Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  And they’d be right to refuse.

  Then don’t you think they’d next sketch the outline of the constitution?

  Of course.

  [b] And I suppose that, as they work, they’d look often in each direction, towards the natures of justice, beauty, moderation, and the like, on the one hand, and towards those they’re trying to put into human beings, on the other. And in this way they’d mix and blend the various ways of life in the city until they produced a human image based on what Homer too called “the divine form and image” when it occurred among human beings.8

  That’s right.

  They’d erase one thing, I suppose, and draw in another until they’d made characters for human beings that the gods would love as much [c] as possible.

  At any rate, that would certainly result in the finest sketch.

  Then is this at all persuasive to those you said were straining to attack us—that the person we were praising is really a painter of constitutions? They were angry because we entrusted the city to him: Are they any calmer, now that they’ve heard what we had to say?

  They’ll be much calmer, if they have any moderation.

  Indeed, how could they possibly dispute it? Will they deny that philosophers [d] are lovers of what is or of the truth?

  That would be absurd.

  Or that their nature as we’ve described it is close to the best?

  They can’t deny that either.

  Or that such a nature, if it follows its own way of life, isn’t as completely good and philosophic as any other? Or that the people we excluded are more so?

  Certainly not. [e]

  Then will they still be angry when we say that, until philosophers take control of a city, there’ll be no respite from evil for either city or citizens, and the constitution we’ve been describing in theory will never be completed in practice?

  They’ll probably be less angry.

  Then if it’s all right with you, let’s not say that they’ll simply be less angry but that they’ll become altogether gentle and persuaded, so that they’ll be shamed into agreeing with us, if nothing else. [502]

  It’s all right with me.

  Let’s assume, therefore, that they’ve been convinced on this point. Will anyone dispute our view that the offspring of kings or rulers could be born with philosophic natures?

  No one would do that.

  Could anyone claim that, if such offspring are born, they’ll inevitably be corrupted? We agree ourselves that it’s hard for them to be saved from corruption, but could anyone claim that in the whole of time not one of them could be saved? [b]

  How could he?

  But surely one such individual would be sufficient to bring to completion all the things that now seem so incredible, provided that his city obeys him.

  One would be sufficient.

  If a ruler established the laws and ways of life we’ve described, it is surely not impossible that the citizens would be willing to carry them out.

  Not at all.

  And would it be either astonishing or impossible that others should think as we do?

  I don’t suppose it would. [c]

  But I think our earlier discussion was sufficient to show that these arrangements are best, if only they are possible.

  Indeed it was.

  Then we can now conclude that this legislation is best, if only it is possible, and that, while it is hard for it to come about, it is not impossible.

  We can.

  Now that this difficulty has been disposed of, we must deal with what remains, namely, how the saviors of our constitution will come to be in the city, what subjects and ways of life will cause them to come into being, and at what ages they’ll take each of them up. [d]

  Indeed we must.

  It wasn’t very clever of me to omit from our earlier discussion the troublesome topics of acquiring wives, begetting children, and appointing rulers, just because I knew that the whole truth would provoke resentment and would be hard to bring about in practice, for as it turned out, I had to go through these matters anyway. The subject of women and children [e] has been adequately dealt with, but that of the rulers has to be taken up again from the beginning. We said, if you remember, that they must show themselves to be lovers of their city when tested by pleasure and pain and [503] that they must hold on to their resolve through labors, fears, and all other adversities. Anyone who was incapable of doing so was to be rejected, while anyone who came through unchanged—like gold tested in a fire—was to be made ruler and receive prizes both while he lived and after his death. These were the sort of things we were saying while our argument, afraid of stirring up the very problems that now confront us, veiled its [b] face and slipped by.

  That’s very true; I do remember it.

  We hesitated to say the things we’ve now dared to say anyway. So let’s now also dare to say that those who are to be made our guardians in the most exact sense of the term must be philosophers.

  Let’s do it.

  Then you should understand that there will probably be only a few of them, for they have to have the nature we described, and its parts mostly grow in separation and are rarely found in the same person. [c]

  What do you mean?

  You know that ease of learning, good memory, quick wits, smartness, youthful passion, high-mindedness, and all the other things that go along with these are rarely willing to grow together in a mind that will choose an orderly life that is quiet and completely stable, for the people who possess the former traits are carried by their quick wits wherever chance leads them and have no stability at all.

  That’s true.

  On the other hand, people with stable characters, who don’t change easily, who aren’t easily frightened in battle, and whom one would employ [d] because of their greater reliability, exhibit similar traits when it comes to learning: They are as hard to move and teach as people whose brains have become numb, and they are filled with sleep and yawning whenever they have to learn anything.

  That’s so.

  Yet we say that someone must have a fine and goodly share of both characters, or he won’t receive the truest education, honors, or rule.

  That’s right.

  Then, don’t you think that such people will be rare?

  Of course.

  [e] Therefore they must be tested in the labors, fears, and pleasures we mentioned previously. But they must also be exercised in many other subjects—which we didn’t mention but are adding now—to see whether they can tolerate the most important subjects or will shrink from them [504] like the cowards who shrink from other tests.

  It’s appropriate to examine them like that. But what do you mean by the most important subjects?

  Do you remember when we distinguished three parts in the soul, in order to help bring out what justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom each is?

  If I didn’t remember that, it wouldn’t be just for me to hear the rest.

  What about what preceded it?

  What was that?

  We said, I believe, that, in order to get the finest possible view of these [b] matters, we would need to take a longer road that would make them plain to anyone who took it but that it was possible to give demonstrations of what they are that would be up to the standard of the previous argument.9 And you said that that would be satisfactory. So it seems to me that our discussion at that time fell short of exactness, but whether or not it satisfied you is for you to say.

  I thought you gave us good measure and so, apparently, did the others.

  Any measure of such things that falls short in any way of that which [c] is is not good measure, for nothing incomplete is the measure of anything, although people are sometimes of the opinion that an incomplete treatment is nonetheless adequate and makes further investigation unnecessary.

  Indeed, laziness causes many people to think that.

  It is a thought that a guardian of a city and its laws can well do without.

  Probably so.

&nb
sp; Well, then, he must take the longer road and put as much effort into learning as into physical training, for otherwise, as we were just saying, he will never reach the goal of the most important subject and the most [d] appropriate one for him to learn.

  Aren’t these virtues, then, the most important things? he asked. Is there anything even more important than justice and the other virtues we discussed

  There is something more important. However, even for the virtues themselves, it isn’t enough to look at a mere sketch, as we did before, while neglecting the most complete account. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, to strain every nerve to attain the utmost exactness and clarity about other things of little value and not to consider the most important things worthy of the greatest exactness? [e]

  It certainly is. But do you think that anyone is going to let you off without asking you what this most important subject is and what it concerns?

  No, indeed, and you can ask me too. You’ve certainly heard the answer often enough, but now either you aren’t thinking or you intend to make trouble for me again by interrupting. And I suspect the latter, for you’ve often heard it said that the form of the good is the most important thing [505] to learn about and that it’s by their relation to it that just things and the others become useful and beneficial. You know very well now that I am going to say this, and, besides, that we have no adequate knowledge of it. And you also know that, if we don’t know it, 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 of it. Or do you think that it is any advantage to have every kind of possession without the good of it? [b] Or to know everything except the good, thereby knowing nothing fine or good?

  No, by god, I don’t.

  Furthermore, you certainly know that the majority believe that pleasure is the good, while the more sophisticated believe that it is knowledge.

  Indeed I do.

  And you know that those who believe this can’t tell us what sort of knowledge it is, however, but in the end are forced to say that it is knowledge of the good.

  And that’s ridiculous.

  [c] Of course it is. They blame us for not knowing the good and then turn around and talk to us as if we did know it. They say that it is knowledge of the good—as if we understood what they’re speaking about when they utter the word “good.”

  That’s completely true.

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

  Most definitely.

  So, I think, they have to agree that the same things are both good and bad. Isn’t that true?

  [d] Of course.

  It’s clear, then, isn’t it, why there are many large controversies about this?

  How could it be otherwise?

  And isn’t this also clear? In the case of just and beautiful things, many people are content with what are believed to be so, even if they aren’t really so, and they act, acquire, and form their own beliefs on that basis. Nobody is satisfied to acquire things that are merely believed to be good, however, but everyone wants the things that really are good and disdains mere belief here.

  That’s right. [e]

  Every soul pursues the good and does its utmost for its sake. It divines that the good is something but it is perplexed and cannot adequately grasp what it is or acquire the sort of stable beliefs it has about other things, and so it misses the benefit, if any, that even those other things may give. Will we allow the best people in the city, to whom we entrust everything, [506] to be so in the dark about something of this kind and of this importance?

  That’s the last thing we’d do.

  I don’t suppose, at least, that just and fine things will have acquired much of a guardian in someone who doesn’t even know in what way they are good. And I divine that no one will have adequate knowledge of them until he knows this.

  You’ve divined well.

  But won’t our constitution be perfectly ordered, if a guardian who knows these things is in charge of it? [b]

  Necessarily. But, Socrates, you must also tell us whether you consider the good to be knowledge or pleasure or something else altogether.

  What a man! It’s been clear for some time that other people’s opinions about these matters wouldn’t satisfy you.

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

  What? Do you think it’s right to talk about things one doesn’t know as if one does know them?

  Not as if one knows them, he said, but one ought to be willing to state one’s opinions as such.

  What? Haven’t you noticed that opinions without knowledge are shameful and ugly things? The best of them are blind—or do you think that those who express a true opinion without understanding are any different from blind people who happen to travel the right road?

  They’re no different.

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

  By god, Socrates, Glaucon said, don’t desert us with the end almost in sight. We’ll be satisfied if you discuss the good as you discussed justice, moderation, and the rest.

  That, my friend, I said, would satisfy me too, but I’m afraid that I won’t be up to it and that I’ll disgrace myself and look ridiculous by trying. So let’s abandon the quest for what the good itself is for the time being, for even to arrive at my own view about it is too big a topic for the discussion [e] we are now started on. But I am willing to tell you about what is apparently an offspring of the good and most like it. Is that agreeable to you, or would you rather we let the whole matter drop?

  It is. The story about the father remains a debt you’ll pay another time.

  I wish that I could pay the debt in full, and you receive it instead of [507] just the interest. So here, then, is this child and offspring of the good. But be careful that I don’t somehow deceive you unintentionally by giving you an illegitimate account of the child.10

  We’ll be as careful as possible, so speak on.

  I will when we’ve come to an agreement and recalled some things that we’ve already said both here and many other times.

  Which ones? [b]

  We say that there are many beautiful things and many good things, and so on for each kind, and in this way we distinguish them in words.

  We do.

  And beauty itself and good itself and all the things that we thereby set down as many, reversing ourselves, we set down according to a single form of each, believing that there is but one, and call it “the being” of each.

  That’s true.

  And we say that the many beautiful things and the rest are visible but not intelligible, while the forms are intelligible but not visible.

  That’s completely true.

  [c] With what part of ourselves do we see visible things?

  With our sight.

  And so audible things are heard by hearing, and with our other senses we perceive all the other perceptible things.

  That’s right.

  Have you considered how lavish the maker of our senses was in making the power to see and be seen?

  I can’t say I have.

  Well, consider 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 [d] thing in whose absence the one won’t hear or the other be heard?

  No, they need nothing else.

  And if there are any others that need such a thing, there can’t be many of them. Can you think of one?

  I can’t.

  You don’t realize that sight and the visible have such a need?

  How so?

  Sight may be present in the eyes, and the one who has it may try to use it, and colors may be present in t
hings, but unless a third kind of thing is present, which is naturally adapted for this very purpose, you know that [e] sight will see nothing, and the colors will remain unseen.

  What kind of thing do you mean?

  I mean what you call light.

  You’re right.

  Then it isn’t an insignificant kind of link that connects the sense of sight [508] and the power to be seen—it is a more valuable link than any other linked things have got, if indeed light is something valuable.

  And, of course, it’s very valuable.

  Which of the gods in heaven would you name as the cause and controller of this, the one whose light causes our sight to see in the best way and the visible things to be seen?

  The same one you and others would name. Obviously, the answer to your question is the sun.

  And isn’t sight by nature related to that god in this way?

  Which way?

  Sight isn’t the sun, neither sight itself nor that in which it comes to be, namely, the eye. [b]

  No, it certainly isn’t.

  But I think that it is the most sunlike of the senses.

  Very much so.

  And it receives from the sun the power it has, just like an influx from an overflowing treasury.

  Certainly.

  The sun is not sight, but isn’t it the cause of sight itself and seen by it?

  That’s right.

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

  How? Explain a bit more.

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

  Of course.

  Yet whenever one turns them on things illuminated by the sun, they see clearly, and vision appears in those very same eyes? [d]

  Indeed.

  Well, understand the soul in the same way: When it focuses on something illuminated by truth and what is, it understands, knows, and apparently possesses understanding, but when it focuses on what is mixed with obscurity, on what comes to be and passes away, it opines and is dimmed, changes its opinions this way and that, and seems bereft of understanding.