Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory, fifth edition

How will you defend yourself, Socrates, he said, if [419a] someone objects that you are not making these men very happy and, furthermore, that it is their own fault that they are not? I mean, the city really belongs to them, yet they derive no good from the city. Others own land, build fine, big houses, acquire furnishings to go along with them, make their own private sacrifices to the gods, entertain guests, and also, of course, possess what you were talking about just now: gold and silver and all the things that those who are going to be blessedly happy are thought to require. Instead of that, he might say, they seem simply to be paid auxiliaries established in the city as a garrison, and nothing else. [420a]

SOCRATES: Yes, and what is more, they do it just for upkeep and get no wages in addition to their upkeep, as other men do. So, they won’t even be able to take a personal trip out of town if they want to, or give presents to their girlfriends, or spend money in whatever other ways they might wish, as people do who are considered happy. You have omitted these and a host of other similar facts from your list of charges.

SOCRATES: I think we will discover what to say if we follow the same path as before. You see, our reply will be this: it would not be at all surprising if these people were happiest just as they are. However, in establishing our city, we are not looking to make any one group in it outstandingly happy, but to make the whole city so as far as possible. For we thought that we would be most likely to find justice in such a city, and injustice, by contrast, in the one that is governed worst. And we thought that by observing both cities, we would be able to decide the question we have been inquiring into for so long. At the moment, then, [c] we take ourselves to be forming a happy city—not separating off a few happy people and putting them in it, but making the city as a whole happy. (We will look at the opposite city soon.)¹

Suppose, then, that we were painting a statue² and someone came up to us and started to criticize us, saying that we had not applied the most beautiful colors to the most beautiful parts of the statue; because the eyes, which are the most beautiful part, had been painted black rather than purple. We would think it reasonable to offer the following defense: “My amazing [d] fellow, you must not expect us to paint the eyes so beautifully that they no longer look like eyes at all, nor the other parts either. On the contrary, you must look to see whether, by dealing with each part appropriately, we are making the whole thing beautiful. Similarly, in the present case, you must not force us to give our guardians the sort of happiness that would make them something other than guardians. You see, we know how to clothe the farmers in purple [e] robes, festoon them with gold jewelry, and tell them to work the land whenever they please. We know we could have our potters recline on couches from right to left in front of the fire,³ drinking and feasting with their wheel beside them for whenever they have a desire to make pots. And we can make all the others happy in the same way, so that the whole city is happy. But please do not urge us to do this. For if we are persuaded by you, a farmer won’t be a farmer, nor a potter a potter, nor will any of the others from [421a] which a city is constituted remain true to type. But for most of the others, it matters less: cobblers who become inferior and corrupt, and claim to be what they are not, do nothing terrible to the city. But if the guardians of our laws and city are not really what they seem to be, you may be sure that they will destroy the city utterly and, on the other hand, that they alone have the opportunity to govern it well and make it happy.”

Now, if we are making genuine guardians, the sort least likely to do the city evil, and if our critic is [b] making pseudo-farmers—feasters happy at a festival, so to speak, not in a city—he is not talking about a city, but about something else. What we have to consider, then, is whether our aim in establishing the guardians is the greatest possible happiness for them, or whether—since our aim is to see this happiness develop for the whole city—we should compel or persuade the auxiliaries and guardians to ensure that [c] they, and all the others as well, are the best possible craftsmen at their own work; and then, with the whole city developing and being governed well, leave it to nature to provide each group with its share of happiness.

SOCRATES: Well, then, will you also think me reasonable if I say something closely related?

SOCRATES: Take the rest of the craftsmen again, and consider whether these things corrupt them to such an extent that they actually become bad. [d]

SOCRATES: This: do you think that a potter who has become wealthy will still be willing to devote himself to his craft?

SOCRATES: And surely if poverty prevents him from providing himself with tools, or any of the other things he needs for his craft, he will make poorer products himself and worse craftsmen of his sons or anyone else he teaches. [e]

SOCRATES: So poverty and wealth make the products and the practitioners of the crafts worse.

SOCRATES: It seems, then, that we have found other things that our guardians must prevent in every way from slipping into the city undetected.

SOCRATES: Wealth and poverty. For the former makes for luxury, idleness, and revolution; and the [422a] latter for illiberality, bad work, and revolution as well.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s right. But consider this, Socrates: how will our city be able to fight a war if it has acquired no wealth—especially if it has to fight a great and wealthy city?

SOCRATES: Obviously, it will be harder to fight one such city, but easier to fight two. [b]

SOCRATES: First of all, if our city has to fight a city of the sort you mention, won’t it be a case of warrior-athletes fighting rich men?

SOCRATES: Well, then, Adeimantus, don’t you think that a single boxer who has had the best possible training could easily fight two non-boxers who are rich and fat?

SOCRATES: Not even if he could start to run away and then turn and hit the one who caught up with him first, and could do this often, out in the stifling [c] heat of the sun? Couldn’t a man like that overcome even more than two such enemies?

SOCRATES: Well, don’t you think that rich people have more knowledge and experience of boxing than of how to fight a war?

SOCRATES: In all likelihood, then, our athletes will easily be able to fight two or three times their number.

SOCRATES: Well, then, what if they sent an envoy to another city with the following true message: “We [d] use no gold or silver. It is against divine law for us to do so, but not for you. So join us in this war and you can have the property of our enemy.” Do you think that anyone who heard this message would choose to fight hard, lean hounds, rather than to join the hounds in fighting fat and tender sheep?

ADEIMANTUS: No, I do not. But if the wealth of all other cities were amassed by a single one, don’t you think that would endanger your non-wealthy city? [e]

SOCRATES: You are happily innocent if you think that any city besides the one we are constructing deserves to be called a city.

SOCRATES: We will have to find a “greater” title for the others because each of them is a great many cities, but not a city, as they say in the game.⁴ They contain two, at any rate, which are at war with one another: the city of the poor and that of the rich. And within each of these, there are a great many more. [423a] So if you treat them as one city, you will be making a big mistake. But if you treat them as many and offer one the money, power, and the very inhabitants of another, you will always find many allies and few enemies. And as long as your own city is temperately governed in the way we just arranged, it will be the greatest one—not in reputation; I do not mean that; but the greatest in fact—even if it has only a thousand soldiers to defend it. For you won’t easily find one city so great among either Greeks or barbarians, though you will find many that are reputed to be many times greater. Or do you disagree? [b]

SOCRATES: This, then, would also provide our rulers with the best limit for determining the proper size of the city, and how much land they should mark off for a city that size, letting the rest go.

SOCRATES: I think it is this: as long as it is willing to remain one city, it may continue to grow, but not beyond that point.

SOCRATES: Then we will also give our guardians this further order, that they are to guard in every possible way against the city’s being either small in size or great in reputation, rather than adequate in size and one in number.

SOCRATES: Here is another that is even more trivial. We mentioned it earlier as well.⁵ We said that if an offspring of the guardians is inferior, he must be sent off to join the other citizens, and that if the others have an excellent offspring, he must join the [d] guardians. This was meant to make clear that every other citizen, too, must be assigned to what naturally suits him, with one person assigned to one job so that, practicing his own pursuit, each of them will become not many but one, and the entire city thereby naturally grow to be one, not many.

SOCRATES: Really, my good Adeimantus, the orders we are giving them are neither as numerous nor as difficult as one would think. Indeed, they are all insignificant provided, as the saying goes, they safeguard the one great thing—or rather not great but adequate. [e]

SOCRATES: Their education and upbringing. For if a good education makes them moderate men, they will easily discover all this for themselves—and everything else that we are now omitting, such as the possession of women, marriages, and the procreation of children, and how all these must be governed as far as possible by the old proverb that friends share [424a] everything in common.

SOCRATES: And surely once our constitution is well started, it will, as it were, go on growing in a circle. For good education and upbringing, if they are kept up, produce good natures; and sound natures, which in turn receive such an education, grow up even better than their predecessors in every respect—but particularly with respect to their offspring, as in the case of all the other animals. [b]

SOCRATES: To put it briefly, then, what the overseers of our city must cling to, not allow to become corrupted without their noticing it, and guard against everything, is this: there must be no innovation in musical or physical training that goes against the established order. On the contrary, they must guard against that as much as they can. And they should dread to hear anyone say that “people think most of the song that floats newest from the singer’s lips,”⁶ in case someone happens to suppose that the poet means not new songs, but a new way of singing, [c] and praises that. We should not praise such a claim, however, or take it to be what the poet meant. You see, a change to a new kind of musical training is something to beware of as wholly dangerous. For one can never change the ways of training people in music without affecting the greatest political laws. That is what Damon says, and I am convinced he is right.

SOCRATES: It seems, then, that it is in musical training that the guardhouse of our guardians must [d] surely be built.

ADEIMANTUS: At any rate, this sort of lawlessness easily inserts itself undetected.

SOCRATES: Yes, because it is supposed to be only part of a game that, as such, can do no harm.

ADEIMANTUS: And it does not do any—except, of course, that when it has established itself there, it slowly and silently flows over into people’s habits and practices. From these it travels forth with greater vigor into private contracts, and then from private contracts it advances with the utmost insolence into the laws and constitution, Socrates, until in the end it overthrows [e] everything public and private.

SOCRATES: Then, as we were saying at the beginning, our children must take part in games that are more law-abiding right from the start, since, if their games become lawless and the children follow suit, isn’t it impossible for them to grow up into excellent and law-abiding men? [425a]

SOCRATES: So whenever children play in a good way right from the start and absorb lawfulness from musical training, there is the opposite result: lawfulness follows them in everything and fosters their growth, correcting anything in the city that may have been neglected before.

SOCRATES: And so such people rediscover the seemingly insignificant conventional views their predecessors had destroyed.

SOCRATES: Those dealing with things like this: the silence appropriate for younger people in the presence of their elders; the giving up of seats for [b] them and standing up in their presence; the care of parents; hairstyles; clothing; shoes; the general appearance of the body; and everything else of that sort. Don’t you agree?

SOCRATES: To legislate about such things is naïve, in my view, since verbal or written decrees will never make them come about or last.

SOCRATES: At any rate, Adeimantus, it looks as though the start of someone’s education determines what follows. Or doesn’t like always encourage like? [c]

SOCRATES: And the final outcome of education, I imagine we would say, is a single, complete, and fresh product that is either good or the opposite.

SOCRATES: That is why I, for my part, would not try to legislate about such things.

SOCRATES: Then, by the gods, what about all that marketplace business, the contracts people make with one another in the marketplace, for example, and contracts with handicraftsmen, and slanders, injuries, [d] indictments, establishing juries, paying or collecting whatever dues are necessary in marketplace and harbors, and, in a word, the entire regulation of marketplace, city, harbor, or what have you—dare we legislate about any of these?

ADEIMANTUS: No, it would not be appropriate to dictate to men who are fine and good. For they will easily find out for themselves whatever needs to be legislated about such things. [e]

SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, provided that a god grants that the laws we have already described are preserved intact.

ADEIMANTUS: If not, they will spend their lives continually enacting and amending such laws in the hope of finding what is best.

SOCRATES: You mean they will live like those sick people who, because they are intemperate, are not willing to abandon their bad way of life.

SOCRATES: Such people really do lead a charming [426a] life! Their medical treatment achieves nothing, except to make their illnesses worse and more complex, and they are always hoping that someone will recommend some new drug that will make them healthy.

SOCRATES: And isn’t it another charming feature of theirs that they think their worst enemy of all is the one who tells them the truth—that until they give up drunkenness, overeating, sexual indulgence, and idleness, then no drug, cautery, or surgery, no charms, [b] amulets, or anything else of that sort will do them any good?

ADEIMANTUS: It is not charming at all. Being harsh to someone who tells the truth is not charming.

SOCRATES: Then nor will you approve of an entire city that behaves in the way we were just describing. Or don’t you think that such invalids behave in the very same way as cities where the following occurs? Because they are badly governed politically, the citizens are warned not to change the city’s whole political system, and the one who does is threatened with [c] the death penalty. But the one who serves these cities most pleasantly, while they remain politically governed in that way; who indulges them, flatters them, anticipates their wishes, and is clever at fulfilling them; isn’t he, on that account, honored by them as a good man who is wise in the most important matters?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, I think their behavior is the same and I do not approve of it at all.

SOCRATES: What about those who are willing and eager to provide treatment for such cities? Don’t you [d] approve of their courage and also their lighthearted irresponsibility?

ADEIMANTUS: I do indeed—except for those who are actually deluded and suppose themselves to be true men of politics because they are praised by the masses.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? Have you no sympathy for these men? Or do you think it is possible for a man who does not know how to measure anything not to believe that he is four cubits tall⁷ when many others, who are similarly ignorant, tell him that he is? [e]

SOCRATES: Then do not be too hard on them. You see, such people are surely the most charming of all. They pass and amend the sorts of laws we have just been describing, and are always expecting that they will find a way to put a stop to cheating on contracts, and the other evildoings I mentioned just now, not realizing that they are really just cutting off a Hydra’s head.⁸

SOCRATES: I would have thought, then, that a true lawgiver should not bother with laws or constitutions of this kind, whether in a politically badly governed or in a politically well-governed city—in the one because it is useless and accomplishes nothing; in the other because some of them are discoverable by anyone, while the others follow automatically from the practices already described.

SOCRATES: For us, nothing; but for the Delphic Apollo, there remain the greatest, finest, and first of legislations.

SOCRATES: The establishing of temples and sacrifices, and other forms of service to gods, daimons, and heroes; the burial of the dead, and the services that ensure the favor of those who have gone to the other world. For we, of course, have no knowledge of these things and so, when we are founding a city, we won’t take anyone else’s advice, if we have any sense, or employ any interpreter except our ancestral [c] one. And in fact, this god—as he delivers his interpretations from his seat at the navel of the earth⁹—is the ancestral guide on these matters for the whole human race.

SOCRATES: So then, son of Ariston, your city would now seem to be founded. As the next step, [d] look inside it, having got hold of an adequate light somewhere. Look yourself and invite your brother and Polemarchus and the rest of us to help you, to see where justice and injustice might be in it, how they differ from one another, and which of the two must be possessed by the person who is going to be happy, whether that fact is hidden from all gods and humans or not.

That’s nonsense! You promised you would look for them yourself, because you said it was impious for you not to defend justice in every way you could.¹⁰[e]

SOCRATES: You are right to remind me, and I must do what I promised. But you will have to help.

SOCRATES: I expect, then, to find justice in the following way. I think our city, if indeed it has been correctly founded, is completely good.

SOCRATES: Then if we find any of these in it, what remains will be what we have not found?

SOCRATES: Therefore, as in the case of any other four things, if we were looking for one of them in something and recognized it first, that would be enough to satisfy us. But if we recognized the other three first, that itself would enable us to recognize what we were looking for, since clearly it could not be anything other than the one that remains.

SOCRATES: So, since there also happen to be four things we are interested in, mustn’t we look for them in the same way?

SOCRATES: Now, the first thing I think I can see clearly in the city is wisdom. And there seems to be something odd about it. [b]

SOCRATES: I think that the city we described is really wise. And that is because it is prudent,¹¹ isn’t it?

SOCRATES: And surely it is clear that this very thing, prudence, is some sort of knowledge. I mean, it certainly is not through ignorance that people do the prudent thing, but through knowledge.

SOCRATES: But there are, of course, many multifarious sorts of knowledge in the city.

SOCRATES: So, is it because of the knowledge possessed by the carpenters that the city deserves to be described as wise and prudent?

SOCRATES: So a city shouldn’t be called wise because it has the knowledge that deliberates about how wooden things can be best.

SOCRATES: What about this, then? What about the knowledge of things made of bronze, or anything else of that sort?

SOCRATES: And not the knowledge of how to produce crops from the soil. On the contrary, it is skilled in farming because of that.

SOCRATES: Then is there some knowledge in the city we have just founded, which some of its citizens have, that does not deliberate about some particular thing in the city, but about the city as a whole, and [d] about how its internal relations and its relations with other cities will be the best possible.

GLAUCON: It is the craft of guardianship. And the ones who possess it are those rulers we just now called complete guardians.¹²

SOCRATES: Now, do you think that there will be more metalworkers in the city, or more of these true guardians? [e]

SOCRATES: Of all those who are called by a certain name because they have some sort of knowledge, wouldn’t the true guardians be the fewest in number?

SOCRATES: So, it is because of the smallest group or part of itself, and the knowledge that is in it—the part that governs and rules—that a city founded according to nature would be wise as a whole. And this class—which seems to be, by nature, the smallest—is the one that inherently possesses a share of the knowledge that alone among all the other sorts of [429a] knowledge should be called wisdom.

SOCRATES: So we have found—though I do not know how—this one of the four and its place in the city, too.

SOCRATES: But surely courage and the part of the city it is in, and because of which the city is described as courageous, is not very difficult to spot.

SOCRATES: Who would describe a city as cowardly or courageous by looking at anything other than [b] that part which defends it and wages war on its behalf?

SOCRATES: Because, I take it, whether the others are courageous or cowardly doesn’t make it one or the other.

SOCRATES: So courage, too, belongs to a city because of a part of itself—because it has in that part the power to preserve through everything its belief that the things, and the sorts of things, that should inspire terror are the very things, and sorts of things, [c] that the lawgiver declared to be such in the course of educating it. Or don’t you call that courage?

GLAUCON: I do not completely understand what you said. Would you mind repeating it?

SOCRATES: The preservation of the belief, inculcated by the law through education, about what things, and what sorts of things, inspire terror. And by its preservation “through everything,” I mean preserving it though pains, pleasures, appetites, and fears and not abandoning it. I will compare it to something [d] I think it resembles, if you like.

SOCRATES: You know, then, that when dyers want to dye wool purple, they first select from wools of many different colors the ones that are naturally white. Then they give them an elaborate preparatory treatment, so that they will accept the color as well as possible. And only at that point do they dip them in the purple dye. When something is dyed in this way, it holds the dye fast, and no amount of washing, [e] whether with or without detergent, can remove the color. But you also know what happens when things are not dyed in this way, when one dyes wools of other colors, or even these white ones, without preparatory treatment.

SOCRATES: You should take it, then, that we too were trying as hard as we could to do something similar when we selected our soldiers and educated them in musical and physical training. It was contrived, you should suppose, for no purpose other than [430a] to ensure that—persuaded by us—they would absorb the laws in the best possible way, just like wool does a dye; that as a result, their beliefs about what things should inspire terror, and about everything else, would hold fast because they had the proper nature and rearing; so fast that the dye could not be washed out even by those detergents that are so terribly effective at scouring—pleasure, which is much more terribly effective at this than any chalestrian¹³ or alkali, and pain and fear and appetite, which are worse than any detergent. This power, then, to preserve through [b] everything the correct and law-inculcated belief about what should inspire terror and what should not is what I, at any rate, call courage. And I will assume it is this, unless you object.

GLAUCON: No, I have no objection. For I presume that the sort of correct belief about these same matters that you find in animals and slaves, which is not the result of education and has nothing at all to do with law, is called something other than courage.

SOCRATES: Yes, do accept it, at any rate, as my account of political courage, and you will be right to accept it. If you like, we will discuss that more fully some other time. You see, at the moment, our inquiry is not about courage but about justice. And for the purpose of that inquiry, I think that what we have said is sufficient.

SOCRATES: Two things, then, remain for us to find in the city: temperance and—the goal of our entire inquiry—justice. [d]

SOCRATES: How could we find justice, then, so we won’t have to bother with temperance any further?

GLAUCON: Well I, for my part, do not know of any, nor would I want justice to appear first if that means that we are not going to investigate temperance any further. So if you want to please me, look for it before the other.

SOCRATES: I will. And seen from here, it is more like a sort of concord and harmony than the previous ones.

SOCRATES: Temperance is surely a sort of order, the mastery of certain sorts of pleasures and appetites. People indicate as much when they use the term “self-mastery”—though I do not know in what way. This and other similar things are like tracks that temperance has left. Isn’t that so?

SOCRATES: Isn’t the term “self-mastery” ridiculous, though? For, of course, the one who is master of himself is also the one who is weaker, and the one who is weaker is also the one who masters. After all, the same person is referred to in all these descriptions. [431a]

SOCRATES: It seems to me, however, that what this term is trying to indicate is that within the same person’s soul, there is a better thing and a worse one. Whenever the naturally better one masters the worse, this is called being master of oneself. At any rate, it is praised. But whenever, as a result of bad upbringing or associating with bad people, the smaller and better one is mastered by the inferior majority, this is blamed as a disgraceful thing and is called being weaker than oneself, or being intemperate. [b]

SOCRATES: Now, then, take a look at our new city and you will find one of these conditions present in it. For you will say that it is rightly described as master of itself, if indeed anything in which the better rules the worse is to be described as temperate and master of itself.

SOCRATES: Furthermore, pleasures, pains, and appetites that are numerous and multifarious are things one would especially find in children, women, [c] household slaves, and in the so-called free members of the masses—that is, the inferior people.

SOCRATES: But the pleasures, pains, and appetites that are simple and moderate, the ones that are led by rational calculation with the aid of understanding and correct belief, you would find in those few people who are born with the best natures and receive the best education.

SOCRATES: Don’t you see, then, that this too is present in your city, and that the appetites of the masses—the inferior people—are mastered there by the wisdom and appetites of the few—the best [d] people?

SOCRATES: So, if any city is said to be master of its pleasures and appetites and of itself, it is this one.

SOCRATES: And moreover, if there is any city in which rulers and subjects share the same belief about who should rule, it is this one. Or don’t you agree? [e]

SOCRATES: And in which of them do you say temperance is located when they are in this condition? In the rulers or the subjects?

SOCRATES: Do you see, then, that the hunch we had just now—that temperance is like a sort of harmony—was quite plausible?

SOCRATES: Because its operation is unlike that of courage and wisdom, each of which resides in one part and makes the city either courageous or wise. [432a] Temperance does not work like that, but has literally been stretched throughout the whole, making the weakest, the strongest, and those in between all sing the same song in unison—whether in wisdom, if you like, or in physical strength, if you prefer; or, for that matter, in numbers, wealth, or anything else. Hence we would be absolutely right to say that this unanimity is temperance—this concord between the naturally worse and the naturally better, about which of the two should rule both in the city and in each individual.

SOCRATES: All right. We have now spotted three kinds of virtue in our city. What kind remains, then, that would give the city yet another share of virtue? For it is clear that what remains is justice.

SOCRATES: So then, Glaucon, we must now station ourselves like hunters surrounding a wood and concentrate our minds, so that justice does not escape us and vanish into obscurity. For it is clear that it is around here somewhere. Keep your eyes peeled and do your best to catch sight of it, and if you happen [c] to see it before I do, show it to me.

GLAUCON: I wish I could help. But it is rather the case that if you use me as a follower who can see only what you point out to him, you will be using me in a more reasonable way.

SOCRATES: And it truly seems to be an impenetrable place and full of shadows. It is dark, at any rate, and difficult to search through. But all the same, we must go on.

SOCRATES: Ah ha! Glaucon, it looks as though there is a track here, and I do not think our quarry will altogether escape us.

SOCRATES: It seems, blessed though you are, that the thing has been rolling around at our feet from the very beginning, and yet, like ridiculous fools, we could not see it. For just as people who are holding something in their hands sometimes search for the very thing they are holding, we did not look in the right direction but gazed off into the distance, and [e] perhaps that is the very reason we did not notice it.

SOCRATES: This: I think we have been talking and hearing about it all this time without understanding ourselves, or realizing that we were, in a way, talking about it.

SOCRATES: Listen, then, and see whether there is anything in what I say. You see, what we laid down at the beginning when we were founding our city, [433a] about what should be done throughout it—that, I think, or some form of that, is justice. And surely what we laid down and often repeated, if you remember, is that each person must practice one of the pursuits in the city, the one for which he is naturally best suited.

SOCRATES: Moreover, we have heard many people say, and have often said ourselves, that justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what is not one’s own. [b]

SOCRATES: This, then, my friend, provided it is taken in a certain way, would seem to be justice—this doing one’s own work. And do you know what I take as evidence of that?

SOCRATES: After our consideration of temperance, courage, and wisdom, I think that what remains in the city is the power that makes it possible for all of these to arise in it, and that preserves them when they have arisen for as long as it remains there itself. [c] And we did say that justice would be what remained when we had found the other three.¹⁴

SOCRATES: Yet, surely, if we had to decide which of these will most contribute to making our city good by being present in it, it would be difficult to decide. Is it the agreement in belief between the rulers and the subjects? The preservation among the soldiers of the law-inculcated belief about what should inspire terror and what should not? The wisdom and guardianship of the rulers? Or is what most contributes to [d] making it good the fact that every child, woman, slave, free person, craftsman, ruler, and subject each does his own work and does not meddle with what is not?

SOCRATES: It seems, then, that this power—which consists in everyone’s doing his own work—rivals wisdom, temperance, and courage in its contribution to the city’s virtue.

SOCRATES: And wouldn’t you say that justice is certainly what rivals them in contributing to the city’s virtue? [e]

SOCRATES: Look at it this way, too, if you want to be convinced. Won’t you assign to the rulers the job of judging lawsuits in the city?

SOCRATES: And will they have any aim in judging other than this: that no citizen should have what is another’s or be deprived of what is his own?

SOCRATES: So from that point of view, too, having and doing of one’s own, of what belongs to one, would be agreed to be justice. [434a]

SOCRATES: Now, see whether you agree with me about this: if a carpenter attempts to do the work of a shoemaker, or a shoemaker that of a carpenter, or they exchange their tools or honors with one another, or if the same person tries to do both jobs, and all other such exchanges are made, do you think that does any great harm to the city?

SOCRATES: But I imagine that when someone who is, by nature, a craftsman or some other sort of moneymaker is puffed up by wealth, or by having a majority of votes, or by his own strength, or by some [b] other such thing, and attempts to enter the class of soldiers; or when one of the soldiers who is unworthy to do so tries to enter that of judge and guardian, and these exchange their tools and honors; or when the same person tries to do all these things at once, then I imagine you will agree that these exchanges and this meddling destroy the city.

SOCRATES: So, meddling and exchange among these three classes is the greatest harm that can happen to the city and would rightly be called the worst [c] evil one could do to it.

SOCRATES: And wouldn’t you say that the worst evil one could do to one’s own city is injustice?

SOCRATES: That, then, is what injustice is. But let’s put it in reverse: the opposite of this—when the moneymaking, auxiliary, and guardian class each do their own work in the city—is justice, isn’t it, and makes the city just?

SOCRATES: Let’s not state it as fixedly established just yet. But if this kind of thing is agreed by us to be justice in the case of individual human beings as well, then we can assent to it. For what else will there be for us to say? But if it is not, we will have to look for something else. For the moment, however, let’s complete the inquiry in which we supposed that if we first tried to observe justice in some larger thing that possessed it, that would make it easier to see what it is like in an individual human being.¹⁵ We agreed that this larger thing is a city, and so we founded the best city we could, knowing well that justice would [e] of course be present in one that was good. So, let’s apply what has come to light for us there to an individual, and if it is confirmed, all will be well. But if something different is found in the case of the individual, we will go back to the city and test it there. And perhaps by examining them side by side and rubbing them together like fire-sticks, we can make justice [435a] blaze forth and, once it has come to light, confirm it in our own case.

SOCRATES: Well, then, if you call a bigger thing and a smaller thing by the same name, are they unalike in the respect in which they are called the same, or alike?

SOCRATES: So a just man won’t differ at all from a just city with respect to the form of justice but will [b] be like it.

SOCRATES: But now, the city, at any rate, was thought to be just because each of the three natural classes within it did its own job; and to be temperate, courageous, and wise, in addition, because of certain other conditions or states of these same classes.

SOCRATES: Then, my friend, we would expect an individual to have these same kinds of things in his soul, and to be correctly called by the same names as the city because the same conditions are present [c] in them both.

SOCRATES: Well, you amazing fellow, here is another trivial investigation we have stumbled into: does the soul have these three kinds of things in it or not?

GLAUCON: It does not look at all trivial to me. Perhaps, Socrates, there is some truth in the old saying that everything beautiful is difficult.

SOCRATES: Apparently so. In fact, you should be well aware, Glaucon, that it is my belief we will never ever grasp this matter precisely by methods of the sort [d] we are now using in our discussions. However, there is in fact another longer and more time-consuming road that does lead there. But perhaps we can manage to come up to the standard of our previous statements and inquiries.

GLAUCON: Shouldn’t we be content with that? It would be enough for me, at least for now.

SOCRATES: Well, isn’t it absolutely necessary for us to agree to this much: that the very same kinds of [e] things and conditions exist in each one of us as exist in the city? After all, where else would they come from? You see, it would be ridiculous for anyone to think that spiritedness did not come to be in cities from the private individuals who are reputed to have this quality, such as the Thracians, Scythians, and others who live to the north of us; or that the same is not true of the love of learning, which is mostly associated with our part of the world; or of the love [436a] of money, which is said to be found not least among the Phoenicians and Egyptians.

SOCRATES: We may take that as being so, then, and it was not at all difficult to discover.

SOCRATES: But this, now, is difficult. Do we do each of them with the same thing or, since there are three, do we do one with one and another with another: that is to say, do we learn with one, feel anger with another, and with yet a third have an appetite for the pleasures of food, sex, and those closely akin to them? Or do we do each of them with the whole of our soul, once we feel the impulse? That is what [b] is difficult to determine in a way that is up to the standards of our argument.

SOCRATES: Well, then, let’s try in this way to determine whether they are the same as one another or different.

SOCRATES: It is clear that the same thing cannot do or undergo opposite things; not, at any rate, in the same respect, in relation to the same thing, at the same time. So, if we ever find that happening here, we will know that we are not dealing with one and the same thing, but with many. [c]

SOCRATES: Is it possible for the same thing, at the same time, and in the same respect, to be standing still and moving?

SOCRATES: Let’s come to a more precise agreement, in order to avoid disputes later on. You see, if anyone said of a person who is standing still but moving his hands and head, that the same thing is moving and standing still at the same time, we would not consider, I imagine, that he should say that; but rather that in one respect the person is standing still, while in another he is moving. Isn’t that so? [d]

SOCRATES: Then, if the one who said this became still more charming and made the sophisticated point that spinning tops, at any rate, stand still as a whole at the same time as they are also in motion, when, with the peg fixed in the same place, they revolve, or that the same holds of anything else that moves in a circle on the same spot—we would not agree, on the grounds that in such situations it is not in the same respects that these objects are both moving and standing still. On the contrary, we would say that [e] these objects have both a straight axis and a circumference in them, and that with respect to the straight axis they stand still—since they do not wobble to either side—whereas with respect to the circumference they move in a circle. But if their straight axis wobbles to the left or right or front or back at the same time as they are spinning, we will say that they are not standing still in any way.

SOCRATES: No such objection will disturb us, then, or make us any more likely to believe that the same thing can—at the same time, in the same respect, and in relation to the same thing—undergo, be, or do opposite things. [437a]

SOCRATES: All the same, in order to avoid going through all these objections one by one and taking a long time to prove them all untrue, let’s hypothesize that what we have said is correct and carry on—with the understanding that if it should ever be shown to be incorrect, all the consequences we have drawn from it will be invalidated.

SOCRATES: Now, wouldn’t you consider assent and dissent, wanting to have something and rejecting [b] it, taking something and pushing it away, as all being pairs of mutual opposites—whether of opposite doings or of opposite undergoings does not matter?

SOCRATES: What about thirst, hunger, and the appetites as a whole, and also wishing and willing? Would you include all of them somewhere among the kinds of things we just mentioned? For example, [c] wouldn’t you say that the soul of someone who has an appetite wants the thing for which it has an appetite, and draws toward itself what it wishes to have; and, in addition, that insofar as his soul wishes something to be given to it, it nods assent to itself as if in answer to a question, and strives toward its attainment?

SOCRATES: What about not-willing, not-wishing, and not-having an appetite? Wouldn’t we include them among the very opposites, cases in which the soul pushes and drives things away from itself?

SOCRATES: Since that is so, won’t we say that there is a kind consisting of appetites, and that the most conspicuous examples of them are what we call hunger and thirst?

SOCRATES: Now, insofar as it is thirst, is it an appetite in the soul for more than what we say it is for? I mean, is thirst a thirst for hot drink or cold, or much drink or little, or—in a word—for drink of a certain sort? Or isn’t it rather that if heat is present in addition to thirst, it causes the appetite to be for something cold as well, whereas the addition of cold [e] makes it an appetite for something hot? And if there is much thirst, because of the presence of muchness, won’t it cause the desire to be for much drink, and where little for little? But thirst itself will never be for anything other than the very thing that it is in its nature to be an appetite for: namely, drink itself; and, similarly, hunger is for food.

GLAUCON: That’s the way it is. By itself, at any rate, each appetite is for its natural object only, while an appetite for an object of this or that sort depends on additions.

SOCRATES: No one should catch us unprepared, then, or disturb us by claiming that no one has an [438a] appetite for drink but rather for good drink, nor for food but rather for good food, since everyone’s appetite is for good things. And so, if thirst is an appetite, it will be an appetite for good drink or good whatever, and similarly for the other appetites.

SOCRATES: But surely, whenever things are related to something, those that are of a particular sort are related to a particular sort of thing, as it seems to me, whereas those that are just themselves are related [b] only to a thing that is just itself.

SOCRATES: Don’t you understand that the greater is such as to be greater than something?

SOCRATES: And the once greater than the once less? And the going-to-be greater than the going-to-be less?

SOCRATES: And doesn’t the same hold of the more in relation to the fewer, the double to the half, and [c] everything of that sort; and also of heavier to lighter and faster to slower; and, in addition, of hot to cold, and all other similar things?

SOCRATES: What about the various kinds of knowledge? Aren’t they the same way? Knowledge itself is of what can be learned itself (or of whatever we should take the object of knowledge to be), whereas a particular knowledge of a particular sort is of a particular thing of a particular sort. I mean something like this: when knowledge of building houses was developed, it differed from the other kinds of knowledge, [d] and so was called knowledge of building. Isn’t that so?

SOCRATES: And wasn’t that because it was a different sort of knowledge from all the others?

SOCRATES: And wasn’t it because it was of a particular sort of thing that it itself became a particular sort of knowledge? And isn’t this true of all the crafts and sciences?

SOCRATES: Well, then, you should think of that as what I wanted to get across before—if you understand it now—when I said that whenever things are related to something, those that are just themselves are related to things that are just themselves, whereas those of a particular sort are related to things of a particular sort. And I do not at all mean that the sorts in question have to be the same for them both—that [e] the knowledge of health and disease is healthy and diseased, or that that of good and bad things is good and bad. On the contrary, I mean that when knowledge occurred that was not just knowledge of the thing itself that knowledge is of, but of something of a particular sort, which in this case was health and disease, the result was that it itself became a particular sort of knowledge; and this caused it to be no longer called simply knowledge but, with the addition of the particular sort, medical knowledge.

SOCRATES: Returning to thirst, then, wouldn’t you include it among the things that are related to [439a] something just by being what they are? Surely thirst is related to.…

SOCRATES: So a particular sort of thirst is for a particular sort of drink. Thirst itself, however, is not for much or little, good or bad, or, in a word, for drink of a particular sort; rather, thirst itself is, by nature, just for drink itself. Right?

SOCRATES: Hence the soul of the thirsty person, insofar as it is simply thirsty, does not want anything else except to drink, and this is what it longs for and is impelled to do. [b]

SOCRATES: Then if anything in it draws it back when it is thirsty, wouldn’t it be something different from what thirsts and, like a beast, drives it to drink? For surely, we say, the same thing, in the same respect of itself, in relation to the same thing, and at the same time, cannot do opposite things.

SOCRATES: In the same way, I imagine, it is not right to say of the archer that his hands at the same time push the bow away and draw it toward him. On the contrary, we should say that one hand pushes it away, while the other draws it toward him.

SOCRATES: Now, we would say, wouldn’t we, that some people are thirsty sometimes, yet unwilling to drink?

SOCRATES: What, then, should one say about them? Isn’t it that there is an element in their soul urging them to drink, and also one stopping them—something different that masters the one doing the urging?

SOCRATES: Doesn’t the element doing the stopping in such cases arise—when it does arise—from rational calculation, while the things that drive and drag are present because of feelings and diseases? [d]

SOCRATES: It would not be unreasonable for us to claim, then, that there are two elements, different from one another; and to call the element in the soul with which it calculates, the rationally calculating element; and the one with which it feels passion, hungers, thirsts, and is stirred by other appetites, the irrational and appetitive element, friend to certain ways of being filled and certain pleasures.

GLAUCON: No, it would not. Indeed, it would be a very natural thing for us to do. [e]

SOCRATES: Let’s assume, then, that we have distinguished these two kinds of elements in the soul. Now, is the spirited element—the one with which we feel anger—a third kind of thing, or is it the same in nature as one of these others?

SOCRATES: But I once heard a story and I believe it. Leontius, the son of Aglaeon, was going up from the Piraeus along the outside of the North Wall when he saw some corpses with the public executioner nearby. He had an appetitive desire to look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and turned himself away. For a while he struggled and put his hand over his eyes, but finally, mastered by his appetite, he opened his eyes wide and rushed toward the [440a] corpses, saying: “Look for yourselves, you evil wretches; take your fill of the beautiful sight.”¹⁶

SOCRATES: Yet, surely, the story suggests that anger sometimes makes war against the appetites as one thing against another.

SOCRATES: And don’t we often notice on other occasions that when appetite forces someone contrary to his rational calculation, he reproaches himself and [b] feels anger at the thing in him that is doing the forcing; and just as if there were two warring factions, such a person’s spirit becomes the ally of his reason? But spirit partnering the appetites to do what reason has decided should not be done—I do not imagine you would say that you had ever seen that, either in yourself or in anyone else.

SOCRATES: And what about when a person thinks he is doing some injustice? Isn’t it true that the nobler [c] he is, the less capable he is of feeling angry if he suffers hunger, cold, or the like at the hands of someone whom he believes to be inflicting this on him justly; and won’t his spirit, as I say, refuse to be aroused?

SOCRATES: But what about when a person believes he is being unjustly treated? Doesn’t his spirit boil then, and grow harsh and fight as an ally of what he holds to be just? And even if it suffers hunger, cold, and every imposition of that sort, doesn’t it stand firm and win out over them, not ceasing its noble efforts until it achieves its purpose, or dies, or, like a [d] dog being called to heel by a shepherd, is called back by the reason alongside it and becomes gentle?

GLAUCON: Your simile is perfect. And, in fact, we did put the auxiliaries in our city to be like obedient sheepdogs for the city’s shepherdlike rulers.

SOCRATES: You have understood what I was trying to say very well. But have you also noticed something else about it?

SOCRATES: That it is the opposite of what we recently thought about the kind of thing spirit is. You see, then we thought of it as something appetitive.¹⁷ But now, far from saying that, we say that in the faction that takes place in the soul, it is far more likely to take arms on the side of the rationally calculating element.

SOCRATES: Is it also different from this, then, or is it some kind of rationally calculating element, so that there are not three kinds of things in the soul, but two—the rationally calculating element and the appetitive one? Or rather, just as there were three classes in the city that held it together—the money-making, the auxiliary, and the deliberative—is there [441a] also this third element in the soul, the spirited kind, which is the natural auxiliary of the rationally calculating element, if it has not been corrupted by bad upbringing?

SOCRATES: Yes, provided, at any rate, that it can be shown to be as distinct from the rationally calculating element as it was shown to be from the appetitive one.

GLAUCON: But it is not difficult to show that. After all, one can see it even in small children: they are full of spirit right from birth, but as for rational calculation, some of them seem to me never to possess it, while the masses do so quite late. [b]

SOCRATES: Yes, by Zeus, you put that really well. Besides, one can see in animals that what you say is true. But, in addition to that, our earlier quotation from Homer also bears it out: “He struck his chest and spoke to his heart.”¹⁸ You see, in it Homer clearly presents what has calculated about better and worse, [c] rebuking what is irrationally angry as though it were something different.

SOCRATES: Well, we have had a difficult swim through all that, and we are pretty much agreed that the same classes as are in the city are in the soul of each individual, and an equal number of them too.

SOCRATES: Then doesn’t it already necessarily follow that the private individual is wise in the same way and because of the same element as is the city?

SOCRATES: And that the city is courageous in the same way and because of the same element as is the private individual? And that in everything else that [d] pertains to virtue, both are alike?

SOCRATES: And so, Glaucon, I take it we will also say that a man is just in exactly the same way as is a city.

SOCRATES: But we surely have not forgotten that the city was just because each of the three classes in it does its own work.

SOCRATES: We should also bear in mind, then, that in the case of each one of us as well, the one in whom each of the elements does its own job will be just and do his own job. [e]

SOCRATES: Then isn’t it appropriate for the rationally calculating element to rule, since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul; and for the spirited kind to obey it and be its ally?

SOCRATES: Now, as we were saying, isn’t it a mixture of musical and physical training that makes these elements concordant, tightening and nurturing the first with fine words and learning, while relaxing, [442a] soothing, and making gentle the second by means of harmony and rhythm?

SOCRATES: And these two elements, having been trained in this way and having truly learned their own jobs and been educated, will be put in charge of the appetitive element—the largest one in each person’s soul and, by nature, the most insatiable for money. They will watch over it to see that it does not get so filled with the so-called pleasures of the body that it becomes big and strong, and no longer does its own job but attempts to enslave and rule over the classes it is not fitted to rule, thereby overturning the whole [b] life of anyone in whom it occurs.

SOCRATES: And wouldn’t these two elements also do the finest job of guarding the whole soul and body against external enemies—the one by deliberating, the other by fighting, following the ruler, and using its courage to carry out the things on which the former had decided?

SOCRATES: I imagine, then, that we call each individual courageous because of the latter part—that is, when the part of him that is spirited in kind preserves through pains and pleasures the pronouncements of [c] reason about what should inspire terror and what should not.

SOCRATES: But we call him wise, surely, because of the small part that rules in him, makes those pronouncements, and has within it the knowledge of what is advantageous—both for each part and for the whole, the community composed of all three.

SOCRATES: What about temperance? Isn’t he temperate because of the friendly and concordant relations between these same things: namely, when both the ruler and its two subjects share the belief that the rationally calculating element should rule, and do not engage in faction against it? [d]

GLAUCON: Temperance in a city and in a private individual is certainly nothing other than that.

SOCRATES: But surely, now, a person will be just because of what we have so often described and in the way we have so often described.

SOCRATES: Well, then, has our justice become in any way blurred? Does it look like anything other than the very thing we found in the city?

SOCRATES: We could make perfectly sure, if there is still anything in our souls that disputes this, by applying everyday tests to it. [e]

SOCRATES: For example, if we had to come to an agreement about whether a man similar in nature and training to this city of ours had embezzled gold or silver he had accepted for deposit, who do you think would consider him more likely to have done so rather than men of a different sort? [443a]

SOCRATES: And would he have anything to do with temple robberies, thefts, or betrayals of friends in private life or of cities in public life?

SOCRATES: And he would be in no way untrustworthy when it came to promises or other agreements.

SOCRATES: And surely adultery, disrespect for parents, and neglect of the gods would be more characteristic of any other sort of person than of this one.

SOCRATES: And isn’t the reason for all this the fact that each element within him does its own job [b] where ruling and being ruled are concerned?

SOCRATES: Are you still looking for justice to be something besides this power that produces men and cities of the sort we have described?

SOCRATES: The dream we had has been completely fulfilled, then—I mean the suspicion we expressed that right from the beginning, when we were founding the city, we had, with the help of some god, chanced to hit upon the origin and pattern of justice.¹⁹ [c]

SOCRATES: So, Glaucon, it really was—which is why it was so helpful—a sort of image of justice, this principle that it is right for someone who is, by nature, a shoemaker to practice shoemaking and nothing else, for a carpenter to practice carpentry, and the same for all the others.

SOCRATES: And in truth, justice is, it seems, something of this sort. Yet it is not concerned with someone’s doing his own job on the outside. On the contrary, it is concerned with what is inside; with himself, really, and the things that are his own. It means that [d] he does not allow the elements in him each to do the job of some other, or the three sorts of elements in his soul to meddle with one another. Instead, he regulates well what is really his own, rules himself, puts himself in order, becomes his own friend, and harmonizes the three elements together, just as if they were literally the three defining notes of an octave—lowest, highest, and middle—as well as any others that may be in between. He binds together all of these and, from having been many, becomes entirely one, temperate and harmonious. Then and only then [e] should he turn to action, whether it is to do something concerning the acquisition of wealth or concerning the care of his body, or even something political, or concerning private contracts. In all these areas, he considers and calls just and fine the action that preserves this inner harmony and helps achieve it, and wisdom the knowledge that oversees such action; and he considers and calls unjust any action that destroys this harmony, and ignorance the belief that oversees it.²⁰ [444a]

SOCRATES: Well, then, if we claim to have found the just man, the just city, and what justice really is in them, we won’t, I imagine, be thought to be telling a complete lie.

SOCRATES: Mustn’t it, in turn, be a kind of faction among those three—their meddling and interfering [b] with one another’s jobs; the rebellion of a part of the soul against the whole in order to rule in it inappropriately, since its nature suits it to be a slave of the ruling class. We will say something like that, I imagine, and that their disorder and wandering is injustice, licentiousness, cowardice, ignorance, and, in a word, the whole of vice.

SOCRATES: Doing unjust actions, then, and being unjust; and, the opposite, doing just ones—they all [c] surely become clear at once, don’t they, provided that both injustice and justice are also clear?

SOCRATES: That they do not differ in any way from healthy actions and unhealthy ones, that what the latter are in the body, they are in the soul.

SOCRATES: Well, doesn’t doing just actions also engender justice, unjust ones injustice? [d]

SOCRATES: But to produce health is to put the elements that are in the body in their natural relations of mastering and being mastered by one another; while to produce disease is to establish a relation of ruling and being ruled by one another that is contrary to nature.

SOCRATES: Doesn’t it follow, then, that to produce justice is to establish the elements in the soul in a natural relation of mastering and being mastered by one another, while to produce injustice is to establish a relation of ruling and being ruled by one another that is contrary to nature?

SOCRATES: Virtue, then, so it seems, is a sort of health, a fine and good state of the soul; whereas vice seems to be a shameful disease and weakness. [e]

SOCRATES: And don’t fine practices lead to the possession of virtue, shameful ones to vice?

SOCRATES: So it now remains, it seems, for us to consider whether it is more profitable to do just actions, [445a] engage in fine practices, and be just, whether one is known to be so or not; or to do injustice and be unjust, provided that one does not have to pay the penalty and become a better person as a result of being punished.

GLAUCON: But, Socrates, that question seems to me, at least, to have become ridiculous, now that the two have been shown to be as we described. Life does not seem worth living when the body’s natural constitution is ruined, not even if one has food and drink of every sort, all the money in the world, and every political office imaginable. So how—even if one could do whatever one wished, except what [b] would liberate one from vice and injustice and make one acquire justice and virtue—could it be worth living when the natural constitution of the very thing by which we live²¹ is ruined and in turmoil?

SOCRATES: Yes, it is ridiculous. All the same, since in fact we have reached a point from which we can see with the utmost clarity, as it were, that these things are so, we must not give up.

SOCRATES: Come up here, then, so that you can see how many kinds of vice there are—the ones, at [c] any rate, that are worth seeing.

SOCRATES: Well, from the vantage point, so to speak, that we have reached in our argument, it seems to me that there is one kind of virtue and an unlimited number of kinds of vice, four of which are worth mentioning.

SOCRATES: It seems likely that there are as many types of soul as there are types of political constitution of a specific kind.

SOCRATES: I will tell you that one type would be the constitution we have been describing. However, there are two ways of referring to it: if one outstanding man emerges among the rulers, it is called a kingship; if more than one, it is called an aristocracy.

SOCRATES: Well, then, that is one of the kinds I had in mind. You see, whether many arise or just one, they won’t change any of the laws of the city that are worth mentioning, since they will have been [e] brought up and educated in the way we described.

SOCRATES: That, then, is the sort of city and constitution—and the sort of man—I call good and [449a] correct. And if indeed this one is correct, all the others are bad and mistaken, both as city governments and as ways of organizing the souls of private individuals. The deficient ones fall into four kinds.

I was going to describe them in the order in which I thought they developed out of one another. ¹ But [b] Polemarchus, who was sitting not far from Adeimantus, extended his hand, gripped the latter’s cloak by the shoulder from above, drew Adeimantus toward him, and, leaning forward himself, said some things in his ear. We overheard nothing of what he said, other than this:

ADEIMANTUS: We think you are being lazy, that you are robbing us of a whole important section of the argument in order to avoid having to explain it. You thought we would not notice when you said—as though it were something inconsequential—that, as regards women and children, anyone could see that it will be a case of friends sharing everything in common.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, it is. But it is just like all the rest we have discussed; its correctness requires an explanation of how the sharing will be arranged, since there are many ways to bring it about. So, do not omit to tell us about the particular one you have [d] in mind. We have all been waiting for a long time in the expectation that you would surely discuss how procreation will be handled, how the children that are born will be reared, and the whole subject of what you mean by sharing women and children. You see, we think that this makes a considerable difference—indeed, all the difference—to whether a constitution is correct or incorrect. So now that you are beginning to describe another constitution without having analyzed this matter adequately, we are resolved, as you overheard, not to let you go until you explain all this [450a] just as you did the rest.

SOCRATES: What a thing to do, attacking me like that. You have started up a huge discussion about the constitution—it will be like starting from the beginning. I was delighted to think I had already completed its description by this time and was satisfied to have what I had said earlier be accepted as is. You do not realize what a swarm of arguments you are now stirring up by making this demand. It was because I could see it that I left the topic aside, to avoid all the [b] trouble it would cause us.

THRASYMACHUS: What of it? Don’t you think these people have come here now to listen to arguments, not to smelt ore?²

GLAUCON: But surely it is within moderation, Socrates, for people with any sense to listen to such arguments their whole life long. So never mind about us. Don’t you get tired of explaining your views on what we asked about: namely, what the sharing of children and women will amount to for our guardians, [c] and how the children will be brought up while they are still small. After all, the time between birth and the beginning of formal education seems to be the most troublesome period of all. So, try to tell us in what way it should be handled.

SOCRATES: It is not easy to explain, my happy fellow. It raises even more doubts than the topics we have discussed so far. One might, in fact, doubt whether what we proposed is possible, and, even if one granted that it is entirely so, one might still have doubts about whether it would be for the best. That, then, is why I was somewhat hesitant to bring it up: I was afraid, my dear comrade, that our argument might seem to be no more than wishful thinking. [d]

GLAUCON: Do not hesitate at all. You see, your audience won’t be inconsiderate, or incredulous, or hostile.

SOCRATES: My very good fellow, are you saying that because you want to encourage me?

SOCRATES: Well, you are having precisely the opposite effect. If I were confident that I was speaking with knowledge, your encouragement would be all very well. When one is among knowledgeable and beloved friends, and one is speaking what one knows to be the truth about the most important and most beloved things, one can feel both secure and confident. [e] But to produce arguments when one is uncertain and searching, as I am doing, is a frightening thing and makes one feel insecure. I am not afraid [451a] of being ridiculed—that would be childish, indeed—but I am afraid that if I fail to secure the truth, just where it is most important to do so, I will not only fall myself but drag my friends down as well. So I bow to Adrasteia, Glaucon, for what I am about to say. You see, I suspect that involuntary homicide is a lesser crime than misleading people about beautiful, good, and just conventions. That is a risk it would be better to run among enemies than among friends. So you have well and truly encouraged me. [b]

Well, Socrates, if we suffer from any false note you strike in the argument, we will release you, as we would in a homicide case, as guiltless and no deceiver of us. So you may speak with confidence.

SOCRATES: Well, it is true; the one who is acquitted in that situation is guiltless, so the law says. And if it is true there, it is probably true here, too.

SOCRATES: I will have to go back again, then, and say now what perhaps I should have said then in the proper place. But maybe it is all right, after having [c] completed a male drama, to perform a female one next³—especially when you demand it in this way. For people born and educated as we have described, then, there is, I believe, no correct way to acquire and employ children and women other than to follow the path on which we first set them. Surely, in our argument, we tried to establish the men as guard-dogs of their flock.

SOCRATES: Then let’s proceed by giving corresponding rules for birth and rearing, and see whether [d] they suit us or not.

SOCRATES: As follows. Do we think that the females of our guard-dogs should join in guarding precisely what the males guard, hunt with them, and share everything with them? Or do we think that they should stay indoors and look after the house,⁴ on the grounds that they are incapable of doing this because they must bear and rear the puppies, while the males should work and have the entire care of the flock?

GLAUCON: They should share everything—except that we employ the females as we would weaker animals, and the males as we would stronger ones. [e]

SOCRATES: Is it possible, then, to employ an animal for the same tasks as another if you do not give it the same upbringing and education?

SOCRATES: Then if we employ women for the same tasks as men, they must also be taught the same things.

SOCRATES: So, we must also give these two crafts, as well as military training, to the women, and employ them in the same way.

SOCRATES: But perhaps many of the things we are now saying, because they are contrary to custom, would seem ridiculous if they were put into practice.

SOCRATES: What do you see as the most ridiculous aspect of them? Isn’t it obvious that it is the idea of the women exercising stripped in the palestras alongside the men?⁵ And not just the young women, but the older ones too—like the old men we see [b] in gymnasiums who, even though their bodies are wrinkled and not pleasant to look at, still love physical training.

GLAUCON: Yes, by Zeus, that would look really ridiculous, at least under present conditions.

SOCRATES: Yet, since we have started to discuss the matter, we must not be afraid of the various jokes that the wits will make both about this sort of change in musical and physical training and—even more so—about the change in the bearing of arms and the [c] mounting of cavalry horses.⁶

SOCRATES: But since we have started, we must move on to the rougher part of the law, and ask these wits not to do their own job, but to be serious. And we will remind them that it is not long since the Greeks thought it shameful and ridiculous (as many barbarians still do) for men to be seen stripped, and that when first the Cretans and then the Lacedaemonians began the gymnasiums, the wits of the time had the opportunity to make a comedy of it all. Or don’t you think so? [d]

SOCRATES: But when it became clear, I take it, to those who employed these practices, that it was better to strip than to cover up all such parts, the laughter in the eyes faded away because of what the arguments had proved to be best. And this showed that it is a fool who finds anything ridiculous except what is bad, or tries to raise a laugh at the sight of anything except what is stupid or bad, or—putting it the other way around—who takes seriously any [e] standard of what is beautiful other than what is good.

SOCRATES: Well, then, shouldn’t we first agree about whether our proposals are viable or not? And mustn’t we give anyone who wishes to do so—whether it is someone who loves a joke or someone serious—the opportunity to dispute whether the female human does have the natural ability to share in all the tasks [453a] of the male sex, or in none at all, or in some but not others; and, in particular, whether this holds in the case of warfare? By making the best beginning in this way, wouldn’t one also be likely to reach the best conclusion?

SOCRATES: So, would you like us to dispute with one another on their behalf, so that their side of the argument won’t be attacked without defenders?

SOCRATES: Then let’s say this on their behalf: “Socrates and Glaucon, you do not need other people to dispute you. After all, you yourselves, when you were beginning to found your city, agreed that each one had to do the one job for which he was naturally suited.”

SOCRATES: “Can it be, then, that a woman is not by nature very different from a man?”

SOCRATES: “Then isn’t it also appropriate to assign a different job to each of them, the one for which they are naturally suited?”

SOCRATES: “How is it, then, that you are not making a mistake now and contradicting yourselves, when you say that men and women must do the same jobs, seeing that they have natures that are most distinct?” Do you have any defense, you amazing fellow, against that attack?

GLAUCON: It is not easy to think of one on the spur of the moment. On the contrary, I shall ask—indeed, I am asking—you to explain the argument on our side as well, whatever it is.

SOCRATES: That, Glaucon, and many other problems of the same sort, which I foresaw long ago, was what I was afraid of when I hesitated to tackle the [d] law concerning the possession and upbringing of women and children.

SOCRATES: No, it is not. But the fact is that whether one falls into a small diving pool or into the middle of the largest sea, one has to swim all the same.

SOCRATES: Then we must swim, too, and try to save ourselves from the sea of argument, hoping for a dolphin to pick us up, or for some other unlikely rescue.⁷

SOCRATES: Come on, then, let’s see if we can find a way out. We have agreed, of course, that different natures must have different pursuits, and that the natures of a woman and a man are different. But we now say that those different natures must have the same pursuits. Isn’t that the charge against us?

SOCRATES: What a noble power, Glaucon, the craft of disputation possesses! [454a]

SOCRATES: Because many people seem to me to fall into it even against their wills, and think they are engaging not in eristic, but in discussion. This happens because they are unable to examine what has been said by dividing it up into kinds. Instead, it is on the purely verbal level that they look for the contradiction in what has been said, and employ eristic, not dialectic, on one another.

GLAUCON: Yes, that certainly does happen to many people. But surely it is not pertinent to us at the moment, is it?

SOCRATES: It most certainly is. At any rate, we are in danger of unconsciously dealing in disputation. [b]

SOCRATES: We are trying to establish the principle that different natures should not be assigned the same pursuits in a bold and eristic manner, on the verbal level. But we did not at all investigate what kind of natural difference or sameness we had in mind, or in what regard the distinction was pertinent, when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same ones to the same.

SOCRATES: And because we did not, it is open to us, apparently, to ask ourselves whether the natures [c] of bald and long-haired men are the same or opposite. And, once we agree that they are opposite, it is open to us to forbid the long-haired ones to be shoemakers, if that is what the bald ones are to be, or vice versa.

SOCRATES: And is it ridiculous for any other reason than that we did not have in mind every kind of difference and sameness in nature, but were keeping our eyes only on the kind of difference and sameness that was pertinent to the pursuits themselves? We meant, for example, that a male and female whose [d] souls are suited for medicine have the same nature. Or don’t you think so?

SOCRATES: In the case of both the male and the female sex, then, if one of them is shown to be different from the other with regard to a particular craft or pursuit, we will say that is the one who should be assigned to it. But if it is apparent that they differ in this respect alone, that the female bears the offspring while the male mounts the female, we will say it has not yet been demonstrated that a woman is different [e] from a man with regard to what we are talking about, and we will continue to believe our guardians and their women should have the same pursuits.

SOCRATES: Next, won’t we urge our opponent to tell us the precise craft or pursuit, relevant to the [455a] organization of the city, for which a woman’s nature and a man’s are not the same but different?

SOCRATES: Perhaps, then, this other person might say, just as you did a moment ago,⁸ that it is not easy to give an adequate answer on the spur of the moment, but that after reflection it would not be at all difficult.

SOCRATES: Do you want us to ask the one who disputes things in this way, then, to follow us to see whether we can somehow show him that there is no [b] pursuit relevant to the management of the city that is peculiar to women?

SOCRATES: Come on, then, we will say to him, give us an answer: “Is this what you meant by one person being naturally well suited for something and another naturally unsuited: that the one learns it easily, the other with difficulty; that the one, after a little instruction, can discover a lot for himself in the subject being studied, whereas the other, even if he gets a lot of instruction and attention, does not even retain what he was taught; that the bodily capacities of the one adequately serve his mind, while those of the other obstruct his? Are there any other factors than these, by which you distinguish a person who [c] is naturally well suited for each pursuit from one who is not?”

SOCRATES: Do you know of anything practiced by human beings, then, at which the male sex is not superior to the female in all those ways? Or must we make a long story of it by discussing weaving and the preparation of baked and boiled food⁹—the very pursuits in which the female sex is thought to excel, and in which its defeat would expose it to the greatest ridicule of all? [d]

GLAUCON: It is true that the one sex shows greater mastery than the other in pretty much every area. Yet there are many women who are better than many men at many things. But on the whole, it is as you say.

SOCRATES: Then, my friend, there is no pursuit relevant to the management of the city that belongs to a woman because she is a woman, or to a man because he is a man; but the various natural capacities are distributed in a similar way between both creatures, and women can share by nature in every pursuit, and men in every one, though for the purposes of all of them women are weaker than men. [e]

SOCRATES: We could not. For we will say, I imagine, that one woman is suited for medicine, another not, and that one is naturally musical, another not.

SOCRATES: Won’t one be suited for physical training or war, then, while another is unwarlike and not [456a] a lover of physical training?

SOCRATES: And one a philosopher (lover of wisdom), another a “misosopher” (hater of wisdom)? And one spirited, another spiritless?

SOCRATES: So there is also a woman who is suited to be a guardian, and one who is not. Or wasn’t that the sort of nature we selected for our male guardians, too?¹⁰

SOCRATES: A woman and a man can have the same nature, then, relevant to guarding the city—except to the extent that she is weaker and he is stronger.

SOCRATES: Women of that sort, then, must be selected to live and guard with men of the same sort, [b] since they are competent to do so and are akin to the men by nature.

SOCRATES: We have come around, then, to what we said before, and we are agreed that it is not against nature to assign musical and physical training to the female guardians.

SOCRATES: So, we are not legislating impossibilities or mere fantasies, at any rate, since the law we were proposing is in accord with nature. Rather, it is the contrary laws that we have now that turn out to [c] be more contrary to nature, it seems.

SOCRATES: Now, wasn’t our inquiry about whether our proposals were both viable and best?

SOCRATES: So, we must next come to an agreement about whether they are for the best?

SOCRATES: Now, as regards producing a woman who is equipped for guardianship, we won’t have one sort of education that will produce our guardian men, will we, and another our women—especially not when it will have the same nature to work on in both cases? [d]

SOCRATES: The notion that one man is better or worse than another—or do you think they are all alike?

SOCRATES: In the city we are founding, who do you think will turn out to be better men: our guardians, who get the education we have described, or the shoemakers, who are educated in shoemaking?

SOCRATES: And what about the female guardians? Won’t they be the best of the women?

SOCRATES: Is there anything better for a city than that the best possible men and women should come to exist in it?

SOCRATES: And that is what musical and physical training, employed as we have described, will achieve? [457a]

SOCRATES: Then the law we were proposing was not only possible, but also best for a city?

SOCRATES: Then the female guardians must strip, clothing themselves in virtue instead of cloaks. They must share in warfare, and whatever else guarding the city involves, and do nothing else. But within these areas, the women must be assigned lighter tasks than the men, because of the weakness of their sex. And the man who laughs at the sight of women stripped for physical training, when their stripping is for the best, is “plucking the unripe fruit of laughter’s [b] wisdom,”¹¹ and knows nothing, it seems, about what he is laughing at or what he is doing. For it is, and always will be, the finest saying that what is beneficial is beautiful; what is harmful ugly.

SOCRATES: May we claim, then, that we are avoiding one wave,¹² as it were, in our discussion of the law about women, so that we are not altogether swept away when we declare that our male and female guardians must share all their pursuits, and that our argument is somehow self-consistent when it states [c] that this is both viable and beneficial?

SOCRATES: The law that is consistent with that one, and with the others that preceded it, is this, I take it.

SOCRATES: That all these women should be shared among all the men, that no individual woman and man should live together, and that the children, [d] too, should be shared, with no parent knowing its own offspring, and no child its parent.

GLAUCON: That wave is far bigger and more dubitable than the other, both as regards its viability and its benefit.

SOCRATES: As far as its benefit is concerned, at least, I do not think anyone would argue that the sharing of women and children is not the greatest good, if indeed it is viable. But I imagine there would be a lot of dispute about whether or not it is viable.

SOCRATES: You mean I will have to face a coalition of arguments. I thought I had at least escaped one of them—namely, whether you thought the proposal was beneficial—and that I would just be left with the argument about whether it is viable or not.

GLAUCON: Well, you did not escape unnoticed. So you will have to give an argument for both.

SOCRATES: I must pay the penalty. But do me this favor: let me take a holiday and act like those lazy people who make a banquet for themselves of [458a] their own thoughts when they are walking alone. People like that, as you know, do not bother to find out how any of their appetites might actually be fulfilled, so as to avoid the trouble of deliberating about what is possible and what is not. They assume that what they want is available, and then proceed to arrange all the rest, taking pleasure in going through everything they will do when they get it—thus making their already lazy souls even lazier. Well, I, too, am succumbing to this weakness at the moment and want [b] to postpone consideration of the viability of our proposals until later. I will assume now that they are viable, if you will permit me to do so, and examine how the rulers will arrange them when they come to pass. And I will try to show that, if they were put into practice, they would be the most beneficial arrangements of all, both for the city and for its guardians. These are the things I will try to examine with you first, leaving the others for later—if indeed you will permit this.

SOCRATES: Well, then, I imagine that if indeed our rulers, and likewise their auxiliaries, are worthy of their names, the latter will be prepared to carry [c] out orders, and the former to give orders, obeying our laws in some cases and imitating them in the others that we leave to their discretion.

SOCRATES: Now, you are their lawgiver, and in just the way you selected these men, you will select as the women to hand over to them those who have natures as similar to theirs as possible. And because they have shared dwellings and meals, and none of them has any private property of that sort, they will live together; and through mixing together in the [d] gymnasia and in the rest of their daily life, they will be driven by innate necessity, I take it, to have sex with one another. Or don’t you think I am talking about necessities here?

GLAUCON: Not geometric necessities, certainly, but erotic ones; and they probably have a sharper capacity to persuade and attract most people.

SOCRATES: They do, indeed. But the next point, Glaucon, is that for them to have unregulated sexual intercourse with one another, or to do anything else of that sort, would not be a pious thing in a city of happy people, and the rulers won’t allow it. [e]

SOCRATES: It is clear, then, that we will next have to make marriages as sacred as possible. And sacred marriages will be those that are most beneficial.

SOCRATES: How, then, will the most beneficial ones come about? Tell me this, Glaucon. I see you [459a] have hunting dogs and quite a flock of noble birds at home.¹³ Have you, by Zeus, noticed anything in particular about their “marriages” and breeding?

SOCRATES: In the first place, though they are all noble animals, aren’t there some that are, or turn out to be, the very best?

SOCRATES: Do you breed from them all to the same extent, then, or do you try hard to breed as far as possible from the best ones?

SOCRATES: And do you breed from the youngest, the oldest, or as far as possible from those in their [b] prime?

SOCRATES: And if they were not bred in this way, do you think that your race of birds and dogs would get much worse?

SOCRATES: And what do you think about horses and other animals? Is the situation any different with them?

SOCRATES: Good heavens, my dear comrade! Then our need for eminent rulers is quite desperate, if indeed the same also holds for the human race.

SOCRATES: It follows that our rulers will then have to employ a great many drugs. You know that when people do not need drugs for their bodies, and they are prepared to follow a regimen, we regard even an inferior doctor as adequate. But when drugs are needed, we know that a much bolder doctor is required.

SOCRATES: This: it looks as though our rulers will have to employ a great many lies and deceptions for the benefit of those they rule. And you remember, I suppose, we said all such things were useful as a kind [d] of drug.¹⁴

SOCRATES: Well, in the case of marriages and procreation, its correctness is particularly evident.

SOCRATES: It follows from our previous agreement that the best men should mate with the best women in as many cases as possible, while the opposite should hold of the worst men and women; and that the offspring of the former should be reared, but not that of the latter, if our flock is going to be an eminent one. And all this must occur without anyone [e] knowing except the rulers—if, again, our herd of guardians is to remain as free from faction as possible.

SOCRATES: So then, we will have to establish by law certain festivals and sacrifices at which we will bring together brides and bridegrooms, and our poets must compose suitable hymns for the marriages that take place. We will leave the number of marriages [460a] for the rulers to decide. That will enable them to keep the number of males as constant as possible, taking into account war, disease, and everything of that sort; so that the city will, as far as possible, become neither too big nor too small.

SOCRATES: I imagine that some sophisticated lotteries will have to be created, then, so that an inferior person of that sort will blame chance rather than the rulers at each mating time.

SOCRATES: And presumably, the young men who are good at war or at other things must—among other [b] prizes and awards—be given a greater opportunity to have sex with the women, in order that a pretext may also be created at the same time for having as many children as possible fathered by such men.

SOCRATES: And then, as offspring are born, won’t they be taken by the officials appointed for this purpose, whether these are men or women or both—for surely our offices are also open to both women and men.

SOCRATES: And I suppose they will take the offspring of good parents to the rearing pen and hand them over to special nurses who live in a separate [c] part of the city. But those of inferior parents, or any deformed offspring of the others, they will hide in a secret and unknown place, as is fitting.¹⁵

SOCRATES: And won’t these nurses also take care of the children’s feeding by bringing the mothers to the rearing pen when their breasts are full, while devising every device to ensure that no mother will recognize her offspring? And won’t they provide other women as wet nurses if the mothers themselves have [d] insufficient milk—taking care, however, that the mothers breast-feed the children for only a moderate period of time, and assigning sleepless nights and similar burdens to the nurses and wet nurses?

SOCRATES: Yes, properly so. But let’s take up the next thing we proposed. We said, as you know, that offspring should be bred from parents who are in their prime.¹⁶

SOCRATES: Do you agree that a woman’s prime lasts, on average, for a period of twenty years and a [e] man’s for thirty?

SOCRATES: A woman should bear children for the city from the age of twenty to that of forty; whereas a man should beget them for the city from the time that he passes his peak as a runner until he reaches fifty-five.¹⁷

SOCRATES: Then if any male who is younger or older than that engages in reproduction for the community, we will say that his offense is neither pious nor just. For the child he fathers for the city, if it escapes discovery, will be begotten and born without the benefit of sacrifices, or of the prayers that priestesses, priests, and the entire city will offer at every marriage festival, asking that from good and beneficial parents ever better and more beneficial offspring should be produced. [b] On the contrary, it will be born in darkness through a terrible act of lack of self-control.

SOCRATES: The same law will apply if a man who is still of breeding age has sex with a woman in her prime when the rulers have not mated them. We will say that he is imposing an illegitimate, unauthorized, and unholy child on the city.

SOCRATES: But when women and men have passed breeding age, I imagine we will leave them free to have sex with whomever they wish—except that a man may not have sex with his daughter, mother, [c] daughters’ daughters, or mother’s female ancestors, or a woman with her son and his descendants or her father and his ancestors. And we will permit all that only after telling them to be very careful not to let even a single fetus see the light of day, if one should happen to be conceived; but if one does force its way out, they must dispose of it on the understanding that no nurture is available for such a child.

GLAUCON: All that sounds reasonable. But how will they recognize one another’s fathers, daughters, and the others you mentioned? [d]

SOCRATES: They won’t. Instead, from the day a man becomes a bridegroom, he will call all offspring born in the tenth month afterward (and in the seventh, of course) his sons,¹⁸ if they are male, and his daughters, if they are female; and they will call him father. Similarly, he will call their children his grandchildren, and they, in turn, will call the group to which he belongs grandfathers and grandmothers. And those who were born at the same time as their mothers and fathers were breeding, they will call their brothers and sisters. Thus, as we were saying just now, they will avoid sexual relations [e] with each other. However, the law will allow brothers and sisters to have sex with one another, if the lottery works out that way and the Pythia approves.¹⁹

SOCRATES: That, then, Glaucon, or something like it, is how the sharing of women and children by the guardians of your city will be handled. The next point we need to have confirmed by argument, then, is that this arrangement is both consistent with the rest of the constitution and by far the best. Isn’t that so?

SOCRATES: As a beginning step toward reaching agreement, shouldn’t we ask ourselves what we think is the greatest good for the organization of the city—the one at which the legislator should aim in making its laws—and what the greatest evil? And then examine whether what we have just described is in harmony with the tracks of the good we have found, and in disharmony with those of the bad?

SOCRATES: Now, do we know of any greater evil for a city than what tears it apart and makes it many instead of one? Or any greater good than what binds [b] it together and makes it one?

SOCRATES: Well, doesn’t sharing pleasure and pain bind it together—when, as far as possible, all the citizens feel more or less the same joy or pain at the same gains or losses?

SOCRATES: On the other hand, doesn’t the privatization of these things dissolve the city—when some are overwhelmed with distress and others overjoyed by the same things happening to the city or some of its inhabitants? [c]

SOCRATES: And isn’t that what happens when people do not apply such phrases as “mine” and “not mine” in unison in the city? And similarly with “someone else’s”?

SOCRATES: Then isn’t the city that is best governed the one in which the vast majority of people apply “mine” and “not mine” to the same things on the basis of the same principle?

SOCRATES: And isn’t it the city whose condition is most like that of a single person? I mean, when one of us somehow hurts his finger, you know the entire partnership—the one that binds body and soul together into a single system under the ruling part within it—is aware of this, and all of it as a whole feels the pain in unison with the part that suffers. That is why we say [d] that this person has a pain in his finger. And the same principle applies, doesn’t it, to any other part of a person, whether it is suffering pain or relieved by pleasure?

GLAUCON: Yes, the same one. And, to answer your question, the city that manages to come closest to this condition is the best-governed one.

SOCRATES: I imagine, then, that whenever one of its citizens has an experience, whether good or bad, such a city will most certainly say that the experience [e] is its own, and all of it together will share his pleasure or pain.

SOCRATES: It is time for us to return to our own city, then, to look there for the features we have agreed on and to see whether it, or rather some other city, possesses them to the greatest degree.

SOCRATES: Well, now, what about those other cities? Presumably there are rulers and people in them as well as in ours? [463a]

SOCRATES: But besides “citizens,” what do the people in those other cities call the rulers?

GLAUCON: In most, they call them “masters,” but in democracies they are called just that—“rulers.”²⁰

SOCRATES: What about the people in our city? Besides “citizens,” what do they call the rulers?

SOCRATES: Now, can you tell me whether a ruler in other cities could address one of his co-rulers as his kinsman and another as an outsider?

SOCRATES: And doesn’t he regard and speak of his kinsman as belonging to him, while he regards the outsider as not doing so? [c]

SOCRATES: What about your guardians? Could any of them regard or address a co-guardian as an outsider?

GLAUCON: Certainly not. He will regard everyone he meets as a brother or a sister, a father or a mother, a son or a daughter, or some ancestor or descendant of these.

SOCRATES: Very well put. But tell me this, too: will your laws require them simply to use these terms of kinship, or must they also do all the things that go along with the names? In the case of fathers, for [d] example, must they show them the customary respect, solicitude, and obedience owed to parents? Will they fare worse at the hands of gods or men, as people whose actions are neither pious nor just, if they do otherwise? Will these be the sayings that are chanted by all the citizens, and that sound in their ears right from their earliest childhood? Or will they hear something else about their fathers—or the ones they are told to regard as their fathers—or about their other relatives?

GLAUCON: They will hear those. It would be ridiculous if they only mouthed the terms of kinship, [e] without the actions.

SOCRATES: So, in this city more than in any other, when someone is doing well or badly, they will utter in concord the words we mentioned a moment ago, and say “my such-and-such is doing well” or “my so-and-so is doing badly.”

SOCRATES: Well, didn’t we say that this conviction and way of talking are accompanied by the having [464a] of pleasures and pains in common?²¹

SOCRATES: Then won’t our citizens share to the fullest, and call “mine,” the very same thing? And because they share it, won’t they experience to the fullest the sharing of pleasures and pains?

SOCRATES: And—in the context of the rest of the political system—isn’t the sharing of women and children by the guardians responsible for it?

SOCRATES: But we further agreed that this sharing is the greatest good for a city, when we compared a [b] well-governed city to the way a human body relates to pain and pleasure in one of its parts.

SOCRATES: Then we have shown that the cause of the greatest good for our city is the sharing of women and children by the auxiliaries.

SOCRATES: And what is more, it is consistent with what we said before. For we said, as you know, that if these people are going to be real guardians, they should not have private houses, land, or any other possession, but should receive their upkeep from the other citizens as a wage for their guardianship, and [c] should all eat communally.²²

SOCRATES: So, as I say, doesn’t what was said earlier, as well as what is being said now, make them into even better guardians and prevent them from tearing the city apart by applying the term “mine” not to the same thing, but to different ones—with one person dragging into his own house whatever he, apart from the others, can get his hands on, and another into a different house to a different wife and [d] children, who create private pleasures and pains at things that are private? Instead of that, don’t our guardians share a single conviction about what is their own, aim at the same goal, and, as far as possible, feel pleasure and pain in unison?

SOCRATES: What about lawsuits and accusations? Won’t they pretty much disappear from among them because they have no private possessions except their own bodies and share all the rest? As a result, won’t they be free from faction—at any rate, from the sort of faction that the possession of property, children, [e] and families causes among people?

SOCRATES: Moreover, neither lawsuits for violence nor for assault should justifiably occur among them. For we will declare, surely, that for people to defend themselves against others of the same age is a fine and just thing, since it will compel them to stay in good physical shape.

SOCRATES: This law is also correct for another reason: if a spirited person vents his anger in this way, [465a] he will be less likely to move on to more serious sorts of faction.

SOCRATES: As for an older person, he will be authorized to rule and punish all the younger ones.

SOCRATES: And, unless the rulers command it, it is unlikely that a younger person will ever employ any sort of violence against an older one, or strike him. And I do not imagine he will fail to show him respect in other ways either, since two guardians—fear and shame—are sufficient to prevent it. Shame will prevent him from laying a hand on his parents, as will the fear that the others would come to his victim’s aid—some because they are his sons, some [b] because they are his brothers, and some because they are his fathers.

SOCRATES: Then won’t the laws induce men to live at peace with one another in all respects?

SOCRATES: And if there is no faction among the guardians, there is no terrible danger that the rest of the city will form factions, either against them or among themselves.

SOCRATES: As for the pettiest of the evils the guardians would escape, they are so unseemly, I hesitate even to mention them: the flatteries of the rich by the poor; the perplexities and sufferings involved [c] in bringing up children; the need to make the money necessary to feed the household—the borrowings, the defaults, and all the things people have to do to provide an income to hand over to their wives and slaves to spend on housekeeping. The various troubles men endure in these areas, my dear Glaucon, are obvious, quite demeaning, and not worth discussing.

SOCRATES: They will escape from all these things, then, and live a more blessedly happy life than the most blessedly happy one—that of the victors in the Olympian games.

SOCRATES: Surely, these victors are considered happy on account of only a small part of what the guardians possess, since the latter victory is even finer, and their upkeep from public funds more complete.²³ After all, the victory they gain is the salvation of the whole city, and the crown of victory they and their children receive is their upkeep and all the necessities of life. They receive privileges from their own city during their lifetime and a worthy burial after their [e] death.

SOCRATES: Now, do you remember that earlier in our discussion we were rebuked by an argument—I forget whose—to the effect that we had not made our guardians happy, that though it was possible for them to have everything that belongs to the citizens, they [466a] actually had nothing? We said, didn’t we, that if this happened to come up at some point, we would look into it then, but that our concern at the time was to make our guardians guardians, and to make the city the happiest possible, rather than looking to any one group within it and molding it for happiness?²⁴

SOCRATES: Well, then, if indeed the life of our auxiliaries has been shown to be much finer and better than that of Olympian victors, is there any need to compare it with the lives of shoemakers or any [b] other craftsmen, or with that of the farmers?

SOCRATES: Nevertheless, it is surely right to repeat here what I also said on that earlier occasion: if a guardian tries to become happy in such a way that he is no longer a guardian at all, and is not satisfied with a life that is moderate, stable, and (we claim) best, but is seized by a foolish, adolescent belief about happiness, which incites him to use his power to take everything in the city for himself—he will come to [c] realize the true wisdom of Hesiod’s saying that, in a sense, “the half is worth more than the whole.”²⁵

SOCRATES: Do you agree, then, that the women should share with the men, in the way we described, in the areas of education, children, and guarding the other citizens; that whether they remain in the city or go out to war, they must guard together and hunt together, as hounds do, and share everything to the extent possible; and that by behaving in this way, they [d] will be doing what is best, not something contrary to the natural relationship of female to male, and the one they are most naturally fitted to share in with one another?

SOCRATES: Then doesn’t it remain for us to determine whether it is also possible among human beings, as it is among other animals, for this sort of sharing to come about, and if so, how?

SOCRATES: As far as war is concerned, I think it is clear how they will wage it. [e]

SOCRATES: They will go to war together. What is more, they will take the children with them to the war, when they are sturdy enough, so that, like the children of other craftsmen, they can see what they will have to do in their own craft when they are grown up. But in addition to observing, they should help and assist in every aspect of war, and take care of [467a] their mothers and fathers. For haven’t you noticed in the other crafts how the children of potters, for example, assist and watch for a long time before actually putting their hands to the clay?

SOCRATES: Well, should these people take more care than the guardians in training their children by appropriate experience and observation?

SOCRATES: Besides, every animal will fight better in the presence of its young. [b]

GLAUCON: That’s right. But there is a risk, Socrates, and not a small one either, that in the event of a disaster of the sort that is likely to happen in a war, they will lose their children’s lives as well as their own, making it impossible for the rest of the city to recover.

SOCRATES: That’s true. But, in the first place, do you think they should arrange for the avoidance of all risk?

SOCRATES: Well, then, if they must face some risk, shouldn’t it be one in which they will be improved by success?

SOCRATES: But you think, do you, that it makes little difference—and so is not worth the risk—whether or not men who are going to be warriors [c] watch warfare when they are still boys?

SOCRATES: Starting from the assumption, then, that we are to make the children observers of war, we must further devise some way of keeping them safe. Then everything will be fine, won’t it?

SOCRATES: Well, in the first place, their fathers won’t be ignorant, will they, but rather as knowledgeable as people can be, about which military campaigns are dangerous and which are not? [d]

SOCRATES: So, they will take the children on the latter, but be wary of taking them on the former.

SOCRATES: And they will not put the worst people in charge of them, I presume, but those whose experience and age qualifies them to be leaders and tutors.

SOCRATES: But we will say that the unexpected happens to many people and on many occasions.

SOCRATES: So, with that in mind, my friend, we must provide the young children with wings at the outset, so that, if the need arises, they can fly away and escape.

SOCRATES: We must mount them on horses when they are still very young, and when they have been taught to ride, they must be taken to view the fighting, not on spirited or aggressive horses, but on the fastest and most manageable ones. In this way, they will get the best view of their own future job, and will be able to make the safest escape, if the need arises, by following their older leaders.

SOCRATES: What about warfare itself? How should your soldiers behave toward one another and [468a] the enemy? Are my views correct or not?

SOCRATES: If one of them leaves his post, throws away his shield, or does anything else of that sort out of cowardice, shouldn’t he be demoted to craftsman or farmer?

SOCRATES: And if anyone is captured alive by the enemy, shouldn’t he be presented to his captors as a catch to use however they wish?

SOCRATES: But if someone distinguishes himself and earns high honors, do you or don’t you think that in the first place, while still on campaign, he should be crowned in turn by each of the adolescents and children who are with the army?

GLAUCON: By all means. And I would add to the law that while they are still on campaign, no one he wants to kiss shall be allowed to refuse, so that if anyone passionately loves another, whether male or [c] female, he will try harder to win the prize for bravery.

SOCRATES: Excellent! For we have already mentioned that more opportunities for marriage will be available for a good man,²⁶ and that men like him will be selected more often than others for such things, so that as many children as possible may be produced from them.

SOCRATES: Moreover, according to Homer too, it is just to honor in such ways those young people who are good. For Homer says that when Ajax distinguished himself in battle, he “was rewarded with the [d] whole backbone,”²⁷ since he considered that to be an appropriate honor for a courageous young man because it honored him and built up his strength at the same time.

SOCRATES: Then we will follow Homer in this matter, at any rate. I mean that at sacrifices and all other such occasions, we too will honor good men—insofar as they have exhibited their goodness—not only with hymns and all the other things we mentioned, but also with “seats of honor, cuts of meats, and well-filled cups of wine,”²⁸ so that while honoring our good men and women, we may train them at the [e] same time.

SOCRATES: All right. And if any of those who died while on campaign has had a particularly distinguished death, won’t we, in the first place, declare that he belongs to the golden race?

SOCRATES: And won’t we believe with Hesiod that, whenever any of that race die, they become “unsullied daimons living upon the earth, noble beings, [469a] protectors against evil, guardians of articulate mortals?”²⁹

SOCRATES: Won’t we ask the god,³⁰ then, to tell us how and with what distinction these daimons, these godlike people, should be buried, and perform their burial in whatever way he prescribes?

SOCRATES: And for the remainder of time, won’t we regard their graves as those of daimons, and take care of them and worship at them? And won’t we follow these same rites whenever anyone who has [b] been judged outstandingly good throughout his life dies of old age, or in some other way?

SOCRATES: First, as regards enslavement, do you think it is just for Greek cities to enslave other Greeks, or should they try as hard as possible not even to allow other cities to do so, and make a habit of sparing the Greek race as a precaution against being enslaved by barbarians? [c]

SOCRATES: So, they should not possess any Greek slaves themselves, and should advise the other Greeks to do the same?

GLAUCON: By all means. In that way, at any rate, they would be more likely to turn against the barbarians and keep their hands off one another.

SOCRATES: What about despoiling the dead? Is it a good thing to strip the dead of anything besides their armor after a victory? Doesn’t it give cowards a pretext for not facing the enemy, since when they [d] are greedily bending over corpses, they will be performing an important duty? And haven’t many armies been lost because of such plundering?

SOCRATES: Don’t you think it is illiberal and money-loving to strip a corpse? And isn’t it small-minded and womanish to regard a dead body as your enemy, when the enemy himself has flitted away leaving behind only the instrument with which he fought? Do you think that people who do this are any different from dogs who get angry with the stones thrown at them but leave the person throwing [e] them alone?

SOCRATES: So they should not strip corpses, should they, or refuse the enemy permission to pick up their dead?

SOCRATES: Moreover, we surely won’t take weapons to the temples as offerings, and if we care anything about the goodwill of other Greeks, we especially won’t do this with Greek weapons. On the contrary, [470a] we would even be afraid of polluting the temples if we brought them such things from our own race, unless, of course, the god ordains otherwise.

SOCRATES: What about ravaging Greek land and burning Greek houses? How will your soldiers behave toward their enemies?

SOCRATES: Well, I believe they should do neither of these things, but destroy only the year’s harvest. Do you want me to tell you why? [b]

SOCRATES: It seems to me that just as we have the two names “war” and “faction,” so there are also two things, and the names apply to differences between the two. The two I mean are, on the one hand, what is one’s own and kin, and, on the other, what is foreign and strange. “Faction” applies to hostility toward one’s own, “war” to hostility toward strangers.

SOCRATES: Consider, then, whether this too is correct. I say that the Greek race, in relation to itself, [c] is its own and kin, but, in relation to barbarians, is strange and foreign.

SOCRATES: When Greeks fight with barbarians, then, or barbarians with Greeks, we will say that that is warfare, that they are natural enemies, and that such hostilities should be called war. But when Greeks engage in such things with Greeks, we will say they are natural friends, that Greece is sick and divided into factions in such a situation, and that such hostilities should be called faction. [d]

SOCRATES: Now, notice that whenever something of the sort that is currently called faction occurs and a city is divided, if each side devastates the land and burns the houses of the other, the faction is thought abominable and neither party is thought to love the city—otherwise they would never have dared to ravage their own nurse and mother. But it is thought reasonable for the ones who have proved stronger to carry off the weaker ones’ crops, and to have the attitude of mind of people who will one day be reconciled [e] and won’t always be at war.

SOCRATES: Then won’t they be lovers of Greeks? Won’t they consider Greece as their own and share the same religious festivals as other Greeks?

SOCRATES: Then won’t they regard their conflicts with Greeks—their own people—as faction, and not [471a] even use the name “war”?

SOCRATES: And so, they will quarrel with the aim of being reconciled, won’t they?

SOCRATES: They will discipline their foes in a friendly spirit, then, and not punish them with enslavement and destruction, since they are discipliners, not enemies.

SOCRATES: As Greeks, then, they won’t devastate Greece or burn its houses, nor will they agree that all the inhabitants in any city—men, women, and children—are their enemies, but only those few responsible for the conflict. For all these reasons, they won’t be willing to devastate their country, since the [b] majority of the inhabitants are their friends, nor destroy the houses, and they will pursue the conflict only to the point at which those responsible are forced to pay the penalty by the innocent ones who are suffering painfully.

GLAUCON: I agree that this is how our citizens should treat their enemies, but they should treat barbarians the way Greeks currently treat each other.

SOCRATES: Then shall we also establish this law for the guardians, that they should neither ravage Greek land nor burn Greek houses? [c]

GLAUCON: Yes, let’s establish it. And let’s assume that this law and its predecessors are right. But, Socrates, I think that if you are allowed to go on talking about this sort of thing, you will never remember the topic you set aside in order to say all this—namely, whether it is possible for this constitution to come into existence, and how it could ever do so. I agree that if it came into existence, everything would be lovely for the city that had it. I will even add some advantages that you have left out: they would fight excellently against their enemies because they would be least likely to desert each other. After all, they [d] recognize each other as brothers, fathers, and sons, and call each other by those names. And if the women, too, joined in their campaigns, either stationed in the same ranks or in the rear, either to strike terror in the enemy or to provide support should the need ever arise, I know that this would make them quite unbeatable. And I also see all the good things they would have at home that you have omitted. Take it for granted that I agree that all these benefits, as [e] well as innumerable others, would result, if this constitution came into existence, and say no more about it. Instead, let’s now try to convince ourselves of just this: that it is possible and how it is possible, and let’s leave the rest aside.

SOCRATES: All of a sudden, you have practically assaulted my argument and lost all sympathy for my [472a] holding back. Perhaps you do not realize that just as I have barely escaped from the first two waves of objections, you are now bringing the biggest and most difficult of the three down upon me.³¹ When you see and hear it, you will have complete sympathy and recognize that I had good reason after all for hesitating and for being afraid to state and try to examine so paradoxical an argument.

GLAUCON: The more you talk like that, the less we will let you get away without explaining how this constitution could come into existence. So explain [b] it, and do not delay any further.

SOCRATES: The first thing to recall, then, is that it was our inquiry into the nature of justice and injustice that brought us to this point.

SOCRATES: Oh, nothing. However, if we discover the nature of justice, should we also expect the just man not to differ from justice itself in any way, but, on the contrary, to have entirely the same nature it does? Or will we be satisfied if he approximates as closely as possible to it and partakes in it far more [c] than anyone else?

SOCRATES: So, it was in order to have a model that we were inquiring into the nature of justice itself and of the completely just man, supposing he could exist, and what he would be like if he did; and similarly with injustice and the most unjust man. We thought that by seeing how they seemed to us to stand with regard to happiness and its opposite, we would also be compelled to agree about ourselves as well: that the one who was most like them would have a fate most like theirs. But [d] we were not doing this in order to demonstrate that it is possible for these men to exist.

SOCRATES: Do you think, then, that someone would be any less good a painter if he painted a model of what the most beautiful human being would be like, and rendered everything in the picture perfectly well, but could not demonstrate that such a man could actually exist?

SOCRATES: What about our own case, then? Weren’t we trying, as we put it, to produce a model in our discussion of a good city? [e]

SOCRATES: So, do you think that our discussion will be any less satisfactory if we cannot demonstrate that it is possible to found a city that is the same as the one we described in speech?

SOCRATES: Then that is the truth of the matter. But if, in order to please you, we must do our best to demonstrate how, and under what condition, this would be most possible, you must again grant me the same points for the purposes of that demonstration.

SOCRATES: Is it possible for anything to be carried out exactly as described in speech, or is it natural for [473a] practice to have less of a grasp of truth than speech does, even if some people do not think so? Do you agree with this or not?

SOCRATES: Then do not compel me to demonstrate it as coming about in practice exactly as we have described it in speech. Rather, if we are able to discover how a city that most closely approximates to what we have described could be founded, you must admit that we have discovered how all you have prescribed could come about. Or wouldn’t you be satisfied [b] with that? I certainly would.

SOCRATES: Then next, it seems, we should try to discover and show what is badly done in cities nowadays that prevents them from being managed our way, and what the smallest change would be that would enable a city to arrive at our sort of constitution—preferably one change; otherwise, two; otherwise, the fewest in number and the least extensive in effect.

SOCRATES: Well, there is one change we could point to that I think would accomplish this. It certainly is not small or easy, but it is possible.

SOCRATES: I am now about to confront what we likened to the greatest wave. Yet, it must be stated, even if it is going to drown me in a wave of outright ridicule and contempt, as it were. So listen to what I am about to say.

SOCRATES: Until philosophers rule as kings in their cities, or those who are nowadays called kings and leading men become genuine and adequate philosophers so that political power and philosophy [d] become thoroughly blended together, while the numerous natures that now pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils, my dear Glaucon, nor, I think, will the human race. And until that happens, the same constitution we have now described in our discussion will never be born to the extent that it can, [e] or see the light of the sun. It is this claim that has made me hesitate to speak for so long. I saw how very unbelievable it would sound, since it is difficult to accept that there can be no happiness, either public or private, in any other way.

GLAUCON: Socrates, what a speech, what an argument you have let burst with! But now that you have uttered it, you must expect that a great many people—and not undistinguished ones either—will immediately throw off their cloaks and, stripped for action, [474a] snatch any available weapon and make a headlong rush at you, determined to do terrible things to you. So, if you do not defend yourself by argument and escape, you really will pay the penalty of general derision.

SOCRATES: But aren’t you the one who is responsible for this happening to me?

GLAUCON: And I was right to do it. Still, I won’t desert you. On the contrary, I will defend you in any way I can. And what I can do is provide good will and encouragement, and maybe give you more careful answers to your questions than someone else. So, with the promise of this sort of assistance, try to demonstrate [b] to the unbelievers that things are as you claim.

SOCRATES: I will have to, especially when you agree to be so great an ally! If we are going to escape from the people you mention, I think we need to define for them who the philosophers are that we dare to say should rule; so that once that is clear, one can defend oneself by showing that some people are fitted by nature to engage in philosophy and to take [c] the lead in a city, while there are others who should not engage in it, but should follow a leader.

SOCRATES: Come on, then, follow me on the path I am about to take, to see if it somehow leads to an adequate explanation.

SOCRATES: Do I have to remind you, or do you recall, that when we say someone loves something, if the description is correct, it must be clear not just that he loves some part of it but not another; but, on the contrary, that he cherishes the whole of it?

GLAUCON: You will have to remind me, it seems. I do not recall the point at all. [d]

SOCRATES: I did not expect you to give that response, Glaucon. A passionate man should not forget that all boys in the bloom of youth somehow manage to sting and arouse a passionate lover of boys, and seem to merit his attention and passionate devotion. Isn’t that the way you people behave to beautiful boys? One, because he is snub-nosed, you will praise as “cute”; another who is hook-nosed you will say is “regal”; while the one in the middle you say is “well proportioned.” Dark ones look “manly,” and pale ones [e] are “children of the gods.” As for the “honey-colored,” do you think that this very term is anything but the euphemistic coinage of a lover who found it easy to tolerate a sallow complexion, provided it was accompanied by the bloom of youth? In a word, you people find any excuse, and use any expression, to avoid rejecting anyone whose flower is in full bloom. [475a]

GLAUCON: If you insist on taking me as your example of what passionate men do, I will go along with you… for the sake of argument!

SOCRATES: What about lovers of wine? Don’t you observe them behaving in just the same way? Don’t they find any excuse to indulge their passionate devotion to wine of any sort?

SOCRATES: And you also observe, I imagine, that if honor-lovers cannot become generals, they serve as lieutenants,³² and if they cannot be honored by important people and dignitaries, they are satisfied with being honored by insignificant and inferior ones, [b] since it is honor as a whole of which they are desirers.

SOCRATES: Then do you affirm this or not? When we say that someone has an appetite for something, are we to say that he has an appetite for everything of that kind, or for one part of it but not another?

SOCRATES: Then in the case of the philosopher, too, won’t we say that he has an appetite for wisdom—not for one part and not another, but for all of it?

SOCRATES: So, if someone is choosy about what he learns, especially if he is young and does not have a rational grasp of what is useful and what is not, we won’t [c] say that he is a lover of learning or a philosopher—any more than we would say that someone who is choosy about his food is famished, or has an appetite for food, or is a lover of food rather than a picky eater.

SOCRATES: But someone who is ready and willing to taste every kind of learning, who turns gladly to learning and is insatiable for it, he is the one we would be justified in calling a philosopher. Isn’t that so?

GLAUCON: In that case, many strange people will be philosophers! I mean, all the lovers of seeing are [d] what they are, I imagine, because they take pleasure in learning things. And the lovers of listening are very strange people to include as philosophers: they would never willingly attend a serious discussion or spend their time that way; yet, just as if their ears were under contract to listen to every chorus, they run around to all the Dionysiac festivals, whether in cities or villages, and never miss one. Are we to say that these people—and others who are students of similar things or of petty crafts—are philosophers? [e]

SOCRATES: It would not be easy to explain to someone else. But you, I imagine, will agree to the following.

SOCRATES: And the same argument applies, then, to just and unjust, good and bad, and all the forms: each of them is itself one thing, but because they appear all over the place in partnership with actions and bodies, and with one another, each of them appears to be many things.

SOCRATES: Well, then, that is the basis of the distinction I draw: on one side are the lovers of seeing, the lovers of crafts, and the practical people you mentioned a moment ago; on the other, those we are arguing about, the only ones it is correct to call [b] philosophers.

SOCRATES: The lovers of listening and seeing are passionately devoted to beautiful sounds, colors, shapes, and everything fashioned out of such things.³³ But their thought is unable to see the nature of the beautiful itself or to be passionately devoted to it.

SOCRATES: On the other hand, won’t those who are able to approach the beautiful itself, and see it by itself, be rare?

SOCRATES: What about someone who believes in beautiful things but does not believe in the beautiful itself, and would not be able to follow anyone who tried to lead him to the knowledge of it? Do you think he is living in a dream, or is he awake? Just consider. Isn’t it dreaming to think—whether asleep or awake—that a likeness is not a likeness, but rather the thing itself that it is like?

SOCRATES: But what about someone who, to take the opposite case, does believe in the beautiful itself, is able to observe both it and the things that participate in it, and does not think that the participants are it, [d] or that it is the participants—do you think he is living in a dream or is awake?

SOCRATES: So, because this person knows these things, we would be right to describe his thought as knowledge; but the other’s we would be right to describe as belief, because he believes what he does?

SOCRATES: What if the person we describe as believing but not knowing is angry with us and disputes the truth of what we say? Will we have any way of soothing and gently persuading him, while disguising [e] the fact that he is not in a healthy state of mind?

SOCRATES: Come on, then, consider what we will say to him. Or—once we have told him that nobody envies him any knowledge he may have—that, on the contrary, we would be delighted to discover that he knows something—do you want us to question him as follows? “Tell us this: does someone who knows know something or nothing?” You answer for him.

SOCRATES: We are adequately assured of this, then, and would remain so, no matter how many ways we examined it: what completely is, is completely an object of knowledge; and what in no way is, is not an object of knowledge at all?

SOCRATES: Good. In that case, then, if anything is such as to be and also not to be, wouldn’t it lie in between what purely is and what in no way is?

SOCRATES: Then, since knowledge deals with what is, ignorance must deal with what is not, while we must look in between knowledge and ignorance for what deals with what lies in between, if there is anything of that sort. [b]

SOCRATES: So, belief has been assigned to deal with one thing, then, and knowledge with another, depending on what power each has.

SOCRATES: Now, doesn’t knowledge naturally deal with what is, to know how what is is? But first I think we had better go through the following.

SOCRATES: We think powers are a type of thing [c] that enables us—or anything else that has an ability—to do whatever we are able to do. Sight and hearing are examples of what I mean by powers, if you understand the kind of thing I am trying to describe.

SOCRATES: Listen, then, to what I think about them. A power has no color for me to see, nor a shape, nor any feature of the sort that many other things have, and that I can consider in order to distinguish them for myself as different from one another. In the case of a power, I can consider only what it deals with and what it does, and it is on that basis [d] that I come to call each the power it is: those assigned to deal with the same things and do the same, I call the same; those that deal with different things and do different things, I call different. What about you? What do you do?

SOCRATES: Going back, then, to where we left off, my very good fellow: do you think knowledge is itself a power? Or to what type would you assign it?

SOCRATES: What about belief? Shall we include it as a power or assign it to a different kind? [e]

GLAUCON: Not at all. Belief is nothing other than the power that enables us to believe.

SOCRATES: But a moment ago you agreed that knowledge and belief are not the same.

GLAUCON: How could anyone with any sense think a fallible thing is the same as an infallible one?

SOCRATES: Fine. Then clearly we agree that belief [478a] is different from knowledge.

SOCRATES: Each of them, then, since it has a different power, deals by nature with something different?

SOCRATES: The very same thing that knowledge knows? Can the object of knowledge and the object of belief be the same? Or is that impossible?

GLAUCON: It is impossible, given what we have agreed. If different powers by nature deal with different things, and both opinion and knowledge are powers but, as we claim, different ones, it follows from these that the object of knowledge and the object of belief cannot be the same. [b]

SOCRATES: Then if what is is the object of knowledge, mustn’t the object of belief be something other than what is?

SOCRATES: Does belief, then, believe what is not? Or is it impossible even to believe what is not? Consider this: doesn’t a believer take his belief to deal with something? Or is it possible to believe, yet to believe nothing?

SOCRATES: But surely what is not is most correctly characterized not as a single thing, but as nothing? [c]

SOCRATES: But we had to assign ignorance to what is not and knowledge to what is?

SOCRATES: Well, then, does it lie beyond these two, surpassing knowledge in clarity or ignorance in opacity?

SOCRATES: Then does belief seem to you to be more opaque than knowledge but clearer than ignorance?

SOCRATES: Now, didn’t we say earlier that if something turned out both to be and not to be at the same time, it would lie in between what purely is and what in every way is not, and that neither knowledge nor ignorance would deal with it; but whatever it was again that turned out to lie in between ignorance and knowledge would?

SOCRATES: And now, what we are calling belief has turned out to lie in between them?

SOCRATES: Apparently, then, it remains for us to find what partakes in both being and not being, and [e] cannot correctly be called purely one or the other, so that if we find it, we can justifiably call it the object of belief, thereby assigning extremes to extremes and in-betweens to in-betweens. Isn’t that so?

SOCRATES: Now that all that has been established, I want him to tell me this—the excellent fellow who believes that there is no beautiful itself, no form of beauty itself that remains always the same in all respects, [479a] but who does believe that there are many beautiful things—I mean, that lover of seeing who cannot bear to hear anyone say that the beautiful is one thing, or the just, or any of the rest—I want him to answer this question: “My very good fellow,” we will say, “of all the many beautiful things, is there one that won’t also seem ugly? Or any just one that won’t seem unjust? Or any pious one that won’t seem impious?”

GLAUCON: There is not. On the contrary, it is inevitable that they would somehow seem both beautiful [b] and ugly; and the same with the other things you asked about.

SOCRATES: What about the many things that are doubles? Do they seem to be any the less halves than doubles?

SOCRATES: And again, will things that we say are big, small, light, or heavy be any more what we say they are than they will be the opposite?

SOCRATES: Then is each of the many things any more what one says it is than it is not what one says it is?

GLAUCON: No, they are like those puzzles one hears at parties, or the children’s riddle about the eunuch who threw something at a bat—the one about what he threw at it and what it was in.³⁴ For these things, too, are ambiguous, and one cannot understand them as fixedly being or fixedly not being, or as both, or as neither.

SOCRATES: Do you know what to do with them, then, or anywhere better to put them than in between being and not being? Surely they cannot be more opaque than what is not, by not-being more than it; nor clearer than what is, by being more than it. [d]

SOCRATES: So, we have now discovered, it seems, that the majority of people’s many conventional views about beauty and the rest are somehow rolling around between what is not and what purely is.

SOCRATES: And we agreed earlier that if anything turned out to be of that sort, it would have to be called an object of belief, not an object of knowledge—a wandering, in-between object grasped by the in-between power.

SOCRATES: As for those, then, who look at many beautiful things but do not see the beautiful itself, [e] and are incapable of following another who would lead them to it; or many just things but not the just itself, and similarly with all the rest—these people, we will say, have beliefs about all these things, but have no knowledge of what their beliefs are about.

SOCRATES: On the other hand, what about those who in each case look at the things themselves that are always the same in every respect? Won’t we say that they have knowledge, not mere belief?

SOCRATES: Shall we say, then, that these people are passionately devoted to and love the things with which knowledge deals, as the others are devoted to and love the things with which belief deals? We have [480a] not forgotten, have we, that the latter love and look at beautiful sounds, colors, and things of that sort, but cannot even bear the idea that the beautiful itself is a thing that is?

SOCRATES: Will we be striking a false note,³⁵ then, if we call such people “philodoxers” (lovers of belief) rather than “philosophers” (lovers of wisdom or knowledge)? Will they be very angry with us if we call them that?

GLAUCON: Not if they take my advice. It is not in accord with divine law to be angry with the truth.

SOCRATES: So, those who in each case are passionately devoted to the thing itself are the ones we must call, not “philodoxers,” but “philosophers”?

SOCRATES: Who the philosophers are, then, Glaucon, and who they aren’t has, through a somewhat lengthy argument and with much effort, somehow [484a] been made clear.

GLAUCON: That’s probably because it could not easily have been done through a shorter one.

SOCRATES: I suppose not. Yet I, at least, think that the matter would have been made even clearer if we had had only that topic to discuss, and not the many others that remain for us to explore if we are to discover the difference between the just life and the unjust one. [b]

SOCRATES: What else but the one that comes next? Since the philosophers are the ones who are able to grasp what is always the same in all respects, while those who cannot—those who wander among the many things that vary in every sort of way—are not philosophers, which of the two should be the leaders of a city?

SOCRATES: Whichever of them seems capable of guarding a city’s laws and practices should be established as guardians. [c]

SOCRATES: So, is the answer to the following question clear: should a guardian who is going to keep watch over something be blind or keen-sighted?

SOCRATES: Well, do you think there is any difference, then, between the blind and those who are really deprived of the knowledge of each thing that is, and have no clear model of it in their souls—those who cannot look away, like painters, to what is most true, and cannot, by making constant reference to it and by studying it as exactly as possible, establish here on earth conventional views about beautiful, just, or [d] good things when they need to be established, or guard and preserve those that have been established?

SOCRATES: Shall we appoint these blind people as our guardians, then, or those who know each thing that is, have no less experience than the others, and are not inferior to them in any other part of virtue?

GLAUCON: It would be absurd to choose anyone but philosophers, if indeed they are not inferior in these other things. For the very area in which they are superior is just about the most important one.

SOCRATES: Shouldn’t we explain, then, how the [485a] same men can have both sets of qualities?

SOCRATES: Then, as we were saying at the beginning of this discussion, it is first necessary to understand the nature of philosophers. And I think that if we can agree sufficiently about that, we will also agree that the same people can have both qualities, and that they alone should be leaders in cities.

SOCRATES: Let’s agree that philosophic natures always love the sort of learning that makes clear to them some feature of the being that always is and [b] does not wander around between coming-to-be and decaying.

SOCRATES: And further, let’s agree that they love all of it and are not willing to give up any part, whether large or small, significant or insignificant, just like the honor-lovers and passionate men we described before.

SOCRATES: Consider next whether there is a further feature they must have in their nature if they are going to be the way we described. [c]

SOCRATES: Truthfulness; that is to say they must never willingly tolerate falsehood in any form. On the contrary, they must hate it and have a natural affection for the truth.

SOCRATES: But it is not only probable, my friend; it is entirely necessary for a naturally passionate man to love everything akin to or related to the boys he loves.

SOCRATES: Well, could you find anything that is more intimately related to wisdom than truth?

SOCRATES: Then is it possible for the same nature to be a philosopher (lover of wisdom) and a lover of falsehood? [d]

SOCRATES: So, right from childhood, a genuine lover of learning must strive above all for truth of every kind.

SOCRATES: But in addition, when someone’s appetites are strongly inclined in one direction, we surely know that they become more weakly inclined in the others, just like a stream that has been partly diverted into another channel.

SOCRATES: Then when a person’s desires flow toward learning and everything of that sort, they will be concerned, I imagine, with the pleasures that the soul experiences just by itself, and will be indifferent to those that come through the body—if indeed the person is not a counterfeit, but rather a true, philosopher. [e]

SOCRATES: A person like that will be temperate, then, and in no way a lover of money. After all, money and the big expenditures that go along with it are sought for the sake of things that other people may take seriously, but that he does not.

SOCRATES: And of course, there is also this to consider when you are going to judge whether a [486a] nature is philosophic or not.

SOCRATES: You should not overlook its sharing in illiberality; for surely petty-mindedness is altogether incompatible with that quality in a soul that is always reaching out to grasp all things as a whole, whether divine or human.

SOCRATES: And do you imagine that a thinker who is high-minded enough to look at all time and all being will consider human life to be a very important thing?

SOCRATES: Then he won’t consider death to be a terrible thing either, will he? [b]

SOCRATES: Then a cowardly and illiberal nature could not partake, apparently, in true philosophy.

SOCRATES: Well, then, is there any way that an orderly person, who is not money-loving, illiberal, a lying imposter, or a coward, could come to drive a hard bargain or be unjust?

SOCRATES: Moreover, when you are considering whether someone has a philosophic soul or not, you will consider whether he is just and gentle, right from the time he is young, or unsociable and savage.

SOCRATES: Whether he is a slow learner or a fast one. Or do you expect someone to love something sufficiently well when it pains him to do it and a lot of effort brings only a small return?

SOCRATES: What if he could retain nothing of what he learned, because he was completely forgetful? Could he fail to be empty of knowledge?

SOCRATES: Then if he is laboring in vain, don’t you think that in the end he is bound to hate himself and what he is doing?

SOCRATES: So let’s never include a person with a forgetful soul among those who are sufficiently philosophical; the one we look for should be good [d] at remembering.

SOCRATES: Moreover, we would deny that an unmusical and graceless nature is drawn to anything besides what is disproportionate.

SOCRATES: And do you think that truth is akin to what is disproportionate or to what is proportionate?

SOCRATES: Then, in addition to those other things, let’s look for a mind that has a natural sense of proportion and grace, one whose innate disposition makes it easy to lead to the form of each thing which is.

SOCRATES: Well, then, do you think the properties we have gone through aren’t interconnected, or [e] that any of them is in any way unnecessary to a soul that is going to have a sufficiently complete grasp of what is?

SOCRATES: Is there any criticism you can find, then, of a pursuit that a person cannot practice adequately unless he is naturally good at remembering, quick to learn, high-minded, graceful, and a friend and relative of truth, justice, courage, and temperance?

SOCRATES: Well, then, when people of this sort are in perfect condition because of their education and their stage of life, wouldn’t you entrust the city to them alone?

No one, Socrates, would be able to contradict these claims of yours. But all the same, here is pretty much [b] the experience people have on any occasion on which they hear the sorts of things you are now saying: they think that because they are inexperienced in asking and answering questions, they are led astray a little bit by the argument at every question, and that when these little bits are added together at the end of the discussion, a big false step appears that is the opposite of what they said at the outset. Like the unskilled, who are trapped by the clever checkers players in the end and cannot make a move, they too are trapped in the end, and have nothing to say in this different [c] kind of checkers, which is played not with pieces, but with words. Yet they are not a bit more inclined to think that what you claim is true. I say this in relation to the present case. You see, someone might well say now that he is unable to find the words to oppose you as you ask each of your questions. Yet, when it comes to facts rather than words, he sees that of all those who take up philosophy—not those who merely dabble in it while still young in order to complete their upbringing, and then drop it, but those who continue in it for a longer time—the majority [d] become cranks, not to say completely bad, while the ones who seem best are rendered useless to the city because of the pursuit you recommend.

ADEIMANTUS: How, then, can it be right to say that there will be no end to evils in our cities until [e] philosophers—people we agree to be useless to cities—rule in them?

SOCRATES: So! After landing me with a claim that is so difficult to establish, are you mocking me, too? Anyway, listen to my image, and you will appreciate [488a] all the more how I have to strain to make up images. What the best philosophers experience in relation to cities is so difficult to bear that there is no other single experience like it. On the contrary, one must construct one’s image and one’s defense of these philosophers from many sources, just as painters paint goat-stags by combining the features of different things.

Imagine, then, that the following sort of thing happens either on one ship or on many. The shipowner is taller and stronger than everyone else on board. But he is hard of hearing, he is a bit shortsighted, and his knowledge of seafaring is correspondingly [b] deficient. The sailors are quarreling with one another about captaincy. Each of them thinks that he should captain the ship, even though he has not yet learned the craft and cannot name his teacher or a time when he was learning it. Indeed, they go further and claim that it cannot be taught at all, and are even ready to cut to pieces anyone who says it can. They are always crowding around the shipowner himself, pleading with him, and doing everything possible to get him [c] to turn the rudder over to them. And sometimes, if they fail to persuade him and others succeed, they execute those others or throw them overboard. Then, having disabled their noble shipowner with mandragora² or drink or in some other way, they rule the ship, use up its cargo drinking and feasting, and make the sort of voyage you would expect of such people. In addition, they praise anyone who is clever at persuading or forcing the shipowner to let them rule, calling him a “sailor,” a “skilled captain,” and “an [d] expert about ships” while dismissing anyone else as a good-for-nothing. They do not understand that a true captain must pay attention to the seasons of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds, and all that pertains to his craft if he is really going to be expert at ruling a ship. As for how he is going to become captain of the ship, whether people want him to or not, they [e] do not think it possible to acquire the craft or practice of doing this at the same time as the craft of captaincy. When that is what is happening onboard ships, don’t you think that a true captain would be sure to be called a “stargazer,” a “useless babbler,” and a “good-for-nothing” by those who sail in ships so governed? [489a]

SOCRATES: I do not think you need to examine the image to see the resemblance to cities and how they’re disposed toward true philosophers, but you already understand what I mean.

SOCRATES: First teach this image, then, to the person who is surprised that philosophers are not honored in cities, and try to persuade him that it would be far more surprising if they were honored. [b]

SOCRATES: Furthermore, try to persuade him that you are speaking the truth when you say that the best among the philosophers are useless to the masses. But tell him to blame their uselessness on those who do not make use of them, not on those good philosophers. You see, it is not natural for the captain to beg the sailors to be ruled by him, nor for the wise to knock at the doors of the rich. The man who came up with that bit of sophistry was lying.³ What is truly natural is for the sick person, rich or poor, to go to doctors’ doors, and for anyone who needs to be ruled [c] to go to the doors of the one who can rule him. It is not for the ruler—if he is truly any use—to beg the subjects to accept his rule. Tell him he will make no mistake if he likens our present political rulers to the sailors we mentioned a moment ago, and those who are called useless stargazers by them to the true ship’s captains.

SOCRATES: For those reasons, then, and in these circumstances, it is not easy for the best pursuit to be highly honored by those whose pursuits are its very opposites. But by far the greatest and most serious slander is brought on philosophy by those who claim [d] to practice it—the ones about whom the prosecutor of philosophy declares, as you put it, that the majority of those who take it up are completely bad, while the best ones are useless. And I admitted that what you said was true, didn’t I?⁴

SOCRATES: Do you next want us to discuss why it is inevitable that the greater number are bad, and try to show, if we can, that philosophy is not responsible [e] for this either?

SOCRATES: Then let’s begin our dialogue by recalling the starting point of our description of the nature that someone must have if he is to become a fine and good person. First of all, if you remember, he was led by truth,⁵ and he had to follow it whole-heartedly [490a] and unequivocally, on pain of being a lying imposter with no share at all in true philosophy.

SOCRATES: Well, isn’t that fact alone completely contrary to the belief currently held about him?

SOCRATES: So, won’t it be reasonable, then, for us to plead in his defense that a real lover of learning naturally strives for what is? He does not linger over each of the many things that are believed to be, but keeps on going, without losing or lessening his [b] passion, until he grasps what the nature of each thing itself is with the element in his soul that is fitted to grasp a thing of that sort because of its kinship with it. Once he has drawn near to it, has intercourse with what really is, and has begotten understanding and truth, he knows, truly lives, is nourished, and—at that point, but not before—is relieved from his labor pains.

SOCRATES: Well, then, will a person of that sort love falsehood or, in completely opposite fashion, will he hate it?

SOCRATES: And if truth led the way, we would never say, I imagine, that a chorus of evils could follow it.

SOCRATES: On the contrary, it is followed by a healthy and just character, and the temperance that accompanies it.

SOCRATES: What need is there, then, to go back to the beginning and compel the rest of the philosophic nature’s chorus to line up all over again? You surely remember that courage, high-mindedness, ease in learning, and a good memory all belong to philosophers. Then you objected that anyone would be compelled to agree with what we are saying, but that if he left the arguments aside and looked at the very [d] people the argument is about, he would say that some of those he saw were useless, while the majority of them were thoroughly bad. Trying to discover the reason for this slander, we have arrived now at this question: why are the majority of them bad? And that is why we have again taken up the nature of the true philosophers and defined what it necessarily has to be.

SOCRATES: What we now have to do is look at the ways this nature gets corrupted; how it gets completely destroyed in the majority of cases, while a small number escape—the very ones that are called useless, rather than bad. After that, we must next look at those who imitate this nature and adopt its pursuit. We must see [491a] what natures the souls have that enter into a pursuit that is too valuable and too high for them—souls that, by often striking false notes, give philosophy the reputation that you said it has with everyone everywhere.

SOCRATES: I will try to explain them to you if I can. I imagine that everyone would agree with us about this: the sort of nature that possesses all the qualities we prescribed just now for the person who is going to be a complete philosopher, is seldom found among human beings, and there will be few [b] who possess it. Or don’t you think so?

SOCRATES: Consider, then, how many great sources of destruction there are for these few.

SOCRATES: The most surprising thing of all to hear is that each one of the things we praised in that nature tends to corrupt the soul that has it and drag it away from philosophy. I mean courage, temperance, and the other things we mentioned.

SOCRATES: Furthermore, in addition to those, all so-called good things also corrupt it and drag it away—[c] beauty, wealth, physical strength, powerful family connections in the city, and all that goes along with these. You understand the general pattern of things I mean?

ADEIMANTUS: I do, and I would be glad to acquire a more precise understanding of it.

SOCRATES: Grasp the general principle correctly and the matter will become clear to you, and what I said about it before won’t seem so strange.

SOCRATES: In the case of every seed or growing thing, whether plant or animal, we know that if it [d] fails to get the food, climate, or location suitable for it, then the more vigorous it is, the more it is deficient in the qualities proper to it. For surely bad is more opposed to good than to not-good.

SOCRATES: So, I suppose it is reasonable that the best nature comes off worse than an inferior one from unsuitable nurture.

SOCRATES: Well, then, Adeimantus, won’t we also say that if souls with the best natures get a bad [e] education, they become exceptionally bad? Or do you think that great injustices and unalloyed evil originate in an inferior nature, rather than in a vigorous one that has been corrupted by its upbringing? Or that a weak nature is ever responsible for great good things or great bad ones?

SOCRATES: Well, then, if the nature we proposed for the philosopher happens to receive the proper [492a] instruction, I imagine it will inevitably grow to attain every virtue. But if it is not sown, planted, and grown in a suitable environment, it will develop in entirely the opposite way, unless some god comes to its aid. Or do you too believe, as the masses do, that some young people are corrupted by sophists—that there are sophists, private individuals, who corrupt them to a significant extent? Isn’t it, rather, the very people who say this who are the greatest sophists of all, who educate most effectively and produce young and old [b] men and women of just the sort they want?

SOCRATES: When many of them sit together in assemblies, courts, theaters, army camps, or any other gathering of a mass of people in public and, with a loud uproar, object excessively to some of the things that are said or done, then approve excessively of others, shouting and clapping; and when, in addition to these people themselves, the rocks and the surrounding space itself echo and redouble the uproar [c] of their praise or blame. In a situation like that, how do you think—as the saying goes—a young man’s heart is affected?⁶ How will whatever sort of private education he received hold up for him, and not get swept away by such praise and blame, and go be carried off by the flood wherever it goes, so that he will call the same things beautiful or ugly as these people, practice what they practice, and become like them?

SOCRATES: It is what these educators and sophists impose by their actions if their words fail to persuade. Or don’t you know that they punish anyone who is not persuaded, with disenfranchisement, fines, or death?

SOCRATES: What other sophist, then, or what sort of private conversations do you think will oppose these and prove stronger?

SOCRATES: No, indeed, even to try would be very foolish. You see, there is not now, never has been, nor ever will be, a character whose view of virtue goes contrary to the education these provide. I mean a human character, comrade—the divine, as the saying goes, is an exception to the rule. You may be sure that if anything is saved and turns out well in the political systems that exist now, you won’t be mistaken [493a] in saying that divine providence saved it.

SOCRATES: None of those private wage-earners—the ones these people call sophists and consider to be their rivals in craft—teaches anything other than the convictions the masses hold when they are assembled together, and this he calls wisdom. It is just as if someone were learning the passions and appetites of a huge, strong beast that he is rearing—how to approach and handle it, when it is most difficult to [b] deal with or most docile and what makes it so, what sounds it utters in either condition, and what tones of voice soothe or anger it. Having learned all this through associating and spending time with the beast, he calls this wisdom, gathers his information together as if it were a craft, and starts to teach it. Knowing nothing in reality about which of these convictions or appetites is fine or shameful, good or bad, just or unjust, he uses all these terms in conformity with the [c] great beast’s beliefs—calling the things it enjoys good and the things that anger it bad. He has no other account to give of them, but calls everything he is compelled to do just and fine, never having seen how much the natures of necessity and goodness really differ, and being unable to explain it to anyone. Don’t you think, by Zeus, that someone like that would make a strange educator?

SOCRATES: Then does this person seem any different from the one who believes that wisdom is understanding the passions and pleasures of the masses—multifarious people—assembled together, whether in [d] regard to painting, music, or politics for that matter? For if a person associates with the masses and exhibits his poetry or some other piece of craftsmanship to them or his service to the city, and gives them mastery over him to any degree beyond what is unavoidable, he will be under Diomedean compulsion,⁷ as it is called, to produce the things of which they approve. But that such things are truly good and beautiful—have you ever heard anyone presenting an argument for that conclusion that was not absolutely ridiculous?

SOCRATES: So then, bearing all that in mind, recall our earlier question: can the majority in any way tolerate or accept that the beautiful itself (as opposed to the many beautiful things), or each thing itself (as opposed to the corresponding many), exists? [494a]

SOCRATES: And so, those who practice philosophy are inevitably disparaged by them?

SOCRATES: And also by those private individuals who associate with the majority and want to please them.

SOCRATES: On the basis of these facts, then, do you see any way to preserve a philosophic nature and ensure that it will continue to practice philosophy and reach the end? Consider the question in light of what we said before. We agreed that ease in learning, a good memory, courage, and high-mindedness belong [b] to the philosophic nature.

SOCRATES: Right from the start, then, won’t someone like that be first among the children in everything, especially if his body’s nature matches that of his soul?

SOCRATES: So as he gets older, I imagine his family and fellow citizens will want to make use of him in connection with their own affairs.

SOCRATES: They will get down on their knees, begging favors from him and honoring him, flattering [c] ahead of time the power that is going to be his, so as to secure it for themselves.

SOCRATES: What do you think someone like that will do in such circumstances—especially if he happens to be from a great city where he is rich and noble, and if he is good-looking and tall as well? Won’t he be filled with an impractical expectation and think himself capable of managing the affairs, not only of the Greeks, but of the barbarians, too? And won’t he exalt himself to great heights, as a result, and be brimming with pretension and empty, [d] senseless pride?⁸

SOCRATES: Now, suppose someone gently approaches a young man in that state of mind and tells him the truth: that he has no sense, although he needs it, and that it cannot be acquired unless he works like a slave to attain it. Do you think it will be easy for him to hear that message through the evils that surround him?

SOCRATES: And suppose that, because of his noble nature and his natural affinity for such arguments, he somehow sees the point and is turned around and [e] drawn toward philosophy. What do we suppose those people will do if they believe that they are losing his services and companionship? Is there anything they won’t do or say in his regard to prevent him from being persuaded? Or anything they won’t do or say in regard to his persuader to prevent him from succeeding, whether it is in private plots or public court cases?⁹

SOCRATES: Do you see, then, that we weren’t wrong to say that when a philosophic nature is badly brought up, its very components—together with the other so-called goods, such as wealth and every provision of that sort—are somehow the cause of its falling away from the pursuit?

SOCRATES: There you are, then, you amazing fellow! That is the extent of the sort of destruction and corruption that the nature best suited for the noblest pursuit undergoes. And such a nature is a rare occurrence [b] anyway, we claim. Moreover, men who possess it are the ones that do the worst things to cities and individuals, and also—if they happen to be swept that way by the current—the greatest good. For a petty nature never does anything great, either to a private individual or a city.

SOCRATES: So when these men, for whom philosophy is most appropriate, fall away from her, they leave her desolate and unwed, and themselves lead a life that is inappropriate and untrue. Then others, [c] who are unworthy of her, come to her as to an orphan bereft of kinsmen, and shame her. They are the ones responsible for the reproaches that you say are cast upon philosophy by her detractors—that some of her consorts are useless, while the majority deserve many evils.

SOCRATES: And it is a reasonable thing to say. For other worthless little men see that this position has become vacant, even though it is brimming with fine accolades and pretensions, and—like prisoners [d] escaping from jail who take refuge in a temple—leap gladly from their crafts to philosophy. These are the ones who are most sophisticated at their own petty craft. You see, at least in comparison to other crafts, and even in its present state, philosophy still has a grander reputation. And that is what many people are aiming at, people with defective natures, whose souls are as cramped and spoiled by their menial tasks as their bodies are warped by their crafts and occupations. Isn’t that inevitably what happens? [e]

SOCRATES: Do you think that they look any different than a little, bald-headed blacksmith who has come into some money and, newly released from debtor’s prison, has taken a bath, put on a new cloak, got himself up as a bridegroom, and is about to marry the master’s daughter because she is poor and abandoned?

SOCRATES: What sort of offspring are they likely to beget, then? Won’t their children be wretched illegitimates?

SOCRATES: What about when men who are unworthy of education approach philosophy and associate with her in a way unworthy of her? What kinds of thoughts and beliefs are we to say they beget? Won’t they be what are truly and appropriately called sophisms, since they have nothing genuine or truly wise about them?

SOCRATES: Then there remains, Adeimantus, only a very small group who associate with philosophy in a way that is worthy of her: a noble and well [b] brought-up character, perhaps, kept down by exile, who stays true to his nature and remains with philosophy because there is no one to corrupt him; or a great soul living in a small city, who disdains the city’s affairs and looks beyond them. A very few might perhaps come to philosophy from other crafts that they rightly despise because they have good natures. And some might be held back by the bridle that restrains our friend Theages—you see, he meets all the other conditions needed to make him fall away from philosophy, [c] but his physical illness keeps him out of politics and prevents it. Finally, my own case is hardly worth mentioning—my daimonic sign—since I don’t suppose it has happened to anyone else or to only a few before. Now, those who have become members of this little group have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is. At the same time, they have also seen the insanity of the masses and realized that there is nothing healthy, so to speak, in public affairs, and that there is no ally with whose aid the champion of justice can survive; that instead he would perish [d] before he could profit either his city or his friends, and be useless both to himself and to others—like a man who has fallen among wild animals and is neither willing to join them in doing injustice nor sufficiently strong to oppose the general savagery alone. Taking all this into his calculations, he keeps quiet and does his own work, like someone who takes refuge under a little wall from a storm of dust or hail driven by the wind. Seeing others filled with lawlessness, the philosopher is satisfied if he can somehow lead his present life pure of injustice and impious acts, and depart from it with good hope, blameless and content. [e]

ADEIMANTUS: Well, that is no small thing for him to have accomplished before departing. [497a]

SOCRATES: But no very great one either, since he did not chance upon a suitable constitution. In a suitable one, his own growth will be fuller and he will save the community, as well as himself. Anyway, it seems to me that we have now said enough about the slander brought against philosophy and why it is unjust—unless, of course, you have got something to add.

ADEIMANTUS: I have nothing further to add on that issue. But which of our present constitutions do you think is suitable for philosophy?

SOCRATES: None of them. But that is exactly my complaint. There is not one city today with a constitution [b] worthy of the philosophic nature. That is precisely why it is perverted and altered. It is like foreign seed sown in alien ground: it tends to be overpowered and to fade away into the native species. Similarly, the philosophic species does not maintain its own power at present, but declines into a different character. But if it were to find the best constitution, as it is itself the best, it would be clear that it is really [c] divine and that other natures and pursuits are merely human. Obviously, you are going to ask next what that constitution is.

ADEIMANTUS: You are wrong there. You see, I was not going to ask that, but whether it was the constitution we described when we were founding our city or a different one.

SOCRATES: In all other respects, it is that one. But we said even then that there must always be some people in the city who have a rational account of the constitution, the same one that guided you, the lawgiver, when you made the laws. [d]

SOCRATES: But we did not explain it clearly enough, for fear of what our own objections have made clear: namely, that the demonstration of it would be long and difficult. Indeed, even what remains is not the easiest of all things to discuss.

SOCRATES: How a city can engage in philosophy without being destroyed. You see, all great things are prone to fall and, as the saying goes, beautiful things are really difficult.

ADEIMANTUS: All the same, the demonstration won’t be complete until this has been cleared up. [e]

SOCRATES: If anything prevents that, it won’t be lack of willingness, but lack of ability. At any rate, you will see how passionate I am. Look now, in fact, at how passionately and recklessly I am going to argue that a city should practice philosophy in the opposite way to the present one.

SOCRATES: At present, those who take it up at all do so as young men, just out of childhood, who have yet to take up household management and money-making. Then, just when they reach the most difficult [498a] part they abandon it and are regarded as the most fully trained philosophers. By the most difficult part, I mean the one concerned with arguments.¹⁰ In later life, if others are engaged in it and they are invited and deign to listen to them, they think they have done a lot, since they think this should only be a sideline. And, with a few exceptions, by the time they reach old age they are more thoroughly extinguished than the sun of Heraclitus, since they are never rekindled.¹¹ [b]

SOCRATES: Entirely the opposite. As young men and children, they should occupy themselves with an education and philosophy suitable to the young. Their bodies are blooming and growing into manhood at this time, and they should take very good care of them, so as to acquire a helper for philosophy. But as they grow older and their soul begins to reach maturity, they should make its exercises more rigorous. Then, when their strength begins to fail and they have retired from politics and military service, they should graze freely in the pastures of philosophy and [c] do nothing else, except as a sideline—I mean those who are going to live happily and, when the end comes, crown the life they have lived with a fitting providence in that other place.

ADEIMANTUS: You seem to be arguing with real passion, Socrates. But I am sure that most of your hearers will oppose you with even greater passion and won’t be convinced in the least—beginning with Thrasymachus.

SOCRATES: Please do not try to raise a quarrel between me and Thrasymachus just as we have become friends—not that we were enemies before. You see, we won’t relax our efforts until we convince him [d] and the others—or at least do something that may benefit them in a later incarnation when, reborn, they happen upon these arguments again.

SOCRATES: It is certainly nothing compared to the whole of time! However, it is no wonder that the masses are not convinced by our arguments. I mean, they have never seen a man that matched our plan—though they have more often seen words purposely chosen to rhyme with one another than [e] just happening to do so as in the present case.¹² But a man who, as far as possible, matched and rhymed with virtue in word and deed, and wielded dynastic power in a city of the same type—that is something they have never seen even once. Or do [499a] you think they have?

SOCRATES: Nor, bless you, have they spent enough time listening to fine and free arguments that vigorously seek the truth in every way, so as to acquire knowledge and keep their distance from all the sophistries and eristic quibbles that—whether in public trials or private gatherings—strive for nothing except reputation and disputation.

SOCRATES: It was for these reasons, and because we foresaw these difficulties, that we were afraid. All the same, we were compelled by the truth to say that [b] no city, no constitution, and no individual man will ever become perfect until some chance event compels those few philosophers who are not vicious (the ones who are now called useless) to take care of a city, whether they are willing to or not, and compels the city to obey them—or until a true passion for true philosophy flows by some divine inspiration into the sons of the men now wielding dynastic power or sovereignty, or into the men themselves. Now, it cannot [c] be reasonably maintained, in my view, that either or both of these things is impossible. But if they were, we would be justly ridiculed for indulging in wishful thinking. Isn’t that so?

SOCRATES: Then if, in the limitless past, some necessity forced those who were foremost in philosophy to take charge of a city, or is doing so now in some barbaric place far beyond our ken, or will do so in the future, this is something we are prepared [d] to fight about—our argument that the constitution we have described has existed, does exist, and will exist, at any rate, whenever it is that the muse of philosophy gains mastery of a city. It is not impossible for this to happen, so we are not speaking of impossibilities—that it is difficult, we agree ourselves.

SOCRATES: Bless you, you should not make such a wholesale charge against the masses! They will surely come to hold a different belief if, instead of wanting to win a victory at their expense, you soothe them [e] and try to remove their slanderous prejudice against the love of learning. You must show them what you mean by philosophers and define their nature and pursuit the way we did just now. Then they will [500a] realize you do not mean the same people they do. And if they once see it that way, even you will say that they will have a different opinion from the one you just attributed to them and will answer differently. Or do you think that anyone who is gentle and without malice is harsh to one who is not harsh, or malicious to one who is not malicious? I will anticipate you and say that I think a few people may have such a harsh character, but not the majority.

SOCRATES: Then don’t you also agree that the harshness of the masses toward philosophy is caused [b] by those outsiders who do not belong and who have burst in like a band of revelers, abusing one another, indulging their love of quarreling, and always arguing about human beings—something that is least appropriate in philosophy?

SOCRATES: For surely, Adeimantus, someone whose mind is truly directed toward the things that are has not the leisure to look down at human affairs and be filled with malice and hatred as a result of entering into their disputes. Instead, as he looks at [c] and contemplates things that are orderly and always the same, that neither do injustice to one another nor suffer it, being all in a rational order, he imitates them and tries to become as like them as he can. Or do you think there is any way to prevent someone from associating with something he admires without imitating it?

SOCRATES: Then the philosopher, by associating with what is orderly and divine, becomes as divine and orderly as a human being can. Though, mind you, there are always plenty of slanders around. [d]

SOCRATES: And if he should come to be compelled to make a practice—in private and in public—of stamping what he sees there into the people’s characters, instead of shaping only his own, do you think he will be a poor craftsman of temperance, justice, and the whole of popular virtue?

SOCRATES: And when the masses realize that what we are saying about him is true, will they be harsh with philosophers or mistrust us when we say that [e] there is no way a city can ever find happiness unless its plan is drawn by painters who use the divine model?

ADEIMANTUS: They won’t be harsh, if they do realize this. But what sort of drawing do you mean? [501a]

SOCRATES: They would take the city and people’s characters as their sketching slate, but first they would wipe it clean—which is not at all an easy thing to do. And you should be aware that this is an immediate difference between them and others—that they refuse to take either a private individual or a city in hand, or to write laws, unless they receive a clean slate or are allowed to clean it themselves.

SOCRATES: And after that, don’t you think they would draw the plan of the constitution?

SOCRATES: And I suppose that, as they work, they would look often in each direction: on the one hand, [b] toward what is in its nature just, beautiful, temperate, and all the rest; and, on the other, toward what they are trying to put into human beings, mixing and blending pursuits to produce a human likeness, based on the one that Homer too called divine and godly when it appeared among human beings.

SOCRATES: They would erase one thing, I suppose, and draw in another, until they had made people’s characters as dear to the gods as possible. [c]

SOCRATES: Are we at all persuading the people you said were rushing to attack us, then, that the philosopher we were praising to them is really this sort of painter of constitutions? They were angry because we were entrusting cities to him; are they any calmer at hearing it now?

SOCRATES: After all, how could they possibly dispute it? Will they deny that philosophers are lovers [d] both of what is and of the truth?

SOCRATES: Or that such a nature, when it happens to find appropriate pursuits, will not be as completely good and philosophic as any other? Or are they going to claim that the people we excluded are more so?

SOCRATES: Will they still be angry, then, when we say that until the philosopher class gains mastery of a city, there will be no respite from evils for either city or citizens, and the constitution we have been describing in our discussion will never be completed in practice?

SOCRATES: If it is all right with you, then, let’s not say that they will simply be less angry, but that they will become altogether gentle and persuaded; [502a] so that out of shame, if nothing else, they will agree.

SOCRATES: So let’s assume that they have been convinced of this. Will anyone contend, then, that there is no chance that the offspring of kings or men in power could be natural-born philosophers?

SOCRATES: Could anyone claim that if such offspring are born, they must inevitably be corrupted? We agree ourselves that it is difficult for them to be saved. But that in the whole of time not one of them could be saved—could anyone contend that? [b]

SOCRATES: But surely the occurrence of one such individual is enough, provided his city obeys him, to bring to completion all the things that now seem so incredible.

SOCRATES: For I suppose that if a ruler established the laws and practices we have described, it is hardly impossible that the citizens would be willing to carry them out.

SOCRATES: Would it be either surprising or impossible, then, that others should think as we do?

SOCRATES: But I think our earlier discussion was sufficient to show that these arrangements are best, provided they are possible.

SOCRATES: It seems, then, that the conclusion we have now reached about legislation is that the one we are describing is best, provided it is possible; and that while it is difficult for it to come about, it certainly is not impossible.

SOCRATES: Now that this conclusion has, with much effort, been reached, we must next deal with the remaining issues—in what way, by means of what subjects and pursuits, the saviors of our constitution will come to exist, and at what ages they will take up [d] each of them.

SOCRATES: I gained nothing by my cleverness, then, in omitting from our earlier discussion the troublesome topic of acquiring women, begetting children, and establishing rulers, because I knew the whole truth would provoke resentment and would be difficult to bring about. As it turned out, the need to discuss them arose anyway. Now, the subject of women and children has already been discussed. But [e] that of the rulers has to be taken up again from the beginning. We said,¹³ if you remember, that they must show themselves to be lovers of the city, when [503a] tested by pleasures and pains, by not abandoning this conviction through labors, fears, and all other adversities. Anyone who was incapable of doing so was to be rejected, while anyone who always came through pure—like gold tested in a fire—was to be made ruler and receive gifts and prizes, both while he lived and after his death. These were the sorts of things we were saying while our argument veiled its face and slipped by, for fear of stirring up the very problems that now confront us. [b]

SOCRATES: I was reluctant, my friend, to say the things we have now dared to say anyway. But now, let’s also dare to say that we must establish philosophers as guardians in the most exact sense.

SOCRATES: Bear in mind, then, that there will probably be only a few of them. You see, they have to have the nature we described, and its parts rarely consent to grow together in one person; rather, its many parts grow split off from one another.

SOCRATES: Ease of learning, good memory, astuteness, and smartness, as you know, and all the other things that go along with them, such as youthful passion and high-mindedness, are rarely willing to grow together simultaneously with a disposition to live an orderly, quiet, and completely stable life. On the contrary, those who possess the former traits are carried by their quick wits wherever chance leads them, and have no stability at all.

SOCRATES: Those with stable characters, on the other hand, who do not change easily, whom one would employ because of their greater reliability, and who in battle are not easily moved by fears, act in [d] the same way when it comes to their studies. They are hard to get moving and learn with difficulty, as if they are anesthetized, and are constantly falling asleep and yawning whenever they have to work hard at such things.

SOCRATES: Yet we say that someone must have a good and fine share of both characters, or he won’t receive the truest education or honor, or be allowed to rule.

SOCRATES: He must be tested, then, in the labors, [e] fears, and pleasures we mentioned before. He must also be exercised in many other subjects, however, which we did not mention but are adding now, to see whether his nature can endure the most important subjects or will shrink from them like the cowards who shrink from the other tests. [504a]

ADEIMANTUS: It is certainly important to find that out. But what do you mean by the most important subjects?

SOCRATES: Do you remember when we distinguished three kinds of things in the soul in order to help bring out what justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom each is?¹⁴

SOCRATES: We said, I believe, that in order to get the finest view of these matters, we would need to [b] take a longer road, which would make them plain to anyone who took it, but that it was possible to give demonstrations that would be up to the standard of the previous discussion.¹⁵ All of you said that was enough. The result was that our subsequent discussion, as it seemed to me, was less than exact. But whether or not it satisfied all of you is for you to say.

ADEIMANTUS: I, at any rate, thought you gave us good measure. And so, apparently, did the others.

SOCRATES: No, my friend, any measure of such things that falls short in any way of what is, is not [c] good measure at all, since nothing incomplete is a measure of anything. Some people, however, are occasionally of the opinion that an incomplete treatment is already adequate and that there is no need for further inquiry.

SOCRATES: Well, that is a feeling that is least appropriate in a guardian of a city and its laws.

SOCRATES: He will have to take the longer road then, comrade, and put no less effort into learning than into physical training. For otherwise, as we were [d] just saying, he will never pursue the most important and most appropriate subject to the end.

ADEIMANTUS: Why, aren’t these virtues the most important things? Is there something yet more important than justice and the other virtues we discussed?

SOCRATES: Not only is it more important, but, even in the case of the virtues themselves, it is not enough to look at a mere sketch as we are doing now, while neglecting the most finished portrait. I mean, it is ridiculous, isn’t it, to strain every nerve to attain the utmost exactness and clarity about other things of little value, while not treating the most important [e] things as meriting the most exactness?

ADEIMANTUS: It certainly is. But do you think that anyone is going to let you off without asking you what you mean by this most important subject, and what it is concerned with?

SOCRATES: No, I do not. And you may ask it, too. You have certainly heard the answer often, but now either you are not thinking or you intend to make trouble for me again by interrupting. And I suspect it is more the latter. You see, you have often heard [505a] it said that the form of the good is the most important thing to learn about, and that it is by their relation to it that just things and the others become useful and beneficial. And now you must be pretty certain that that is what I am going to say, and, in addition, that we have no adequate knowledge of it. And if we do not know it, you know that even the fullest possible knowledge of other things is of no benefit to us, any more than if we acquire any possession without the good. Or do you think there is any benefit in possessing [b] everything but the good? Or to know everything without knowing the good, thereby knowing nothing fine or good?

SOCRATES: Furthermore, you also know that the masses believe pleasure to be the good, while the more refined believe it to be knowledge.

SOCRATES: And, my friend, that those who believe this cannot show us what sort of knowledge it is, but in the end are forced to say that it is knowledge of the good.

SOCRATES: How could it not be, when they blame us for not knowing the good and then turn [c] around and talk to us as if we did know it? I mean, they say it is knowledge of the good—as if we understood what they mean when they utter the word “good.”

SOCRATES: What about those who define the good as pleasure? Are they any less full of confusion than the others? Or aren’t even they forced to admit that there are bad pleasures?

SOCRATES: I suppose it follows, doesn’t it, that they have to admit that the same things are both good and bad?

SOCRATES: Isn’t it clear, then, that there are lots of serious disagreements about the good?

SOCRATES: Well, isn’t it also clear that many people would choose things that are believed to be just or beautiful, even if they are not, and would act, acquire things, and form beliefs accordingly? Yet no one is satisfied to acquire things that are believed to be good. On the contrary, everyone seeks the things that are good. In this area, everyone disdains mere reputation.

SOCRATES: That, then, is what every soul pursues, and for its sake does everything. The soul has a hunch that the good is something, but it is puzzled and [e] cannot adequately grasp just what it is or acquire the sort of stable belief about it that it has about other things, and so it misses the benefit, if any, that even those other things may give. Are we to accept that even the best people in the city, to whom we entrust [506a] everything, must remain thus in the dark about something of this kind and importance?

SOCRATES: Anyway, I imagine that just and fine things won’t have acquired much of a guardian in someone who does not even know why they are good. And I have a hunch that no one will have adequate knowledge of them until he knows this.

SOCRATES: But won’t our constitution be perfectly ordered if such a guardian, one who knows these things, oversees it? [b]

ADEIMANTUS: It is bound to be. But you yourself, Socrates, do you say the good is knowledge or pleasure, or is it something else altogether?

SOCRATES: What a man! You made it good and clear long ago that other people’s opinions about these matters would not satisfy you.

ADEIMANTUS: Well, Socrates, it does not seem right to me for you to be willing to state other people’s convictions but not your own, when you have spent so much time occupied with these matters. [c]

SOCRATES: What? Do you think it is right to speak about things you do not know as if you do know them?

ADEIMANTUS: Not as if you know them, but you ought to be willing to state what you believe as what you believe.

SOCRATES: What? Haven’t you noticed that beliefs without knowledge are all shameful and ugly things, since the best of them are blind? Do you think that those who have a true belief without understanding are any different from blind people who happen to travel the right road?

SOCRATES: Do you want to look at shameful, blind, and crooked things, then, when you might hear fine, illuminating ones from other people? [d]

By Zeus, Socrates, do not stop now, with the end in sight, so to speak! We will be satisfied if you discuss the good the way you discussed justice, temperance, and the rest.

SOCRATES: That, comrade, would well satisfy me too, but I am afraid that I won’t be up to it and that I will disgrace myself and look ridiculous by trying. No, bless you, let’s set aside what the good itself is for the time being. You see, even to arrive at my current beliefs about it seems beyond the range of our present discussion. But I am willing to tell you about what seems to be an offspring of the good and most like it, if that is agreeable to you; or otherwise to let the matter drop.

GLAUCON: Tell us, then. The story about the father remains a debt you will pay another time.

SOCRATES: I wish I could repay it, and you [507a] recover the debt, instead of just the interest. So here, then, is this child and offspring of the good itself. But take care I do not somehow deceive you unintentionally by giving you an illegitimate account of the child.¹⁶

SOCRATES: I will once I have come to an agreement with you and reminded you of things we have already said here as well as on many other occasions.

SOCRATES: We say that there are many beautiful, many good, and many other such things, thereby distinguishing them in words.

SOCRATES: We also say there is a beautiful itself and a good itself. And so, in the case of all the things that we then posited as many, we reverse ourselves and posit a single form belonging to each, since we suppose there is a single one, and call it what each is.

SOCRATES: And we say that the one class of things is visible but not intelligible, while the forms are intelligible but not visible.

SOCRATES: And don’t we hear audible things with hearing and perceive all other perceptible things with our other senses?

SOCRATES: Have you ever thought about how lavish the craftsman of our senses was in making the power to see and be seen?

SOCRATES: Well, think of it this way. Do hearing and sound need another kind of thing in order for the former to hear and the latter to be heard—a third thing in whose absence the one won’t hear or the [d] other be heard?

SOCRATES: And I think there cannot be many—not to say any—others that need such a thing. Or can you think of one?

SOCRATES: Surely sight may be present in the eyes and its possessor may try to use it, and colors may be present in things; but unless a third kind of thing is present, which is naturally adapted for this specific purpose, you know that sight will see nothing [e] and the colors will remain unseen.

SOCRATES: So it is no insignificant form of yoke, then, that yokes the sense of sight and the power to [508a] be seen. In fact, it is more honorable than any that yokes other yoked teams. Provided, of course, that light is not something without honor.

SOCRATES: Which of the gods in the heavens would you say is the controller of this—the one whose light makes our sight see best and visible things best seen?

GLAUCON: The very one you and others would name. I mean, it is clear that what you are asking about is the sun.¹⁷

SOCRATES: Neither sight itself nor that in which it comes to be—namely, the eye—is the sun. [b]

SOCRATES: And doesn’t it receive the power it has from the sun, just like an influx from an overflowing treasury?

SOCRATES: The sun is not sight either; yet as its cause, isn’t it seen by sight itself?

SOCRATES: Let’s say, then, that this is what I called the offspring of the good, which the good begot as its analogue. What the latter is in the intelligible realm in relation to understanding and intelligible things, the former is in the visible realm in relation [c] to sight and visible things.

SOCRATES: You know that when our eyes no longer turn to things whose colors are illuminated by the light of day, but by the lights of night, they are dimmed and seem nearly blind, as if clear sight were no longer in them.

SOCRATES: Yet I suppose that whenever they are turned to things illuminated by the sun, they see clearly and sight is manifest in those very same eyes? [d]

SOCRATES: Well, think about the soul in the same way. When it focuses on something that is illuminated both by truth and what is, it understands, knows, and manifestly possesses understanding. But when it focuses on what is mixed with obscurity, on what comes to be and passes away, it believes and is dimmed, changes its beliefs this way and that, and seems bereft of understanding.

SOCRATES: You must say, then, that what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to [e] the knower is the form of the good. And as the cause of knowledge and truth, you must think of it as an object of knowledge. Both knowledge and truth are beautiful things. But if you are to think correctly, you must think of the good as other and more beautiful than they. In the visible realm, light and sight are rightly thought to be sunlike, but wrongly thought to [509a] be the sun. So, here it is right to think of knowledge and truth as goodlike, but wrong to think that either of them is the good—for the state of the good is yet more honored.

GLAUCON: It is an incredibly beautiful thing you are talking about, if it provides both knowledge and truth but is itself superior to them in beauty. I mean, you surely do not think that it could be pleasure.

SOCRATES: No words of ill omen, please! Instead, examine our analogy in more detail.

SOCRATES: The sun, I think you would say, not only gives visible things the power to be seen but also provides for their coming-to-be, growth, and nourishment—although it is not itself coming to be.

SOCRATES: Therefore, you should also say that not only do the objects of knowledge owe their being known to the good, but their existence and being are also due to it; although the good is not being, but something yet beyond being, superior to it in rank and power.

GLAUCON: And don’t you stop, either—at least, not until you have finished discussing the good’s similarity to the sun, if you are omitting anything.

SOCRATES: I think I will have to omit a fair amount. All the same, as far as is now possible, I won’t purposely omit anything.

SOCRATES: Then you should think, as we said, that there are these two things, one sovereign of the [d] intelligible kind and place, the other of the visible—I do not say “of the heavens,” so as not to seem to you to be playing the sophist with the name.¹⁹ In any case, do you understand these two kinds, visible and intelligible?

SOCRATES: Represent them, then, by a line divided into two unequal sections. Then divide each section—that of the visible kind and that of the intelligible—in the same proportion as the line.²⁰ In terms now of relative clarity and opacity, you will have as one subsection of the visible, images. By [e] images I mean, first, shadows, then reflections in bodies of water and in all close-packed, smooth, and [510a] shiny materials, and everything of that sort. Do you understand?

SOCRATES: Then, in the other subsection of the visible, put the originals of these images—that is, the animals around us, every plant, and the whole class of manufactured things.

SOCRATES: Would you also be willing to say, then, that, as regards truth and untruth, the division is in this ratio: as what is believed is to what is known, so the likeness is to the thing it is like?

SOCRATES: As follows: in one subsection, the soul, using as images the things that were imitated before, is forced to base its inquiry on hypotheses, proceeding not to a first principle, but to a conclusion. In the other subsection, by contrast, it makes its way to an unhypothetical first principle, proceeding from a hypothesis, but without the images used in the previous subsection, using forms themselves and making its investigation through them.

SOCRATES: Let’s try again. You see, you will understand it more easily after this explanation. I think [c] you know that students of geometry, calculation, and the like hypothesize the odd and the even, the various figures, the three kinds of angles, and other things akin to these in each of their investigations, regarding them as known. These they treat as hypotheses and do not think it necessary to give any argument for them, either to themselves or to others, as if they were evident to everyone. And going from these first principles through the remaining steps, they arrive [d] in full agreement at the point they set out to reach in their investigation.

SOCRATES: Then don’t you also know that they use visible forms and make their arguments about them, although they are not thinking about them, but about those other things that they are like? They make their arguments with a view to the square itself and the diagonal itself, not the diagonal they draw, and similarly with the others. The very things they [e] make and draw, of which shadows and reflections in water are images, they now in turn use as images in seeking to see those other things themselves that one cannot see except by means of thought. [511a]

SOCRATES: This, then, is the kind of thing that I said was intelligible. The soul is forced to use hypotheses in the investigation of it, not traveling up to a first principle, since it cannot escape or get above its hypotheses, but using as images those very things of which images were made by the things below them, and which, by comparison to their images, were thought to be clear and to be honored as such.

GLAUCON: I understand that you mean what is dealt with in geometry and related crafts. [b]

SOCRATES: Also understand, then, that by the other subsection of the intelligible I mean what reason itself grasps by the power of dialectical discussion, treating its hypotheses, not as first principles, but as genuine hypotheses (that is, stepping stones and links in a chain), in order to arrive at what is unhypothetical and the first principle of everything. Having grasped this principle, it reverses itself and, keeping hold of what follows from it, comes down to a conclusion, making no use of anything visible at all, but only of [c] forms themselves, moving on through forms to forms, and ending in forms.

GLAUCON: I understand, though not adequately—you see, in my opinion you are speaking of an enormous task. You want to distinguish the part of what is and is intelligible, the part looked at by the science of dialectical discussion, as clearer than the part looked at by the so-called sciences—those for which hypotheses are first principles. And although those who look at the latter part are forced to do so by means of thought rather than sense perception, still, because they do not go back to a genuine first principle in considering it, but proceed from hypotheses, you do not think that they have true understanding of them, even though—given such a [d] first principle—they are intelligible. And you seem to me to call the state of mind of the geometers—and the others of that sort—thought but not understanding; thought being intermediate between belief and understanding.

SOCRATES: You have grasped my meaning most adequately. Join me, then, in taking these four conditions in the soul as corresponding to the four subsections of the line: understanding dealing with the highest, thought dealing with the second; assign belief to the third, and imagination to the last. Arrange them [e] in a proportion and consider that each shares in clarity to the degree that the subsection it deals with shares in truth.