I

went down yesterday to the Peiraeus

with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pay my devotions

to the Goddess,

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.

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,

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,

“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.”

“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,

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,

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.

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.

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

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,

'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,

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,

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

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?” “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.

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.”

“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,

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

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

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. “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.” “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.

“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?” “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

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,

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?”

“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.”

“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?”

“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,

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

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?”

“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.”

“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

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,

the maternal uncle of Odysseus, and says “‘he was gifted beyond all men in thievery and perjury.’” 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.”

“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?” “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,

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

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?”

“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.”

“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,

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,

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.”

“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?”

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,

“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

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

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

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,

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,

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,”

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,”

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?

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,

“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.

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,

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.”

“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

—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.

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?”

“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.”

“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.

“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.” “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.

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,”

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.” “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

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

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

, 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.

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?”

“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

?”

“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?”

“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?

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,

“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

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,

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.”

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

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

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

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

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,

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.

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

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.”

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

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:

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.

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.

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

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,

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?

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.

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.”

“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,

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?” “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,

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

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,

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

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

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.

“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

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.”

“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?”

“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.” “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

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?”

“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,

“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.” “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,

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?

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?” “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.

“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

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,

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.

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

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.”

“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?”

“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?” “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

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.” “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,

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

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

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,

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.” “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

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?” “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?”

“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.”

“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—

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

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.”

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

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.”

“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

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

“In my opinion,” I said, “it belongs in the fairest class, that which a man who is to be happy must love both for its own sake and for the results.” “Yet the multitude,” he said, “do not think so, but that it belongs to the toilsome class of things that must be 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,”

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

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,

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

“for on what subject would a man of sense rather delight to hold and hear discourse again and again?” “That is excellent,” he said; “and now listen to what I said would be the first topic—the nature and origin of justice. By nature,

they say, to commit injustice is a good and to suffer it is an evil, but that the excess of evil in being wronged is greater than the excess of good in doing wrong. So that when men do wrong and are wronged by one another and taste of both, those who lack the power

to avoid the one and take the other determine that it is for their profit to make a compact with one another neither to commit nor to suffer injustice; and that this is the beginning of legislation and 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,

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:

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

which men say once came to the ancestor of Gyges the Lydian.

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

and that there was nothing else but a gold ring on its hand, which he took off and 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

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

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,

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.

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.

“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

and attempts the one and lets the others go; and then, too, if he does happen to trip, he is equal to correcting his error. Similarly, the unjust man who attempts injustice rightly must be supposed to escape detection if he is to be altogether unjust, and we must regard the man who is caught as a bungler.

For the height of injustice

is to seem just without being so. To the perfectly unjust man, then, we must assign perfect injustice and withhold nothing of it, but we must allow him, while committing the greatest wrongs, to have secured for himself the greatest reputation for justice;

and if he does happen to trip,

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

For if he is going to be thought just

he will have honors and gifts because of that esteem. We cannot be sure in that case whether he is just for justice' sake or for the sake of the gifts and the honors. So we must strip him bare of everything but justice and make his state the opposite of his imagined counterpart.

Though doing no wrong he must have the repute of the greatest injustice, so that he may be put to the test as regards justice through not softening because of ill repute and the consequences thereof. But let him hold on his course unchangeable even unto death,

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.

We must tell it, then; and even if my language is somewhat rude and brutal,

you must not suppose, Socrates, that it is I who speak thus, but those who commend injustice above justice. What they will say is this: that such being his disposition the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains,

the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified,

and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire. And the saying of Aeschylus

was, it seems, far more correctly applicable to the unjust man. For it is literally true, they will say, that the unjust man, as pursuing what clings closely to reality, to truth, and not regulating his life by opinion, desires not to seem but to be unjust, “ Exploiting the deep furrows of his wit ”

“ From which there grows the fruit of counsels shrewd, ” first office and rule in the state because of his reputation for justice, then a wife from any family he chooses, and the giving of his children in marriage to whomsoever he pleases, dealings and partnerships with whom he will, and in all these transactions advantage and profit for himself because he has no 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

; 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

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

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,

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

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

“ Barley and wheat, and his trees are laden and weighted with fair fruits, Increase comes to his flocks and the ocean is teeming with fishes. ”

And Musaeus and his son

have

a more excellent song

than these of the blessings that the gods bestow on the righteous. For they conduct them to the house of Hades in their tale and arrange a symposium of the saints,

where, reclined on couches crowned with wreaths,

they entertain the time henceforth with wine, as if the fairest meed of virtue were an everlasting drunk. And others extend still further the rewards of virtue from the gods. For they say that the 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,

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

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

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

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; ”

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

“ And incense and libation turn their wills Praying, whenever they have sinned and made transgression. ” And they produce a bushel

of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, the offspring of the Moon and of the Muses, as they affirm, and these books they use in their ritual, and make not only ordinary men but states believe that there really are remissions of sins and purifications for deeds of injustice, by means of sacrifice and pleasant sport

for the living,

and that there are also special rites for the defunct, which they call functions, that deliver us from evils in that other world, while terrible things await those who have neglected to sacrifice.

“What, Socrates, do we suppose is the effect of all such sayings about the esteem in which men and gods hold virtue and vice upon the souls that hear them, the souls of young men who are quick-witted and capable of flitting, as it were, from one expression of opinion to another and inferring from them

all the character and the path whereby a man would lead the best life? Such a youth

would most likely put to himself the question Pindar asks, “‘Is it by justice or by crooked deceit that I the higher tower shall scale and so live my life out in fenced and guarded security?’” The consequences of my being just are, unless I likewise seem so, not assets,

they say, but liabilities, labor and total loss; but if I am unjust and have procured myself a reputation for justice a godlike life is promised. Then

since it is the “‘seeming’” as the wise men show me, that “‘masters the reality’” and is lord of happiness, to this I must devote myself without reserve. For a front and a show

I must draw about myself a shadow-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,

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,

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

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,

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

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,

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

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

For if you had all spoken in this way from the beginning and from our youth up had sought to convince us, we should not now be guarding against one another's injustice, but each would be his own best guardian, for fear lest by working injustice he should dwell in communion with the greatest of evils.

This, Socrates, and perhaps even more than this, Thrasymachus and haply another might say in pleas for and against justice and injustice, inverting their true potencies, as I believe, grossly. But I—

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

nor injustice that you censure, but the seeming, and that you really are exhorting us to be unjust but conceal it, and that you are at one with Thrasymachus in the opinion that justice is 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,

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

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

pleased by their words on this occasion, and said: “ It was excellently spoken of you, sons of the man we know, ”

in the beginning of the elegy which the admirer

of Glaucon wrote when you distinguished yourselves in the battle of Megara

—'Sons of Ariston,

whose race from a glorious sire is 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.

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

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

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;

“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,

let us first look for its quality in states, and then only examine it also in the individual, looking for the likeness of the greater in the form of the less.” “I think that is a good suggestion,” he said. “If, then,” said I, “our argument should observe the origin

of a state, we should see also the origin of justice and injustice in it.” “It may be,” said he. “And if this is done, we may expect to find more easily what we are seeking?”

“Much more.” “Shall we try it, then, and go through with it? I fancy it is no slight task. Reflect, then.” “We have reflected,

” said 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,

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

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

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

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

of the food for himself alone in a quarter of the time and employ the other three-quarters, the one in the provision of a house, the other of a garment, the other of shoes, and not have the bother of associating with other people, but, himself for himself, mind his own affairs?”

And 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

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

attend to it as his main affair, and not as a 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,

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,

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

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

we shall need quite a number of others who are expert in maritime business.” “Quite a number.”

“But again, within the city itself how will they share with one another the products of their labor? This was the very purpose of our association and establishment of a state.” “Obviously,” he said, “by buying and selling.” “A market-place, then, and money as a token

for the purpose of exchange will be the result of this.”

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

in body and those who are useless for any other task. They must wait there in the agora

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

are not altogether worthy of our fellowship, but whose strength of body is sufficient for toil; so they, selling the use of this strength and calling the price wages, are designated, I believe, wage-earners, are they not?” “Certainly.” “Wage-earners, then, it seems, are the complement that helps to fill up the state.”

“I think so.” “Has our city, then, 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?”

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

shod sufficiently? And for their nourishment they will provide meal from their barley and flour from their wheat, and kneading and cooking these they will serve noble cakes and loaves on some arrangement of reeds or clean leaves, and, reclined on rustic beds 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?”

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,

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,

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.

For there are some, it appears, who will not be contented with this sort of fare or with this way of life; but couches will have to be added thereto and tables and other furniture, yes, and relishes and myrrh and incense and girls

and cakes—all sorts of all of them. And the requirements we first mentioned, houses and garments and shoes, will no longer be confined to necessities,

but we must set painting to work and embroidery, and procure gold and ivory and similar adornments, must we not?”

“Yes,” he said. “Then 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

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?” “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,

disregarding the limit set by our necessary wants.” “Inevitably, Socrates.” “We shall go to war

as the next step, Glaucon—or what will happen?” “What you say,” he said. “And we are not yet to speak,” said I, “of any evil or good effect of war, but only to affirm that we have further

discovered the origin of war, namely, from those things from which

the greatest disasters, public and private, come to states when they come.” “Certainly.” “Then, my friend, we must still further enlarge our city

by no small increment, but by a whole army, that will march forth and fight it out with assailants in 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,

“don't you think that the business of fighting is an art and a profession?” “It is indeed,” he said. “Should our concern be greater, then, for the cobbler's art than for the art of war?” “By no means.” “Can we suppose,

then, that while we were at pains to prevent the cobbler from attempting to be at the same time a farmer, a weaver, or a builder instead of just a cobbler, to the end that

we might have the cobbler's business well done, and similarly assigned to each and every one man one occupation, for which he was fit and naturally adapted and at which he was to work all his days,

at leisure

from other pursuits and not letting slip the right moments for doing the work well, and that yet we are in doubt whether the right accomplishment of the business of war is not of supreme moment? Is it so easy

that a man who is 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

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,

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

so far as our strength allows.” “No, we mustn't.” “Do you think,” said I, “that there is any difference between the nature of a well-bred hound for this 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

anything else? Have you never observed what an irresistible and invincible thing is spirit,

the presence of which makes every soul in the face of everything fearless and unconquerable?” “I have.” “The physical qualities of the guardian, then, are obvious.” “Yes.” “And also those of his soul, namely that he must be of high spirit.” “Yes, this too.” “How then, Glaucon,” said I, “will they escape being savage to one another

and to the other citizens if this is to be their nature?” “Not easily, by Zeus,” said he. “And yet

we must have them gentle to their friends and harsh to their enemies; otherwise they will not await their destruction at the hands of others, but will be first themselves in bringing it about.” “True,” he said. “What, then, are we to do?” “said I. “Where shall we discover a disposition that is at once gentle and great-spirited? For there appears to be an opposition

between the spirited type and the gentle nature.” “There does.” “But yet if one lacks either of these qualities, a good guardian he never can be. But these requirements resemble impossibilities, and so

the result is that a good guardian is impossible.” “It seems likely,” he said. And I was at a standstill, and after reconsidering what we had been saying, I said, “We deserve to be at a loss, my friend, for we have lost sight of the comparison that we set before ourselves.

” “What do you mean?” “We failed to note that there are after all such natures as we thought impossible, endowed with these opposite qualities.” “Where?” “It may be observed in other animals, but especially in that which we

likened to the guardian. You surely have observed in well-bred hounds that their natural disposition is to be most gentle to their familiars and those whom they recognize, but the contrary to those whom they do not know.” “I am aware of that.” “The thing is possible, then,” said I, “and it is not an unnatural requirement that we are looking for in our guardian.” “It seems not.”

“And does it seem to you that our guardian-to-be will also need, in addition to the being high-spirited, the further quality of having the love of wisdom in his nature?” “How so?” he said; “I don't apprehend your meaning.”

“This too,” said I, “is something that you will discover in dogs and which is worth our wonder in the creature.” “What?” “That the sight of an unknown person angers him before he has suffered any injury, but an acquaintance he will fawn upon though he has never received any kindness from him. Have you never 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

trait of his nature and one that shows a true love of wisdom.

” “In what respect, pray?” “In respect,” said I, “that he distinguishes a friendly from a hostile aspect by nothing save his apprehension of the one and his failure to recognize the other. How, I ask you,

can the love of learning be denied to a creature whose criterion of the friendly and the alien is intelligence and ignorance?” “It certainly cannot,” he said. “But you will admit,” said I, “that the love of learning and the love of wisdom are the same?” “The same,” he said. “Then may we not confidently lay it down in the case of man too, that if he is to be

in some sort gentle to friends and familiars he must be by nature a lover of wisdom and of learning?” “Let us so assume,” he replied. “The love of wisdom, then, and high spirit and quickness and strength will be combined for us in the nature of him who is to be a good and true guardian of the state.” “By all means,” he said. “Such, then,” I said, “would be the basis

of his character. But the rearing of these men and their education, how shall we manage that? And will the consideration of this topic advance us

in any way 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

had ample leisure,

let us educate these men in our discourse.” “So we must.”

“What, then, is our education?

Or is it hard to find a better than that which long time has discovered?

Which is, I suppose, gymnastics for the body

and for the soul music.” “It is.” “And shall we not begin education in music earlier than in gymnastics?” “Of course.” “And under music you include tales, do you not?” “I do.” “And tales are of two species, the one true and the other false

?” “Yes.” “And education must make use

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

especially for any creature that is young and tender

?

For it is then that it is best molded and takes the impression

that one wishes to stamp upon it.” “Quite so.” “Shall we, then, thus lightly suffer

our children to listen to any chance stories fashioned by any chance teachers and so to take into their minds opinions for the most part contrary to those that we shall think it desirable for them to hold when they are grown up?” “By no manner of means will we allow it.” “We must begin, then, it seems, by a censorship

over our 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

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.”

“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;

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,

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—

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,

that is the sort of thing that ought rather to be said by their elders, men and women, to children from the beginning and as they grow older, and we must compel the poets to keep close to this in their compositions. But Hera's fetterings

by her son and the hurling out of heaven of Hephaestus by his father when he was trying to save his mother from a beating, and the battles of the gods

in Homer's verse are things that we must not admit into our city either wrought in allegory

or without allegory. For the young are not able to distinguish what is and what is not allegory, but whatever opinions are taken into the mind at that age are wont to prove

indelible and unalterable. For which reason, maybe, we should do our utmost that the first stories that they hear should be so composed as to bring the fairest lessons of virtue to their ears.”

“Yes, that is reasonable,” he said; “but if again someone should ask us to be specific and say what these compositions may be and what are the tales, what could we name?” And I replied, “Adeimantus, we are not poets,

you and I at present,

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

good in reality

and always to be spoken of

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

he said. “Neither, then, could God,” said I, “since he is good, be, as the multitude say, the cause of all things, but for mankind he is the cause of few things, but of many things not the cause.

For good things are far fewer

with us than evil, and for the good we must assume no other cause than God, but the cause of evil we must look for in other things and not in God.” “What you say seems to me most true,” he replied. “Then,” said I, “we must not accept

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

nor will we tolerate the saying that “ Zeus is dispenser alike of good and of evil to mortals. ”

“But as to the violation of the oaths

and the truce by Pandarus, if anyone affirms it to have been brought about by the action of Athena and Zeus, we will not approve, nor that the strife and contention

of the gods

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, ”

but if any poets compose a 'Sorrows of Niobe,' the poem that contains these iambics, or a tale of the Pelopidae or of Troy, or anything else of the kind, we must either forbid them to say that these woes are the work of God, or they must devise some such interpretation as we now require, and must declare that what God

did was righteous and good, and they were benefited

by their chastisement. But that they were miserable who paid the penalty, and that the doer of this was God, is a thing that the poet must not be suffered to say; if on the other hand he should say that for needing chastisement the wicked were miserable and that in paying the penalty they were benefited by God, that we must allow. But as to saying that God, who is good, becomes the cause of evil to anyone, we must 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,

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.

“And what of this, the second. Do you think that God is a wizard and capable of manifesting himself by design, now in one aspect, now in another, at one time

himself changing and altering his shape in many transformations and at another deceiving us and causing us to believe such things about him; or that he is simple and less likely than anything else to depart from his own form?” “I cannot say offhand,” he replied. “But what of this: If anything went out from

its own form, would it not be displaced and changed, either by itself

or by something else?” “Necessarily.” “Is it not true that to be altered and moved

by something else happens least to things that are in the best condition, as, for example, a body by food and drink and toil, and plants

by the heat of the sun and winds and similar influences—is it not true that the healthiest and strongest is least altered?”

“Certainly.” “And is it not the soul that is bravest and most intelligent, that would be least disturbed

and altered by any external affection?” “Yes.” “And, again, it is surely true of all composite implements, edifices, and habiliments, by parity of reasoning, that those which are 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

art or both admits least alteration by something else.” “So it seems.” “But God, surely, and everything that belongs to God is in every way in the best possible state.” “Of course.” “From this point of view, then, it would be least of all likely that there would be many forms in God.” “Least indeed.”

“But would he transform and alter himself?” “Obviously,” he said, “if he is altered.” “Then does he change himself for the better and to something fairer, or for the worse

and to something uglier than himself?”

“It must necessarily,” said he, “be for the worse if he is changed. For we surely will not say that God is deficient in either beauty or excellence.” “Most rightly spoken,” said I. “And if that were his condition, do you think, 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,”

I said, “my good friend, must be allowed to tell us that “ The gods, in the likeness of strangers, Many disguises assume as they visit the cities of mortals. ”

Nor must anyone tell falsehoods about Proteus

and Thetis, nor in any tragedy or in other poems bring in Hera disguised as a priestess collecting alms “ for the life-giving sons of Inachus, the Argive stream. ”

And many similar falsehoods they must not tell. Nor again must mothers under the influence of such poets terrify their children

with harmful tales, how 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. “Consider,”

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

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

of the affection in the soul,

an 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

to avert the evil—as a medicine? And also in the fables of which we were just now speaking owing to our ignorance of the truth about antiquity, we liken the false to the true as far as we may and so make it edifying.

” “We most certainly do,” he said. “Tell me, then, on which of these grounds falsehood would be serviceable to God. Would he because of his ignorance of antiquity make false likenesses of it?” “An absurd supposition, that,” he said. “Then there is no lying poet in God.” “I think not.”

“Well then, would it be through fear of his enemies that he would lie?” “Far from it.” “Would it be because of the folly or madness of his friends?” “Nay, no fool or madman is a friend of God.” “Then there is no motive for God to deceive.” “None.” “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.” “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

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

When anyone says that sort of thing about the gods, we shall be wroth with him, we will refuse him a chorus, neither will we allow teachers to use him for the education of the young if our guardians are to be god-fearing men and 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.”

“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? 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,

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

and this:

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

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

and this: “ Sole to have wisdom and wit, but the others are shadowy phantoms, ”

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

and: “ Under the earth like a vapor vanished the gibbering soul, ” and: “ Even as bats in the hollow of some mysterious grotto Fly with a 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. ”

We will beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we cancel those and all similar passages, not that they are not poetic and pleasing

to most hearers, but because the more poetic they are the less are they suited to the ears of boys and men who are destined to be free and to be more afraid of slavery than of death.” “By all means.”

“Then we must further taboo in these matters the entire vocabulary of terror and fear, Cocytus

named of lamentation loud, abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate, the people of the infernal pit and of the charnel-house, and all other terms of this type, whose very names send a shudder

through all the hearers every year. And they may be excellent for other purposes,

but we are in fear for our guardians lest the habit of such thrills make them more sensitive

and soft than we would have them.” “And we are right in so fearing.” “We must remove those things then?” “Yes.” “And the opposite type to them is what we must require in speech and in verse?” “Obviously.” “And shall we also do away with the

wailings and lamentations of men of repute?” “That necessarily follows,” he said, “from the other.” “Consider,” said I, “whether we shall be right in thus getting rid of them or not. What we affirm is that a good man

will not think that for a good man, whose friend he also is, death is a terrible thing.” “Yes, we say that.” “Then it would not be for his friend's

sake as if he had suffered something dreadful that he would make lament.” “Certainly not.” “But we also say this, that such a one is most of all men sufficient unto himself

for a good life and is distinguished from other men in having least need of anybody else.” “True,” he replied. “Least of all then to him is it a terrible thing to lose son

or brother or his wealth or anything of the sort.” “Least of all.” “Then he makes the least lament and bears it most moderately when any such misfortune overtakes him.” “Certainly.” “Then we should be right in doing away with the lamentations of men of note and in attributing them to women,

and not to the most worthy of them either, and to inferior men, in that those whom we say we are breeding for the guardianship of the land may disdain to act like these.” “We should be right,” said he. “Again then we shall request Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, the son of a goddess, as, “ Lying now on his side, and then again on his back, And again on his face, ”

and then rising up and “‘Drifting distraught on the shore of the waste unharvested ocean,’”

nor “clutching with both hands the sooty dust and strewing it over his head,”

nor as weeping and lamenting in the measure and manner attributed to him by the poet; nor yet Priam,

near kinsman of the gods, making supplication and rolling in the dung, “ Calling aloud unto each, by name to each man appealing. ” And yet more than this shall we beg of them at least not to describe the gods as lamenting and crying,

“ Ah, woe is me, woeful mother who bore to my sorrow the bravest, ”

and if they will so picture the gods at least not to have the effrontery to present so unlikely a likeness

of the supreme god as to make him say: “ Out on it, dear to my heart is the man whose pursuit around Troy-town I must behold with my eyes while my spirit is grieving within me, ”

and: “ Ah, woe is me! of all men to me is Sarpedon the dearest, ”

“ Fated to fall by the hands of Patroclus, Menoitius' offspring. ”

“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.”

“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

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. ” —we must not accept it on your view.” “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,

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

the ruler catches anybody else in the city lying, any of the craftsmen “ Whether a prophet or healer of sickness or joiner of timbers, ” he will chastise him for introducing a practice as subversive

and destructive of a state as it is of a ship.” “He will,” he said, “if deed follows upon word.

” “Again, will our lads not need the virtue of self-control?” “Of course.” “And for the multitude

are not the main points of self-control these—to be obedient to their rulers and themselves to be rulers

over the bodily appetites and pleasures of food, drink, and the rest?” “I think so.” “Then, I take it, we will think well said such sayings as that of Homer's Diomede: “ Friend, sit down and be silent and hark to the word of my bidding, ”

and what follows: “ Breathing high spirit the Greeks marched silently fearing their captains, ”

and all similar passages.” “Yes, well said.” “But what of this sort of thing? “ Heavy with wine with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a fleet deer, ”

and the lines that follow,

are these well—and other impertinences

in prose or verse of private citizens to their rulers?” “They are not well.” “They certainly are not suitable for youth to hear for the inculcation of self-control. But if from another point of view they yield some pleasure we must not be surprised, or what is your view of it?” “This,” he said.

“Again, to represent the wisest man as saying that this seems to him the fairest thing in the world, “ When the bounteous tables are standing ”

“ Laden with bread and with meat and the cupbearer ladles the sweet wine Out of the mixer and bears it and empties it into the beakers. ”

—do you think the hearing of that sort of thing will conduce to a young man's temperance or self-control? or this: “ Hunger is the most piteous death that a mortal may suffer. ”

Or to hear how Zeus

lightly forgot all the designs which he devised,

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.’” Nor will it profit them to hear of Hephaestus's fettering Ares and Aphrodite

for a like motive.” “No, by Zeus,” he said,

“I don't think it will.” “But any words or deeds of endurance in the face of all odds

attributed to famous men are suitable for our youth to see represented and to hear, such as: “ He smote his breast and chided thus his heart, “Endure, my heart, for worse hast thou endured.” ”

“By all means,” he said. “It is certain that we cannot allow our men to be acceptors of bribes or greedy for gain.”

“By no means.” “Then they must not chant: “ Gifts move the gods and gifts persuade dread kings. ”

Nor should we approve Achilles' attendant Phoenix

as speaking fairly when he 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.” “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. ”

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,’”

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,

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,

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.

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. ” For which cause we must put down such fables, lest they breed

in our youth great laxity

in turpitude.” “Most assuredly.” “What type of discourse remains for our definition of our prescriptions and proscriptions?” “We have declared the right way of speaking about gods and daemons and heroes and that other world.” “We have.” “Speech, then, about men would be the remainder.” “Obviously.” “It is impossible for us, my friend, to place this here.

” “Why?” “Because I presume we are going to say that so it is that both poets

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

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

“So this concludes the topic of tales.

That of diction, I take it, is to be considered next. So we shall have completely examined both the matter and the manner of speech.” And Adeimantus said, “I don't understand what

you mean by this.” “Well,” said I, “we must have you understand. Perhaps you will be more likely to apprehend it thus. Is not everything that is said by fabulists or poets a narration of past, present, or future things?” “What else could it be?” he said. “Do not they proceed

either by pure narration or by a narrative that is effected through imitation,

or by both?” “This too,” he said, “I still need to have made plainer.” “I seem to be a ridiculous and obscure teacher,

” I said; “so like men who are unable to express themselves

I won't try to speak in wholes

and universals but will separate off a particular part and by the example of that try to show you my meaning. Tell me. Do you know the first lines 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,

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, ” the poet himself is the speaker and does not even attempt to suggest to us that anyone but himself is speaking.

But what follows he delivers as if he were himself Chryses and tries as far as may be to make us feel that not Homer is the speaker, but the priest, an old man. And in this manner he has carried 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

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.

And lest you may say again that you don't understand, I will explain to you how this would be done. If Homer, after telling us that Chryses came with the ransom of his daughter and as a suppliant of the Achaeans but chiefly of the kings, had gone on speaking not as if made or being Chryses

but still as Homer, you are aware that it would not be imitation but narration, pure and simple. It would have been somewhat in this wise. I will state it without meter for I am not a poet:

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

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

without imitation simple narration results.” “I understand,” he said.

“Understand then,” said I, “that the opposite of this arises when one removes the words of the poet between and leaves the alternation of speeches.” “This too I understand,” he said, “—it is what happens in tragedy.” “You have conceived me most rightly,” I said, “and now I think I can make plain to you what I was unable to before, that there is one kind of poetry and tale-telling which works wholly through imitation,

as you remarked, tragedy and comedy; and another which employs the recital of the poet himself, best exemplified, I presume, in the dithyramb

; and there is again that which employs both, in epic poetry and in many other places, if you apprehend me.” “I understand now,” he said, “what you then meant.” “Recall then also the preceding statement that we were done with the 'what' of speech and still had to consider the 'how.'” “I remember.”

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

at all.” “I divine,” he said, “that you are considering whether we shall admit tragedy and comedy into our city or not.” “Perhaps,” said I, “and perhaps even more than that.

For I certainly do not yet know myself, but whithersoever the wind, as it were, of the argument blows,

there lies our course.”

“Well said,” he replied. “This then, 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

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

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,

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

they imbibe the reality.

Or have you not observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and (second) nature

in the body, the speech, and the thought?” “Yes, indeed,” said he. “We will not then allow our charges, whom we expect to prove good men, being men, to play the parts of women and imitate a woman young or old wrangling with her husband, defying heaven, loudly boasting, fortunate in her own conceit, or involved in misfortune

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

and in other ways sinning against themselves and others in word and deed after the fashion of such men. And I take it they must not form the habit of likening themselves to madmen either in words nor yet in deeds. For while knowledge they must have

both of mad and bad men and women, they must do and imitate nothing of this kind.” “Most true,” he said. “What of this?” I said, “—are they to imitate smiths and other craftsmen or the rowers of triremes and those who call the time to them or other things

connected therewith?” “How could they,” he said, “since it will be forbidden them even to pay any attention to such things?” “Well, then, neighing horses

and lowing bulls, and the noise of rivers and the roar of the sea and the thunder and everything of that kind—will they imitate these?” “Nay, they have been forbidden,” he said, “to be mad or liken themselves to madmen.” “If, then, I understand your meaning,” said I, “there is a form of diction and narrative in which

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

when he acts steadfastly and sensibly, and less and more reluctantly when he is upset by sickness or love or drunkenness or any other mishap. But when he comes to someone unworthy of himself, he will not wish to liken himself in earnest to one who is inferior,

except in the few cases where he is doing something good, but will be embarrassed both because he is unpractised in the mimicry of such characters, and also because he shrinks in distaste from molding and fitting himself the types of baser things.

His mind disdains them, unless it be for jest.

” “Naturally,” he said.

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

” he said, that is the type and pattern of such a speaker.” “Then,” said I,

“the other kind 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

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—

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?”

“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

to our polity, because there is no twofold or manifold man

among us, since every man does one thing.” “It is not suited.” “And is this not the reason why such a city is the only one in which we shall find the cobbler a cobbler and not a pilot in addition to his cobbling, and the farmer a farmer and not a judge added to his farming, and the soldier a soldier and not a money-maker in addition to his soldiery, and so of all the rest?” “True,” he said.

“If a man, then, it seems,

who was capable by his cunning of assuming every kind of shape and imitating all things should arrive in our city, bringing with himself

the poems which he wished to exhibit, we should fall down and worship him as a holy and wondrous and delightful creature, but should say to him that there is no man of that kind among us in our city, nor is it lawful for such a man to arise among us, and we should send him away to another city, after pouring myrrh down over his head and crowning him with fillets of wool, but we ourselves, for our souls' good, should continue to employ

the more austere

and less delightful poet and 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.

“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,

“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,

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.” “Will you make any use of them for warriors?” “None at all,” he said; “but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the Phrygian.” “I don't know

the musical modes,” I said, “but leave us that mode

that would fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed, either meeting wounds or death or having fallen into some other mishap,

in all these conditions confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes. And another for such a man engaged in works of peace, not enforced but 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

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

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.

“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

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.

”

“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,

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

that

good rhythm and bad rhythm accompany, the one fair diction, assimilating itself thereto, and the other the opposite, and so of the apt and the unapt, if, as we were just now 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,

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

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.

“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

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

and so from earliest childhood insensibly guide them to likeness, to friendship, to harmony with beautiful reason.” “Yes,” he said, “that would be far the best education for them.” “And is it not for this reason, Glaucon,” said I, “that education in music is most sovereign,

because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained,

and otherwise the contrary? And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste

rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth and become himself beautiful and good.

The ugly he would rightly disapprove of and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but when reason came

the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her 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

in small things or great

and think it unnecessary to recognize them, but were eager to distinguish them everywhere, in the belief that we should never be literate and letter-perfect till we could do this.” “True.” “And is it not also true that if there are any likenesses

of letters reflected in water or mirrors, we shall never know them until we know the originals, but such knowledge belongs to the same art and discipline

?” “By all means.” “Then, by heaven, am I not right in saying that by the same token we shall never be true musicians, either—

neither we nor the guardians that we have undertaken to educate—until we are able to recognize the forms of soberness, courage, 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.

“Then,” said I, “when there is a coincidence

of a beautiful disposition in the soul and corresponding and harmonious beauties of the same type in the bodily form—is not this the fairest spectacle for one who is capable of its contemplation

?” “Far the fairest.” “And surely the fairest is the most lovable.” “Of course.” “The true musician, then, would love by preference persons of this sort; but if there were disharmony he would not love this.” “No,” he said, “not if there was a defect in the soul; but if it were in the body he would bear with it and still be willing to bestow his love.”

“I understand,” I said, “that you have or have had favorites of this sort and I grant your distinction. But tell me this—can there be any communion between soberness and extravagant pleasure

?” “How could there be,” he said, “since such pleasure puts a man beside himself

no less than pain?” “Or between it and virtue generally?” “By no means.” “But is there between pleasure and insolence and 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

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,

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

from boyhood through life, and the way of it is this, I believe; but consider it yourself too. For I, for my part, do not believe that a sound body by its excellence makes the soul good, but on the contrary that a good soul by its virtue renders the body the best that is possible.

What is your opinion?” “I think so too.” “Then if we should sufficiently train the mind and turn over to it the minutiae of the care of the body,

and content ourselves with merely indicating the norms or patterns, not to make a long story of it, we should 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?”

“Perhaps.” “Nay,” said I, “that is a drowsy habit and precarious for health. Don't you observe that they sleep away their lives,

and that if they depart ever so little from their prescribed regimen these athletes are liable to great and violent diseases?” “I do.” “Then,” said I, “we need some more ingenious form of training for our athletes of war, since these must be as it were sleepless hounds, and have the keenest possible perceptions of sight and hearing, and in their campaigns undergo many changes

in their drinking water, their food, and in exposure to the heat of the sun and to storms,

without disturbance of their health.” “I think so.” “Would not, then, the best gymnastics be akin to the music that we were just now describing?” “What do you mean?” “It would be a simple and flexible

gymnastic, and especially so in the training for war.” “In what way?” “One could learn that,” said I, “even from Homer.

For you are aware that in the banqueting of the heroes on campaign he does not

feast them on fish,

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,”

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

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

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

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

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

and cunningly to try every dodge and practice,

every evasion, and wriggle

out of every hold in defeating justice, and that too for trifles and worthless things, because he does not know how much nobler and better it is to arrange his life so as to have no need

of a nodding juryman?” “That is,” said he, “still more shameful than the other.” “And to require medicine,” said I, “not merely for wounds or the incidence of some seasonal maladies,

but, because of sloth and such a regimen as we described, to fill one's body up with winds and humors like a marsh and compel the ingenious sons of 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

did not find fault with the damsel who gave to the wounded Eurypylus

to drink a posset of Pramnian wine plentifully sprinkled with barley and gratings of cheese,

inflammatory 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

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

” “A noble prize

indeed for his science,” he said.

“The appropriate one,” said I, “for a man who did not know that it was not from ignorance or inacquaintance with this type of medicine that 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.

“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,

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,

“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,

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,

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

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

But if a man was incapable of living in the established round

and order of life, he did not think it worth while to treat him, since such a fellow is of no use either to himself or to the state.” “A most politic Asclepius you're telling us of,

” he said. “Obviously,” said I, “that was his character. And his sons too, don't you in see that at Troy they approved

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?’”

But what he was to eat or drink thereafter they no more prescribed than for Eurypylus, taking it for granted that the remedies sufficed to heal men who before their wounds were healthy and temperate in diet

even if they did 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

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,

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,

and if they themselves had suffered all diseases and were not of very healthy constitution. For you see they do not treat the body by the body.

If they did, it would not be allowable for their bodies to be or to have been in evil condition. But they treat the body with the mind—and it is not competent for a mind that is or has been evil to treat anything well.” “Right,” he said. “But a judge, mark you, my friend,

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

since they do not have within themselves patterns answering to the affections of the bad.” “That is indeed their experience,” he said. “Therefore it is,” said I, that the good judge must not be a youth but an old man, a late learner

of the nature of injustice, one who has not become aware of it as a property in his own soul, but one who has through the long years trained himself to understand it as an alien thing in alien souls, and to discern how great an evil it is

by the instrument of mere knowledge and not by experience of his own.” “That at any rate,” he said, “appears to be the noblest kind of judge.” “And what is more, a good one,” I said, “which was the gist of your question. For he who has a good soul is good. But that cunning fellow quick to suspect evil,

and who has himself done many unjust acts and who thinks himself a smart 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,

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

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,

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

in his use of gymnastics, if he please, get to have no need of medicine save when indispensable

?” “I think so.” “And even the exercises and toils of gymnastics he will undertake with a view to the spirited part of his nature

to arouse that rather than for mere strength, unlike ordinary athletes, who treat

diet and exercise only as a means to muscle.” “Nothing could be truer,” he said. “Then may we not say, Glaucon,” said I, “that those who established

an education in music and gymnastics

had not the purpose in view that some attribute to them in so instituting, namely to treat the body by one and the soul by the other?” “But what?” he said. “It seems likely,” I said, “that they ordained both chiefly for the soul's sake.” “How so?” “Have you not observed,” said I, “the effect on the disposition of the mind itself

of lifelong devotion to gymnastics with total neglect of music? Or the disposition of those of the opposite habit?” “In what respect do you mean?” he said.

“In respect of savagery and hardness or, on the other hand, of softness and 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

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?”

“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,

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,

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

is not the result that even if there was some principle of the love of knowledge in his soul, since it tastes of no instruction nor of any inquiry and does not participate in any discussion or any other form of culture, it becomes feeble, deaf, and blind, because it is not aroused or fed nor are its perceptions purified and quickened?” “That is so,” he said. “And so such a man, I take it, becomes a misologist

and stranger to the Muses. He no longer makes any use of persuasion by speech but achieves all his ends

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

by the proper degree of tension and relaxation of each.” “Yes, so it appears,” he said. “Then he who best blends gymnastics with music and applies them most suitably to the soul is the man whom we should most rightly pronounce to be the most perfect and harmonious musician, far rather than the one who brings the strings into unison with one another.

” “That seems likely, Socrates,” he said. “And shall we not also need in our city, Glaucon, a permanent overseer

of this kind if its constitution is to be preserved?”

“We most certainly shall.”

“Such would be the outlines of their education and breeding. For why

should one recite the list of the dances of such citizens, their hunts and chases with hounds, their athletic contests and races? It is pretty plain that they must conform to these principles and there is no longer any difficulty in discovering them.” “There is, it may be, no difficulty,” he said. “Very well,” said I; “what, then, have we next to determine? Is it not which ones among them

shall be

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

and furthermore careful

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

for the interest of the state, and who would be least likely to consent to do the opposite.” “That would be a suitable choice,” he said. “I think, then, we shall have to observe them at every period of life, to see if they are conservators and guardians of this conviction in their minds and never by sorcery nor by force can be brought to expel

from their souls unawares this conviction that they must do what is best for the state.” “What do you mean by the 'expelling'?” he said. “I will tell you, said I; “it seems to me that the exit of a belief from the mind is either voluntary or involuntary.

Voluntary is the departure of the false belief from one who learns better, involuntary that of every true belief.” “The voluntary,” he said, “I understand, but I need instruction about the involuntary.” “How now,” said I, “don't you agree with me in thinking that men are unwillingly deprived of good things but willingly of evil? Or is it not an evil to be deceived in respect of the truth and a good to possess truth? And don't you think that to opine the things that are is to possess the truth?” “Why, yes,” said he, “you are right, and I agree that men are unwillingly deprived of true opinions.

” “And doesn't this happen to them by theft, by the spells of sorcery or by force?” “I don't understand now either,” he said. “I must be talking in high tragic style,

” I said;

“by those who have their opinions stolen from them I mean those who are 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

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

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

and again pass them into pleasures, testing them much more carefully than men do gold in the fire, to see if the man remains immune to such 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

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

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

“How, then,” said I, “might we contrive

one of those opportune falsehoods

of which we were just now

speaking,

so as by one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?” “What kind of a fiction do you mean?” said he. “Nothing unprecedented,” said I, “but a sort of Phoenician tale,

something that has happened ere now in many parts of the world, as the poets aver and have induced men to believe, but that has not happened and perhaps would not be likely to happen in our day

and demanding no little persuasion to make it believable.” “You act like one who shrinks from telling his thought,” he said. “You will think that I have right good reason

for shrinking when I have told,” I said.

“Say on,” said he, “and don't be afraid.” “Very well, I will. And yet I hardly know how to find the audacity or the words to speak and undertake to persuade first the rulers themselves and the soldiers and then the rest of the city, that in good sooth

all our training and educating of them were things that they imagined and that happened to them as it were in a dream; but that in reality at that time they were down within the earth being molded and fostered themselves while

their weapons and the rest of their equipment were being fashioned. And when they were quite finished the earth as being their mother

delivered them, and now as if their land were their mother and their nurse they ought to take thought for her and defend her against any attack and regard the other citizens as their brothers and children of the 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,”

I said; “but all the same hear the rest of the story. While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled gold in their generation,

for which reason they are the most precious—but in the helpers silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen. And as you are all akin, though for the most part you will breed after your kinds,

it may 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

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?”

“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,

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.”

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

instead of dogs.” “A terrible thing, indeed,” he said.

“Must we not then guard by every means in our power against our helpers 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,

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

“He will rightly affirm that.” “Consider then,” said I, “whether, if that is to be their character, their 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,

they must receive as an agreed

stipend

from the other citizens as the wages of their guardianship, so measured that there shall be neither superfluity at the end of the year nor any lack.

And resorting to a common mess

like soldiers on campaign they will live together. Gold and silver, we will tell them, they have of the divine quality from the gods always in their souls, and they have no need of the metal of men nor does holiness suffer them to mingle and contaminate that heavenly possession with the acquisition of mortal gold, since many impious deeds have been done about

the coin of the multitude, while that which dwells within them is unsullied. But for these only of all the dwellers in the city it is not lawful to handle gold and silver and to touch them nor yet to come under the same roof

with them, nor to hang them as ornaments on their limbs nor to drink from silver and gold. So living they would save themselves and save their city.

But whenever they shall acquire for themselves land of their own and houses and coin, they will be house-holders and farmers instead of guardians, and will be transformed

from the helpers of their fellow citizens to their enemies and masters,

and so in hating and being hated,

plotting and being plotted against they will pass their days fearing far more and rather

the townsmen within than the foemen without—and then even then laying the course

of near shipwreck for themselves and the state. For all these reasons,” said I, “let us declare that such must be the provision for our guardians in lodging and other respects and so legislate. Shall we not?” “By all means,” said Glaucon.

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,

exactly like hired mercenaries, with nothing to do but keep guard.” “Yes,” said I, “and what is more, they serve for board-wages and do not even receive pay in addition to their food as others do,

so that they will not even be able to take a journey

on their own account, if they wish to, or make presents to their mistresses, or spend money in other directions according to their desires like the men who are thought to be happy. These and many similar counts of the indictment you are omitting.” “Well,” said he, “assume these counts too.

”

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

that in a state so constituted we should be most likely to discover justice as we should injustice

in the worst governed state, and that when we had made these out we could pass 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—

we should think it a reasonable justification to reply, ‘Don't expect us, quaint friend, to paint the eyes so fine that they will not be like eyes at all, nor the other parts. But observe whether by assigning what is proper to each we render the whole beautiful.

’ And so in the present case you must not require us to attach to the guardians a happiness that will make them anything but guardians.

For in like manner we could

clothe the farmers in robes of state and deck them with gold and bid them cultivate the soil at their pleasure, and we could make the potters recline on couches from left to right

before the fire drinking toasts and feasting with their wheel alongside to potter with when they are so disposed, and we can make all the others happy in the same fashion, so that thus the entire city may be happy. But urge us not to this,

since, if we yield, the farmer will not be a farmer nor the potter a potter, nor will any other of the types that constitute state keep its form. However, for the others it matters less. For cobblers

who deteriorate and are spoiled and pretend to be the workmen that they are not are no great danger to a state. But guardians of laws and of the city who are not what they pretend to be, but only seem, destroy utterly, I would have you note, the entire state, and on the other hand, they alone are decisive of its good government and happiness. If then we are forming true guardians

and keepers of our liberties, men least likely to harm the commonwealth, but the proponent of the other ideal is thinking of farmers and 'happy' feasters as it were in a festival and not in a civic community, he would have something else in mind

than a state. Consider, then, whether our aim in establishing the guardians is the greatest possible happiness among them or whether that is something we must look to see develop in the city as a whole, but these helpers and guardians

are to be constrained and persuaded to do what will make them the best craftsmen in their own work, and similarly all the rest. And so, as the entire city develops and is ordered well, each class is to be left, to the share of happiness that its nature comports.

“Well,” he said, “I think you are right.” “And will you then,” I said, “also think me reasonable in another point akin to this?” “What pray?” “Consider whether

these are the causes that corrupt other

craftsmen too so as positively to spoil them.

” “What causes?” “Wealth and poverty,”

said I. “How so?” “Thus! do you think a potter who grew rich would any longer be willing to give his mind to his craft?” “By no means,” said he. “But will he become more idle and negligent than he was?” “Far more.” “Then he becomes a worse potter?” “Far worse too.” “And yet again, if from poverty he is unable to provide himself with tools and other requirements of his art,

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

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

but easier to fight two.

” “What did you mean by that?” he said. “Tell me first,” I said, “whether, if they have to fight, they will not be fighting as athletes of war

against men of wealth?” “Yes, that is true,” he said. “Answer me then, 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

and then turn and strike the one who came up first, and if he repeated the procedure many times under a burning and stifling sun? Would not such a fighter down even a number of such opponents?” “Doubtless,” he said; “it wouldn't be surprising if he did.” “Well, don't you think that the rich have more of the skill and practice

of boxing than of the art of war?” “I do,” he said. “It will be easy, then, for our athletes in all probability to fight with double and triple their number.” “I shall have to concede the point,”

he said, “for I believe you are right.” “Well then, if they send an embassy to the other city and say what is in fact true

: ‘We make no use of gold and silver nor is it lawful for us but it is for you: do you then join us in the war and keep the spoils of the enemy,’

—do you suppose any who heard such a proposal would choose to fight against hard and wiry hounds rather than with the aid of the hounds against fat and tender sheep?” “I think not.” “Yet consider whether the accumulation

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

There are two at the least at enmity with one another, the city of the rich

and the city of the poor,

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

defenders. For a city of this size

that is really one

you will not easily discover either among Greeks or barbarians—but of those that seem so you will find many and many times the size of this. Or do you think otherwise?” “No, indeed I don't,” said he.

“Would not this, then, be the best rule and measure for our governors of the proper size of the city and of the territory that they should mark off for a city of that size and seek no more?” “What is the measure?” “I think,” said I, “that they should let it grow so long as in its growth it consents

to remain a unity,

but no further.” “Excellent,” he said. “Then is not this still another injunction that we should lay upon our guardians, to keep guard in every way that the city shall not be too small, nor great only in seeming, but that it shall be a sufficient city and one?” “That behest will perhaps be an easy

one for them,” he said. “And still easier,

haply,” I said, “is this that we mentioned before

when we said that if a degenerate offspring was born to the guardians he must be sent away to the other classes,

and likewise if a superior to the others he must be enrolled among the guardians; and the purport of all this was

that the other citizens too must be sent to the task for which their natures were fitted, one man to one work, in order that each of them fulfilling his own function may be not many men, but one, and so the entire city may come to be not a multiplicity but a unity.

” “Why yes,” he said, “this is even more trifling than that.” “These are not, my good Adeimantus, as one might suppose, numerous and difficult injunctions that

we are imposing upon them, but they are all easy, provided they guard, as the saying is, the one great thing

—or instead of great let us call it sufficient.

” “What is that?” he said. “Their education and nurture,” I replied. “For if a right education

makes of them reasonable men they will easily discover everything of this kind—and other principles that we now pass over, as that the possession of wives and marriage,

and the procreation of children and all that sort of thing should be made as far as possible the proverbial goods of friends that are common.

” “Yes, that would be the best way,” he said. “And, moreover,” said I, “the state, if it once starts

well, proceeds as it were in a cycle

of growth. I mean that a sound nurture and education if kept up creates good natures in the state, and sound natures in turn receiving an education of this sort develop into better men than their predecessors

both for other purposes and for the production of offspring as among animals also.

” “It is probable,” he said. “To put it briefly, then,” said I, “it is to this that the overseers of our state must cleave and be watchful against its insensible corruption. They must throughout be watchful against innovations in music and gymnastics counter to the established order, and to the best of their power guard against them, fearing when anyone says that “ That song is most regarded among men Which hovers newest on the singer's lips, ”

lest haply

it be supposed that the poet means not new songs but a new way of song

and is commending this. But we must not praise that sort of thing nor conceive it to be the poet's meaning. For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music

are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions, as Damon affirms and as I am convinced.

” “Set me too down in the number of the convinced,” said Adeimantus.

“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