason what is useful and what is not, we shall say is not a lover of learning or a lover of wisdom, just as we say that one who is dainty about his food is not really hungry, has not an appetite for food, and is not a lover of food, but a poor feeder.”
“We shall rightly say so.”
“But the one who feels no distaste in sampling every study, and who attacks his task of learning gladly and cannot get enough of it, him we shall justly pronounce the lover of wisdom, the philosopher, shall we not?” To which Glaucon replied,

§ 475d  “You will then be giving the name to a numerous and strange band, for all the lovers of spectacles are what they are, I fancy, by virtue of their delight in learning something. And those who always want to hear some new thing are a very queer lot to be reckoned among philosophers. You couldn't induce them to attend a serious debate or any such entertainment, but as if they had farmed out their ears to listen to every chorus in the land, they run about to all the Dionysiac festivals, never missing one, either in the towns or in the country-villages. Are we to designate all these, then, and similar folk

§ 475e  and all the practitioners of the minor arts as philosophers?”
“Not at all,” I said; “but they do bear a certain likeness to philosophers.”
“Whom do you mean, then, by the true philosophers?”
“Those for whom the truth is the spectacle of which they are enamored,” said I. “Right again,” said he; “but in what sense do you mean it?”
“It would be by no means easy to explain it to another,” I said, “but I think that you will grant me this.”
“What?”
“That since the fair and honorable is the opposite of the base and ugly, they are two.”

§ 476a  “Of course.”
“And since they are two, each is one.”
“That also.”
“And in respect of the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and all the ideas or forms, the same statement holds, that in itself each is one, but that by virtue of their communion with actions and bodies and with one another they present themselves everywhere, each as a multiplicity of aspects.”
“Right,” he said. “This, then,” said I, “is my division. I set apart and distinguish those of whom you were just speaking, the lovers of spectacles and the arts,

§ 476b  and men of action, and separate from them again those with whom our argument is concerned and who alone deserve the appellation of philosophers or lovers of wisdom.”
“What do you mean?” he said. “The lovers of sounds and sights,” I said, “delight in beautiful tones and colors and shapes and in everything that art fashions out of these, but their thought is incapable of apprehending and taking delight in the nature of the beautiful in itself.”
“Why, yes,” he said, “that is so.”
“And on the other hand, will not those be few who would be able to approach beauty itself and contemplate it in and by itself?”

§ 476c  “They would, indeed.”
“He, then, who believes in beautiful things, but neither believes in beauty itself nor is able to follow when someone tries to guide him to the knowledge of it — do you think that his life is a dream or a waking? Just consider. Is not the dream state, whether the man is asleep or awake, just this: the mistaking of resemblance for identity?”
“I should certainly call that dreaming,” he said. “Well, then, take the opposite case: the man whose thought recognizes a beauty in itself,

§ 476d  and is able to distinguish that self-beautiful and the things that participate in it, and neither supposes the participants to be it nor it the participants — is his life, in your opinion, a waking or a dream state?”
“He is very much awake,” he replied. “Could we not rightly, then, call the mental state of the one as knowing, knowledge, and that of the other as opining, opinion?”
“Assuredly.”
“Suppose, now, he who we say opines but does not know should be angry and challenge our statement as not true.

§ 476e  Can we find any way of soothing him and gently winning him over, without telling him too plainly that he is not in his right mind?”
“We must try,” he said. “Come, then, consider what we are to say to him, or would you have us question him in this fashion — premising that if he knows anything, nobody grudges it him, but we should be very glad to see him knowing something — but tell us this: Does he who knows know something or nothing? Do you reply in his behalf.”
“I will reply,” he said, “that he knows something.”
“Is it something that is or is not?”
“That is. How could that which is not be known?”

§ 477a  “We are sufficiently assured of this, then, even if we should examine it from every point of view, that that which entirely‘is’ is entirely knowable, and that which in no way 'is' is in every way unknowable.”
“Most sufficiently.”
“Good. If a thing, then, is so conditioned as both to be and not to be, would it not lie between that which absolutely and unqualifiedly is and that which in no way is?”
“Between.”
“Then if knowledge pertains to that which is and ignorance of necessity to that which is not,

§ 477b  for that which lies between we must seek for something between nescience and science, if such a thing there be.”
“By all means.”
“Is there a thing which we call opinion?”
“Surely.”
“Is it a different faculty from science or the same?”
“A different.”
“Then opinion is set over one thing and science over another, each by virtue of its own distinctive power or faculty.”
“That is so.”
“May we say, then, that science is naturally related to that which is, to know that and how that which is is? But rather, before we proceed, I think we must draw the following distinctions.”
“What ones?”

§ 477c  “Shall we say that faculties, powers, abilities are a class of entities by virtue of which we and all other things are able to do what we or they are able to do? I mean that sight and hearing, for example, are faculties, if so be that you understand the class or type that I am trying to describe.”
“I understand,” he said. “Hear, then, my notion about them. In a faculty I cannot see any color or shape or similar mark such as those on which in many other cases I fix my eyes in discriminating in my thought one thing

§ 477d  from another. But in the case of a faculty I look to one thing only — that to which it is related and what it effects, and it is in this way that I come to call each one of them a faculty, and that which is related to the same thing and accomplishes the same thing I call the same faculty, and that to another I call other. How about you, what is your practice?”
“The same,” he said. “To return, then, my friend,” said I, “to science or true knowledge, do you say that it is a faculty and a power, or in what class do you put it?”

§ 477e  “Into this,” he said, “the most potent of all faculties.”
“And opinion — shall we assign it to some other class than faculty.”
“By no means,” he said, “for that by which we are able to opine is nothing else than the faculty of opinion.”
“But not long ago you agreed that science and opinion are not identical.”
“How could any rational man affirm the identity of the infallible with the fallible?”
“Excellent,” said I, “and we are plainly agreed

§ 478a  that opinion is a different thing from scientific knowledge.”
“Yes, different.”
“Each of them, then, since it has a different power, is related to a different object.”
“Of necessity.”
“Science, I presume, to that which is, to know the condition of that which is. But opinion, we say, opines.”
“Yes.”
“Does it opine the same thing that science knows, and will the knowable and the opinable be identical, or is that impossible?”
“Impossible by our admissions,” he said. “If different faculties are naturally related to different objects

§ 478b  and both opinion and science are faculties, but each different from the other, as we say — these admissions do not leave place for the identity of the knowable and the opinable.”
“Then, if that which is is knowable, something other than that which is would be the opinable.”
“Something else.”
“Does it opine that which is not, or is it impossible even to opine that which is not? Reflect: Does not he who opines bring his opinion to bear upon something or shall we reverse ourselves and say that it is possible to opine, yet opine nothing?”
“That is impossible.”
“Then he who opines opines some one thing.”
“Yes.”
“But surely that which is not could not be designated as some one thing, but

§ 478c  most rightly as nothing at all. To that which is not we of necessity assigned nescience, and to that which is, knowledge.”
“Rightly,” he said. “Then neither that which is nor that which is not is the object of opinion.”
“It seems not.”
“Then opinion would be neither nescience nor knowledge.”
“So it seems.”
“Is it then a faculty outside of these, exceeding either knowledge in lucidity or ignorance in obscurity?”
“It is neither.”
“But do you deem opinion something darker than knowledge but brighter than ignorance?”
“Much so,” he said. “And does it lie within the boundaries of the two?”

§ 478d  “Yes.”
“Then opinion would be between the two.”
“Most assuredly.”
“Were we not saying a little while ago that if anything should turn up such that it both is and is not, that sort of thing would lie between that which purely and absolutely is and that which wholly is not, and that the faculty correlated with it would be neither science or nescience, but that which should appear to hold a place correspondingly between nescience and science.”
“Right.”
“And now there has turned up between these two the thing that we call opinion.”
“There has.”

§ 478e  “It would remain, then, as it seems, for us to discover that which partakes of both, of to be and not to be, and that could not be rightly designated either in its exclusive purity; so that, if it shall be discovered, we may justly pronounce it to be the opinable, thus assigning extremes to extremes and the intermediate to the intermediate. Is not that so?”
“It is.”
“This much premised, let him tell me,

§ 479a  I will say, let him answer me, that good fellow who does not think there is a beautiful in itself or any idea of beauty in itself always remaining the same and unchanged, but who does believe in many beautiful things — the lover of spectacles, I mean, who cannot endure to hear anybody say that the beautiful is one and the just one, and so of other things — and this will be our question: My good fellow, is there any one of these many fair-and-honorable things that will not sometimes appear ugly and base? And of the just things, that will not seem unjust? And of the pious things, that will not seem impious?”
“No, it is inevitable,” he said, “that they would appear

§ 479b  to be both beautiful in a way and ugly, and so with all the other things you asked about.”
“And again, do the many double things appear any the less halves than doubles?”
“None the less.”
“And likewise of the great and the small things, the light and the heavy things — will they admit these predicates any more than their opposites?”
“No,” he said, “each of them will always hold of, partake of, both.”
“Then is each of these multiples rather than it is not that which one affirms it to be?”
“They are like those jesters who palter with us in a double sense at banquets,” he replied, “and resemble the children's riddle

§ 479c  about the eunuch and his hitting of the bat — with what and as it sat on what they signify that he struck it. For these things too equivocate, and it is impossible to conceive firmly any one of them to be or not to be or both or neither.”
“Do you know what to do with them, then?” said I, “and can you find a better place to put them than that midway between existence or essence and the not-to-be? For we shall surely not discover a darker region than not-being that they should still more not be,

§ 479d  nor brighter than being that they should still more be.”
“Most true,” he said. “We would seem to have found, then, that the many conventions of the many about the fair and honorable and other things are tumbled about in the mid-region between that which is not and that which is in the true and absolute sense.”
“We have so found it.”
“But we agreed in advance that, if anything of that sort should be discovered, it must be denominated opinable, not knowable, the wanderer between being caught by the faculty that is betwixt and between.”
“We did.”
“We shall affirm, then, that those who view many beautiful things

§ 479e  but do not see the beautiful itself and are unable to follow another's guidance to it, and many just things, but not justice itself, and so in all cases — we shall say that such men have opinions about all things, but know nothing of the things they opine.”
“Of necessity.”
“And, on the other hand, what of those who contemplate the very things themselves in each case, ever remaining the same and unchanged — shall we not say that they know and do not merely opine?”
“That, too, necessarily follows.”
“Shall we not also say that the one welcomes to his thought and loves the things

§ 480a  subject to knowledge and the other those to opinion? Do we not remember that we said that those loved and regarded tones and beautiful colours and the like, but they could not endure the notion of the reality of the beautiful itself?”
“We do remember.”
“Shall we then offend their ears if we call them doxophilists rather than philosophers and will they be very angry if we so speak?”
“Not if they heed my counsel,” he said, “for to be angry with truth is not lawful.”
“Then to those who in each and every kind welcome the true being, lovers of wisdom and not lovers of opinion is the name we must give.”
“By all means.”

§ 484a  BOOK 6
SOCRATES: “So now, Glaucon,” I said, “our argument after winding a long and weary way has at last made clear to us who are the philosophers or lovers of wisdom and who are not.”
“Yes,” he said, “a shorter way is perhaps not feasible.”
“Apparently not,” I said. “I, at any rate, think that the matter would have been made still plainer if we had had nothing but this to speak of, and if there were not so many things left which our purpose of discerning the difference between the just and the unjust life requires us to discuss.”

§ 484b  “What, then,” he said, “comes next?”
“What else,” said I, “but the next in order? Since the philosophers are those who are capable of apprehending that which is eternal and unchanging, while those who are incapable of this but lose themselves and wander amid the multiplicities of multifarious things, are not philosophers, which of the two kinds ought to be the leaders in a state?”
“What, then,” he said, “would be a fair statement of the matter?”
“Whichever,” I said, “appear competent to guard the laws and pursuits of society, these we should establish as guardians.”

§ 484c  “Right” he said. “Is this, then,” said I, “clear, whether the guardian who is to keep watch over anything ought to be blind or keen of sight?”
“Of course it is clear,” he said. “Do you think, then, that there is any appreciable difference between the blind and those who are veritably deprived of the knowledge of the veritable being of things, those who have no vivid pattern in their souls and so cannot, as painters look to their models, fix their eyes on the absolute truth, and always with reference to that ideal and in the exactest possible contemplation of it

§ 484d  establish in this world also the laws of the beautiful, the just and the good, when that is needful, or guard and preserve those that are established?”
“No, by heaven,” he said, “there is not much difference.”
“Shall we, then, appoint these blind souls as our guardians, rather than those who have learned to know the ideal reality of things and who do not fall short of the others in experience and are not second to them in any part of virtue?”
“It would be strange indeed,” he said, “to choose others than the philosophers, provided they were not deficient in those other respects, for this very knowledge

§ 485a  of the ideal would perhaps be the greatest of superiorities.”
“Then what we have to say is how it would be possible for the same persons to have both qualifications, is it not?”
“Quite so.”
“Then, as we were saying at the beginning of this discussion, the first thing to understand is the nature that they must have from birth; and I think that if we sufficiently agree on this we shall also agree that the combination of qualities that we seek belongs to the same persons, and that we need no others for guardians of states than these.”
“How so?”
“We must accept as agreed this trait of the philosophical nature,

§ 485b  that it is ever enamored of the kind of knowledge which reveals to them something of that essence which is eternal, and is not wandering between the two poles of generation and decay.”
“Let us take that as agreed.”
“And, further,” said I, “that their desire is for the whole of it and that they do not willingly renounce a small or a great, a more precious or a less honored, part of it. That was the point of our former illustration drawn from lovers and men covetous of honor.”
“You are right,” he said. “Consider, then, next whether the men who are to meet our requirements

§ 485c  must not have this further quality in their natures.”
“What quality?”
“The spirit of truthfulness, reluctance to admit falsehood in any form, the hatred of it and the love of truth.”
“It is likely,” he said. “It is not only likely, my friend, but there is every necessity that he who is by nature enamored of anything should cherish all that is akin and pertaining to the object of his love.”
“Right,” he said. “Could you find anything more akin to wisdom than truth?”
“Impossible,” he said. “Then can the same nature be a lover of wisdom and of falsehood?”

§ 485d  “By no means.”
“Then the true lover of knowledge must, from childhood up, be most of all a striver after truth in every form.”
“By all means.”
“But, again, we surely are aware that when in a man the desires incline strongly to any one thing, they are weakened for other things. It is as if the stream had been diverted into another channel. “Surely.”
“So, when a man's desires have been taught to flow in the channel of learning and all that sort of thing, they will be concerned, I presume, with the pleasures of the soul in itself, and will be indifferent to those of which the body is the instrument, if the man is a true and not a sham philosopher.”

§ 485e  “That is quite necessary.”
“Such a man will be temperate and by no means greedy for wealth; for the things for the sake of which money and great expenditure are eagerly sought others may take seriously, but not he.”
“It is so.”
“And there is this further point to be considered in distinguishing

§ 486a  the philosophical from the unphilosophical nature.”
“What point?”
“You must not overlook any touch of illiberality. For nothing can be more contrary than such pettiness to the quality of a soul that is ever to seek integrity and wholeness in all things human and divine.”
“Most true,” he said. “Do you think that a mind habituated to thoughts of grandeur and the contemplation of all time and all existence can deem this life of man a thing of great concern?”
“Impossible,” said he.

§ 486b  “Hence such a man will not suppose death to be terrible?”
“Least of all.”
“Then a cowardly and illiberal spirit, it seems, could have no part in genuine philosophy.”
“I think not.”
“What then? Could a man of orderly spirit, not a lover of money, not illiberal, nor a braggart nor a coward, ever prove unjust, or a driver of hard bargains?”
“Impossible.”
“This too, then, is a point that in your discrimination of the philosophic and unphilosophic soul you will observe — whether the man is from youth up just and gentle or unsocial and savage.”
“Assuredly.”
“Nor will you overlook this,

§ 486c  I fancy.”
“What?”
“Whether he is quick or slow to learn. Or do you suppose that anyone could properly love a task which he performed painfully and with little result from much toil?”
“That could not be.”
“And if he could not keep what he learned, being steeped in oblivion, could he fail to be void of knowledge?”
“How could he?”
“And so, having all his labor for naught, will he not finally be constrained to loathe himself and that occupation?”

§ 486d  “Of course.”
“The forgetful soul, then, we must not list in the roll of competent lovers of wisdom, but we require a good memory.”
“By all means.”
“But assuredly we should not say that the want of harmony and seemliness in a nature conduces to anything else than the want of measure and proportion.”
“Certainly.”
“And do you think that truth is akin to measure and proportion or to disproportion?”
“To proportion.”
“Then in addition to our other requirements we look for a mind endowed with measure and grace, whose native disposition will make it easily guided

§ 486e  to the aspect of the ideal reality in all things.”
“Assuredly.”
“Tell me, then, is there any flaw in the argument? Have we not proved the qualities enumerated to be necessary and compatible with one another for the soul that is to have a sufficient and perfect apprehension of reality?”

§ 487a  “Nay, most necessary,” he said. “Is there any fault, then, that you can find with a pursuit which a man could not properly practise unless he were by nature of good memory, quick apprehension, magnificent, gracious, friendly and akin to truth, justice, bravery and sobriety?”
“Momus himself,” he said, “could not find fault with such a combination.”
“Well, then,” said I, “when men of this sort are perfected by education and maturity of age, would you not entrust the state solely to them?”
And Adeimantus said, “No one, Socrates,

§ 487b  would be able to controvert these statements of yours. But, all the same, those who occasionally hear you argue thus feel in this way: They think that owing to their inexperience in the game of question and answer they are at every question led astray a little bit by the argument, and when these bits are accumulated at the conclusion of the discussion mighty is their fall and the apparent contradiction of what they at first said; and that just as by expert draught-players the unskilled are finally shut in and cannot make a move,

§ 487c  so they are finally blocked and have their mouths stopped by this other game of draughts played not with counters but with words; yet the truth is not affected by that outcome. I say this with reference to the present case, for in this instance one might say that he is unable in words to contend against you at each question, but that when it comes to facts he sees that of those who turn to philosophy, not merely touching upon it to complete their education

§ 487d  and dropping it while still young, but lingering too long in the study of it, the majority become cranks, not to say rascals, and those accounted the finest spirits among them are still rendered useless to society by the pursuit which you commend.” And I, on hearing this, said, “Do you think that they are mistaken in saying so?”
“I don't know,” said he,

§ 487e  “but I would gladly hear your opinion.”
“You may hear, then, that I think that what they say is true.”
“How, then,” he replied, “can it be right to say that our cities will never be freed from their evils until the philosophers, whom we admit to be useless to them, become their rulers?”
“Your question,” I said, “requires an answer expressed in a comparison or parable.”
“And you,” he said, “of course, are not accustomed to speak in comparisons!”
“So,” said I, “you are making fun of me after driving me into such an impasse of argument. But, all the same, hear my comparison

§ 488a  so that you may still better see how I strain after imagery. For so cruel is the condition of the better sort in relation to the state that there is no single thing like it in nature. But to find a likeness for it and a defence for them one must bring together many things in such a combination as painters mix when they portray goat-stags and similar creatures. Conceive this sort of thing happening either on many ships or on one: Picture a shipmaster in height and strength surpassing all others on the ship,

§ 488b  but who is slightly deaf and of similarly impaired vision, and whose knowledge of navigation is on a par with his sight and hearing. Conceive the sailors to be wrangling with one another for control of the helm, each claiming that it is his right to steer though he has never learned the art and cannot point out his teacher or any time when he studied it. And what is more, they affirm that it cannot be taught at all, but they are ready to make mincemeat of anyone who says that it can be taught,

§ 488c  and meanwhile they are always clustered about the shipmaster importuning him and sticking at nothing to induce him to turn over the helm to them. And sometimes, if they fail and others get his ear, they put the others to death or cast them out from the ship, and then, after binding and stupefying the worthy shipmaster with mandragora or intoxication or otherwise, they take command of the ship, consume its stores and, drinking and feasting, make such a voyage of it as is to be expected from such, and as if that were not enough, they praise and celebrate as a navigator,

§ 488d  a pilot, a master of shipcraft, the man who is most cunning to lend a hand in persuading or constraining the shipmaster to let them rule, while the man who lacks this craft they censure as useless. They have no suspicions that the true pilot must give his attention to the time of the year, the seasons, the sky, the winds, the stars, and all that pertains to his art if he is to be a true ruler of a ship, and that he does not believe that there is any art or science of seizing the helm

§ 488e  with or without the consent of others, or any possibility of mastering this alleged art and the practice of it at the same time with the science of navigation. With such goings-on aboard ship do you not think that the real pilot would in very deed be called a star-gazer, an idle babbler,

§ 489a  a useless fellow, by the sailors in ships managed after this fashion?”
“Quite so,” said Adeimantus. “You take my meaning, I presume, and do not require us to put the comparison to the proof and show that the condition we have described is the exact counterpart of the relation of the state to the true philosophers.”
“It is indeed,” he said. “To begin with, then, teach this parable to the man who is surprised that philosophers are not honored in our cities, and try to convince him that it would be far more surprising if they were honored.”

§ 489b  “I will teach him,”75 he said. “And say to him further: You are right in affirming that the finest spirit among the philosophers are of no service to the multitude. But bid him blame for this uselessness, not the finer spirits, but those who do not know how to make use of them. For it is not the natural course of things that the pilot should beg the sailors to be ruled by him or that wise men should go to the doors of the rich. The author of that epigram was a liar. But the true nature of things is that whether the sick man be rich or poor he must needs go to the door of the physician,

§ 489c  and everyone who needs to be governed to the door of the man who knows how to govern, not that the ruler should implore his natural subjects to let themselves be ruled, if he is really good for anything. But you will make no mistake in likening our present political rulers to the sort of sailors we are just describing, and those whom these call useless and star-gazing ideologists to the true pilots.”
“Just so,” he said. “Hence, and under these conditions, we cannot expect that the noblest pursuit should be highly esteemed by those whose way of life is quite the contrary.

§ 489d  But far the greatest and chief disparagement of philosophy is brought upon it by the pretenders to that way of life, those whom you had in mind when you affirmed that the accuser of philosophy says that the majority of her followers are rascals and the better sort useless, while I admitted that what you said was true. Is not that so?”
“Yes.”
“Have we not, then, explained the cause of the uselessness of the better sort?”
“We have.”
“Shall we next set forth the inevitableness of the degeneracy of the majority, and try to show if we can that philosophy is not to be blamed for this either?”

§ 489e  “By all means.”
“Let us begin, then, what we have to say and hear by recalling the starting-point of our description of the nature which he who is to be

§ 490a  a scholar and gentleman must have from birth. The leader of the choir for him, if you recollect, was truth. That he was to seek always and altogether, on pain of being an impostor without part or lot in true philosophy.”
“Yes, that was said.”
“Is not this one point quite contrary to the prevailing opinion about him?”
“It is indeed,” he said. “Will it not be a fair plea in his defence to say that it was the nature of the real lover of knowledge to strive emulously for true being and that he would not linger over

§ 490b  the many particulars that are opined to be real, but would hold on his way, and the edge of his passion would not be blunted nor would his desire fail till he came into touch with the nature of each thing in itself by that part of his soul to which it belongs to lay hold on that kind of reality — the part akin to it, namely — and through that approaching it, and consorting with reality really, he would beget intelligence and truth, attain to knowledge and truly live and grow, and so find surcease from his travail of soul, but not before?”
“No plea could be fairer.”
“Well, then, will such a man love falsehood, or, quite the contrary, hate it?”

§ 490c  “Hate it,” he said. “When truth led the way, no choir of evils, we, I fancy, would say, could ever follow in its train.”
“How could it?”
“But rather a sound and just character, which is accompanied by temperance.”
“Right,” he said. “What need, then, of repeating from the beginning our proof of the necessary order of the choir that attends on the philosophical nature? You surely remember that we found pertaining to such a nature courage, grandeur of soul, aptness to learn, memory. And when you interposed

§ 490d  the objection that though everybody will be compelled to admit our statements, yet, if we abandoned mere words and fixed our eyes on the persons to whom the words referred, everyone would say that he actually saw some of them to be useless and most of them base with all baseness, it was in our search for the cause of this ill-repute that we came to the present question: Why is it that the majority are bad? And, for the sake of this, we took up again the nature of the true philosophers and defined what it must necessarily be?”

§ 490e  “That is so,” he said.
“We have, then,” I said, “to contemplate the causes of the corruption of this nature in the majority, while a small part escapes, even those whom men call not bad but useless; and after that in turn

§ 491a  we are to observe those who imitate this nature and usurp its pursuits and see what types of souls they are that thus entering upon a way of life which is too high for them and exceeds their powers, by the many discords and disharmonies of their conduct everywhere and among all men bring upon philosophy the repute of which you speak.”
“Of what corruptions are you speaking?”
“I will try,” I said, “to explain them to you if I can. I think everyone will grant us this point, that a nature such as we just now postulated

§ 491b  for the perfect philosopher is a rare growth among men and is found in only a few. Don't you think so?”
“Most emphatically.”
“Observe, then, the number and magnitude of the things that operate to destroy these few.”
“What are they?”
“The most surprising fact of all is that each of the gifts of nature which we praise tends to corrupt the soul of its possessor and divert it from philosophy. I am speaking of bravery, sobriety, and the entire list.”
“That does sound like a paradox,” said he.

§ 491c  “Furthermore,” said I, “all the so-called goods corrupt and divert, beauty and wealth and strength of body and powerful family connections in the city and all things akin to them — you get my general meaning?”
“I do,” he said, “and I would gladly hear a more precise statement of it.”
“Well,” said I, “grasp it rightly as a general proposition and the matter will be clear and the preceding statement will not seem to you so strange.”
“How do you bid me proceed?” he said.

§ 491d  “We know it to be universally true of every seed and growth, whether vegetable or animal, that the more vigorous it is the more it falls short of its proper perfection when deprived of the food, the season, the place that suits it. For evil is more opposed to the good than to the not-good. “Of course.”
“So it is, I take it, natural that the best nature should fare worse than the inferior under conditions of nurture unsuited to it.”
“It is.”
“Then,” said I, “Adeimantus,

§ 491e  shall we not similarly affirm that the best endowed souls become worse than the others under a bad education? Or do you suppose that great crimes and unmixed wickedness spring from a slight nature and not from a vigorous one corrupted by its nurture, while a weak nature will never be the cause of anything great, either for good or evil?”
“No,” he said, “that is the case.”

§ 492a  “Then the nature which we assumed in the philosopher, if it receives the proper teaching, must needs grow and attain to consummate excellence, but, if it be sown and planted and grown in the wrong environment, the outcome will be quite the contrary unless some god comes to the rescue. Or are you too one of the multitude who believe that there are young men who are corrupted by the sophists, and that there are sophists in private life who corrupt to any extent worth mentioning, and that it is not rather the very men who talk in this strain

§ 492b  who are the chief sophists and educate most effectively and mould to their own heart's desire young and old, men and women?”
“When?” said he. “Why, when,” I said, “the multitude are seated together in assemblies or in court-rooms or theaters or camps or any other public gathering of a crowd, and with loud uproar censure some of the things that are said and done and approve others, both in excess, with full-throated clamor

§ 492c  and clapping of hands, and thereto the rocks and the region round about re-echoing redouble the din of the censure and the praise. In such case how do you think the young man's heart, as the saying is, is moved within him? What private teaching do you think will hold out and not rather be swept away by the torrent of censure and applause, and borne off on its current, so that he will affirm the same things that they do to be honorable and base,

§ 492d  and will do as they do, and be even such as they?”
“That is quite inevitable, Socrates,” he said.
“And, moreover,” I said, “we have not yet mentioned the chief necessity and compulsion.”
“What is it?” said he. “That which these ‘educators’ and sophists impose by action when their words fail to convince. Don't you know that they chastise the recalcitrant with loss of civic rights and fines and death?”
“They most emphatically do,” he said. “What other sophist, then, or what private teaching do you think will prevail in opposition to these?”

§ 492e  “None, I fancy,” said he. “No,” said I, “the very attempt is the height of folly. For there is not, never has been and never will be, a divergent type of character and virtue created by an education running counter to theirs — humanly speaking, I mean, my friend; for the divine, as the proverb says, all rules fail. And you may be sure that, if anything is saved and turns out well

§ 493a  in the present condition of society and government, in saying that the providence of God preserves it you will not be speaking ill.”
“Neither do I think otherwise,” he said. “Then,” said I, “think this also in addition.”
“What?”
“Each of these private teachers who work for pay, whom the politicians call sophists and regard as their rivals, inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom. It is as if a man were acquiring the knowledge of the humors and desires of a great strong beast which he had in his keeping,

§ 493b  how it is to be approached and touched, and when and by what things it is made most savage or gentle, yes, and the several sounds it is wont to utter on the occasion of each, and again what sounds uttered by another make it tame or fierce, and after mastering this knowledge by living with the creature and by lapse of time should call it wisdom, and should construct thereof a system and art and turn to the teaching of it, knowing nothing in reality about which of these opinions and desires is honorable or base, good or evil, just or unjust,

§ 493c  but should apply all these terms to the judgements of the great beast, calling the things that pleased it good, and the things that vexed it bad, having no other account to render of them, but should call what is necessary just and honorable, never having observed how great is the real difference between the necessary and the good, and being incapable of explaining it to another. Do you not think, by heaven, that such a one would be a strange educator?”
“I do,” he said. “Do you suppose that there is any difference between such a one and the man who thinks

§ 493d  that it is wisdom to have learned to know the moods and the pleasures of the motley multitude in their assembly, whether about painting or music or, for that matter, politics? For if a man associates with these and offers and exhibits to them his poetry or any other product of his craft or any political. service, and grants the mob authority over himself more than is unavoidable, the proverbial necessity of Diomede will compel him to give the public what it likes, but that what it likes is really good and honorable, have you ever heard an attempted proof of this that is not simply ridiculous?”

§ 493e  “No,” he said, “and I fancy I never shall hear it either.”
“Bearing all this in mind, recall our former question. Can the multitude possibly tolerate or believe in the reality of the beautiful in itself as opposed to the multiplicity of beautiful things, or can they believe in anything conceived in its essence as opposed to the many particulars?”
“Not in the least,” he said. “Philosophy, then, the love of wisdom, is impossible for the multitude.”

§ 494a  “Impossible.”
“It is inevitable, then, that those who philosophize should be censured by them.”
“Inevitable.”
“And so likewise by those laymen who, associating with the mob, desire to curry favor with it.”
“Obviously.”
“From this point of view do you see any salvation that will suffer the born philosopher to abide in the pursuit and persevere to the end? Consider it in the light of what we said before.

§ 494b  We agreed that quickness in learning, memory, courage and magnificence were the traits of this nature.”
“Yes.”
“Then even as a boy among boys such a one will take the lead in all things, especially if the nature of his body matches the soul.”
“How could he fail to do so?” he said. “His kinsmen and fellow-citizens, then, will desire, I presume, to make use of him when he is older for their own affairs.”
“Of course.”

§ 494c  “Then they will fawn upon him with petitions and honors, anticipating and flattering the power that will be his.”
“That certainly is the usual way.”
“How, then, do you think such a youth will behave in such conditions, especially if it happen that he belongs to a great city and is rich and well-born therein, and thereto handsome and tall? Will his soul not be filled with unbounded ambitious hopes, and will he not think himself capable of managing the affairs of both Greeks and barbarians,

§ 494d  and thereupon exalt himself, haughty of mien and stuffed with empty pride and void of sense “He surely will,” he said. “And if to a man in this state of mind someone gently comes and tells him what is the truth, that he has no sense and sorely needs it, and that the only way to get it is to work like a slave to win it, do you think it will be easy for him to lend an ear to the quiet voice in the midst of and in spite of these evil surroundings “Far from it,” said he. “And even supposing,” said I, “that owing to a fortunate disposition and his affinity for the words of admonition

§ 494e  one such youth apprehends something and is moved and drawn towards philosophy, what do we suppose will be the conduct of those who think that they are losing his service and fellowship? Is there any word or deed that they will stick at to keep him from being persuaded and to incapacitate anyone who attempts it, both by private intrigue and public prosecution in the court?”

§ 495a  “That is inevitable,” he said. “Is there any possibility of such a one continuing to philosophize?”
“None at all,” he said.
“Do you see, then,” said I,” that we were not wrong in saying that the very qualities that make up the philosophical nature do, in fact, become, when the environment and nurture are bad, in some sort the cause of its backsliding, and so do the so-called goods — 141 riches and all such instrumentalities?”
“No,” he replied, “it was rightly said.”
“Such, my good friend, and so great as regards the noblest pursuit,

§ 495b  is the destruction and corruption of the most excellent nature, which is rare enough in any case, as we affirm. And it is from men of this type that those spring who do the greatest harm to communities and individuals, and the greatest good when the stream chances to be turned into that channel, but a small nature never does anything great to a man or a city.”
“Most true,” said he.

§ 495c  “Those, then, to whom she properly belongs, thus falling away and leaving philosophy forlorn and unwedded, themselves live an unreal and alien life, while other unworthy wooers rush in and defile her as an orphan bereft of her kin, and attach to her such reproaches as you say her revilers taunt her with, declaring that some of her consorts are of no account and the many accountable for many evils.”
“Why, yes,” he replied, “that is what they do say.”
“And plausibly,” said I; “for other mannikins, observing that the place is unoccupied and full of fine terms and pretensions,

§ 495d  just as men escape from prison to take sanctuary in temples, so these gentlemen joyously bound away from the mechanical arts to philosophy, those that are most cunning in their little craft. For in comparison with the other arts the prestige of philosophy even in her present low estate retains a superior dignity; and this is the ambition and aspiration of that multitude of pretenders unfit by nature, whose souls are bowed and mutilated by their vulgar occupations

§ 495e  even as their bodies are marred by their arts and crafts. Is not that inevitable?”
“Quite so,” he said. “Is not the picture which they present,” I said, “precisely that of a little bald-headed tinker who has made money and just been freed from bonds and had a bath and is wearing a new garment and has got himself up like a bridegroom and is about to marry his master's daughter

§ 496a  who has fallen into poverty and abandonment?”
“There is no difference at all,” he said. “Of what sort will probably be the offspring of such parents?”
“Will they not be bastard and base?”
“Inevitably.”
“And so when men unfit for culture approach philosophy and consort with her unworthily, what sort of ideas and opinions shall we say they beget? Will they not produce what may in very deed be fairly called sophisms, and nothing that is genuine or that partakes of true intelligence?”
“Quite so,” he said.
“There is a very small remnant, then, Adeimantus,” I said,

§ 496b  “of those who consort worthily with philosophy, some well-born and well-bred nature, it may be, held in check by exile, and so in the absence of corrupters remaining true to philosophy, as its quality bids, or it may happen that a great soul born in a little town scorns and disregards its parochial affairs; and a small group perhaps might by natural affinity be drawn to it from other arts which they justly disdain; and the bridle of our companion Theages also might operate as a restraint. For in the case of Theages all other conditions were at hand

§ 496c  for his backsliding from philosophy, but his sickly habit of body keeping him out of politics holds him back. My own case, the divine sign, is hardly worth mentioning — for I suppose it has happened to few or none before me. And those who have been of this little company and have tasted the sweetness and blessedness of this possession and who have also come to understand the madness of the multitude sufficiently and have seen that there is nothing, if I may say so, sound or right in any present politics, and that there is no ally

§ 496d  with whose aid the champion of justice could escape destruction, but that he would be as a man who has fallen among wild beasts, unwilling to share their misdeeds and unable to hold out singly against the savagery of all, and that he would thus, before he could in any way benefit his friends or the state come to an untimely end without doing any good to himself or others, — for all these reasons I say the philosopher remains quiet, minds his own affair, and, as it were, standing aside under shelter of a wall in a storm and blast of dust and sleet and seeing others filled full of lawlessness, is content if in any way

§ 496e  he may keep himself free from iniquity and unholy deeds through this life and take his departure with fair hope, serene and well content when the end comes.”
“Well,” he said, “that is no very slight thing

§ 497a  to have achieved before taking his departure.”
“He would not have accomplished any very great thing either,” I replied, “if it were not his fortune to live in a state adapted to his nature. In such a state only will he himself rather attain his full stature and together with his own preserve the common weal.
“The causes and the injustice of the calumniation of philosophy, I think, have been fairly set forth, unless you have something to add.”
“No,” he said, “I have nothing further to offer on that point. But which of our present governments do you think is suitable for philosophy?”

§ 497b  “None whatever,” I said; “but the very ground of my complaint is that no polity of today is worthy of the philosophic nature. This is just the cause of its perversion and alteration; as a foreign seed sown in an alien soil is wont to be overcome and die out into the native growth, so this kind does not preserve its own quality but falls away and degenerates into an alien type. But if ever

§ 497c  it finds the best polity as it itself is the best, then will it be apparent that this was in truth divine and all the others human in their natures and practices. Obviously then you are next, going to ask what is this best form of government.”
“Wrong,” he said “I was going to ask not that but whether it is this one that we have described in our establishment of a state or another.”
“In other respects it is this one,” said I; “but there is one special further point that we mentioned even then, namely that there would always have to be resident in such a state an element

§ 497d  having the same conception of its constitution that you the lawgiver had in framing its laws.”
“That was said,” he replied. “But it was not sufficiently explained,” I said, “from fear of those objections on your part which have shown that the demonstration of it is long and difficult. And apart from that the remainder of the exposition is by no means easy.”
“Just what do you mean?”
“The manner in which a state that occupies itself with philosophy can escape destruction. For all great things are precarious and, as the proverb truly says, fine things are hard.”
“All the same,”

§ 497e  he said, “our exposition must be completed by making this plain.”
“It will be no lack of will,” I said, “but if anything, a lack of ability, that would prevent that. But you shall observe for yourself my zeal. And note again how zealously and recklessly I am prepared to say that the state ought to take up this pursuit in just the reverse of our present fashion.”
“In what way?”
“At present,”

§ 498a  said I, “those who do take it up are youths, just out of boyhood, who in the interval before they engage in business and money-making approach the most difficult part of it, and then drop it — and these are regarded forsooth as the best exemplars of philosophy. By the most difficult part I mean discussion. In later life they think they have done much if, when invited, they deign to listen to the philosophic discussions of others. That sort of thing they think should be by-work. And towards old age, with few exceptions, their light is quenched more completely

§ 498b  than the sun of Heracleitus, inasmuch as it is never rekindled.”
“And what should they do?” he said. “Just the reverse. While they are lads and boys they should occupy themselves with an education and a culture suitable to youth, and while their bodies are growing to manhood take right good care of them, thus securing a basis and a support for the intellectual life. But with the advance of age, when the soul begins to attain its maturity, they should make its exercises more severe, and when

§ 498c  the bodily strength declines and they are past the age of political and military service, then at last they should be given free range of the pasture and do nothing but philosophize, except incidentally, if they are to live happily, and, when the end has come, crown the life they have lived with a consonant destiny in that other world.”
“You really seem to be very much in earnest, Socrates,” he said; yet I think most of your hearers are even more earnest in their opposition and will not be in the least convinced, beginning with Thrasymachus.”
“Do not try to breed a quarrel between me and Thrasymachus,

§ 498d  who have just become friends and were not enemies before either. For we will spare no effort until we either convince him and the rest or achieve something that will profit them when they come to that life in which they will be born gain and meet with such discussions as these.”
“A brief time your forecast contemplates,” he said. “Nay, nothing at all,” I replied, “as compared with eternity. However, the unwillingness of the multitude to believe what you say is nothing surprising. For of the thing here spoken they have never beheld a token,

§ 498e  but only the forced and artificial chiming of word and phrase, not spontaneous and accidental as has happened here. But the figure of a man ‘equilibrated’ and ‘assimilated’ to virtue's self perfectly, so far as may be, in word and deed, and holding rule in a city of like quality, that is a thing they have never seen

§ 499a  in one case or in many. Do you think they have?”
“By no means.”
“Neither, my dear fellow, have they ever seriously inclined to hearken to fair and free discussions whose sole endeavor was to search out the truth at any cost for knowledge's sake, and which dwell apart and salute from afar all the subtleties and cavils that lead to naught but opinion and strife in court-room and in private talk.”
“They have not,” he said.

§ 499b  “For this cause and foreseeing this, we then despite our fears declared under compulsion of the truth that neither city nor polity nor man either will ever be perfected until some chance compels this uncorrupted remnant of philosophers, who now bear the stigma of uselessness, to take charge of the state whether they wish it or not, and constrains the citizens to obey them, or else until by some divine inspiration a genuine passion for true philosophy takes possession

§ 499c  either of the sons of the men now in power and sovereignty or of themselves. To affirm that either or both of these things cannot possibly come to pass is, I say, quite unreasonable. Only in that case could we be justly ridiculed as uttering things as futile as day-dreams are. Is not that so?”
“It is.”
“If, then, the best philosophical natures have ever been constrained to take charge of the state in infinite time past, or now are in some barbaric region

§ 499d  far beyond our ken, or shall hereafter be, we are prepared to maintain our contention that the constitution we have described has been, is, or will be realized when this philosophic Muse has taken control of the state. It is not a thing impossible to happen, nor are we speaking of impossibilities. That it is difficult we too admit.”
“I also think so,” he said. “But the multitude — are you going to say? — does not think so,” said I. “That may be,” he said. “My dear fellow,”

§ 499e  said I, “do not thus absolutely condemn the multitude. They will surely be of another mind if in no spirit of contention but soothingly and endeavoring to do away with the dispraise of learning you point out to them whom you mean by philosophers, and define as we recently did their nature

§ 500a  and their pursuits so that the people may not suppose you to mean those of whom they are thinking. Or even if they do look at them in that way, are you still going to deny that they will change their opinion and answer differently? Or do you think that anyone is ungentle to the gentle or grudging to the ungrudging if he himself is ungrudging and mild? I will anticipate you and reply that I think that only in some few and not in the mass of mankind is so ungentle or harsh a temper to be found.”
“And I, you may be assured,” he said, “concur.”

§ 500b  “And do you not also concur in this very point that the blame for this harsh attitude of the many towards philosophy falls on that riotous crew who have burst in where they do not belong, wrangling with one another, filled with spite and always talking about persons, a thing least befitting philosophy?”
“Least of all, indeed,” he said.
“For surely, Adeimantus, the man whose mind is truly fixed on eternal realities has no leisure

§ 500c  to turn his eyes downward upon the petty affairs of men, and so engaging in strife with them to be filled with envy and hate, but he fixes his gaze upon the things of the eternal and unchanging order, and seeing that they neither wrong nor are wronged by one another, but all abide in harmony as reason bids, he will endeavor to imitate them and, as far as may be, to fashion himself in their likeness and assimilate himself to them. Or do you think it possible not to imitate the things to which anyone attaches himself with admiration?”
“Impossible,” he said. “Then the lover of wisdom

§ 500d  associating with the divine order will himself become orderly and divine in the measure permitted to man. But calumny is plentiful everywhere.”
“Yes, truly.”
“If, then,” I said, “some compulsion is laid upon him to practise stamping on the plastic matter of human nature in public and private the patterns that he visions there, and not merely to mould and fashion himself, do you think he will prove a poor craftsman of sobriety and justice and all forms of ordinary civic virtue?”
“By no means,” he said. “But if the multitude become aware

§ 500e  that what we are saying of the philosopher is true, will they still be harsh with philosophers, and will they distrust our statement that no city could ever be blessed unless its lineaments were traced by artists who used the heavenly model?”
“They will not be harsh,”

§ 501a  he said, “if they perceive that. But tell me, what is the manner of that sketch you have in mind?”
“They will take the city and the characters of men, as they might a tablet, and first wipe it clean — 225 no easy task. But at any rate you know that this would be their first point of difference from ordinary reformers, that they would refuse to take in hand either individual or state or to legislate before they either received a clean slate or themselves made it clean.”
“And they would be right,” he said. “And thereafter, do you not think that they would sketch the figure of the constitution?”
“Surely.”
“And then,

§ 501b  I take it, in the course of the work they would glance frequently in either direction, at justice, beauty, sobriety and the like as they are in the nature of things, and alternately at that which they were trying to reproduce in mankind, mingling and blending from various pursuits that hue of the flesh, so to speak, deriving their judgement from that likeness of humanity which Homer too called when it appeared in men the image and likeness of God.”
“Right,” he said. “And they would erase one touch or stroke and paint in another

§ 501c  until in the measure of the possible they had made the characters of men pleasing and dear to God as may be.”
“That at any rate would be the fairest painting.”
“Are we then making any impression on those who you said were advancing to attack us with might and main? Can we convince them that such a political artist of character and such a painter exists as the one we then were praising when our proposal to entrust the state to him angered them, and are they now in a gentler mood when they hear what we are now saying?”
“Much gentler,” he said, “if they are reasonable.”

§ 501d  “How can they controvert it? Will they deny that the lovers of wisdom are lovers of reality and truth?”
“That would be monstrous,” he said. “Or that their nature as we have portrayed it is akin to the highest and best?”
“Not that either.”
“Well, then, can they deny that such a nature bred in the pursuits that befit it will be perfectly good and philosophic so far as that can be said of anyone? Or will they rather say it of those whom we have excluded?”

§ 501e  “Surely not.”
“Will they, then, any longer be fierce with us when we declare that, until the philosophic class wins control, there will be no surcease of trouble for city or citizens nor will the polity which we fable in words be brought to pass in deed?”
“They will perhaps be less so,” he said. “Instead of less so, may we not say that they have been altogether tamed and convinced, so that

§ 502a  for very shame, if for no other reason, they may assent?”
“Certainly,” said he.
“Let us assume, then,” said I, “that they are won over to this view. Will anyone contend that there is no chance that the offspring of kings and rulers should be born with the philosophic nature?”
“Not one,” he said. “And can anyone prove that if so born they must necessarily be corrupted? The difficulty of their salvation we too concede; but that in all the course of time

§ 502b  not one of all could be saved, will anyone maintain that?”
“How could he?”
“But surely,” said I, “the occurrence of one such is enough, if he has a state which obeys him, to realize all that now seems so incredible.”
“Yes, one is enough,” he said. “For if such a ruler,” I said, “ordains the laws and institutions that we have described it is surely not impossible that the citizens should be content to carry them out.”
“By no means.”
“Would it, then, be at all strange or impossible for others to come to the opinion to which we have come?”

§ 502c  “I think not,” said he. “And further that these things are best, if possible, has already, I take it, been sufficiently shown.”
“Yes, sufficiently.”
“Our present opinion, then, about this legislation is that our plan would be best if it could be realized and that this realization is difficult yet not impossible.”
“That is the conclusion,” he said.
“This difficulty disposed of, we have next

§ 502d  to speak of what remains, in what way, namely, and as a result of what studies and pursuits, these preservers of the constitution will form a part of our state, and at what ages they will severally take up each study.”
“Yes, we have to speak of that,” he said. “I gained nothing,” I said, “by my cunning in omitting heretofore the distasteful topic of the possession of women and procreation of children and the appointment of rulers, because I knew that the absolutely true and right way would provoke censure and is difficult of realization;

§ 502e  for now I am none the less compelled to discuss them. The matter of the women and children has been disposed of, but the education of the rulers has to be examined again, I may say, from the starting-point. We were saying, if you recollect,

§ 503a  that they must approve themselves lovers of the state when tested in pleasures and pains, and make it apparent that they do not abandon this fixed faith under stress of labors or fears or any other vicissitude, and that anyone who could not keep that faith must he rejected, while he who always issued from the test pure and intact, like gold tried in the fire, is to be established as ruler and to receive honors in life and after death and prizes as well. Something of this sort we said while the argument slipped by with veiled face in fear of starting our present debate.”

§ 503b  “Most true,” he said; “I remember.”
“We shrank, my friend,” I said, “from uttering the audacities which have now been hazarded. But now let us find courage for the definitive pronouncement that as the most perfect guardians we must establish philosophers.”
“Yes, assume it to have been said,” said he. “Note, then, that they will naturally be few, for the different components of the nature which we said their education presupposed rarely consent to grow in one; but for the most part these qualities are found apart.”

§ 503c  “What do you mean?” he said. “Facility in learning, memory, sagacity, quickness of apprehension and their accompaniments, and youthful spirit and magnificence in soul are qualities, you know, that are rarely combined in human nature with a disposition to live orderly, quiet, and stable lives; but such men, by reason of their quickness, are driven about just as chance directs, and all steadfastness is gone out of them.”
“You speak truly,” he said. “And on the other hand, the steadfast and stable temperaments, whom one could rather trust in use,

§ 503d  and who in war are not easily moved and aroused to fear, are apt to act in the same way when confronted with studies. They are not easily aroused, learn with difficulty, as if benumbed, and are filled with sleep and yawning when an intellectual task is set them.”
“It is so,” he said. “But we affirmed that a man must partake of both temperaments in due and fair combination or else participate in neither the highest education nor in honors nor in rule.”
“And rightly,” he said. “Do you not think, then, that such a blend will be a rare thing?”

§ 503e  “Of course.”
“They must, then, be tested in the toils and fears and pleasures of which we then spoke, and we have also now to speak of a point we then passed by, that we must exercise them in many studies, watching them to see whether their nature is capable of enduring the greatest and most difficult studies

§ 504a  or whether it will faint and flinch as men flinch in the trials and contests of the body.”
“That is certainly the right way of looking at it,” he said. “But what do you understand by the greatest studies?”
“You remember, I presume,” said I, “that after distinguishing three kinds in the soul, we established definitions of justice, sobriety, bravery and wisdom severally.”
“If I did not remember,” he said, “I should not deserve to hear the rest.”
“Do you also remember what was said before this?”

§ 504b  “What?”
“We were saying, I believe, that for the most perfect discernment of these things another longer way was requisite which would make them plain to one who took it, but that it was possible to add proofs on a par with the preceding discussion. And you said that that was sufficient, and it was on this understanding that what we then said was said, falling short of ultimate precision as it appeared to me, but if it contented you it is for you to say.”
“Well,” he said, “it was measurably satisfactory to me, and apparently to the rest of the company.”

§ 504c  “Nay, my friend,” said I, “a measure of such things that in the least degree falls short of reality proves no measure at all. For nothing that is imperfect is the measure of anything, though some people sometimes think that they have already done enough and that there is no need of further inquiry.”
“Yes, indeed,” he said, “many experience this because of their sloth.”
“An experience,” said I, “that least of all befits the guardians of a state and of its laws.”
“That seems likely,” he said. “Then,” said I, “such a one must go around

§ 504d  the longer way and must labor no less in studies than in the exercises of the body or else, as we were just saying, he will never come to the end of the greatest study and that which most properly belongs to him.”
“Why, are not these things the greatest?” said he; “but is there still something greater than justice and the other virtues we described?”
“There is not only something greater,” I said, “but of these very things we need not merely to contemplate an outline as now, but we must omit nothing of their most exact elaboration. Or would it not be absurd to strain every nerve to attain

§ 504e  to the utmost precision and clarity of knowledge about other things of trifling moment and not to demand the greatest precision for the greatest matters?”
“It would indeed,” he said; “but do you suppose that anyone will let you go without asking what is the greatest study and with what you think it is concerned?”
“By no means,” said I; “but do you ask the question. You certainly have heard it often, but now you either do not apprehend or again you are minded to make trouble for me

§ 505a  by attacking the argument. I suspect it is rather the latter. For you have often heard that the greatest thing to learn is the idea of good by reference to which just things and all the rest become useful and beneficial. And now I am almost sure you know that this is what I am going to speak of and to say further that we have no adequate knowledge of it. And if we do not know it, then, even if without the knowledge of this we should know all other things never so well, you are aware that it would avail us nothing,

§ 505b  just as no possession either is of any avail without the possession of the good. Or do you think there is any profit in possessing everything except that which is good, or in understanding all things else apart from the good while understanding and knowing nothing that is fair and good?”
“No, by Zeus, I do not,” he said.
“But, furthermore, you know this too, that the multitude believe pleasure to be the good, and the finer spirits intelligence or knowledge.”
“Certainly.”
“And you are also aware, my friend, that those who hold this latter view are not able to point out what knowledge it is but are finally compelled to say that it is the knowledge of the good.”
“Most absurdly,” he said. “Is it not absurd,”

§ 505c  said I, “if while taunting us with our ignorance of the good they turn about and talk to us as if we knew it? For they say it is the knowledge of the good, as if we understood their meaning when they utter the word ‘good.'”
“Most true,” he said. “Well, are those who define the good as pleasure infected with any less confusion of thought than the others? Or are not they in like manner compelled to admit that there are bad pleasures?”
“Most assuredly.”
“The outcome is, I take it, that they are admitting

§ 505d  the same things to be both good and bad, are they not?”
“Certainly.”
“Then is it not apparent that there are many and violent disputes about it?”
“Of course.”
“And again, is it not apparent that while in the case of the just and the honorable many would prefer the semblance without the reality in action, possession, and opinion, yet when it comes to the good nobody is content with the possession of the appearance but all men seek the reality, and the semblance satisfies nobody here?”

§ 505e  “Quite so,” he said. “That, then, which every soul pursues and for its sake does all that it does, with an intuition of its reality, but yet baffled and unable to apprehend its nature adequately, or to attain to any stable belief about it as about other things, and for that reason failing of any possible benefit from other things, —

§ 506a  in a matter of this quality and moment, can we, I ask you, allow a like blindness and obscurity in those best citizens to whose hands we are to entrust all things?”
“Least of all,” he said. “I fancy, at any rate,” said I, “that the just and the honorable, if their relation and reference to the good is not known, will not have secured a guardian of much worth in the man thus ignorant, and my surmise is that no one will understand them adequately before he knows this.”
“You surmise well,” he said. “Then our constitution

§ 506b  will have its perfect and definitive organization only when such a guardian, who knows these things, oversees it.”
“Necessarily,” he said. “But you yourself, Socrates, do you think that knowledge is the good or pleasure or something else and different?”
“What a man it is,” said I; “you made it very plain long ago that you would not be satisfied with what others think about it.”
“Why, it does not seem right to me either, Socrates,” he said, “to be ready to state the opinions of others but not one's own when one has occupied himself with the matter so long.”

§ 506c  “But then,” said I, “do you think it right to speak as having knowledge about things one does not know?”
“By no means,” he said, “as having knowledge, but one ought to be willing to tell as his opinion what he opines.”
“Nay,” said I, “have you not observed that opinions divorced from knowledge are ugly things? The best of them are blind. Or do you think that those who hold some true opinion without intelligence differ appreciably from blind men who go the right way?”
“They do not differ at all,” he said. “Is it, then, ugly things that you prefer

§ 506d  to contemplate, things blind and crooked, when you might hear from others what is luminous and fair?”
“Nay, in heaven's name, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “do not draw back, as it were, at the very goal. For it will content us if you explain the good even as you set forth the nature of justice, sobriety, and the other virtues.”
“It will right well content me, my dear fellow,” I said, “but I fear that my powers may fail and that in my eagerness I may cut a sorry figure and become a laughing-stock. Nay, my beloved,

§ 506e  let us dismiss for the time being the nature of the good in itself; for to attain to my present surmise of that seems a pitch above the impulse that wings my flight today. But of what seems to be the offspring of the good and most nearly made in its likeness I am willing to speak if you too wish it, and otherwise to let the matter drop.”
“Well, speak on,” he said, “for you will duly pay me the tale of the parent another time.”
“I could wish,”

§ 507a  I said, “that I were able to make and you to receive the payment and not merely as now the interest. But at any rate receive this interest and the offspring of the good. Have a care, however, lest I deceive you unintentionally with a false reckoning of the interest.”
“We will do our best,” he said, “to be on our guard. Only speak on.”
“Yes,” I said, “after first coming to an understanding with you and reminding you of what has been said here before and often on other occasions.”

§ 507b  “What?” said he. “We predicate ‘to be’311 of many beautiful things and many good things, saying of them severally that they are, and so define them in our speech.”
“We do.”
“And again, we speak of a self-beautiful and of a good that is only and merely good, and so, in the case of all the things that we then posited as many, we turn about and posit each as a single idea or aspect, assuming it to be a unity and call it that which each really is. “It is so.”
“And the one class of things we say can be seen but not thought,

§ 507c  while the ideas can be thought but not seen.”
“By all means.”
“With which of the parts of ourselves, with which of our faculties, then, do we see visible things?”
“With sight,” he said. “And do we not,” I said, “hear audibles with hearing, and perceive all sensibles with the other senses?”
“Surely.”
“Have you ever observed,” said I, “how much the greatest expenditure the creator of the senses has lavished on the faculty of seeing and being seen? “Why, no, I have not,” he said. “Well, look at it thus. Do hearing and voice stand in need of another medium so that the one may hear and the other be heard,

§ 507d  in the absence of which third element the one will not hear and the other not be heard?”
“They need nothing,” he said. “Neither, I fancy,” said I,” do many others, not to say that none require anything of the sort. Or do you know of any?”
“Not I,” he said. “But do you not observe that vision and the visible do have this further need?”
“How?”
“Though vision may be in the eyes and its possessor may try to use it, and though color be present, yet without

§ 507e  the presence of a third thing specifically and naturally adapted to this purpose, you are aware that vision will see nothing and the colors will remain invisible.”
“What is this thing of which you speak?” he said. “The thing,” I said, “that you call light.”
“You say truly,” he replied. “The bond, then, that yokes together

§ 508a  visibility and the faculty of sight is more precious by no slight form that which unites the other pairs, if light is not without honor.”
“It surely is far from being so,” he said.
“Which one can you name of the divinities in heaven as the author and cause of this, whose light makes our vision see best and visible things to be seen?”
“Why, the one that you too and other people mean,” he said; “for your question evidently refers to the sun.”
“Is not this, then, the relation of vision to that divinity?”
“What?”
“Neither vision itself nor its vehicle, which we call the eye, is identical with the sun.”

§ 508b  “Why, no.”
“But it is, I think, the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense.”
“By far the most.”
“And does it not receive the power which it possesses as an influx, as it were, dispensed from the sun?”
“Certainly.”
“Is it not also true that the sun is not vision, yet as being the cause thereof is beheld by vision itself?”
“That is so,” he said. “This, then, you must understand that I meant by the offspring of the good which the good

§ 508c  begot to stand in a proportion with itself: as the good is in the intelligible region to reason and the objects of reason, so is this in the visible world to vision and the objects of vision.”
“How is that?” he said; “explain further.”
“You are aware,” I said, “that when the eyes are no longer turned upon objects upon whose colors the light of day falls but that of the dim luminaries of night, their edge is blunted and they appear almost blind, as if pure vision did not dwell in them.”
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “But when, I take it,

§ 508d  they are directed upon objects illumined by the sun, they see clearly, and vision appears to reside in these same eyes.”
“Certainly.”
“Apply this comparison to the soul also in this way. When it is firmly fixed on the domain where truth and reality shine resplendent it apprehends and knows them and appears to possess reason; but when it inclines to that region which is mingled with darkness, the world of becoming and passing away, it opines only and its edge is blunted, and it shifts its opinions hither and thither, and again seems as if it lacked reason.”

§ 508e  “Yes, it does,”
“This reality, then, that gives their truth to the objects of knowledge and the power of knowing to the knower, you must say is the idea of good, and you must conceive it as being the cause of knowledge, and of truth in so far as known. Yet fair as they both are, knowledge and truth, in supposing it to be something fairer still than these you will think rightly of it. But as for knowledge and truth, even as in our illustration

§ 509a  it is right to deem light and vision sunlike, but never to think that they are the sun, so here it is right to consider these two their counterparts, as being like the good or boniform, but to think that either of them is the good is not right. Still higher honor belongs to the possession and habit of the good.”
“An inconceivable beauty you speak of,” he said, “if it is the source of knowledge and truth, and yet itself surpasses them in beauty. For you surely cannot mean that it is pleasure.”
“Hush,” said I, “but examine

§ 509b  the similitude of it still further in this way.”
“How?”
“The sun, I presume you will say, not only furnishes to visibles the power of visibility but it also provides for their generation and growth and nurture though it is not itself generation.”
“Of course not.”
“In like manner, then, you are to say that the objects of knowledge not only receive from the presence of the good their being known, but their very existence and essence is derived to them from it, though the good itself is not essence but still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power.”

§ 509c  And Glaucon very ludicrously said, “Heaven save us, hyperbole can no further go.”
“The fault is yours,” I said, “for compelling me to utter my thoughts about it.”
“And don't desist,” he said, “but at least expound the similitude of the sun, if there is anything that you are omitting.”
“Why, certainly,” I said, “I am omitting a great deal.”
“Well, don't omit the least bit,” he said. “I fancy,” I said, “that I shall have to pass over much, but nevertheless so far as it is at present practicable I shall not willingly leave anything out.”
“Do not,”

§ 509d  he said. “Conceive then,” said I, “as we were saying, that there are these two entities, and that one of them is sovereign over the intelligible order and region and the other over the world of the eye-ball, not to say the sky-ball, but let that pass. You surely apprehend the two types, the visible and the intelligible.”
“I do.”
“Represent them then, as it were, by a line divided into two unequal sections and cut each section again in the same ratio (the section, that is, of the visible and that of the intelligible order), and then as an expression of the ratio of their comparative clearness and obscurity you will have, as one of the sections of the visible world, images. By images I mean,

§ 510a  first, shadows, and then reflections in water and on surfaces of dense, smooth and bright texture, and everything of that kind, if you apprehend.”
“I do.”
“As the second section assume that of which this is a likeness or an image, that is, the animals about us and all plants and the whole class of objects made by man.”
“I so assume it,” he said. “Would you be willing to say,” said I, “that the division in respect of reality and truth or the opposite is expressed by the proportion: as is the opinable to the knowable so is the likeness to that of which it is a likeness?”

§ 510b  “I certainly would.”
“Consider then again the way in which we are to make the division of the intelligible section.”
“In what way?”
“By the distinction that there is one section of it which the soul is compelled to investigate by treating as images the things imitated in the former division, and by means of assumptions from which it proceeds not up to a first principle but down to a conclusion, while there is another section in which it advances from its assumption to a beginning or principle that transcends assumption, and in which it makes no use of the images employed by the other section, relying on ideas only and progressing systematically through ideas.”
“I don't fully understand what you mean by this,” he said. “Well, I will try again,”

§ 510c  said I,” for you will better understand after this preamble. For I think you are aware that students of geometry and reckoning and such subjects first postulate the odd and the even and the various figures and three kinds of angles and other things akin to these in each branch of science, regard them as known, and, treating them as absolute assumptions, do not deign to render any further account of them to themselves or others, taking it for granted that they are obvious to everybody. They take their start

§ 510d  from these, and pursuing the inquiry from this point on consistently, conclude with that for the investigation of which they set out.”
“Certainly,” he said, “I know that.”
“And do you not also know that they further make use of the visible forms and talk about them, though they are not thinking of them but of those things of which they are a likeness, pursuing their inquiry for the sake of the square as such and the diagonal as such, and not for the sake of the image of it which they draw?

§ 510e  And so in all cases. The very things which they mould and draw, which have shadows and images of themselves in water, these things they treat in their turn as only images, but what they really seek is to get sight of those realities which can be seen only by the mind.”

§ 511a  “True,” he said.
“This then is the class that I described as intelligible, it is true, but with the reservation first that the soul is compelled to employ assumptions in the investigation of it, not proceeding to a first principle because of its inability to extricate itself from and rise above its assumptions, and second, that it uses as images or likenesses the very objects that are themselves copied and adumbrated by the class below them, and that in comparison with these latter are esteemed as clear and held in honor.”
“I understand,”

§ 511b  said he, “that you are speaking of what falls under geometry and the kindred arts.”
“Understand then,” said I, “that by the other section of the intelligible I mean that which the reason itself lays hold of by the power of dialectics, treating its assumptions not as absolute beginnings but literally as hypotheses, underpinnings, footings, and springboards so to speak, to enable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is the starting-point of all, and after attaining to that again taking hold of the first dependencies from it, so to proceed downward to the conclusion,

§ 511c  making no use whatever of any object of sense but only of pure ideas moving on through ideas to ideas and ending with ideas.”
“I understand,” he said; “not fully, for it is no slight task that you appear to have in mind, but I do understand that you mean to distinguish the aspect of reality and the intelligible, which is contemplated by the power of dialectic, as something truer and more exact than the object of the so-called arts and sciences whose assumptions are arbitrary starting-points. And though it is true that those who contemplate them are compelled to use their understanding and not

§ 511d  their senses, yet because they do not go back to the beginning in the study of them but start from assumptions you do not think they possess true intelligence about them although the things themselves are intelligibles when apprehended in conjunction with a first principle. And I think you call the mental habit of geometers and their like mind or understanding and not reason because you regard understanding as something intermediate between opinion and reason.”
“Your interpretation is quite sufficient,” I said; “and now, answering to these four sections, assume these four affections occurring in the soul: intellection or reason for the highest,

§ 511e  understanding for the second; assign belief to the third, and to the last picture-thinking or conjecture, and arrange them in a proportion, considering that they participate in clearness and precision in the same degree as their objects partake of truth and reality.”
“I understand,” he said; “I concur and arrange them as you bid.”

§ 514a  BOOK 7
“Next,” said I, “compare our nature in respect of education and its lack to such an experience as this. Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot,

§ 514b  able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet-shows have partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets.”
“All that I see,” he said. “See also, then, men carrying past the wall

§ 514c  implements of all kinds that rise above the wall, and human images

§ 515a  and shapes of animals as well, wrought in stone and wood and every material, some of these bearers presumably speaking and others silent.”
“A strange image you speak of,” he said, “and strange prisoners.”
“Like to us,” I said; “for, to begin with, tell me do you think that these men would have seen anything of themselves or of one another except the shadows cast from the fire on the wall of the cave that fronted them?”
“How could they,” he said, “if they were compelled

§ 515b  to hold their heads unmoved through life?”
“And again, would not the same be true of the objects carried past them?”
“Surely.”
“If then they were able to talk to one another, do you not think that they would suppose that in naming the things that they saw they were naming the passing objects?”
“Necessarily.”
“And if their prison had an echo from the wall opposite them, when one of the passersby uttered a sound, do you think that they would suppose anything else than the passing shadow to be the speaker?”
“By Zeus, I do not,” said he. “Then in every way

§ 515c  such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects.”
“Quite inevitably,” he said. “Consider, then, what would be the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly if in the course of nature something of this sort should happen to them: When one was freed from his fetters and compelled to stand up suddenly and turn his head around and walk and to lift up his eyes to the light, and in doing all this felt pain and, because of the dazzle and glitter of the light, was unable to discern the objects whose shadows he formerly saw,

§ 515d  what do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly? And if also one should point out to him each of the passing objects and constrain him by questions to say what it is, do you not think that he would be at a loss and that he would regard what he formerly saw as more real than the things now pointed out to him?”
“Far more real,” he said.
“And if he were compelled to look at the light itself,

§ 515e  would not that pain his eyes, and would he not turn away and flee to those things which he is able to discern and regard them as in very deed more clear and exact than the objects pointed out?”
“It is so,” he said. “And if,” said I, “someone should drag him thence by force up the ascent which is rough and steep, and not let him go before he had drawn him out into the light of the sun, do you not think that he would find it painful to be so haled along, and would chafe at it, and when

§ 516a  he came out into the light, that his eyes would be filled with its beams so that he would not be able to see even one of the things that we call real?”
“Why, no, not immediately,” he said. “Then there would be need of habituation, I take it, to enable him to see the things higher up. And at first he would most easily discern the shadows and, after that, the likenesses or reflections in water of men and other things, and later, the things themselves, and from these he would go on to contemplate the appearances in the heavens and heaven itself, more easily by night, looking at the light

§ 516b  of the stars and the moon, than by day the sun and the sun's light.”
“Of course.”
“And so, finally, I suppose, he would be able to look upon the sun itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it in an alien setting, but in and by itself in its own place.”
“Necessarily,” he said. “And at this point he would infer and conclude that this it is that provides the seasons and the courses of the year and presides over all things in the visible region,

§ 516c  and is in some sort the cause of all these things that they had seen.”
“Obviously,” he said, “that would be the next step.”
“Well then, if he recalled to mind his first habitation and what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow-bondsmen, do you not think that he would count himself happy in the change and pity them?”
“He would indeed.”
“And if there had been honors and commendations among them which they bestowed on one another and prizes for the man who is quickest to make out the shadows as they pass and best able to remember their customary precedences,

§ 516d  sequences and co-existences, and so most successful in guessing at what was to come, do you think he would be very keen about such rewards, and that he would envy and emulate those who were honored by these prisoners and lorded it among them, or that he would feel with Homer and “‘greatly prefer while living on earth to be serf of another, a landless man,’”Hom. Od. 11.489 and endure anything rather than opine with them and live that life?”

§ 516e  “Yes,” he said, “I think that he would choose to endure anything rather than such a life.”
“And consider this also,” said I, “if such a one should go down again and take his old place would he not get his eyes full of darkness, thus suddenly coming out of the sunlight?”
“He would indeed.”
“Now if he should be required to contend with these perpetual prisoners

§ 517a  in 'evaluating' these shadows while his vision was still dim and before his eyes were accustomed to the dark — and this time required for habituation would not be very short — would he not provoke laughter, and would it not be said of him that he had returned from his journey aloft with his eyes ruined and that it was not worth while even to attempt the ascent? And if it were possible to lay hands on and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not kill him?”
“They certainly would,” he said.
“This image then, dear Glaucon, we must apply as a whole to all that has been said,

§ 517b  likening the region revealed through sight to the habitation of the prison, and the light of the fire in it to the power of the sun. And if you assume that the ascent and the contemplation of the things above is the soul's ascension to the intelligible region, you will not miss my surmise, since that is what you desire to hear. But God knows whether it is true. But, at any rate, my dream as it appears to me is that in the region of the known the last thing to be seen and hardly seen is the idea of good,

§ 517c  and that when seen it must needs point us to the conclusion that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful, giving birth in the visible world to light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason, and that anyone who is to act wisely in private or public must have caught sight of this.”
“I concur,” he said, “so far as I am able.”
“Come then,” I said, “and join me in this further thought, and do not be surprised that those who have attained to this height are not willing to occupy themselves with the affairs of men, but their souls ever feel the upward urge and

§ 517d  the yearning for that sojourn above. For this, I take it, is likely if in this point too the likeness of our image holds”
“Yes, it is likely.”
“And again, do you think it at all strange,” said I, “if a man returning from divine contemplations to the petty miseries of men cuts a sorry figure and appears most ridiculous, if, while still blinking through the gloom, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to the environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the images that cast the shadows and to wrangle in debate

§ 517e  about the notions of these things in the minds of those who have never seen justice itself?”
“It would be by no men strange,” he said. “But a sensible man,”

§ 518a  I said, “would remember that there are two distinct disturbances of the eyes arising from two causes, according as the shift is from light to darkness or from darkness to light, and, believing that the same thing happens to the soul too, whenever he saw a soul perturbed and unable to discern something, he would not laugh unthinkingly, but would observe whether coming from a brighter life its vision was obscured by the unfamiliar darkness, or

§ 518b  whether the passage from the deeper dark of ignorance into a more luminous world and the greater brightness had dazzled its vision. And so he would deem the one happy in its experience and way of life and pity the other, and if it pleased him to laugh at it, his laughter would be less laughable than that at the expense of the soul that had come down from the light above.”
“That is a very fair statement,” he said.
“Then, if this is true, our view of these matters must be this, that education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their professions.

§ 518c  What they aver is that they can put true knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting vision into blind eyes.”
“They do indeed,” he said. “But our present argument indicates,” said I, “that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body. Even so this organ of knowledge must be turned around from the world of becoming together with the entire soul, like the scene-shifting periact in the theater, until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence and the brightest region of being.

§ 518d  And this, we say, is the good, do we not?”
“Yes.”
“Of this very thing, then,” I said, “there might be an art, an art of the speediest and most effective shifting or conversion of the soul, not an art of producing vision in it, but on the assumption that it possesses vision but does not rightly direct it and does not look where it should, an art of bringing this about.”
“Yes, that seems likely,” he said. “Then the other so-called virtues of the soul do seem akin to those of the body.

§ 518e  For it is true that where they do not pre-exist, they are afterwards created by habit and practice. But the excellence of thought, it seems, is certainly of a more divine quality, a thing that never loses its potency, but, according to the direction of its conversion, becomes useful and beneficent,

§ 519a  or, again, useless and harmful. Have you never observed in those who are popularly spoken of as bad, but smart men, how keen is the vision of the little soul, how quick it is to discern the things that interest it, a proof that it is not a poor vision which it has, but one forcibly enlisted in the service of evil, so that the sharper its sight the more mischief it accomplishes?”
“I certainly have,” he said. “Observe then,” said I, “that this part of such a soul, if it had been hammered from childhood, and had thus been struck free of the leaden weights, so to speak, of our birth

§ 519b  and becoming, which attaching themselves to it by food and similar pleasures and gluttonies turn downwards the vision of the soul — If, I say, freed from these, it had suffered a conversion towards the things that are real and true, that same faculty of the same men would have been most keen in its vision of the higher things, just as it is for the things toward which it is now turned.”
“It is likely,” he said. “Well, then,” said I, “is not this also likely and a necessary consequence of what has been said, that neither could men who are uneducated and inexperienced in truth ever adequately

§ 519c  preside over a state, nor could those who had been permitted to linger on to the end in the pursuit of culture — the one because they have no single aim and purpose in life to which all their actions, public and private, must be directed, and the others, because they will not voluntarily engage in action, believing that while still living they have been transported to the Islands of the Blest.”
“True,” he said. “It is the duty of us, the founders, then,” said I, “to compel the best natures to attain the knowledge which we pronounced the greatest, and to win to the vision of the good,

§ 519d  to scale that ascent, and when they have reached the heights and taken an adequate view, we must not allow what is now permitted.”
“What is that?”
“That they should linger there,” I said, “and refuse to go down again among those bondsmen and share their labors and honors, whether they are of less or of greater worth.”
“Do you mean to say that we must do them this wrong, and compel them to live an inferior life when the better is in their power?”

§ 519e  “You have again forgotten, my friend,” said I, “that the law is not concerned with the special happiness of any class in the state, but is trying to produce this condition in the city as a whole, harmonizing and adapting the citizens to one another by persuasion and compulsion, and requiring them to impart to one another any benefit

§ 520a  which they are severally able to bestow upon the community, and that it itself creates such men in the state, not that it may allow each to take what course pleases him, but with a view to using them for the binding together of the commonwealth.”
“True,” he said, “I did forget it.”
“Observe, then, Glaucon,” said I, “that we shall not be wronging, either, the philosophers who arise among us, but that we can justify our action when we constrain them to take charge of the other citizens and be their guardians.

§ 520b  For we will say to them that it is natural that men of similar quality who spring up in other cities should not share in the labors there. For they grow up spontaneously from no volition of the government in the several states, and it is justice that the self-grown, indebted to none for its breeding, should not be zealous either to pay to anyone the price of its nurture. But you we have engendered for yourselves and the rest of the city to be, as it were, king-bees and leaders in the hive. You have received a better

§ 520c  and more complete education than the others, and you are more capable of sharing both ways of life. Down you must go then, each in his turn, to the habitation of the others and accustom yourselves to the observation of the obscure things there. For once habituated you will discern them infinitely better than the dwellers there, and you will know what each of the ‘idols’64 is and whereof it is a semblance, because you have seen the reality of the beautiful, the just and the good. So our city will be governed by us and you with waking minds, and not, as most cities now which are inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream by men who fight one another

§ 520d  for shadows and wrangle for office as if that were a great good, when the truth is that the city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office must needs be best administered and most free from dissension, and the state that gets the contrary type of ruler will be the opposite of this.”
“By all means,” he said. “Will our alumni, then, disobey us when we tell them this, and will they refuse to share in the labors of state each in his turn while permitted to dwell the most of the time with one another in that purer world?”

§ 520e  “Impossible,” he said: “for we shall be imposing just commands on men who are just. Yet they will assuredly approach office as an unavoidable necessity, and in the opposite temper from that of the present rulers in our cities.”
“For the fact is, dear friend,” said I, “if you can discover a better way of life than office-holding

§ 521a  for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are really rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness — a good and wise life. But if, being beggars and starvelings from lack of goods of their own, they turn to affairs of state thinking that it is thence that they should grasp their own good, then it is impossible. For when office and rule become the prizes of contention, such a civil and internecine strife destroys the office-seekers themselves and the city as well.”

§ 521b  “Most true,” he said. “Can you name any other type or ideal of life that looks with scorn on political office except the life of true philosophers?” I asked. “No, by Zeus,” he said. “But what we require,” I said, “is that those who take office should not be lovers of rule. Otherwise there will be a contest with rival lovers.”
“Surely.”
“What others, then, will you compel to undertake the guardianship of the city than those who have most intelligence of the principles that are the means of good government and who possess distinctions of another kind and a life that is preferable to the political life?”
“No others,” he said.

§ 521c  “Would you, then, have us proceed to consider how such men may be produced in a state and how they may be led upward to the light even as some are fabled to have ascended from Hades to the gods?”
“Of course I would.”
“So this, it seems, would not be the whirling of the shell in the children's game, but a conversion and turning about of the soul from a day whose light is darkness to the veritable day — that ascension to reality of our parable which we will affirm to be true philosophy.”
“By all means.”
“Must we not, then, consider what studies have the power to effect this?”

§ 521d  “Of course.”
“What, then, Glaucon, would be the study that would draw the soul away from the world of becoming to the world of being? A thought strikes me while I speak: Did we not say that these men in youth must be athletes of war”
“We did.”
“Then the study for which we are seeking must have this additional qualification.”
“What one?”
“That it be not useless to soldiers.”
“Why, yes, it must,” he said, “if that is possible.”

§ 521e  “But in our previous account they were educated in gymnastics and music.”
“They were, he said. “And gymnastics, I take it, is devoted to that which grows and perishes; for it presides over the growth and decay of the body.”
“Obviously.”
“Then this cannot be the study that we seek.”

§ 522a  “No.”
“Is it, then, music, so far as we have already described it?”
“Nay, that,” he said, “was the counterpart of gymnastics, if you remember. It educated the guardians through habits, imparting by the melody a certain harmony of spirit that is not science, and by the rhythm measure and grace, and also qualities akin to these in the words of tales that are fables and those that are more nearly true. But it included no study that tended to any such good as you are now seeking.”

§ 522b  “Your recollection is most exact,” I said; “for in fact it had nothing of the kind. But in heaven's name, Glaucon, what study could there be of that kind? For all the arts were in our opinion base and mechanical.”
“Surely; and yet what other study is left apart from music, gymnastics and the arts?”
“Come,” said I, “if we are unable to discover anything outside of these, let us take something that applies to all alike.”

§ 522c  “What?”
“Why, for example, this common thing that all arts and forms of thought and all sciences employ, and which is among the first things that everybody must learn.”
“What?” he said. “This trifling matter,” I said, “of distinguishing one and two and three. I mean, in sum, number and calculation. Is it not true of them that every art and science must necessarily partake of them?”
“Indeed it is,” he said. “The art of war too?” said I. “Most necessarily,” he said.

§ 522d  “Certainly, then,” said I, “Palamedes in the play is always making Agamemnon appear a most ridiculous general. Have you not noticed that he affirms that by the invention of number he marshalled the troops in the army at Troy in ranks and companies and enumerated the ships and everything else as if before that they had not been counted, and Agamemnon apparently did not know how many feet he had if he couldn't count? And yet what sort of a General do you think he would be in that case?”
“A very queer one in my opinion,” he said, “if that was true.”

§ 522e  “Shall we not, then,” I said, “set down as a study requisite for a soldier the ability to reckon and number?”
“Most certainly, if he is to know anything whatever of the ordering of his troops — or rather if he is to be a man at all.”
“Do you observe then,” said I, “in this study what I do?”
“What?”
“It seems likely

§ 523a  that it is one of those studies which we are seeking that naturally conduce to the awakening of thought, but that no one makes the right use of it, though it really does tend to draw the mind to essence and reality.”
“What do you mean?” he said. “I will try,” I said, “to show you at least my opinion. Do you keep watch and observe the things I distinguish in my mind as being or not being conducive to our purpose, and either concur or dissent, in order that here too we may see more clearly whether my surmise is right.”
“Point them out,” he said. “I do point them out,” I said, “if you can discern that some reports of our perceptions

§ 523b  do not provoke thought to reconsideration because the judgement of them by sensation seems adequate, while others always invite the intellect to reflection because the sensation yields nothing that can be trusted.”
“You obviously mean distant appearances,” he said, “and shadow-painting.”
“You have quite missed my meaning,” said I. “What do you mean?” he said. “The experiences that do not provoke thought are those that do not

§ 523c  at the same time issue in a contradictory perception. Those that do have that effect I set down as provocatives, when the perception no more manifests one thing than its contrary, alike whether its impact comes from nearby or afar. An illustration will make my meaning plain. Here, we say, are three fingers, the little finger, the second and the middle.”
“Quite so,” he said. “Assume that I speak of them as seen near at hand. But this is the point that you are to consider.”
“What?”
“Each one of them appears to be

§ 523d  equally a finger, and in this respect it makes no difference whether it is observed as intermediate or at either extreme, whether it is white or black, thick or thin, or of any other quality of this kind. For in none of these cases is the soul of most men impelled to question the reason and to ask what in the world is a finger, since the faculty of sight never signifies to it at the same time that the finger is the opposite of a finger.”
“Why, no, it does not,” he said. “Then,” said I, “it is to be expected that such a perception will not provoke or awaken reflection and thought.”

§ 523e  “It is.”
“But now, what about the bigness and the smallness of these objects? Is our vision's view of them adequate, and does it make no difference to it whether one of them is situated outside or in the middle; and similarly of the relation of touch, to thickness and thinness, softness and hardness? And are not the other senses also defective in their reports of such things? Or is the operation of each of them as follows?

§ 524a  In the first place, the sensation that is set over the hard is of necessity related also to the soft, and it reports to the soul that the same thing is both hard and soft to its perception.”
“It is so,” he said. “Then,” said I, “is not this again a case where the soul must be at a loss as to what significance for it the sensation of hardness has, if the sense reports the same thing as also soft? And, similarly, as to what the sensation of light and heavy means by light and heavy, if it reports the heavy as light, and the light as heavy?”

§ 524b  “Yes, indeed,” he said, “these communications to the soul are strange and invite reconsideration.”
“Naturally, then,” said I, “it is in such cases as these that the soul first summons to its aid the calculating reason and tries to consider whether each of the things reported to it is one or two.”
“Of course.”
“And if it appears to be two, each of the two is a distinct unit.”
“Yes.”
“If, then, each is one and both two, the very meaning of ‘two’ is that the soul will conceive them as distinct. For if they were not separable,

§ 524c  it would not have been thinking of two, but of one.”
“Right.”
“Sight too saw the great and the small, we say, not separated but confounded. “Is not that so?”
“Yes.”
“And for the clarification of this, the intelligence is compelled to contemplate the great and small, not thus confounded but as distinct entities, in the opposite way from sensation.”
“True.”
“And is it not in some such experience as this that the question first occurs to us, what in the world, then, is the great and the small?”
“By all means.”
“And this is the origin of the designation “intelligible” for the one, and “visible” for the other.”

§ 524d  “Just so,” he said.
“This, then, is just what I was trying to explain a little while ago when I said that some things are provocative of thought and some are not, defining as provocative things that impinge upon the senses together with their opposites, while those that do not I said do not tend to awaken reflection.”
“Well, now I understand,” he said, “and agree.”
“To which class, then, do you think number and the one belong?”
“I cannot conceive,” he said. “Well, reason it out from what has already been said. For, if unity is adequately seen by itself

§ 524e  or apprehended by some other sensation, it would not tend to draw the mind to the apprehension of essence, as we were explaining in the case of the finger. But if some contradiction is always seen coincidentally with it, so that it no more appears to be one than the opposite, there would forthwith be need of something to judge between them, and it would compel the soul to be at a loss and to inquire, by arousing thought in itself, and to ask,

§ 525a  whatever then is the one as such, and thus the study of unity will be one of the studies that guide and convert the soul to the contemplation of true being.”
“But surely,” he said, “the visual perception of it does especially involve this. For we see the same thing at once as one and as an indefinite plurality.”
“Then if this is true of the one,” I said, “the same holds of all number, does it not?”
“Of course.”
“But, further, reckoning and the science of arithmetic are wholly concerned with number.”

§ 525b  “They are, indeed.”
“And the qualities of number appear to lead to the apprehension of truth.”
“Beyond anything,” he said. “Then, as it seems, these would be among the studies that we are seeking. For a soldier must learn them in order to marshal his troops, and a philosopher, because he must rise out of the region of generation and lay hold on essence or he can never become a true reckoner.”
“It is so,” he said. “And our guardian is soldier and philosopher in one.”
“Of course.”
“It is befitting, then, Glaucon, that this branch of learning should be prescribed by our law and that we should induce those who are to share the highest functions of state

§ 525c  to enter upon that study of calculation and take hold of it, not as amateurs, but to follow it up until they attain to the contemplation of the nature of number, by pure thought, not for the purpose of buying and selling, as if they were preparing to be merchants or hucksters, but for the uses of war and for facilitating the conversion of the soul itself from the world of generation to essence and truth.”
“Excellently said,” he replied. “And, further,” I said, “it occurs to me, now that the study of reckoning has been mentioned,

§ 525d  that there is something fine in it, and that it is useful for our purpose in many ways, provided it is pursued for the sake of knowledge and not for huckstering.”
“In what respect?” he said. “Why, in respect of the very point of which we were speaking, that it strongly directs the soul upward and compels it to discourse about pure numbers, never acquiescing if anyone proffers to it in the discussion numbers attached to visible and tangible bodies. For you are doubtless aware

§ 525e  that experts in this study, if anyone attempts to cut up the ‘one’ in argument, laugh at him and refuse to allow it; but if you mince it up, they multiply, always on guard lest the one should appear to be not one but a multiplicity of parts.”
“Most true,” he replied.

§ 526a  “Suppose now, Glaucon, someone were to ask them, ‘My good friends, what numbers are these you are talking about, in which the one is such as you postulate, each unity equal to every other without the slightest difference and admitting no division into parts?’ What do you think would be their answer?”
“This, I think — that they are speaking of units which can only be conceived by thought, and which it is not possible to deal with in any other way.”
“You see, then, my friend,” said I, “that this branch of study really seems to be

§ 526b  indispensable for us, since it plainly compels the soul to employ pure thought with a view to truth itself.”
“It most emphatically does.”
“Again, have you ever noticed this, that natural reckoners are by nature quick in virtually all their studies? And the slow, if they are trained and drilled in this, even if no other benefit results, all improve and become quicker than they were?”
“It is so,” he said.

§ 526c  “And, further, as I believe, studies that demand more toil in the learning and practice than this we shall not discover easily nor find many of them.”
“You will not, in fact.”
“Then, for all these reasons, we must not neglect this study, but must use it in the education of the best endowed natures.”
“I agree,” he said.
“Assuming this one point to be established,” I said, “let us in the second place consider whether the study that comes next is suited to our purpose.”
“What is that? Do you mean geometry,” he said. “Precisely that,” said I. “So much of it,” he said,

§ 526d  “as applies to the conduct of war is obviously suitable. For in dealing with encampments and the occupation of strong places and the bringing of troops into column and line and all the other formations of an army in actual battle and on the march, an officer who had studied geometry would be a very different person from what he would be if he had not.”
“But still,” I said, “for such purposes a slight modicum of geometry and calculation would suffice. What we have to consider is

§ 526e  whether the greater and more advanced part of it tends to facilitate the apprehension of the idea of good. That tendency, we affirm, is to be found in all studies that force the soul to turn its vision round to the region where dwells the most blessed part of reality, which it is imperative that it should behold.”
“You are right,” he said. “Then if it compels the soul to contemplate essence, it is suitable; if genesis, it is not.”
“So we affirm.”

§ 527a  “This at least,” said I, “will not be disputed by those who have even a slight acquaintance with geometry, that this science is in direct contradiction with the language employed in it by its adepts.”
“How so?” he said. “Their language is most ludicrous, though they cannot help it, for they speak as if they were doing something and as if all their words were directed towards action. For all their talk is of squaring and applying and adding and the like, whereas in fact

§ 527b  the real object of the entire study is pure knowledge.”
“That is absolutely true,” he said. “And must we not agree on a further point?”
“What?”
“That it is the knowledge of that which always is, and not of a something which at some time comes into being and passes away.”
“That is readily admitted,” he said, “for geometry is the knowledge of the eternally existent.”
“Then, my good friend, it would tend to draw the soul to truth, and would be productive of a philosophic attitude of mind, directing upward the faculties that now wrongly are turned earthward.”
“Nothing is surer,” he said.

§ 527c  “Then nothing is surer,” said I, “than that we must require that the men of your Fair City shall never neglect geometry, for even the by-products of such study are not slight.”
“What are they?” said he. “What you mentioned,” said I, “its uses in war, and also we are aware that for the better reception of all studies there will be an immeasurable difference between the student who has been imbued with geometry and the one who has not.”
“Immense indeed, by Zeus,” he said. “Shall we, then, lay this down as a second branch of study for our lads?”
“Let us do so,” he said.

§ 527d  “Shall we set down astronomy as a third, or do you dissent?”
“I certainly agree,” he said; “for quickness of perception about the seasons and the courses of the months and the years is serviceable, not only to agriculture and navigation, but still more to the military art.”
“I am amused,” said I, “at your apparent fear lest the multitude may suppose you to be recommending useless studies. It is indeed no trifling task, but very difficult to realize that there is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh

§ 527e  by such studies when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes; for by it only is reality beheld. Those who share this faith will think your words superlatively true. But those who have and have had no inkling of it will naturally think them all moonshine. For they can see no other benefit from such pursuits worth mentioning. Decide, then, on the spot, to which party you address yourself.

§ 528a  Or are you speaking to neither, but chiefly carrying on the discussion for your own sake, without however judging any other who may be able to profit by it?”
“This is the alternative I choose,” he said, “that it is for my own sake chiefly that I speak and ask questions and reply.”
“Fall back a little, then,” said I; “for we just now did not rightly select the study that comes next after geometry.”
“What was our mistake?” he said. “After plane surfaces,” said I, “we went on to solids in revolution before studying them in themselves.

§ 528b  The right way is next in order after the second dimension to take the third. This, I suppose, is the dimension of cubes and of everything that has depth.”
“Why, yes, it is,” he said; “but this subject, Socrates, does not appear to have been investigated yet.”
“There are two causes of that,” said I: “first, inasmuch as no city holds them in honor, these inquiries are languidly pursued owing to their difficulty. And secondly, the investigators need a director, who is indispensable for success and who, to begin with, is not easy to find, and then, if he could be found, as things are now, seekers in this field would be too arrogant

§ 528c  to submit to his guidance. But if the state as a whole should join in superintending these studies and honor them, these specialists would accept advice, and continuous and strenuous investigation would bring out the truth. Since even now, lightly esteemed as they are by the multitude and hampered by the ignorance of their students as to the true reasons for pursuing them, they nevertheless in the face of all these obstacles force their way by their inherent charm

§ 528d  and it would not surprise us if the truth about them were made apparent.”
“It is true,” he said, “that they do possess an extraordinary attractiveness and charm. But explain more clearly what you were just speaking of. The investigation of plane surfaces, I presume, you took to be geometry?”
“Yes,” said I. “And then,” he said, “at first you took astronomy next and then you drew back.”
“Yes,” I said, “for in my haste to be done I was making less speed. For, while the next thing in order is the study of the third dimension or solids, I passed it over because of our absurd neglect to investigate it, and mentioned next after geometry astronomy,

§ 528e  which deals with the movements of solids.”
“That is right,” he said. “Then, as our fourth study,” said I, “let us set down astronomy, assuming that this science, the discussion of which has been passed over, is available, provided, that is, that the state pursues it.”
“That is likely,” said he; “and instead of the vulgar utilitarian commendation of astronomy, for which you just now rebuked me, Socrates, I now will praise it on your principles.

§ 529a  For it is obvious to everybody, I think, that this study certainly compels the soul to look upward and leads it away from things here to those higher things.”
“It may be obvious to everybody except me,” said I, “for I do not think so.”
“What do you think?” he said. “As it is now handled by those who are trying to lead us up to philosophy, I think that it turns the soul's gaze very much downward.”
“What do you mean?” he said. “You seem to me in your thought to put a most liberal interpretation on the ‘study of higher things,’”

§ 529b  I said, “for apparently if anyone with back-thrown head should learn something by staring at decorations on a ceiling, you would regard him as contemplating them with the higher reason and not with the eyes. Perhaps you are right and I am a simpleton. For I, for my part, am unable to suppose that any other study turns the soul's gaze upward than that which deals with being and the invisible. But if anyone tries to learn about the things of sense, whether gaping up or blinking down, I would never say that he really learns — for nothing of the kind admits of true knowledge — nor would I say that his soul looks up, but down,

§ 529c  even though he study floating on his back on sea or land.”
“A fair retort,” he said; “your rebuke is deserved. But how, then, did you mean that astronomy ought to be taught contrary to the present fashion if it is to be learned in a way to conduce to our purpose?”
“Thus,” said I, “these sparks that paint the sky, since they are decorations on a visible surface, we must regard, to be sure, as the fairest and

§ 529d  most exact of material things but we must recognize that they fall far short of the truth, the movements, namely, of real speed and real slowness in true number and in all true figures both in relation to one another and as vehicles of the things they carry and contain. These can be apprehended only by reason and thought, but not by sight; or do you think otherwise?”
“By no means,” he said. “Then,” said I, “we must use the blazonry of the heavens as patterns to aid in the study of those realities, just as

§ 529e  one would do who chanced upon diagrams drawn with special care and elaboration by Daedalus or some other craftsman or painter. For anyone acquainted with geometry who saw such designs would admit the beauty of the workmanship, but would think it absurd to examine them seriously in the expectation of finding in them the absolute truth

§ 530a  with regard to equals or doubles or any other ratio.”
“How could it be otherwise than absurd?” he said. “Do you not think,” said I, “that one who was an astronomer in very truth would feel in the same way when he turned his eyes upon the movements of the stars? He will be willing to concede that the artisan of heaven fashioned it and all that it contains in the best possible manner for such a fabric; but when it comes to the proportions of day and night, and of their relation to the month, and that of the month to the year, and

§ 530b  of the other stars to these and one another, do you not suppose that he will regard as a very strange fellow the man who believes that these things go on for ever without change or the least deviation — though they possess bodies and are visible objects — and that his unremitting quest the realities of these things?”
“I at least do think so,” he said, “now that I hear it from you.”
“It is by means of problems, then,” said I, “as in the study of geometry, that we will pursue astronomy too, and

§ 530c  we will let be the things in the heavens, if we are to have a part in the true science of astronomy and so convert to right use from uselessness that natural indwelling intelligence of the soul.”
“You enjoin a task,” he said, “that will multiply the labor of our present study of astronomy many times.”
“And I fancy,” I said, “that our other injunctions will be of the same kind if we are of any use as lawgivers.
“However, what suitable studies have you to suggest?”
“Nothing,” he said, “thus off-hand.”
“Yet, surely,” said I, “motion in general provides not one but many forms or species,

§ 530d  according to my opinion. To enumerate them all will perhaps be the task of a wise man, but even to us two of them are apparent.”
“What are they?”
“In addition to astronomy, its counterpart, I replied.”
“What is that?”
“We may venture to suppose,” I said, “that as the eyes are framed for astronomy so the ears are framed, for the movements of harmony; and these are in some sort kindred sciences, as the Pythagoreans affirm and we admit, do we not, Glaucon?”
“We do,” he said.

§ 530e  “Then,” said I, since the task is, so great, shall we not inquire of them what their opinion is and whether they have anything to add? And we in all this will be on the watch for what concerns us.”
“What is that?”
“To prevent our fosterlings from attempting to learn anything that does not conduce to the end we have in view, and does not always come out at what we said ought to be the goal of everything, as we were just now saying about astronomy.

§ 531a  Or do you not know that they repeat the same procedure in the case of harmonies? They transfer it to hearing and measure audible concords and sounds against one another, expending much useless labor just as the astronomers do.”
“Yes, by heaven,” he said, “and most absurdly too. They talk of something they call minims and, laying their ears alongside, as if trying to catch a voice from next door, some affirm that they can hear a note between and that this is the least interval and the unit of measurement, while others insist that the strings now render identical sounds,

§ 531b  both preferring their ears to their minds.”
“You,” said I, “are speaking of the worthies who vex and torture the strings and rack them on the pegs; but — not to draw out the comparison with strokes of the plectrum and the musician's complaints of too responsive and too reluctant strings — I drop the figure, and tell you that I do not mean these people, but those others whom we just now said we would interrogate about harmony.

§ 531c  Their method exactly corresponds to that of the astronomer; for the numbers they seek are those found in these heard concords, but they do not ascend to generalized problems and the consideration which numbers are inherently concordant and which not and why in each case.”
“A superhuman task,” he said. “Say, rather, useful, said I, for the investigation of the beautiful and the good, but if otherwise pursued, useless.”
“That is likely,” he said.
“And what is more,” I said, I take it that if the investigation

§ 531d  of all these studies goes far enough to bring out their community and kinship with one another, and to infer their affinities, then to busy ourselves with them contributes to our desired end, and the labor taken is not lost; but otherwise it is vain.”
“I too so surmise,” said he; “but it is a huge task of which you speak, Socrates.”
“Are you talking about the prelude,” I said, “or what? Or do we not know that all this is but the preamble of the law itself, the prelude of the strain that we have to apprehend? For you surely do not suppose that experts in these matters are reasoners

§ 531e  and dialecticians? ““No, by Zeus,” he said, “except a very few whom I have met.”
“But have you ever supposed,” I said, “that men who could not render and exact an account of opinions in discussion would ever know anything of the things we say must be known?”

§ 532a  “‘No’ is surely the answer to that too.”
“This, then, at last, Glaucon,” I said, “is the very law which dialectics recites, the strain which it executes, of which, though it belongs to the intelligible, we may see an imitation in the progress of the faculty of vision, as we described its endeavor to look at living things themselves and the stars themselves and finally at the very sun. In like manner, when anyone by dialectics attempts through discourse of reason and apart from all perceptions of sense to find his way to the very essence of each thing and does not desist

§ 532b  till he apprehends by thought itself the nature of the good in itself, he arrives at the limit of the intelligible, as the other in our parable, came to the goal of the visible.”
“By all means,” he said. “What, then, will you not call this progress of thought dialectic?”
“Surely.”
“And the release from bonds,” I said, “and the conversion from the shadows to the images that cast them and to the light and the ascent from the subterranean cavern to the world above, and there the persisting inability to look directly at animals and plants and the light of the sun,

§ 532c  but the ability to see the phantasms created by God in water and shadows of objects that are real and not merely, as before, the shadows of images cast through a light which, compared with the sun, is as unreal as they — all this procedure of the arts and sciences that we have described indicates their power to lead the best part of the soul up to the contemplation of what is best among realities, as in our parable the clearest organ in the body was turned to the contemplation of what is brightest in the corporeal and visible region.”

§ 532d  “I accept this,” he said, “as the truth; and yet it appears to me very hard to accept, and again, from another point of view, hard to reject. Nevertheless, since we have not to hear it at this time only, but are to repeat it often hereafter, let us assume that these things are as now has been said, and proceed to the melody itself, and go through with it as we have gone through the prelude. Tell me, then, what is the nature of this faculty of dialectic?

§ 532e  Into what divisions does it fall? And what are its ways? For it is these, it seems, that would bring us to the place where we may, so to speak, rest on the road and then come to the end of our journeying.”

§ 533a  “You will not be able, dear Glaucon, to follow me further, though on my part there will be no lack of goodwill. And, if I could, I would show you, no longer an image and symbol of my meaning, but the very truth, as it appears to me — though whether rightly or not I may not properly affirm. But that something like this is what we have to see, I must affirm. Is not that so?”
“Surely.”
“And may we not also declare that nothing less than the power of dialectics could reveal this, and that only to one experienced in the studies we have described, and that the thing is in no other wise possible?”
“That, too,” he said, “we may properly affirm.”
“This, at any rate,” said I, “no one will maintain in dispute against us:

§ 533b  that there is any other way of inquiry that attempts systematically and in all cases to determine what each thing really is. But all the other arts have for their object the opinions and desires of men or are wholly concerned with generation and composition or with the service and tendance of the things that grow and are put together, while the remnant which we said did in some sort lay hold on reality — geometry and the studies that accompany it —

§ 533c  are, as we see, dreaming about being, but the clear waking vision of it is impossible for them as long as they leave the assumptions which they employ undisturbed and cannot give any account of them. For where the starting-point is something that the reasoner does not know, and the conclusion and all that intervenes is a tissue of things not really known, what possibility is there that assent in such cases can ever be converted into true knowledge or science?”
“None,” said he.
“Then,” said I, “is not dialectics the only process of inquiry that advances in this manner, doing away with hypotheses, up to the first principle itself in order to find confirmation there? And it is literally true that when the eye of the soul is sunk

§ 533d  in the barbaric slough of the Orphic myth, dialectic gently draws it forth and leads it up, employing as helpers and co-operators in this conversion the studies and sciences which we enumerated, which we called sciences often from habit, though they really need some other designation, connoting more clearness than opinion and more obscurity than science. ‘Understanding,’253 I believe, was the term we employed. But I presume we shall not dispute about the name

§ 533e  when things of such moment lie before us for consideration.”
“No, indeed,” he said.255* * *“Are you satisfied, then,” said I, “as before, to call the first division science,

§ 534a  the second understanding, the third belief, and the fourth conjecture or picture-thought — and the last two collectively opinion, and the first two intellection, opinion dealing with generation and intellection with essence, and this relation being expressed in the proportion: as essence is to generation, so is intellection to opinion; and as intellection is to opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to image-thinking or surmise? But the relation between their objective correlates and the division into two parts of each of these, the opinable, namely, and the intelligible, let us dismiss, Glaucon, lest it involve us in discussion many times as long as the preceding.”

§ 534b  “Well,” he said, “I agree with you about the rest of it, so far as I am able to follow.”
“And do you not also give the name dialectician to the man who is able to exact an account of the essence of each thing? And will you not say that the one who is unable to do this, in so far as he is incapable of rendering an account to himself and others, does not possess full reason and intelligence about the matter?”
“How could I say that he does?” he replied. “And is not this true of the good likewise — that the man who is unable to define in his discourse and distinguish and abstract from all other things the aspect or idea of the good,

§ 534c  and who cannot, as it were in battle, running the gauntlet of all tests, and striving to examine everything by essential reality and not by opinion, hold on his way through all this without tripping in his reasoning — the man who lacks this power, you will say, does not really know the good itself or any particular good; but if he apprehends any adumbration of it, his contact with it is by opinion, not by knowledge; and dreaming and dozing through his present life, before he awakens here

§ 534d  he will arrive at the house of Hades and fall asleep for ever?”
“Yes, by Zeus,” said he, “all this I will stoutly affirm.”
“But, surely,” said I, “if you should ever nurture in fact your children whom you are now nurturing and educating in word, you would not suffer them, I presume, to hold rule in the state, and determine the greatest matters, being themselves as irrational as the lines so called in geometry.”
“Why, no,” he said. “Then you will provide by law that they shall give special heed to the discipline that will enable them to ask and answer questions in the most scientific manner?”

§ 534e  “I will so legislate,” he said, “in conjunction with you.”
“Do you agree, then,” said I, “that we have set dialectics above all other studies to be as it were the coping-stone — and that no other higher kind of study could rightly be placed above it,

§ 535a  but that our discussion of studies is now complete”
“I do,” he said.
“The distribution, then, remains,” said I, “to whom we are to assign these studies and in what way.”
“Clearly,” he said. “Do you remember, then, the kind of man we chose in our former selection of rulers?”
“Of course,” he said. “In most respects, then,” said I, “you must suppose that we have to choose those same natures. The most stable, the most brave and enterprising are to be preferred, and, so far as practicable, the most comely. But in addition

§ 535b  we must now require that they not only be virile and vigorous in temper, but that they possess also the gifts of nature suitable to this type of education.”
“What qualities are you distinguishing?”
“They must have, my friend, to begin with, a certain keenness for study, and must not learn with difficulty. For souls are much more likely to flinch and faint in severe studies than in gymnastics, because the toil touches them more nearly, being peculiar to them and not shared with the body.”
“True,” he said. “And

§ 535c  we must demand a good memory and doggedness and industry in every sense of the word. Otherwise how do you suppose anyone will consent both to undergo all the toils of the body and to complete so great a course of study and discipline?”
“No one could,” he said, “unless most happily endowed.”
“Our present mistake,” said I, “and the disesteem that has in consequence fallen upon philosophy are, as I said before, caused by the unfitness of her associates and wooers. They should not have been bastards but true scions.”
“What do you mean?” he said. “In the first place,”

§ 535d  I said, “the aspirant to philosophy must not limp in his industry, in the one half of him loving, in the other shunning, toil. This happens when anyone is a lover of gymnastics and hunting and all the labors of the body, yet is not fond of learning or of listening or inquiring, but in all such matters hates work. And he too is lame whose industry is one-sided in the reverse way.”
“Most true,” he said. “Likewise in respect of truth,” I said, “we shall regard as maimed

§ 535e  in precisely the same way the soul that hates the voluntary lie and is troubled by it in its own self and greatly angered by it in others, but cheerfully accepts the involuntary falsehood and is not distressed when convicted of lack of knowledge, but wallows in the mud of ignorance as insensitively as a pig.”

§ 536a  “By all means,” he said. “And with reference to sobriety,” said I, “and bravery and loftiness of soul and all the parts of virtue, we must especially be on our guard to distinguish the base-born from the true-born. For when the knowledge necessary to make such discriminations is lacking in individual or state, they unawares employ at random for any of these purposes the crippled and base-born natures, as their friends or rulers.”
“It is so indeed,” he said. “But we,” I said, “must be on our guard in all such cases,

§ 536b  since, if we bring men sound of limb and mind to so great a study and so severe a training, justice herself will have no fault to find with us, and we shall preserve the state and our polity. But, if we introduce into it the other sort, the outcome will be just the opposite, and we shall pour a still greater flood of ridicule upon philosophy.”
“That would indeed be shameful,” he said. “Most certainly,” said I: “but here again I am making myself a little ridiculous.”
“In what way?”

§ 536c  “I forgot,” said I, “that we were jesting, and I spoke with too great intensity. For, while speaking, I turned my eyes upon philosophy, and when I saw how she is undeservedly reviled, I was revolted, and, as if in anger, spoke too earnestly to those who are in fault.”
“No, by Zeus, not too earnestly for me as a hearer.”
“But too much so for me as a speaker,” I said. “But this we must not forget, that in our former selection we chose old men, but in this one that will not do. For we must not take Solon's word for it

§ 536d  that growing old a man is able to learn many things. He is less able to do that than to run a race. To the young belong all heavy and frequent labors.”
“Necessarily,” he said.
“Now, all this study of reckoning and geometry and all the preliminary studies that are indispensable preparation for dialectics must be presented to them while still young, not in the form of compulsory instruction.”
“Why so?”
“Because,” said I,

§ 536e  “a free soul ought not to pursue any study slavishly; for while bodily labors performed under constraint do not harm the body, nothing that is learned under compulsion stays with the mind.”
“True,” he said. “Do not, then, my friend, keep children to their studies by compulsion

§ 537a  but by play. That will also better enable you to discern the natural capacities of each.”
“There is reason in that,” he said. “And do you not remember,” I said, “that we also declared that we must conduct the children to war on horseback to be spectators, and wherever it may be safe, bring them to the front and give them a taste of blood as we do with whelps?”
“I do remember.”
“And those who as time goes on show the most facility in all these toils and studies and alarms are to be selected and enrolled on a list.”

§ 537b  “At what age?” he said. “When they are released from their prescribed gymnastics. For that period, whether it be two or three years, incapacitates them for other occupations. For great fatigue and much sleep are the foes of study, and moreover one of our tests of them, and not the least, will be their behavior in their physical exercises.”
“Surely it is,” he said. “After this period,” I said, “those who are given preference from the twenty-year class will receive greater honors than the others,

§ 537c  and they will be required to gather the studies which they disconnectedly pursued as children in their former education into a comprehensive survey of their affinities with one another and with the nature of things.”
“That, at any rate, he said, is the only instruction that abides with those who receive it.”
“And it is also,” said I, “the chief test of the dialectical nature and its opposite. For he who can view things in their connection is a dialectician; he who cannot, is not.”
“I concur,” he said. “With these qualities in mind,” I said,

§ 537d  “it will be your task to make a selection of those who manifest them best from the group who are steadfast in their studies and in war and in all lawful requirements, and when they have passed the thirtieth year to promote them, by a second selection from those preferred in the first, to still greater honors, and to prove and test them by the power of dialectic to see which of them is able to disregard the eyes and other senses and go on to being itself in company with truth. And at this point, my friend, the greatest care is requisite.”
“How so?” he said. “Do you not note,”

§ 537e  said I, “how great is the harm caused by our present treatment of dialectics?”
“What is that?” he said. “Its practitioners are infected with lawlessness.”
“They are indeed.”
“Do you suppose,” I said, “that there is anything surprising in this state of mind, and do you not think it pardonable?”
“In what way, pray?” he said. “Their case,” said I, “resembles that of a supposititious son reared in abundant wealth and a great and numerous family

§ 538a  amid many flatterers, who on arriving at manhood should become aware that he is not the child of those who call themselves his parents, and should I not be able to find his true father and mother. Can you divine what would be his feelings towards the flatterers and his supposed parents in the time when he did not know the truth about his adoption, and, again, when he knew it? Or would you like to hear my surmise?”
“I would.”
“Well, then, my surmise is,” I said, “that he would be more likely to honor

§ 538b  his reputed father and mother and other kin than the flatterers, and that there would be less likelihood of his allowing them to lack for anything, and that he would be less inclined to do or say to them anything unlawful, and less liable to disobey them in great matters than to disobey the flatterers — during the time when he did not know the truth.”
“It is probable,” he said. “But when he found out the truth, I surmise that he would grow more remiss in honor and devotion to them and pay more regard to the flatterers, whom he would heed

§ 538c  more than before and would henceforth live by their rule, associating with them openly, while for that former father and his adoptive kin he would not care at all, unless he was naturally of a very good disposition.”
“All that you say,” he replied, “would be likely to happen. But what is the pertinency of this comparison to the novices of dialectic?”
“It is this. We have, I take it, certain convictions from childhood about the just and the honorable, in which, in obedience and honor to them, we have been bred as children under their parents.”

§ 538d  “Yes, we have.”
“And are there not other practices going counter to these, that have pleasures attached to them and that flatter and solicit our souls, but do not win over men of any decency; but they continue to hold in honor the teachings of their fathers and obey them?”
“It is so”
“Well, then,” said I, “when a man of this kind is met by the question, ‘What is the honorable?’ and on his giving the answer which he learned from the lawgiver, the argument confutes him, and by many and various refutations upsets his faith

§ 538e  and makes him believe that this thing is no more honorable than it is base, and when he has had the same experience about the just and the good and everything that he chiefly held in esteem, how do you suppose that he will conduct himself thereafter in the matter of respect and obedience to this traditional morality?”
“It is inevitable,” he said, “that he will not continue to honor and obey as before.”
“And then,” said I, “when he ceases to honor these principles and to think that they are binding on him, and cannot discover the true principles,

§ 539a  will he be likely to adopt any other way of life than that which flatters his desires?”
“He will not,” he said. “He will, then, seem to have become a rebel to law and convention instead of the conformer that he was.”
“Necessarily.”
“And is not this experience of those who take up dialectics in this fashion to be expected and, as I just now said, deserving of much leniency?”
“Yes, and of pity too,” he said. “Then that we may not have to pity thus your thirty-year-old disciples, must you not take every precaution when you introduce them to the study of dialectics?”
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “And is it not

§ 539b  one chief safeguard not to suffer them to taste of it while young? For I fancy you have not failed to observe that lads, when they first get a taste of disputation, misuse it as a form of sport, always employing it contentiously, and, imitating confuters, they themselves confute others. They delight like spies in pulling about and tearing with words all who approach them.”
“Exceedingly so,” he said. “And when they have themselves confuted many and been confuted by many,

§ 539c  they quickly fall into a violent distrust of all that they formerly held true; and the outcome is that they themselves and the whole business of philosophy are discredited with other men.”
“Most true,” he said. “But an older man will not share this craze,” said I, “but rather choose to imitate the one who consents to examine truth dialectically than the one who makes a jest and a sport of mere contradiction,

§ 539d  and so he will himself be more reasonable and moderate, and bring credit rather than discredit upon his pursuit.”
“Right,” he said. “And were not all our preceding statements made with a view to this precaution our requirement that those permitted to take part in such discussions must have orderly and stable natures, instead of the present practice of admitting to it any chance and unsuitable applicant?”
“By all means,” he said.
“Is it enough, then, to devote to the continuous and strenuous study of dialectics undisturbed by anything else, as in the corresponding discipline in bodily exercises,

§ 539e  twice as many years as were allotted to that?”
“Do you mean six or four?” he said. “Well,” I said, “set it down as five. For after that you will have to send them down into the cave again, and compel them to hold commands in war and the other offices suitable to youth, so that they may not fall short of the other type in experience either. And in these offices, too, they are to be tested to see whether they will remain steadfast under diverse solicitations

§ 540a  or whether they will flinch and swerve.”
“How much time do you allow for that?” he said. “Fifteen years,” said I, “and at the age of fifty those who have survived the tests and approved themselves altogether the best in every task and form of knowledge must be brought at last to the goal. We shall require them to turn upwards the vision of their souls and fix their gaze on that which sheds light on all, and when they have thus beheld the good itself they shall use it as a pattern for the right ordering of the state and the citizens and themselves

§ 540b  throughout the remainder of their lives, each in his turn, devoting the greater part of their time to the study of philosophy, but when the turn comes for each, toiling in the service of the state and holding office for the city's sake, regarding the task not as a fine thing but a necessity; and so, when each generation has educated others like themselves to take their place as guardians of the state, they shall depart to the Islands of the Blest and there dwell. And the state shall establish public memorials

§ 540c  and sacrifices for them as to divinities if the Pythian oracle approves or, if not, as to divine and godlike men.”
“A most beautiful finish, Socrates, you have put upon your rulers, as if you were a statuary.”
“And on the women too, Glaucon,” said I; “for you must not suppose that my words apply to the men more than to all women who arise among them endowed with the requisite qualities.”
“That is right,” he said, “if they are to share equally in all things with the men as we laid it down.”

§ 540d  “Well, then,” said I, “do you admit that our notion of the state and its polity is not altogether a daydream, but that though it is difficult, it is in a way possible and in no other way than that described — when genuine philosophers, many or one, becoming masters of the state scorn the present honors, regarding them as illiberal and worthless, but prize the right

§ 540e  and the honors that come from that above all things, and regarding justice as the chief and the one indispensable thing, in the service and maintenance of that reorganize and administer their city?”
“In what way?” he said. “All inhabitants above the age of ten,” I said,

§ 541a  “they will send out into the fields, and they will take over the children, remove them from the manners and habits of their parents, and bring them up in their own customs and laws which will be such as we have described. This is the speediest and easiest way in which such a city and constitution as we have portrayed could be established and prosper and bring most benefit to the people among whom it arises.”

§ 541b  “Much the easiest,” he said, “and I think you have well explained the manner of its realization if it should ever be realized.”
“Then,” said I, “have we not now said enough about this state and the corresponding type of man — for it is evident what our conception of him will be?”
“It is evident,” he said, “and, to answer your question, I think we have finished.”

§ 543a  BOOK 8
SOCRATES: “Very good. We are agreed then, Glaucon, that the state which is to achieve the height of good government must have community of wives and children and all education, and also that the pursuits of men and women must be the same in peace and war, and that the rulers or kings over them are to be those who have approved themselves the best in both war and philosophy.”
“We are agreed,” he said. “And we further granted this,

§ 543b  that when the rulers are established in office they shall conduct these soldiers and settle them in habitations such as we described, that have nothing private for anybody but are common for all, and in addition to such habitations we agreed, if you remember, what should be the nature of their possessions.”
“Why, yes, I remember,” he said, “that we thought it right that none of them should have anything that ordinary men now possess, but that, being as it were athletes

§ 543c  of war and guardians, they should receive from the others as pay for their guardianship each year their yearly sustenance, and devote their entire attention to the care of themselves and the state.”
“That is right,” I said. “But now that we have finished this topic let us recall the point at which we entered on the digression that has brought us here, so that we may proceed on our way again by the same path.”
“That is easy,” he said; “for at that time, almost exactly as now, on the supposition that you had finished the description of the city, you were going on to say that you assumed such a city

§ 543d  as you then described and the corresponding type of man to be good, and that too though, as it appears, you had a still finer city and type of man to tell of;

§ 544a  but at any rate you were saying that the others are aberrations, if this city is right. But regarding the other constitutions, my recollection is that you said there were four species worth speaking of and observing their defects and the corresponding types of men, in order that when we had seen them all and come to an agreement about the best and the worst man, we might determine whether the best is the happiest and the worst most wretched or whether it is otherwise. And when I was asking what were

§ 544b  the four constitutions you had in mind, Polemarchus and Adeimantus thereupon broke in, and that was how you took up the discussion again and brought to this point.”
“Your memory is most exact,” I said. “A second time then, as in a wrestling-match, offer me the same hold, and when I repeat my question try to tell me what you were then about to say.”
“I will if I can,” said I. “And indeed,” said he, “I am eager myself to hear what four forms of government you meant.”

§ 544c  “There will be no difficulty about that,” said I. “For those I mean are precisely those that have names in common usage: that which the many praised, your Cretan and Spartan constitution; and the second in place and in honor, that which is called oligarchy, a constitution teeming with many ills, and its sequent counterpart and opponent, democracy ; and then the noble tyranny surpassing them all, the fourth and final malady of a state.

§ 544d  Can you mention any other type of government, I mean any other that constitutes a distinct species? For, no doubt, there are hereditary principalities and purchased kingships, and similar intermediate constitutions which one could find in even greater numbers among the barbarians than among the Greeks.”
“Certainly many strange ones are reported,” he said.
“Are you aware, then,” said I, “that there must be as many types of character among men as there are forms of government? Or do you suppose that constitutions spring from the proverbial oak or rock and not from the characters of the citizens,

§ 544e  which, as it were, by their momentum and weight in the scales draw other things after them?”
“They could not possibly come from any other source,” he said. “Then if the forms of government are five, the patterns of individual souls must be five also.”
“Surely.”
“Now we have already described the man corresponding to aristocracy or the government of the best, whom we aver to be the truly good and just man.”

§ 545a  “We have.”
“Must we not, then, next after this, survey the inferior types, the man who is contentious and covetous of honor, corresponding to the Laconian constitution, and the oligarchical man in turn, and the democratic and the tyrant, in order that, after observing the most unjust of all, we may oppose him to the most just, and complete our inquiry as to the relation of pure justice and pure injustice in respect of the happiness and unhappiness of the possessor, so that we may either follow the counsel of Thrasymachus and pursue injustice

§ 545b  or the present argument and pursue justice?”
“Assuredly,” he said, “that is what we have to do.”
“Shall we, then, as we began by examining moral qualities in states before individuals, as being more manifest there, so now consider first the constitution based on the love of honor? I do not know of any special name for it in use. We must call it either timocracy or timarchy. And then in connection with this

§ 545c  we will consider the man of that type, and thereafter oligarchy and the oligarch, and again, fixing our eyes on democracy, we will contemplate the democratic man: and fourthly, after coming to the city ruled by a tyrant and observing it, we will in turn take a look into the tyrannical soul, and so try to make ourselves competent judges of the question before us.”
“That would be at least a systematic and consistent way of conducting the observation and the decision,” he said.
“Come, then,” said I, “let us try to tell in what way a timocracy would arise out of an aristocracy.