Complete Works

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

  So it seems.

  Now, it looks as though the other so-called virtues of the soul are akin to those of the body, for they really aren’t there beforehand but are added [e] later by habit and practice. However, the virtue of reason seems to belong above all to something more divine, which never loses its power but is either useful and beneficial or useless and harmful, depending on the way [519] it is turned. Or have you never noticed this about people who are said to be vicious but clever, how keen the vision of their little souls is and how sharply it distinguishes the things it is turned towards? This shows that its sight isn’t inferior but rather is forced to serve evil ends, so that the sharper it sees, the more evil it accomplishes.

  Absolutely.

  However, if a nature of this sort had been hammered at from childhood and freed from the bonds of kinship with becoming, which have been fastened to it by feasting, greed, and other such pleasures and which, like [b] leaden weights, pull its vision downwards—if, being rid of these, it turned to look at true things, then I say that the same soul of the same person would see these most sharply, just as it now does the things it is presently turned towards.

  Probably so.

  And what about the uneducated who have no experience of truth? Isn’t it likely—indeed, doesn’t it follow necessarily from what was said before—that they will never adequately govern a city? But neither would those who’ve been allowed to spend their whole lives being educated. The former [c] would fail because they don’t have a single goal at which all their actions, public and private, inevitably aim; the latter would fail because they’d refuse to act, thinking that they had settled while still alive in the faraway Isles of the Blessed.

  That’s true.

  It is our task as founders, then, to compel the best natures to reach the study we said before is the most important, namely, to make the ascent and see the good. But when they’ve made it and looked sufficiently, we [d] mustn’t allow them to do what they’re allowed to do today.

  What’s that?

  To stay there and refuse to go down again to the prisoners in the cave and share their labors and honors, whether they are of less worth or of greater.

  Then are we to do them an injustice by making them live a worse life when they could live a better one?

  You are forgetting again that it isn’t the law’s concern to make any one [e] class in the city outstandingly happy but to contrive to spread happiness throughout the city by bringing the citizens into harmony with each other through persuasion or compulsion and by making them share with each other the benefits that each class can confer on the community.4 The law produces such people in the city, not in order to allow them to turn [520] in whatever direction they want, but to make use of them to bind the city together.

  That’s true, I had forgotten.

  Observe, then, Glaucon, that we won’t be doing an injustice to those who’ve become philosophers in our city and that what we’ll say to them, when we compel them to guard and care for the others, will be just. We’ll say: “When people like you come to be in other cities, they’re justified in not sharing in their city’s labors, for they’ve grown there spontaneously, [b] against the will of the constitution. And what grows of its own accord and owes no debt for its upbringing has justice on its side when it isn’t keen to pay anyone for that upbringing. But we’ve made you kings in our city and leaders of the swarm, as it were, both for yourselves and for the rest of the city. You’re better and more completely educated than the others and are better able to share in both types of life. Therefore each of you in [c] turn must go down to live in the common dwelling place of the others and grow accustomed to seeing in the dark. When you are used to it, you’ll see vastly better than the people there. And because you’ve seen the truth about fine, just, and good things, you’ll know each image for what it is and also that of which it is the image. Thus, for you and for us, the city will be governed, not like the majority of cities nowadays, by people who fight over shadows and struggle against one another in order to rule—as if that were a great good—but by people who are awake rather than dreaming, for the truth is surely this: A city whose prospective rulers [d] are least eager to rule must of necessity be most free from civil war, whereas a city with the opposite kind of rulers is governed in the opposite way.”

  Absolutely.

  Then do you think that those we’ve nurtured will disobey us and refuse to share the labors of the city, each in turn, while living the greater part of their time with one another in the pure realm?

  It isn’t possible, for we’ll be giving just orders to just people. Each of [e] them will certainly go to rule as to something compulsory, however, which is exactly the opposite of what’s done by those who now rule in each city.

  This is how it is. If you can find a way of life that’s better than ruling for the prospective rulers, your well-governed city will become a possibility, [521] for only in it will the truly rich rule—not those who are rich in gold but those who are rich in the wealth that the happy must have, namely, a good and rational life. But if beggars hungry for private goods go into public life, thinking that the good is there for the seizing, then the well-governed city is impossible, for then ruling is something fought over, and this civil and domestic war destroys these people and the rest of the city as well.

  That’s very true.

  [b] Can you name any life that despises political rule besides that of the true philosopher?

  No, by god, I can’t.

  But surely it is those who are not lovers of ruling who must rule, for if they don’t, the lovers of it, who are rivals, will fight over it.

  Of course.

  Then who will you compel to become guardians of the city, if not those who have the best understanding of what matters for good government and who have other honors than political ones, and a better life as well?

  No one.

  Do you want us to consider now how such people will come to be in [c] our city and how—just as some are said to have gone up from Hades to the gods—we’ll lead them up to the light?

  Of course I do.

  This isn’t, it seems, a matter of tossing a coin, but of turning a soul from a day that is a kind of night to the true day—the ascent to what is, which we say is true philosophy.

  Indeed.

  Then mustn’t we try to discover the subjects that have the power to [d] bring this about?

  Of course.

  So what subject is it, Glaucon, that draws the soul from the realm of becoming to the realm of what is? And it occurs to me as I’m speaking that we said, didn’t we, that it is necessary for the prospective rulers to be athletes in war when they’re young?

  Yes, we did.

  Then the subject we’re looking for must also have this characteristic in addition to the former one.

  Which one?

  It mustn’t be useless to warlike men.

  If it’s at all possible, it mustn’t.

  Now, prior to this, we educated them in music and poetry and physical [e] training.

  We did.

  And physical training is concerned with what comes into being and dies, for it oversees the growth and decay of the body.

  Apparently.

  So it couldn’t be the subject we’re looking for.

  No, it couldn’t. [522]

  Then, could it be the music and poetry we described before?

  But that, if you remember, is just the counterpart of physical training. It educated the guardians through habits. Its harmonies gave them a certain harmoniousness, not knowledge; its rhythms gave them a certain rhythmical quality; and its stories, whether fictional or nearer the truth, cultivated other habits akin to these. But as for the subject you’re looking for now, there’s nothing like that in music and poetry. [b]

  Your reminder is exactly to the point; there’s really nothing like that in music and poetry. But, Glaucon, what is there that does have this? The crafts all seem to be base or mechanical.

  How
could they be otherwise? But apart from music and poetry, physical training, and the crafts, what subject is left?

  Well, if we can’t find anything apart from these, let’s consider one of the subjects that touches all of them.

  What sort of thing?

  For example, that common thing that every craft, every type of thought, and every science uses and that is among the first compulsory subjects [c] for everyone.

  What’s that?

  That inconsequential matter of distinguishing the one, the two, and the three. In short, I mean number and calculation, for isn’t it true that every craft and science must have a share in that?

  They certainly must.

  Then so must warfare.

  Absolutely.

  In the tragedies, at any rate, Palamedes is always showing up Agamemnon as a totally ridiculous general. Haven’t you noticed? He says that, by inventing numbers, he established how many troops there were [d] in the Trojan army and counted their ships and everything else—implying that they were uncounted before and that Agamemnon (if indeed he didn’t know how to count) didn’t even know how many feet he had? What kind of general do you think that made him?

  A very strange one, if that’s true.

  Then won’t we set down this subject as compulsory for a warrior, so [e] that he is able to count and calculate?

  More compulsory than anything. If, that is, he’s to understand anything about setting his troops in order or if he’s even to be properly human.

  Then do you notice the same thing about this subject that I do?

  What’s that?

  That this turns out to be one of the subjects we were looking for that naturally lead to understanding. But no one uses it correctly, namely, as something that is really fitted in every way to draw one towards being. [523]

  What do you mean?

  I’ll try to make my view clear as follows: I’ll distinguish for myself the things that do or don’t lead in the direction we mentioned, and you must study them along with me and either agree or disagree, and that way we may come to know more clearly whether things are indeed as I divine.

  Point them out.

  I’ll point out, then, if you can grasp it, that some sense perceptions don’t summon the understanding to look into them, because the judgment of [b] sense perception is itself adequate, while others encourage it in every way to look into them, because sense perception seems to produce no sound result.

  You’re obviously referring to things appearing in the distance and to trompe l’oeil paintings.

  You’re not quite getting my meaning.

  Then what do you mean?

  The ones that don’t summon the understanding are all those that don’t go off into opposite perceptions at the same time. But the ones that do go [c] off in that way I call summoners—whenever sense perception doesn’t declare one thing any more than its opposite, no matter whether the object striking the senses is near at hand or far away. You’ll understand my meaning better if I put it this way: These, we say, are three fingers—the smallest, the second, and the middle finger.

  That’s right.

  Assume that I’m talking about them as being seen from close by. Now, this is my question about them.

  What?

  It’s apparent that each of them is equally a finger, and it makes no difference in this regard whether the finger is seen to be in the middle or [d] at either end, whether it is dark or pale, thick or thin, or anything else of that sort, for in all these cases, an ordinary soul isn’t compelled to ask the understanding what a finger is, since sight doesn’t suggest to it that a finger is at the same time the opposite of a finger.

  No, it doesn’t.

  Therefore, it isn’t likely that anything of that sort would summon or [e] awaken the understanding.

  No, it isn’t.

  But what about the bigness and smallness of fingers? Does sight perceive them adequately? Does it make no difference to it whether the finger is in the middle or at the end? And is it the same with the sense of touch, as regards the thick and the thin, the hard and the soft? And do the other senses reveal such things clearly and adequately? Doesn’t each of them [524] rather do the following: The sense set over the hard is, in the first place, of necessity also set over the soft, and it reports to the soul that the same thing is perceived by it to be both hard and soft?

  That’s right.

  And isn’t it necessary that in such cases the soul is puzzled as to what this sense means by the hard, if it indicates that the same thing is also soft, or what it means by the light and the heavy, if it indicates that the heavy is light, or the light, heavy?

  Yes, indeed, these are strange reports for the soul to receive, and they [b] do demand to be looked into.

  Then it’s likely that in such cases the soul, summoning calculation and understanding, first tries to determine whether each of the things announced to it is one or two.

  Of course.

  If it’s evidently two, won’t each be evidently distinct and one?

  Yes.

  Then, if each is one, and both two, the soul will understand that the two are separate, for it wouldn’t understand the inseparable to be two, but rather one. [c]

  That’s right.

  Sight, however, saw the big and small, not as separate, but as mixed up together. Isn’t that so?

  Yes.

  And in order to get clear about all this, understanding was compelled to see the big and the small, not as mixed up together, but as separate—the opposite way from sight.

  True.

  And isn’t it from these cases that it first occurs to us to ask what the big is and what the small is?

  Absolutely.

  And, because of this, we called the one the intelligible and the other the visible.

  That’s right. [d]

  This, then, is what I was trying to express before, when I said that some things summon thought, while others don’t. Those that strike the relevant sense at the same time as their opposites I call summoners, those that don’t do this do not awaken understanding.

  Now I understand, and I think you’re right.

  Well, then, to which of them do number and the one belong?

  I don’t know.

  Reason it out from what was said before. If the one is adequately seen itself by itself or is so perceived by any of the other senses, then, as we were saying in the case of fingers, it wouldn’t draw the soul towards being. But if something opposite to it is always seen at the same time, so that [e] nothing is apparently any more one than the opposite of one, then something would be needed to judge the matter. The soul would then be puzzled, would look for an answer, would stir up its understanding, and would ask what the one itself is. And so this would be among the subjects that lead the soul and turn it around towards the study of that which is. [525]

  But surely the sight of the one does possess this characteristic to a remarkable degree, for we see the same thing to be both one and an unlimited number at the same time.

  Then, if this is true of the one, won’t it also be true of all numbers?

  Of course.

  Now, calculation and arithmetic are wholly concerned with numbers.

  That’s right.

  [b] Then evidently they lead us towards truth.

  Supernaturally so.

  Then they belong, it seems, to the subjects we’re seeking. They are compulsory for warriors because of their orderly ranks and for philosophers because they have to learn to rise up out of becoming and grasp being, if they are ever to become rational.

  That’s right.

  And our guardian must be both a warrior and a philosopher.

  Certainly.

  Then it would be appropriate, Glaucon, to legislate this subject for those who are going to share in the highest offices in the city and to persuade them to turn to calculation and take it up, not as laymen do, but staying [c] with it until they reach the study of the natures of the numbers by means of understanding itself, nor
like tradesmen and retailers, for the sake of buying and selling, but for the sake of war and for ease in turning the soul around, away from becoming and towards truth and being.

  Well put.

  Moreover, it strikes me, now that it has been mentioned, how sophisticated the subject of calculation is and in how many ways it is useful for [d] our purposes, provided that one practices it for the sake of knowing rather than trading.

  How is it useful?

  In the very way we were talking about. It leads the soul forcibly upward and compels it to discuss the numbers themselves, never permitting anyone to propose for discussion numbers attached to visible or tangible bodies. You know what those who are clever in these matters are like: If, in the course of the argument, someone tries to divide the one itself, they laugh [e] and won’t permit it. If you divide it, they multiply it, taking care that one thing never be found to be many parts rather than one.

  That’s very true.

  Then what do you think would happen, Glaucon, if someone were to [526] ask them: “What kind of numbers are you talking about, in which the one is as you assume it to be, each one equal to every other, without the least difference and containing no internal parts?”

  I think they’d answer that they are talking about those numbers that can be grasped only in thought and can’t be dealt with in any other way.

  [b] Then do you see that it’s likely that this subject really is compulsory for us, since it apparently compels the soul to use understanding itself on the truth itself?

  Indeed, it most certainly does do that.

  And what about those who are naturally good at calculation or reasoning? Have you already noticed that they’re naturally sharp, so to speak, in all subjects, and that those who are slow at it, if they’re educated and exercised in it, even if they’re benefited in no other way, nonetheless improve and become generally sharper than they were?

  That’s true.

  Moreover, I don’t think you’ll easily find subjects that are harder to learn or practice than this. [c]

  No, indeed.

  Then, for all these reasons, this subject isn’t to be neglected, and the best natures must be educated in it.