Persons in the Dialogue: Socrates, Glaucon, Adeimantus. Socrates is the narrator.
The issue they are discussing is the nature and origin of justice.

Gl. Let me ask you now: --How would you arrange goods --are there not some which we welcome for their own sakes, and independently of their consequences, as, for example, harmless pleasures and enjoyments, which delight us at the time, although nothing follows from them?

Soc. I agree in thinking that there is such a class.

Gl. Is there not also a second class of goods, such as knowledge, sight, health, which are desirable not only in themselves, but also for their results?

Soc. Certainly.

Gl. And would you not recognize a third class, such as gymnastic, and the care of the sick, and the physician's art; also the various ways of money-making --these do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and no one would choose them for their own sakes, but only for the sake of some reward or result which flows from them?

Soc. There is, this third class also. But why do you ask?

Gl.  Because I want to know in which of the three classes you would place justice?

Soc. In the highest class, --among those goods which he who would be happy desires both for their own sake and for the sake of their results.

Gl. Then the many are of another mind; they think that justice is to be reckoned in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued for the sake of rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are disagreeable and rather to be avoided.

Soc.  I know,  that this is their manner of thinking, and that this was the thesis which Thrasymachus was maintaining just now [in Rep. I], when he censured justice and praised injustice. But I am too stupid to be convinced by him.

Gl.  I wish, that you would hear me as well as him, and then I shall see whether you and I agree... For Thrasymachus seems to me, like a snake, to have been charmed by your voice sooner than he ought to have been; but to my mind the nature of justice and injustice have not yet been made clear.  Setting aside their rewards and results, I want to know what they are in themselves, and how they inwardly work in the soul.  If you, please, then, I will revive the argument of Thrasymachus.  And first I will speak of the nature and origin of justice according to the common view of them.  Secondly, I will show that all men who practice justice do so against their will, of necessity, but not as a good.  And thirdly, I will argue that there is reason in this view, for the life of the unjust is after all better far than the life of the just --if what they say is true, Socrates, since I myself am not of their opinion.  But still I acknowledge that I am perplexed when I hear the voices of Thrasymachus and myriads of others dinning in my ears; and, on the other hand, I have never yet heard the superiority of justice to injustice maintained by any one in a satisfactory way. I want to hear justice praised in respect of itself; then I shall be satisfied, and you are the person from whom I think that I am most likely to hear this; and therefore I will praise the unjust life to the utmost of my power, and my manner of speaking will indicate the manner in which I desire to hear you too praising justice and censuring injustice. Will you say whether you approve of my proposal?

Soc. Indeed I do; nor can I imagine any theme about which a man of sense would oftener wish to converse.

Gl. I am delighted, to hear you say so, and shall begin by speaking, as I proposed, of the nature and origin of justice.

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good.  And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just.  This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; --it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do    injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honored by reason of the inability of men to do injustice.  For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did.  Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.

Now that those who practice justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law.  The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian.  According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended.  Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present.  He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same    result-when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.  Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice.  No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men.  Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point.  And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust.  For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right.  If you could imagine any one obtaining this  power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.  Enough of this.

Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and unjust, we must isolate them; there is no other way; and how is the isolation to be effected?  I answer: Let the unjust man be entirely unjust, and the just man entirely just; nothing is to be taken away from either of them, and both are to be perfectly furnished for the work of their respective lives.  First, let the unjust be like other distinguished masters of craft; like the skillful pilot or physician, who knows intuitively his own powers and keeps within their limits, and who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover himself.  So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice (he who is found out is nobody): for the highest reach of injustice is: to be deemed just when you are not.  Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must assume the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice.  If he have taken a false step he must be able to recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect, if any of his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where force is required his courage and strength, and command of money and friends. And at his side let us place the just man in his nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good.  There must be no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honored and rewarded, and then we shall not know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the sake of honors and rewards; therefore, let him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former.  Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences.  And let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.

Soc. Heavens! my dear Glaucon, how energetically you polish them up for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two statues.

Gl.  I do my best. And now that we know what they are like there is no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either of them.  This I will proceed to describe; but as you may think the description a little too coarse, I ask you to suppose, Socrates, that the words which follow are not mine. --Let me put them into the mouths of the eulogists of injustice: They will tell you that the just man who is thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound --will have his eyes burnt out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled: Then he will understand that he ought to seem only, and not to be, just; the words of Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the unjust than of the just. For the unjust is pursuing a reality; he does not live with a view to appearances --he wants to be really unjust and not to seem only:--

His mind has a soil deep and fertile,
Out of which spring his prudent counsels.

In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule in the city; he can marry whom he will, and give in marriage to whom he will; also he can trade and deal where he likes, and    always to his own advantage, because he has no misgivings about injustice and at every contest, whether in public or private, he gets the better of his antagonists, and gains at their expense, and is rich, and out of his gains he can benefit his friends, and harm his enemies; moreover, he can offer sacrifices, and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and magnificently, and can honor the gods or any man whom he wants to honor in a far better style than the just, and therefore he is likely to be dearer than they are to the gods.  And thus, Socrates, gods and men are said to unite in making the life of the unjust better than the life of the just.

I was going to say something in answer to Glaucon, when Adeimantus, his brother, interposed:

Ad. Socrates, he said, you do not suppose that there is nothing more to be urged?

Soc. Why, what else is there?

Ad. The strongest point of all has not been even mentioned.

Soc. Well, then, according to the proverb, 'Let brother help brother' --if he fails in any part do you assist him; although I must confess that Glaucon has already said quite enough to lay me in the dust, and take from me the power of helping justice.

Ad. Nonsense. But let me add something more: There is another side to Glaucon's argument about the praise and censure of justice and injustice, which is equally required in order to bring out what I believe to be his meaning. Parents and tutors are always telling their sons and their wards that they are to be just; but why? not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of character and reputation; in the hope of obtaining for him who is reputed just some of those offices, marriages, and the like which Glaucon has enumerated among the advantages accruing to the unjust from the reputation of justice. More, however, is made of appearances by this class of persons than by the others; for they throw in the good opinion of the gods, and will tell you of a shower of benefits which the heavens, as they say, rain upon the pious; and this accords with the testimony of the noble Hesiod and Homer, the first of whom says, that the gods make the oaks of the just--

To bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle;
And make the sheep bowed down with the their fleeces

and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them. And Homer has a very similar strain; for he speaks of one whose fame is--

As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god,
Maintains justice to whom the black earth brings forth
Wheat and barley, whose trees are bowed with fruit,
And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives him fish.

Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his son vouchsafe to the just; they take them down into the world below, where they have the saints lying on couches at a feast, everlastingly drunk, crowned with garlands; their idea seems to be that an immortality of drunkenness is the highest meed of virtue. Some extend their rewards yet further; the posterity, as they say, of the faithful and just shall survive to the third and fourth generation. This is the style in which they praise justice. But about the wicked there is another strain; they bury them in a slough in Hades, and make them carry water in a sieve; also while they are yet living they bring them to infamy, and inflict upon them the punishments which Glaucon described as the portion of the just who are reputed to be unjust; nothing else does their invention supply. Such is their manner of praising the one and censuring the other.

Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking about justice and injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honorable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They say also that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honor them both in public and private when they are rich or in any other way influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the others. But most extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking about virtue and the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and misery to many good men, and good and happiness to the wicked. And mendicant prophets go to rich men's doors and persuade them that they have a power committed to them by the gods of making an atonement for a man's own or his ancestor's sins by sacrifices or charms, with rejoicings and feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just or unjust, at a small cost; with magic arts and incantations binding heaven, as they say, to execute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom they appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with the words of Hesiod; --

Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth and her dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil, and a tedious and uphill road

then citing Homer as a witness that the gods may be influenced by men; for he also says:

The gods, too, may he turned from their purpose; and men pray to them and avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing entreaties, and by libations and the odor of fat, when they have sinned and transgressed.

And they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus, who were children of the Moon and the Muses --that is what they say --according to which they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals, but whole cities, that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by sacrifices and amusements which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at the service of the living and the dead; the latter sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us from the pains of hell, but if we neglect them no one knows what awaits us.

He proceeded: And now when the young hear all this said about virtue and vice, and the way in which gods and men regard them, how are their minds likely to be affected, my dear Socrates, --those of them, I mean, who are quickwitted, and, like bees on the wing, light on every flower, and from all that they hear are prone to draw conclusions as to what manner of persons they should be and in what way they should walk if they would make the best of life? Probably the youth will say to himself in the words of Pindar, “Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may he a fortress to me all my days?”  For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me. Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself. I will describe around me a picture and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house; behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox, as Archilochus, greatest of sages, recommends.

But I hear some one exclaiming that the concealment of wickedness is often difficult; to which I answer, Nothing great is easy. Nevertheless, the argument indicates this, if we would be happy, to be the path along which we should proceed. With a view to concealment we will establish secret brotherhoods and political clubs. And there are professors of rhetoric who teach the art of persuading courts and assemblies; and so, partly by persuasion and partly by force, I shall make unlawful gains and not be punished. Still I hear a voice saying that the gods cannot be deceived, neither can they be compelled. But what if there are no gods? or, suppose them to have no care of human things --why in either case should we mind about concealment? And even if there are gods, and they do care about us, yet we know of them only from tradition and the genealogies of the poets; and these are the very persons who say that they may be influenced and turned by 'sacrifices and soothing entreaties and by offerings.' Let us be consistent then, and believe both or neither. If the poets speak truly, why then we had better be unjust, and offer of the fruits of injustice; for if we are just, although we may escape the vengeance of heaven, we shall lose the gains of injustice; but, if we are unjust, we shall keep the gains, and by our sinning and praying, and praying and sinning, the gods will be propitiated, and we shall not be punished. 'But there is a world below in which either we or our posterity will suffer for our unjust deeds.' Yes, my friend, will be the reflection, but there are mysteries and atoning deities, and these have great power. That is what mighty cities declare; and the children of the gods, who were their poets and prophets, bear a like testimony.

On what principle, then, shall we any longer choose justice rather than the worst injustice? when, if we only unite the latter with a deceitful regard to appearances, we shall fare to our mind both with gods and men, in life and after death, as the most numerous and the highest authorities tell us. Knowing all this, Socrates, how can a man who has any superiority of mind or person or rank or wealth, be willing to honor justice; or indeed to refrain from laughing when he hears justice praised? And even if there should be some one who is able to disprove the truth of my words, and who is satisfied that justice is best, still he is not angry with the unjust, but is very ready to forgive them, because he also knows that men are not just of their own free will; unless, peradventure, there be some one whom the divinity within him may have inspired with a hatred of injustice, or who has attained knowledge of the truth --but no other man. He only blames injustice who, owing to cowardice or age or some weakness, has not the power of being unjust. And this is proved by the fact that when he obtains the power, he immediately becomes unjust as far as he can be.

The cause of all this, Socrates, was indicated by us at the beginning of the argument, when my brother and I told you how astonished we were to find that of all the professing panegyrists of justice --beginning with the ancient heroes of whom any memorial has been preserved to us, and ending with the men of our own time --no one has ever blamed injustice or praised justice except with a view to the glories, honors, and benefits which flow from them. No one has ever adequately described either in verse or prose the true essential nature of either of them abiding in the soul, and invisible to any human or divine eye; or shown that of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good, and injustice the greatest evil. Had this been the universal strain, had you sought to persuade us of this from our youth upwards, we should not have been on the watch to keep one another from doing wrong, but every one would have been his own watchman, because afraid, if he did wrong, of harboring in himself the greatest of evils. I dare say that Thrasymachus  and others would seriously hold the language which I have been merely repeating, and words even stronger than these about justice and injustice, grossly, as I conceive, perverting their true nature. But I speak in this vehement manner, as I must frankly confess to you, because I want to hear from you the opposite side; and I would ask you to show not only the superiority which justice has over injustice, but what effect they have on the possessor of them which makes the one to be a good and the other an evil to him. And please, as Glaucon requested of you, to exclude reputations; for unless you take away from each of them his true reputation and add on the false, we shall say that you do not praise justice, but the appearance of it; we shall think that you are only exhorting us to keep injustice dark, and that you really agree with Thrasymachus in thinking that justice is another's good and the interest of the stronger, and that injustice is a man's own profit and interest, though injurious to the weaker. Now as you have admitted that justice is one of that highest class of goods which are desired indeed for their results, but in a far greater degree for their own sakes --like sight or hearing or knowledge or health, or any other real and natural and not merely conventional good --I would ask you in your praise of justice to regard one point only: I mean the essential good and evil which justice and injustice work in the possessors of them. Let others praise justice and censure injustice, magnifying the rewards and honors of the one and abusing the other; that is a manner of arguing which, coming from them, I am ready to tolerate, but from you who have spent your whole life in the consideration of this question, unless I hear the contrary from your own lips, I expect something better. And therefore, I say, not only prove to us that justice is better than injustice, but show what they either of them do to the possessor of them, which makes the one to be a good and the other an evil, whether seen or unseen by gods and men.

Soc.  I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but on hearing these words I was quite delighted, and said: Sons of an illustrious father, that was not a bad beginning of the Elegiac verses which the admirer of Glaucon made in honor of you after you had distinguished yourselves at the battle of Megara:--

'Sons of Ariston,' he sang, 'divine offspring of an illustrious hero.'

The epithet is very appropriate, for there is something truly divine in being able to argue as you have done for the superiority of injustice, and remaining unconvinced by your own arguments. And I do believe that you are not convinced --this I infer from your general character, for had I judged only from your speeches I should have mistrusted you. But now, the greater my confidence in you, the greater is my difficulty in knowing what to say. For I am in a strait between two; on the one hand I feel that I am unequal to the task; and my inability is brought home to me by the fact that you were not satisfied with the answer which I made to Thrasymachus, proving, as I thought, the superiority which justice has over injustice. And yet I cannot refuse to help, while breath and speech remain to me; I am afraid that there would be an impiety in being present when justice is evil spoken of and not lifting up a hand in her defence. And therefore I had best give such help as I can.

Glaucon and the rest entreated me by all means not to let the question drop, but to proceed in the investigation. They wanted to arrive at the truth, first, about the nature of justice and injustice, and secondly, about their relative advantages.  I told them, what I --really thought, that the enquiry would be of a serious nature, and would require very good eyes.  Seeing then, I said, that we are no great wits, I think that we had better adopt a method which I may illustrate thus; suppose that a short-sighted person had been asked by some one to read small letters from a distance; and it occurred to some one else that they might be found in another place which was larger and in which the letters were larger --if they were the same and he could read the larger letters first, and then proceed to the lesser --this would have been thought a rare piece of good fortune.

Ad.  Very true; but how does the illustration apply to our enquiry?

Soc. I will tell you; justice, which is the subject of our enquiry, is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of an individual, and sometimes as the virtue of a State.

Ad. True.

Soc. And is not a State larger than an individual?

Ad. It is.

Soc. Then in the larger the quantity of justice is likely to be larger and more easily discernible. I propose therefore that we enquire into the nature of justice and injustice, first as they appear in the State, and secondly in the individual, proceeding from the greater to the lesser and comparing them.

Ad.  That is an excellent proposal.

Soc. And if we imagine the State in process of creation, we shall see the justice and injustice of the State in process of  creation also.

Ad. I dare say.

Soc. When the State is completed there may be a hope that the object of our search will be more easily discovered.

Ad. Yes, far more easily.

Soc. But ought we to attempt to construct one? For to do so, as I am inclined to think, will be a very serious task.  Reflect therefore.

Ad. I have reflected, and am anxious that you should proceed.

Soc.   A State, arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.  Can any other origin of a State be imagined?

Ad.  There can I be no other.

Soc. Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one purpose and another for another; and when these partners and helpers are gathered together in one habitation the body of inhabitants is termed a State.

Ad. True.

Soc.  And they exchange with one another, and one gives, and another receives, under the idea that the exchange will be for their good.

Ad. Very true.

Soc. Then, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.

Ad. Of course.

Soc. Now the first and greatest of necessities is food, which is the condition of life and existence.

Ad.  Certainly.

Soc. The second is a dwelling, and the third clothing and the like.

Ad. True.

Soc. And now let us see how our city will be able to supply this great demand: We may suppose that one man is a  husbandman, another a builder, some one else a weaver --shall we add to them a shoemaker, or perhaps some other purveyor to our bodily wants?

Ad. Quite right.

Soc.  The barest notion of a State must include four or five men.

Ad. Clearly.

Soc. And how will they proceed? Will each bring the result of his labors into a common stock? --the individual husbandman, for example, producing for four, and laboring four times as long and as much as he need in the provision of food with which he supplies others as well as himself; or will he have nothing to do with others and not be at the trouble of producing for them, but provide for himself alone a fourth of the food in a fourth of the time, and in the remaining three-fourths of his time be employed in making a house or a coat or a pair of shoes, having no partnership with others, but supplying himself all his own wants?

Adeimantus thought that he should aim at producing food only and not at producing everything.

Soc. Probably that would be the better way; and when I hear you say this, I am myself reminded that we are not all alike; there are diversities of natures among us which are adapted to different occupations.

Ad. Very true.

Soc. And will you have a work better done when the workman has many occupations, or when he has only one?

Ad. When he has only one.

Socrates proceeds to construct the ideal city.  Following the principle that each should stick to a single craft, he distinguishes three classes.  The first, and largest class, is the workers–carpenters, farmers, shopkeepers, etc.  The second class is the professional soldiers, who defend the city and its laws.  The third, and smallest class, is the guardians, who make the laws and oversee the city.  Socrates argues that each person, by nature, belongs to one of these classes.  Much of Republic II-IV is devoted to the details of education for each of the classes.  Our selection from the Republic continues with Socrates describing justice as it applies to the ideal city, and later, to the individual person.

Soc.  I mean to begin with the assumption that our State, if rightly ordered, is perfect.

Gl.  That is most certain.

Soc. And being perfect, is therefore wise and valiant and temperate and just... .  And whichever of these qualities we find in the State, the one which is not found will be the residue?

Gl. Very good.

Soc. If there were four things, and we were searching for one of them, wherever it might be, the one sought for might be known to us from the first, and there would be no further trouble; or we might know the other three first, and then the fourth would clearly be the one left... .  And is not a similar method to be pursued about the virtues, which are also four in number?

Gl.  Clearly.

Soc. First among the virtues found in the State, wisdom comes into view, and in this I detect a certain peculiarity... .  The State which we have been describing is said to be wise as being good in counsel?

Gl.  Very true.

Soc. And good counsel is clearly a kind of knowledge, for not by ignorance, but by knowledge, do men counsel well?

Gl.   Clearly.

Soc.     And the kinds of knowledge in a State are many and diverse? ... There is the knowledge of the carpenter; but is that the sort of knowledge which gives a city the title of wise and good in counsel?

Gl. Certainly not; that would only give a city the reputation of skill in carpentering.

Soc. Then a city is not to be called wise because possessing a knowledge which counsels for the best about wooden implements? ... Nor by reason of a knowledge which advises about brazen pots, nor as possessing any other similar knowledge? ... Nor yet by reason of a knowledge which cultivates the earth; that would give the city the name of agricultural?

Gl. Yes.

Soc.  Well, and is there any knowledge in our recently founded State among any of the citizens which advises, not about any particular thing in the State, but about the whole, and considers how a State can best deal with itself and with other States?

Gl. There certainly is.

Soc.  And what is knowledge, and among whom is it found?

Gl.  It is the knowledge of the guardians, and found among those whom we were just now describing as perfect guardians.

Soc. And what is the name which the city derives from the possession of this sort of knowledge?

Gl. The name of good in counsel and truly wise.

Soc. And will there be in our city more of these true guardians or more smiths?

Gl.  The smiths, he replied, will be far more numerous.

Soc. Will not the guardians be the smallest of all the classes who receive a name from the profession of some kind of knowledge?

Gl. Much the smallest.

Soc. And so by reason of the smallest part or class, and of the knowledge which resides in this presiding and ruling part of itself, the whole State, being thus constituted according to nature, will be wise; and this, which has the only knowledge worthy to be called wisdom, has been ordained by nature to be of all classes the least... .  Thus, then, the nature and place in the State of one of the four virtues has somehow or other been discovered... .

Again, there is no difficulty in seeing the nature of courage; and in what part that quality resides which gives the name of courageous to the State... .  Every one who calls any State courageous or cowardly, will be thinking of the part which fights and goes out to war on the State's behalf.

Gl. No one, he replied, would ever think of any other.

Soc. The rest of the citizens may be courageous or may be cowardly but their courage or cowardice will not, as I conceive, have the effect of making the city either the one or the other. The city will be courageous in virtue of a portion of herself which preserves under all circumstances that opinion about the nature of things to be feared and not to be feared in which our legislator educated them; and this is what you term courage.

Gl.  I should like to hear what you are saying once more, for I do not think that I perfectly understand you.

Soc. I mean that courage is a kind of salvation... of the opinion respecting things to be feared, what they are and of what nature, which the law implants through education; and I mean by the words 'under all circumstances' to intimate that in pleasure or in pain, or under the influence of desire or fear, a man preserves, and does not lose this opinion.  Shall I give you an illustration?
... You know, I said, that dyers, when they want to dye wool for making the true sea-purple, begin by selecting their white color first; this they prepare and dress with much care and pains, in order that the white ground may take the purple hue in full perfection.  The dyeing then proceeds; and whatever is dyed in this manner becomes a fast color, and no washing either with lyes or without them can take away the bloom.  But, when the ground has not been duly prepared, you will have noticed how poor is the look either of purple or of any other color.

Gl. Yes, he said; I know that they have a washed-out and ridiculous appearance.

Soc. Then now, I said, you will understand what our object was in selecting our soldiers, and educating them in music and gymnastic; we were contriving influences which would prepare them to take the dye of the laws in perfection, and the color of their opinion about dangers and of every other opinion was to be indelibly fixed by their nurture and training, not to be washed away by such potent lyes as pleasure --mightier agent far in washing the soul than any soda or lye; or by sorrow, fear, and desire, the mightiest of all other solvents.  And this sort of universal saving   power of true opinion in conformity with law about real and false dangers I call and maintain to  be courage, unless you disagree.

Gl. But I agree; for I suppose that you mean to exclude mere uninstructed courage, such as that of a wild beast or of a slave --this, in your opinion, is not the courage which the law ordains, and ought to have another name.

Soc. Most certainly.

Gl. Then I may infer courage to be such as you describe?

Soc. Why, yes, you may, and if you add the words 'of a citizen,' you will not be far wrong; --hereafter, if you like, we will carry the examination further, but at present we are we w seeking not for courage but justice; and for the purpose of our enquiry we have said enough... .

Two virtues remain to be discovered in the State-first temperance, and then justice which is the end of our search... .  Now, can we find justice without troubling ourselves about temperance?

Gl.  I do not know how that can be accomplished, nor do I desire that justice should be brought to light and temperance lost sight of; and therefore I wish that you would do me the favor of considering temperance first.

Soc. Certainly, I replied, I should not be justified in refusing your request... . Yes, I will; and as far as I can at present see, the virtue of temperance has more of the nature of harmony and symphony than the preceding... .  Temperance is the ordering or controlling of certain pleasures and desires; this is curiously enough implied in the saying of 'a man being his own master' and other traces of the same notion may be found in language... .   There is something ridiculous in the expression 'master of himself'; for the master is also the servant and the servant the master; and in all these modes of speaking the same person is denoted... . The meaning is, I believe, that in the human soul there is a better and also a worse principle; and when the better has the worse under control, then a man is said to be master of himself; and this is a term of praise: but when,    owing to evil education or association, the better principle, which is also the smaller, is overwhelmed by the greater mass of the worse --in this case he is blamed and is called the slave of self and unprincipled... .

And now, look at our newly created State, and there you will find one of these two conditions realized; for the State, as you will acknowledge, may be justly called master of itself, if the words 'temperance' and 'self-mastery' truly express the rule of the better part over the worse... .  Let me further note that the manifold and complex pleasures and desires and pains are generally found in children and women and servants, and in the freemen so called who are of the lowest and more numerous class... .  Whereas the simple and moderate desires which follow reason, and are under the guidance of mind and true opinion, are to be found only in a few, and those the best born and best educated... . These two, as you may perceive, have a place in our State; and the meaner desires of the many are held down by the virtuous desires and wisdom of the few.

Gl.    That I perceive.

Soc. Then if there be any city which may be described as master of its own pleasures and desires, and master of itself, ours may claim such a designation?

Gl. Certainly.

Soc. It may also be called temperate, and for the same reasons?   ... And if there be any State in which rulers and subjects will be agreed as to the question who are to rule, that again will be our State?

Gl.  Undoubtedly.

Soc. And the citizens being thus agreed among themselves, in which class will temperance be found --in the rulers or in the subjects?

Gl.  In both, as I should imagine.

Soc. Do you observe that we were not far wrong in our guess that temperance was a sort of harmony? ... Because temperance is unlike courage and wisdom, each of which resides in a part only, the one making the State wise and the other valiant; not so temperance, which extends to the whole, and runs through all the notes of the scale, and produces a harmony of the weaker and the stronger and the middle class, whether you suppose them to be stronger or weaker in wisdom or power or numbers or wealth, or anything else.  Most truly then may we deem temperance to be the agreement of the naturally superior and inferior, as to the right to rule of either, both in states and individuals... .  And so, we may consider three out of the four virtues to have been discovered in our State.  The last of those qualities which make a state virtuous must be justice, if we only knew what that was... .

The time then has arrived, Glaucon, when, like huntsmen, we should surround the cover, and look sharp that justice does not steal away, and pass out of sight and escape us; for beyond a doubt she is somewhere in this country: watch therefore and strive to catch a sight of her, and if you see her first, let me know.

Gl. Would that I could! but you should regard me rather as a follower who has just eyes enough to, see what you show him --that is about as much as I am good for.

Soc. Offer up a prayer with me and follow.

Gl. I will, but you must show me the way.

Soc. Here is no path, I said, and the wood is dark and perplexing; still we must push on... .  Here I saw something: Halloo! I said, I begin to perceive a track, and I believe that the quarry will not escape.

Gl.  Good news, he said.

Soc. Truly, I said, we are stupid fellows... . At the beginning of our enquiry, ages ago, there was justice tumbling out at our feet, and we never saw her; nothing could be more ridiculous.  Like people who go about looking for what they have in their hands --that was the way with us --we looked not at what we were seeking, but at what was far off in the distance; and therefore, I suppose, we missed her... .   I mean to say that in reality for a long time past we have been talking of justice, and have failed to recognize her.

Gl. I grow impatient at the length of your exordium.

Soc. Well then, tell me, I said, whether I am right or not: You remember the original principle which we were always laying down at the foundation of the State, that one man should practice one thing only, the thing to which his nature was best adapted; --now justice is this principle or a part of it.

Gl. Yes, we often said that one man should do one thing only.

Soc. Further, we affirmed that justice was doing one's own business, and not being a busybody; we said so again and again, and many others have said the same to us... .  Then to do one's own business in a certain way may be assumed to be justice. Can you tell me whence I derive this inference?

Gl. I cannot, but I should like to be told.

Soc. Because I think that this is the only virtue which remains in the State when the other virtues of temperance and courage and wisdom are abstracted; and, that this is the ultimate cause and condition of the existence of all of them, and while remaining in them is also their preservative; and we were saying that if the three were discovered by us, justice would be the fourth or remaining one... .  If we are asked to determine which of these four qualities by its presence contributes most to the excellence of the State, whether the agreement of rulers and subjects, or the preservation in the soldiers of the opinion which the law ordains about the true nature of dangers, or wisdom and watchfulness in the rulers, or whether this other which I am mentioning, and which is found in children and women, slave and freeman, artisan, ruler, subject, --the quality, I mean, of every one doing his own work, and not being a busybody, would claim the palm --the question is not so easily answered.

Gl. Certainly, he replied, there would be a difficulty in saying which.

Soc. Then the power of each individual in the State to do his own work appears to compete with the other political virtues, wisdom, temperance, courage... .   And the virtue which enters into this competition is justice?

Gl.  Exactly.

Soc. Let us look at the question from another point of view: Are not the rulers in a State those to whom you would entrust the office of determining suits at law?...  And are suits decided on any other ground but that a man may neither take what is another's, nor be deprived of what is his own?

Gl.  Yes; that is their principle... .

Soc. Then on this view also justice will be admitted to be the having and doing what is a man's own, and belongs to him?

Gl.  Very true.

Soc. Think, now, and say whether you agree with me or not. Suppose a carpenter to be doing the business of a cobbler, or a cobbler of a carpenter; and suppose them to exchange their implements or their duties, or the same person to be doing the work of both, or whatever be the change; do you think that any great harm would result to the State?

Gl. Not much.

Soc.  But when the cobbler or any other man whom nature designed to be a trader, having his heart lifted up by wealth or strength or the number of his followers, or any like advantage, attempts to force his way into the class of warriors, or a warrior into that of legislators and guardians, for which he is unfitted, and either to take the implements or the duties of the other; or when one man is trader, legislator, and warrior all in one, then I think you will agree with me in saying that this interchange and this meddling of one with another is the ruin of the State... .     Seeing then, I said, that there are three distinct classes, any meddling of one with another, or the change of one into another, is the greatest harm to the State, and may be most justly termed evil-doing?

Gl. Precisely.

Soc. And the greatest degree of evil-doing to one's own city would be termed by you injustice?

Gl. Certainly.

Soc. This then is injustice; and on the other hand when the trader, the auxiliary, and the guardian each do their own business, that is justice, and will make the city just... .  We will not be over-positive as yet; but if, on trial, this conception of justice be verified in the individual as well as in the State, there will be no longer any room for doubt; if it be not verified, we must have a fresh enquiry.

First let us complete the old investigation, which we began, as you remember, under the impression that, if we could previously examine justice on the larger scale, there would be less difficulty in discerning her in the individual.  That larger example appeared to be the State, and accordingly we constructed as good a one as we could, knowing well that in the good State justice would be found.  Let the discovery which we made be now applied to the individual --if they agree, we shall be satisfied; or, if there be a difference in the individual, we will come back to the State and have another trial of the theory.  The friction of the two when rubbed together may possibly strike a light in which justice will shine forth, and the vision which is then revealed we will fix in our souls... .

I proceeded to ask: When two things, a greater and less, are called by the same name, are they like or unlike in so far as they are called the same?

Gl. Like, he replied.

Soc. The just man then, if we regard the idea of justice only, will be like the just State? ... And a State was thought by us to be just when the three classes in the State severally did their own business; and also thought to be temperate and valiant and wise by reason of certain other affections and qualities of these same classes?

Gl. True.

Soc. And so of the individual; we may assume that he has the same three principles in his own soul which are found in the State; and he may be rightly described in the same terms, because he is affected in the same manner?

Gl. Certainly, he said.

Soc. Once more then, O my friend, we have alighted upon an easy question --whether the soul has these three principles or not? ... Must we not acknowledge, that in each of us there are the same principles and habits which there are in the State; and that from the individual they pass into the State? --how else can they come there?  Take the quality of passion or spirit; --it would be ridiculous to imagine that this quality, when found in States, is not derived from the individuals who are supposed to possess it, e.g. the Thracians, Scythians, and in general the northern nations; and the same may be said of the love of knowledge, which is the special characteristic of our part of the world, or of the love of money, which may, with equal truth, be attributed to the Phoenicians and Egyptians... .

But the question is not quite so easy when we proceed to ask whether these principles are three or one; whether, that is to say, we learn with one part of our nature, are angry with another, and with a third part desire the satisfaction of our natural appetites; or whether the whole soul comes into play in each sort of action --to determine that is the difficulty... .

Then let us now try and determine whether they are the same or different... .  The same thing clearly cannot act or be acted upon in the same part or in relation to the same thing at the same time, in contrary ways; and therefore whenever this contradiction occurs in things apparently the same, we know that they are really not the same, but different.

Well, I said, would you not allow that assent and dissent, desire and aversion, attraction and repulsion, are all of them opposites, whether they are regarded as active or passive (for that makes no difference in the fact of their opposition)?

Gl. Yes, they are opposites.

Soc. Well, and hunger and thirst, and the desires in general, and again willing and wishing, --all these you would refer to the classes already mentioned. You would say --would you not? --that the soul of him who desires is seeking after the object of his desires; or that he is drawing to himself the thing which he wishes to possess: or again, when a person wants anything to be given him, his mind, longing for the realization of his desires, intimates his wish to have it by a nod of assent, as if he had been asked a question?

Gl. Very true.

Soc. And what would you say of unwillingness and dislike and the absence of desire; should not these be referred to the opposite class of repulsion and rejection?

Gl. Certainly.

Soc. Admitting this to be true of desire generally, let us suppose a particular class of desires, and out of these we will select hunger and thirst, as they are termed, which are the most obvious of them?...  The object of one is food, and of the other drink?

Gl. Yes.

Soc. If you suppose something which pulls a thirsty soul away from drink, that must be different from the thirsty principle which draws him like a beast to drink; for, as we were saying, the same thing cannot at the same time with the same part of itself act in contrary ways about the same... .
No more than you can say that the hands of the archer push and pull the bow at the same time, but what you say is that one hand pushes and the other pulls.

Gl. Exactly so.

Soc. And might a man be thirsty, and yet unwilling to drink?

Gl.  Yes, it constantly happens.

Soc. And in such a case what is one to say? Would you not say that there was something in the soul bidding a man to drink, and something else forbidding him, which is other and stronger than the principle which bids him? ...  And the forbidding principle is derived from reason, and that which bids and attracts proceeds from passion and disease?

Gl. Clearly.

Soc. Then we may fairly assume that they are two, and that they differ from one another; the one with which man reasons, we may call the rational principle of the soul, the other, with which he loves and hungers and thirsts and feels the flutterings of any other desire, may be termed the irrational or appetitive, the ally of sundry pleasures and satisfactions... .

Then let us finally determine that there are two principles existing in the soul. And what of passion, or spirit? Is it a third, or akin to one of the preceding?

Gl.  I should be inclined to say --akin to desire.

Soc. Well, I said, there is a story which I remember to have heard, and in which I put faith. The story is, that Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus, under the north wall on the outside, observed some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He felt a desire to see them, and also a dread and abhorrence of them; for a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but at length the desire got the better of him; and forcing them open, he ran up to the dead bodies, saying, Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.

Gl. I have heard the story myself, he said.

Soc.  The moral of the tale is, that anger at times goes to war with desire, as though they were two distinct things... .  And are there not many other cases in which we observe that when a man's desires violently prevail over his reason, he reviles himself, and is angry at the violence within him, and that in this struggle, which is like the struggle of factions in a State, his spirit is on the side of his reason; --but for the passionate or spirited element to take part with the desires when reason that she should not be opposed, is a sort of thing which thing which I believe that you never observed occurring in yourself, nor, as I should imagine, in any one else?

Gl. Certainly not.

Soc. Suppose that a man thinks he has done a wrong to another, the nobler he is the less able is he to feel indignant at any suffering, such as hunger, or cold, or any other pain which the injured person may inflict upon him --these he deems to be just, and, as I say, his anger refuses to be excited by them... .  But when he thinks that he is the sufferer of the wrong, then he boils and chafes, and is on the side of what he believes to be justice; and because he suffers hunger or cold or other pain he is only the more determined to persevere and conquer.  His noble spirit will not be quelled until he either slays or is slain; or until he hears the voice of the shepherd, that is, reason, bidding his dog bark no more.

Gl. The illustration is perfect; and in our State, as we were saying, the soldiers were to be dogs, and to hear the voice of the rulers, who are their shepherds.

Soc. I perceive that you quite understand me; there is, however, a further point which I wish you to consider... .  You remember that passion or spirit appeared at first sight to be a kind of desire, but now we should say quite the contrary; for in the conflict of the soul spirit is arrayed on the side of the rational principle... .  But a further question arises: Is passion different from reason also, or only a kind of reason; in which latter case, instead of three principles in the soul, there will only be two, the rational and the concupiscent; or rather, as the State was composed of three classes, traders, soldiers, guardians, so may there not be in the individual soul a third element which is passion or spirit, and when not corrupted by bad education is the natural auxiliary of reason

Gl. Yes, there must be a third.

Soc. Yes, if passion, which has already been shown to be different from desire, turn out also to be different from reason.

Gl. But that is easily proved: --We may observe even in young children that they are full of spirit almost as soon as they are born, whereas some of them never seem to attain to the use of reason, and most of them late enough.

Soc. Excellent, I said, and you may see passion equally in brute animals, which is a further proof of the truth of what you are saying.

And so, after much tossing, we have reached land, and are fairly agreed that the same principles which exist in the State exist also in the individual, and that they are three in number... .  Must we not then infer that the individual is wise in the same way, and in virtue of the same quality which makes the State wise?

Gl. Certainly.

Soc. Also that the same quality which constitutes courage in the State constitutes courage in the individual, and that both the State and the individual bear the same relation to all the other virtues? ...  And the individual will be acknowledged by us to be just in the same way in which the State is just?

Gl. That follows, of course.

Soc. We cannot but remember that the justice of the State consisted in each of the three classes doing the work of its own class?

Gl.  We are not very likely to have forgotten.

Soc. We must recollect that the individual in whom the several qualities of his nature do their own work will be just, and will do his own work?

Gl. Yes, we must remember that too.

Soc. And ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and has the care of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or spirited principle to be the subject and ally? ...  And, as we were saying, the united influence of music and gymnastic will bring them into accord, nerving and sustaining the reason with noble words and lessons, and moderating and soothing and civilizing the wildness of passion by harmony and rhythm?

Gl. Quite true.

Soc.  And these two, thus nurtured and educated, and having learned truly to know their own functions, will rule over the concupiscent, which in each of us is the largest part of the soul and by nature most insatiable of gain; over this they will keep guard, lest, waxing great and strong with the fulness of bodily pleasures, as they are termed, the concupiscent soul, no longer confined to her own sphere, should attempt to enslave and rule those who are not her natural-born subjects, and overturn the whole life of man?

Gl.  Very true.

Soc. Both together will they not be the best defenders of the whole soul and the whole body against attacks from without; the one counseling, and the other fighting under his leader, and courageously executing his commands and counsels? ...  And he is to be deemed courageous whose spirit retains in pleasure and in pain the commands of reason about what he ought or ought not to fear?

Gl.  Right.

Soc. And him we call wise who has in him that little part which rules, and which proclaims these commands; that part too being supposed to have a knowledge of what is for the interest of each of the three parts and of the whole?

Gl.  Assuredly.

Soc. And would you not say that he is temperate who has these same elements in friendly harmony, in whom the one ruling principle of reason, and the two subject ones of spirit and desire are equally agreed that reason ought to rule, and do not rebel?

Gl.  Certainly, that is the true account of temperance whether in the State or individual.

Soc.  And surely, we have explained again and again how and by virtue of what quality a man will be just... .  And is justice dimmer in the individual, and is her form different, or is she the same which we found her to be in the State?

Gl. There is no difference in my opinion.

Soc. Because, if any doubt is still lingering in our minds, a few commonplace instances will satisfy us of the truth of what I am saying... .  If the case is put to us, must we not admit that the just State, or the man who is trained in the principles of such a State, will be less likely than the unjust to make away with a deposit of gold or silver?  Would any one deny this?

Gl.  No one.

Soc.   Will the just man or citizen ever be guilty of sacrilege or theft, or treachery either to his friends or to his country? ... Neither will he ever break faith where there have been oaths or agreements?

Gl.  Impossible.

Soc. No one will be less likely to commit adultery, or to dishonor his father and mother, or to fall in his religious duties?

Gl. No one.

Soc.     The reason is that each part of him is doing its own business, whether in ruling or being ruled...  Are you satisfied then that the quality which makes such men and such states is justice, or do you hope to discover some other?

Gl.  Not I, indeed.

Soc.  Then our dream has been realized; and the suspicion which we entertained at the beginning of our work of construction, that some divine power must have conducted us to a primary form of justice, has now been verified?

Gl.  Yes, certainly.

Soc.  And the division of labor which required the carpenter and the shoemaker and the rest of the citizens to be doing each his own business, and not another's, was a shadow of justice, and for that reason it was of use... .  But in reality justice was such as we were describing, being concerned however, not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concern of man: for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others, --he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the three principles within him, which may be compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals --when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or private business; always thinking and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition, just and good action, and the    knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance.

Gl. You have said the exact truth, Socrates.

Soc. Very good; and if we were to affirm that we had discovered the just man and the just State, and the nature of  justice in each of them, we should not be telling a falsehood?

Gl.  Most certainly not... .

Soc. And now, injustice has to be considered... .  Must not injustice be a strife which arises among the three principles --a meddlesomeness, and interference, and rising up of a part of the soul against the whole, an assertion of unlawful authority, which is made by a rebellious     subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal, --what is all this confusion and delusion but injustice, and intemperance and cowardice and ignorance, and every form of vice?

Gl. Exactly so.

Soc.  And if the nature of justice and injustice be known, then the meaning of acting unjustly and being unjust, or, again, of acting justly, will also be perfectly clear? ... They are like disease and health; being in the soul just what disease and health are in the body. ... That which is healthy causes health, and that which is unhealthy causes disease... .  And just actions cause justice, and unjust actions cause injustice?  And the creation of health is the institution of a natural order and government of one by another in the parts of the body; and the creation of disease is the production of a state of things at variance with this natural order? ... And is not the creation of justice the institution of a natural order and government of one by another in the parts of the soul, and the creation of injustice the production of a state of things at variance with the natural order?

Gl.  Exactly so.

Soc. Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice the disease and weakness and deformity of the same? ...  And do not good practices lead to virtue, and evil practices to vice?

Gl. Assuredly.

Soc. Still our old question of the comparative advantage of justice and injustice has not been answered: Which is the more profitable, to be just and act justly and practice virtue, whether seen or unseen of gods and men, or to be unjust and act unjustly, if only unpunished and unreformed?

Gl. In my judgment, Socrates, the question has now become ridiculous. We know that, when the bodily constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with all kinds of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all power; and shall we be told that when the very essence of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, life is still worth having to a man, if only he be allowed to do whatever he likes with the single exception that he is not to acquire justice and virtue, or to escape from injustice and vice; assuming them both to be such as we have described?

Soc. Yes, I said, the question is, as you say, ridiculous... .

Encouraged by Glaucon, Adeimantus, and Thrasymachus, Socrates begins to spell out his views about the education of women.

Soc. ... Many more doubts arise about this than about our previous conclusions. For the practicability of what is said may be doubted; and looked at in another point of view, whether the scheme, if ever so practicable, would be for the best, is also doubtful. Hence I feel a reluctance      to approach the subject, lest our aspiration, my dear friend, should turn out to be a dream only....
The encouragement which you offer would have been all very well had I myself believed that I knew what I was talking about: to declare the truth about matters of high interest which a man honors and loves among wise men who love him need occasion no fear or faltering in his mind; but to carry on an argument when you are yourself only a hesitating enquirer, which is my condition, is a dangerous and slippery thing; and the danger is not that I shall be laughed at (of which the fear would be childish), but that I shall miss the truth where I have most need to be sure of my footing, and drag my friends after me in my fall. And I pray Nemesis not to visit upon me the words which I am going to utter. For I do indeed believe that to be an involuntary homicide is a less crime than to be a deceiver about beauty or goodness or justice in the matter of laws. And that is a risk which I would rather run among enemies than among friends, and therefore you do well to encourage me.

Gl. Well then, Socrates, in case you and your argument do us any serious injury you shall be acquitted beforehand of the crime and shall not be held to be a deceiver; take courage then and speak.

Soc. Well, the law says that when a man is acquitted he is free from guilt, and what holds at law may hold in argument....
     ... I suppose that I must retrace my steps and say what I perhaps ought to have said before in the proper place. The part of the men has been played out, and now properly enough comes the turn of the women. Of them I will proceed to speak, and the more readily since I am invited by you.
 For men born and educated like our citizens, the only way, in my opinion, of arriving at a right conclusion about the possession and use of women and children is to follow the path on which we originally started, when we said that the men were to be the guardians and watchdogs of the herd....
     Let us further suppose the birth and education of our women to be subject to similar or nearly similar regulations; then we shall see whether the result accords with our design.

Gl.  What do you mean?

Soc.  What I mean may be put into the form of a question, I said: Are dogs divided into “hes” and “shes,” or do they both share equally in hunting and in keeping watch and in the other duties of dogs? or do we entrust to the males the entire and exclusive care of the flocks, while we leave the females at home, under the idea that the bearing and suckling their puppies is labor enough for them?

Gl. No, he said, they share alike; the only difference between them is that the males are stronger and the females weaker.

Soc. But can you use different animals for the same purpose, unless they are bred and fed in the same way?

Gl. You cannot.

Soc.  Then, if women are to have the same duties as men, they must have the same nurture and education.... The education which was assigned to the men was music and gymnastic....  Then women must be taught music and gymnastic and also the art of war, which they must practice like the men?

Gl.  That is the inference, I suppose.

Soc.     I should rather expect, I said, that several of our proposals, if they are carried out, being unusual, may appear ridiculous....  Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of beauty, any more than the enthusiastic old men who in spite of wrinkles and ugliness continue to frequent the gymnasia.

Gl.  Yes, indeed, he said: according to present notions the proposal would be thought ridiculous.

Soc.  But then, I said, as we have determined to speak our minds, we must not fear the jests of the wits which will be directed against this sort of innovation; how they will talk of women's attainments both in music and gymnastic, and above all about their wearing armor and riding upon horseback!

 Yet having begun we must go forward to the rough places of the law; at the same time begging of these gentlemen for once in their life to be serious. Not long ago, as we shall remind them, the Hellenes were of the opinion, which is still generally received among the barbarians, that the sight of a naked man was ridiculous and improper; and when first the Cretans and then the Lacedaemonians introduced the custom, the wits of that day might equally have ridiculed the innovation....  But when experience showed that to let all things be uncovered was far better than to cover them up, and the ludicrous effect to the outward eye vanished before the better principle which reason asserted, then the man was perceived to be a fool who directs the shafts of his ridicule at any other sight but that of folly and vice, or seriously inclines to weigh the beautiful by any other standard but that of the good.

 First, then, whether the question is to be put in jest or in earnest, let us come to an understanding about the nature of woman: Is she capable of sharing either wholly or partially in the actions of men, or not at all? And is the art of war one of those arts in which she can or can not share? That will be the best way of commencing the enquiry, and will probably lead to the fairest conclusion.

Gl.  That will be much the best way.

Soc.  Shall we take the other side first and begin by arguing against ourselves; in this manner the adversary’s position will not be undefended.... Then let us put a speech into the mouths of our opponents. They will say: ‘Socrates and Glaucon, no adversary need convict you, for you yourselves, at the first foundation of the State, admitted the principle that everybody was to do the one work suited to his own nature.’ And certainly, if I am not mistaken, such an admission was made by us. ‘And do not the natures of men and women differ very much indeed?’ And we shall reply: Of course they do. Then we shall be asked, ‘Whether the tasks assigned to men and to women should not be different, and such as are agreeable to their different natures?’ Certainly they should. ‘But if so, have you not fallen into a serious inconsistency in saying that men and women, whose natures are so entirely different, ought to perform the same actions?’ –What defense will you make for us, my good Sir, against any one who offers these objections?

Gl. That is not an easy question to answer when asked suddenly; and I shall and I do beg of you to draw out the case on our side.

Soc. These are the objections, Glaucon, and there are many others of a like kind, which I foresaw long ago; they made me afraid and reluctant to take in hand any law about the possession and nurture of women and children.

Gl.     By Zeus, the problem to be solved is anything but easy.

Soc. Why yes, I said, but the fact is that when a man is out of his depth, whether he has fallen into a little swimming bath or into mid-ocean, he has to swim all the same....  And must not we swim and try to reach the shore: we will hope that Arion’s dolphin or some other miraculous help may save us? ....

 Well then, let us see if any way of escape can be found. We acknowledged --did we not? that different natures ought to have different pursuits, and that men's and women's natures are different. And now what are we saying? –that different natures ought to have the same pursuits, –this is the inconsistency which is charged upon us.... Verily, Glaucon, glorious is the power of the art of contradiction!

Gl.  Why do you say so?

Soc.  Because I think that many a man falls into the practice against his will. When he thinks that he is reasoning he is really disputing, just because he cannot define and divide, and so know that of which he is speaking; and he will  pursue a merely verbal opposition in the spirit of contention and not of fair discussion.... We valiantly and pugnaciously insist upon the verbal truth, that different natures ought to have different pursuits, but we never considered at all what was the meaning of sameness or difference of nature, or why we distinguished them when we assigned different pursuits to different natures and the same to the same natures..... Suppose that by way of illustration we were to ask the question whether there is not an opposition in nature between bald men and hairy men; and if this is admitted by us, then, if bald men are cobblers, we should forbid     the hairy men to be cobblers, and conversely?

Gl.  That would be a jest.

Soc.  Yes, I said, a jest; and why? because we never meant when we constructed the State, that the opposition of natures should extend to every difference, but only to those differences which affected the pursuit in which the individual is engaged; we should have argued, for example, that a physician and one who is in mind a physician may be said to have the same nature.... Whereas the physician and the carpenter have different natures....  And if the male and female sex appear to differ in their fitness for any art or pursuit, we should say that such pursuit or art ought to be assigned to one or the other of them; but if the difference consists only in women bearing and men begetting children, this does not amount to a proof that a woman differs from a man in respect of   the sort of education she should receive; and we shall therefore continue to maintain that our guardians and their wives ought to have the same pursuits.

Gl.  Very true.

Soc. Next, we shall ask our opponent how, in reference to any of the pursuits or arts of civic life, the nature of a woman differs from that of a man? ... And perhaps he, like yourself, will reply that to give a sufficient answer on the instant is not easy; but after a little reflection there is no difficulty.... Suppose then that we invite him to accompany us in the argument, and then we may hope to show him that there is nothing peculiar in the constitution of women which would affect them in the administration of the State.... Let us say to him: Come now, and we will ask you a question: --when you spoke of a nature gifted or not gifted in any respect, did you mean to say that one man will acquire a thing easily, another with difficulty; a little learning will lead the one to discover a great deal; whereas the other, after much study and application, no sooner learns than     he forgets; or again, did you mean, that the one has a body which is a good servant to his mind, while the body of  the other is a hindrance to him?-would not these be the sort of differences which distinguish the man gifted by nature from the one who is ungifted?  And can you mention any pursuit of mankind in which the male sex has not all these gifts and qualities in a higher     degree than the female? Need I waste time in speaking of the art of weaving, and the management of pancakes and preserves, in which womankind does really appear to be great, and in which for her to be beaten by a man is of all things the most absurd?

Gl. You are quite right, he replied, in maintaining the general inferiority of the female sex: although many women are in many things superior to many men, yet on the whole what you say is true.

Soc.  And if so, my friend, I said, there is no special faculty of administration in a state which a woman has because she is a woman, or which a man has by virtue of his sex, but the gifts of nature are alike diffused in both; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, but in all of them a woman is inferior to a man....  Then are we to impose all our enactments on men and none of them on women?  One woman has a gift of healing, another not; one is a musician, and another has no music in her nature.... And one woman has a turn for gymnastic and military exercises, and another is unwarlike and hates gymnastics.... And one woman is a philosopher, and another is an enemy of philosophy; one has spirit, and another is without spirit.... Then one woman will have the temper of a guardian, and another not. Was not the selection of the male guardians determined by differences of this sort?

Gl.  Yes.

Soc.  Men and women alike possess the qualities which make a guardian; they differ only in their comparative strength or weakness.... And those women who have such qualities are to be selected as the companions and colleagues of men who have similar qualities and whom they resemble in capacity and in character.... And ought not the same natures to have the same pursuits?

Gl.  They ought.

Soc.  Then, as we were saying before, there is nothing unnatural in assigning music and gymnastic to the wives of the guardians–to that point we come round again....  The law which we then enacted was agreeable to nature, and therefore not an impossibility or mere aspiration; and the contrary practice, which prevails at present, is in reality a violation of nature.

Gl.  That appears to be true.

Soc.   We had to consider, first, whether our proposals were possible, and secondly whether they were the most beneficial.... And the possibility has been acknowledged.... The very great benefit has next to be established?

Gl.  Quite so.

Soc.  You will admit that the same education which makes a man a good guardian will make a woman a good guardian; for their original nature is the same....Would you say that all men are equal in excellence, or is one man better than another?

Gl.  The latter.

Soc.  And in the commonwealth which we were founding do you conceive the guardians who have been brought up on our model system to be more perfect men, or the cobblers whose education has been cobbling?

Gl.  What a ridiculous question!

Soc.  You have answered me, I replied: Well, and may we not further say that our guardians are the best of our citizens? ... And will not their wives be the best women? ... And can there be anything better for the interests of the State than that the men and women of a State should be as good as possible?

Gl.  There can be nothing better.

Soc.  And this is what the arts of music and gymnastic, when present in such manner as we have described, will accomplish? ... Then we have made an enactment not only possible but in the highest degree beneficial to the State.... Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be their robe, and let them share in the toils of war and the defense of their country; only in the distribution of labors the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same. And as for the man who laughs at naked women exercising their bodies from the best of motives, in his laughter he is plucking “A fruit of unripe wisdom,” and he himself is ignorant of what he is laughing at, or what he is about;–for that is, and ever will be, the best of sayings, “That the useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base.”

Gl.  Very true....

Socrates proceeds to argue that wives and children be held in common in order to increase the unity of the state.  Our selection jumps to Socrates’ consideration of the question “Can the Ideal State Exist?”

Gl. But still I must say, Socrates, that if you are allowed to go on in this way you will entirely forget the other question which at the commencement of this discussion you thrust aside: --Is such an order of things possible, and how, if at all? ... .

Soc. If I loiter for a moment, you instantly make a raid upon me, and have no mercy... .  Let me begin by reminding you that we found our way hither in the search after justice and injustice.

Gl. True, he replied; but what of that?

Soc. I was only going to ask whether, if we have discovered them, we are to require that the just man should in nothing fail of absolute justice; or may we be satisfied with an approximation, and the attainment in him of a higher degree of justice than is to be found in other men?

Gl. The approximation will be enough.

Soc. We are enquiring into the nature of absolute justice and into the character of the perfectly just, and into injustice and the perfectly unjust, that we might have an ideal.  We were to look at these in order that we might judge of our own happiness and unhappiness according to the standard which they exhibited and the degree in which we resembled them, but not with any view of showing that they could exist in fact.

Gl.  True.

Soc. Would a painter be any the worse because, after having delineated with consummate art an ideal of a perfectly beautiful man, he was unable to show that any such man could ever have existed?

Gl. He would be none the worse.

Soc. Well, and were we not creating an ideal of a perfect State? ...  And is our theory a worse theory because we are unable to prove the possibility of a city being ordered in the manner described?

Gl. Surely not.

Soc. That is the truth. But if, at your request, I am to try and show how and under what conditions the possibility is highest, I must ask you, having this in view, to repeat your former admissions...   I want to know whether ideals are ever fully realized in language? Does not the word express more than the fact, and must not the actual, whatever a man may think, always, in the nature of things, fall short of the truth? What do you say?

Gl. I agree.

Soc. Then you must not insist on my proving that the actual State will in every respect coincide with the ideal: if we are only able to discover how a city may be governed nearly as we proposed, you will admit that we have discovered the possibility which you demand; and will be contented. I am sure that I should be contented --will not you?

Gl. Yes, I will.

Soc. Let me next endeavor to show what is that fault in States which is the cause of their present maladministration, and what is the least change which will enable a State to pass into the truer form; and let the change, if possible, be of one thing only, or if not, of two; at any rate, let the changes be as few and slight as possible... .  I think, that there might be a reform of the State if only one change were made, which is not a slight or easy though still a possible one.

Gl. What is it?

Soc. Now then, I go to meet that which I liken to the greatest of the waves; yet shall the word be spoken, even though the wave break and drown me in laughter and dishonor; and do you mark my words... . Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils, --nor the human race, as I believe, --and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.  Such was the thought, my dear Glaucon, which I would fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant; for to be convinced that in no other State can there be happiness private or public is indeed a hard thing.

Gl. Socrates, what do you mean? I would have you consider that the word which you have uttered is one at which numerous persons, and very respectable persons too, in a figure pulling off their coats all in a moment, and seizing any weapon that comes to hand, will run at you might and main, before you know where you are, intending to do heaven knows what; and if you don't prepare an answer, and put yourself in motion, you will be prepared by their fine wits,' and no mistake....

Soc. I ought to try..... And I think that, if there is to be a chance of our escaping, we must explain to them whom we mean when we say that philosophers are to rule in the State; then we shall be able to defend ourselves:  There will be discovered to be some natures who ought to study philosophy and to be leaders in the State; and others who are not born to be philosophers, and are meant to be followers rather than leaders.

Soc. I must first come to an understanding with you, and remind you of what I have mentioned in the course of this discussion, and at many other times... . The old story, that there is a many beautiful and a many good, and so of other things which we describe and define; to all of them 'many' is applied... . And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term 'many' is applied there is an absolute; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each... . The many, as we say, are seen but not known, and the ideas are known but not seen.

Gl. Exactly.

Soc. You have to imagine, then, that there are two ruling powers, and that one of them is set over the intellectual world,  the other over the visible... . May I suppose that you have this distinction of the visible and intelligible fixed in your mind?

Gl. I have.

Soc. Now take a line which has been cut into two unequal parts, and divide each of them again in the same proportion, and suppose the two main divisions to answer, one to the visible and the other to the intelligible, and then compare the subdivisions in respect of their clearness and want of clearness, and you will find that the first section in the sphere of the visible consists of images. And by images I mean, in the first place, shadows, and in the second  place, reflections in water and in solid, smooth and polished bodies and the like... .  Imagine, now, the other section, of which this is only the resemblance, to include the animals which we see, and everything that grows or is made.

Gl. Very good.
 

Soc. Would you not admit that both the sections of this division have different degrees of truth, and that the copy is to the original as the sphere of opinion is to the sphere of knowledge?

Gl. Most undoubtedly.

Soc. Next proceed to consider the manner in which the sphere of the intellectual is to be divided... .  There are two subdivisions, in the lower or which the soul uses the figures given by the former division as images; the enquiry can only be hypothetical, and instead of going upwards to a principle descends to the other end; in the higher of the two, the soul passes out of hypotheses, and goes up to a principle which is above hypotheses, making no use of images as in the former case, but proceeding only in and through the ideas themselves.

Gl.  I do not quite understand your meaning.

Soc. Then I will try again; you will understand me better when I have made some preliminary remarks.  You are aware that students of geometry, arithmetic, and the kindred sciences assume the odd and the even and the figures and three kinds of angles and the like in their several branches of science; these are their hypotheses, which they and everybody are supposed to know, and therefore they do not deign to give any account of them either to themselves or others; but they begin with them, and go on until they arrive at last, and in a consistent manner, at their conclusion?

Gl. Yes, I know.

Soc. And do you not know also that although they make use of the visible forms and reason about them, they are thinking not of these, but of the ideals which they resemble; not of the figures which they draw, but of the absolute square and the absolute diameter, and so on --the forms which they draw or make, and which have shadows and reflections in water of their own, are converted by them into images, but they are really seeking to behold the things themselves, which can only be seen with the eye of the mind?

Gl. That is true.

Soc. And of this kind I spoke as the intelligible, although in the search after it the soul is compelled to use hypotheses; not ascending to a first principle, because she is unable to rise above the region of hypothesis, but employing the objects of which the shadows below are resemblances in their turn as images, they having in relation to the shadows and reflections of them a greater distinctness, and therefore a higher value.

Gl. I understand that you are speaking of the province of geometry and the sister arts.

Soc. And when I speak of the other division of the intelligible, you will understand me to speak of that other sort of knowledge which reason herself attains by the power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as first principles, but only as hypotheses --that is to say, as steps and points of departure into a world which is above hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole; and clinging to this and then to that which depends on this, by successive steps she descends again without the aid of any sensible object, from ideas, through ideas, and in ideas she ends.

Gl. I understand you; not perfectly, for you seem to me to be describing a task which is really tremendous; but, at any rate, I understand you to say that knowledge and being, which the science of dialectic contemplates, are clearer than the notions of the arts, as they are termed, which proceed from hypotheses only: these are also contemplated by the understanding, and not by the senses: yet, because they start from hypotheses and do not ascend to a principle, those who contemplate them appear to you not to exercise the higher reason upon them, although when a first principle is added to them they are cognizable by the higher reason. And the habit which is  concerned with geometry and the cognate sciences I suppose that you would term understanding and not reason, as being intermediate between opinion and reason.

Soc. You have quite conceived my meaning, I said; and now, corresponding to these four divisions, let there be four  faculties in the soul-reason answering to the highest, understanding to the second, belief (or conviction) to the third, and perception of shadows to the last-and let there be a scale of them, and let us suppose that the several faculties  have clearness in the same degree that their objects have truth.

Gl. I understand, he replied, and give my assent, and accept your arrangement.

Soc. And now, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads.  Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets... .  And do you see, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.

Gl. You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.

Soc. Like ourselves; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

Gl. True; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

Soc. And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows? ... And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?

Gl. Very true.

Soc. And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?

Gl. No question.

Soc. To them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images... .  And now look again, and see what will naturally follow it' the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -will he not be perplexed?  Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?

Gl. Far truer.

Soc. And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him? ... And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he 's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated?  When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.

Gl. Not all in a moment, he said.

Soc. He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?

Gl. Certainly.

Soc. Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.

Gl.  Certainly.

Soc. He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold?

Gl. Clearly, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.

Soc. And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?

Gl. Certainly, he would.

Soc. And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,
Better to be the poor servant of a poor master,
and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?

Gl. Yes, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.

Soc. Imagine once more, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?

Gl. To be sure.

Soc. And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never  moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and   they would put him to death.

Gl. No question.

Soc. This entire allegory, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows.  But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this   visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.

Gl. I agree, as far as I am able to understand you.

Soc. Moreover, you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell; which desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.... And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavoring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice?

Gl. Anything but surprising.

Soc.  Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den....

 But then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes....
Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.... And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest and quickest manner; not implanting the faculty of sight, for that exists already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away from the truth?

Gl. Yes, he said, such an art may be presumed.

Soc.  And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to bodily qualities, for even when they are not originally innate they can be implanted later by habit and exercise, the virtue of wisdom more than anything else contains a divine element which always remains, and by this conversion is rendered useful and profitable; or, on the other hand, hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue–how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eyesight is forced into the service of evil, and he is mischievous in proportion to his cleverness.

Gl.  Very true.

Soc.  But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of their youth; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls upon the things that are below–if, I say, they had been released from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to now.

 ... And there is another thing which is likely. or rather a necessary inference from what has preceded, that neither the uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of their education, will be able ministers of State; not the former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of all their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already dwelling apart in the islands of the blest.... Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now... They remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the den, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not.

Gl.  But is not this unjust? Ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better?

Soc. You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State. ... Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the den, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.

Gl.  Quite true.

Soc.  And will our pupils, when they hear this, refuse to take their turn at the toils of State, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of their time with one another in the heavenly light?

Gl.  Impossible; for they are just men, and the commands which we impose upon them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of them will take office as a stern necessity, and not after the fashion of our present rulers of State.

Soc.  Yes, my friend, I said; and there lies the point. You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life. Whereas if they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and hungering after their own private advantage, thinking that hence they are to snatch the chief good, order there can never be; for they will be fighting about office, and the civil and domestic broils which thus arise will be the ruin of the rulers themselves and of the whole State.

Gl.   Most true.

Soc.  And the only life which looks down upon the life of political ambition is that of true philosophy.... And those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task?  For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight. ... Who then are those whom we shall compel to be guardians? Surely they will be the men who are wisest about affairs of State, and by whom the State is best administered, and who at the same time have other honors and another and a better life than that of politics?

Gl.  They are the men, and I will choose them.

Soc.  And now shall we consider in what way such guardians will be produced, and how they are to be brought from darkness to light,–as some are said to have ascended from the world below to the gods....

Socrates proceeds to discuss the order of subjects in his ideal curriculum.  He begins with gymnastic and music.  This is followed by arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics.  The culmination of the curriculum is dialectic.  The highlights of Socrates’ discussion follow, beginning with his defense of the importance of arithmetic.

Soc. What sort of knowledge is there which would draw the soul from becoming to being? And another consideration has just occurred to me: You will remember that our young men are to be warrior athletes. Then this new kind of knowledge must have an additional quality–usefulness in war.

Gl.   Yes, if possible.

Soc.  There were two parts in our former scheme of education.... There was gymnastic which presided over the growth and decay of the body.... [And] music, which also entered to a certain extent into our former scheme....

Gl. Music, as you will remember, was the counterpart of gymnastic, and trained the guardians by the influences of habit, by harmony making them harmonious, by rhythm rhythmical, but not giving them science; and the words, whether fabulous or possibly true, had kindred elements of rhythm and harmony in them. But in music there was nothing which tended to that good which you are now seeking.

Soc.  You are most accurate in your recollection; in music there certainly was nothing of the kind.  But what branch of knowledge is there, my dear Glaucon, which is of the desired nature; since all the useful arts were reckoned mean by us?

Gl.  Undoubtedly; and yet if music and gymnastic are excluded, and the arts are also excluded, what remains?

Soc.    ... A something which all arts and sciences and intelligences use in common, and which every one first has to learn among the elements of education....  in a word, number and calculation–do not all arts and sciences necessarily partake of them?

Gl. Yes.

Soc.  Then the art of war partakes of them?

Gl.    To the sure.

Soc.   ... It appears to me to be a study of the kind which we are seeking, and which leads naturally to reflection, but never to have been rightly used; for the true use of it is simply to draw the soul towards being.... [For] objects of sense are of two kinds; some of them do not invite thought because the sense is an adequate judge of them; while in the case of other objects sense is so untrustworthy that further enquiry is imperatively demanded.

Gl.   You are clearly referring to the manner in which the senses are imposed upon by distance, and by painting in light and shade.

Soc.  No, that is not at all my meaning.... When speaking of uninviting objects, I mean those which do not pass from one sensation to the opposite; inviting objects are those which do; in this latter case the sense coming upon the object, whether at a distance or near, gives no more vivid idea of anything in particular than of its opposite. An illustration will make my meaning clearer: here are three fingers–a little finger, a second finger, and a middle finger.... You may suppose that they are seen quite close: And here comes the point.   Each of them equally appears a finger, whether seen in the middle or at the extremity, whether white or black, or thick or thin–it makes no difference; a finger is a finger all the same. In these cases a man is not compelled to ask of thought the question, what is a finger? for the sight never intimates to the mind that a finger is  other than a finger.

Gl. True.

Soc.  And therefore, I said, as we might expect, there is nothing here which invites or excites intelligence.

Gl.   There is not.

Soc.  But is this equally true of the greatness and smallness of the fingers? Can sight adequately perceive them? and is no difference made by the circumstance that one of the fingers is in the middle and another at the extremity? And in like manner does the touch adequately perceive the qualities of thickness or thinness, or softness or hardness?  And so of the other senses; do they give perfect intimations of such matters? Is not their mode of operation on this wise–the sense which is concerned with the quality of hardness is necessarily concerned also with the quality of    softness, and only intimates to the soul that the same thing is felt to be both hard and soft?

Gl. You are quite right.

Soc.  And must not the soul be perplexed at this intimation which the sense gives of a hard which is also soft? What, again, is the meaning of light and heavy, if that which is light is also heavy, and that which is heavy, light?

Gl. Yes, these intimations which the soul receives are very curious and require to be explained.

Soc. Yes, I said, and in these perplexities the soul naturally summons to her aid calculation and intelligence, that she may see whether the several objects announced to her are one or two.... And if they turn out to be two, is not each of them one and different?

Gl. Certainly.

Soc.  And if each is one, and both are two, she will conceive the two as in a state of division, for if there were undivided they could only be conceived of as one.... The eye certainly did see both small and great, but only in a confused manner; they were not distinguished.... Whereas the thinking mind, intending to light up the chaos, was compelled to reverse the process, and look at   small and great as separate and not confused.

Gl.  Very true.

Soc. Was not this the beginning of the enquiry ‘What is great?’ and ‘What is small?’...  And thus arose the distinction of the visible and the intelligible.

Gl.  Most true.

Soc.  This was what I meant when I spoke of impressions which invited the intellect, or the reverse–those which are simultaneous with opposite impressions, invite thought; those which are not simultaneous do not.

Gl. I understand, and agree with you.

Soc.   And to which class do unity and number belong? ... Think a little and you will see that what has preceded will supply the answer; for if simple unity could be adequately perceived by the sight or by any other sense, then, as we were saying in the case of the finger, there would be nothing to attract towards being; but when there is some contradiction always present, and one is the reverse of one and involves the conception of plurality, then thought begins to be aroused within us, and the soul perplexed and wanting to arrive at a decision asks ‘What is absolute unity?’ This is the way in which the study of the one has a power of drawing and converting the mind to the contemplation of true being.

Gl.  And surely, he said, this occurs notably in the case of one; for we see the same thing to be both one and infinite in multitude?

Soc.  Yes; and this being true of one must be equally true of all number....  And all arithmetic and calculation have to do with number.... And they appear to lead the mind towards truth?

Gl. Yes, in a very remarkable manner.

Soc.  Then this is knowledge of the kind for which we are seeking, having a double use, military and philosophical; for the man of war must learn the art of number or he will not know how to array his troops, and the philosopher also, because he has to rise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being, and therefore he must be an arithmetician.... Then this is a kind of knowledge which legislation may fitly prescribe; and we must endeavor to persuade those who are prescribe to be the principal men of our State to go and learn arithmetic, not as amateurs, but they must carry on the study until they see the nature of numbers with the mind only; nor again, like merchants or retail-traders, with a view to buying or selling, but for the sake of their military use, and of the soul herself; and because this will be the easiest way for her to pass from becoming to truth and being.

Gl. That is excellent.

Soc.  Yes, and now having spoken of it, I must add how charming the science is! and in how many ways it conduces to our desired end, if pursued in the spirit of a philosopher, and not of a shopkeeper! ... I mean, as I was saying, that arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tangible objects into the argument....  And, for all these reasons, arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up.

Gl.   I agree.

Socrates proceeds to discuss geometry and astronomy.  He stresses that “the knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal” and not of what is perishing and transient.   Concerning astronomy, the focus is not primarily on the celestial bodies themselves, but on the mathematical models of the heavens. Concerning harmonics, the focus is not primarily on the sounds themselves, but on the mathematical proportions of the harmonious notes.  What follows is Socrates’ account of dialectic.

Soc.  And so, Glaucon we have at last arrived at the hymn of dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself.  And so with dialectic; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible.

Gl.  Exactly.

Soc.  But the release of the prisoners from chains, and their translation from the shadows to the images and to the light, and the ascent from the underground den to the sun, while in his presence they are vainly trying to look on animals and plants and the light of the sun, but are able to perceive even with their weak eyes the images in the water (which are divine), and are the shadows of true existence (not shadows of images cast by a light of fire, which compared with the sun is only an image)–this power of elevating the highest principle in the soul to the contemplation of that which is best in existence, with which we may compare the raising of that faculty which is the very light of the body to the sight of that which is brightest in the material and visible world –this power is given, as I was saying, by all that study and pursuit of the arts which has been described.

Gl.   I agree in what you are saying, which may be hard to believe, yet, from another point of view, is harder still to deny. This, however, is not a theme to be treated of in passing only, but will have to be discussed again and again. And so, whether our conclusion be true or false, let us assume all this, and proceed at once from the prelude or preamble to the chief strain, and describe that in like manner. Say, then, what is the nature and what are the divisions of dialectic, and what are the paths which lead thither; for these paths will also lead to our final rest?

Soc.   Dear Glaucon, you will not be able to follow me here, though I would do my best, and you should behold not an image only but the absolute truth, according to my notion. Whether what I told you would or would not have been a reality I cannot venture to say; but you would have seen something like reality; of that I am confident.

Gl.  Doubtless.

Soc.  But I must also remind you, that the power of dialectic alone can reveal this, and only to one who is a disciple of the previous sciences....  And assuredly no one will argue that there is any other method of comprehending by any regular process all true existence or of ascertaining what each thing is in its own nature; for the arts in general are concerned with the desires or opinions of men, or are cultivated with a view to production and construction, or for the preservation of such productions and constructions; and as to the mathematical sciences which, as we were saying, have some apprehension of true being–geometry and the like–they only dream about being, but never can they behold the waking reality so long as they leave the hypotheses which they use unexamined, and are unable to give an account of them. For when a man knows not his own first principle, and when the conclusion and intermediate steps are also constructed out of he knows not what, how can he imagine that such a fabric of convention can ever become science?

Gl.   Impossible.

Soc.  Then dialectic, and dialectic alone, goes directly to the first principle and is the only science which does away with hypotheses in order to make her ground secure; the eye of the soul, which is literally buried in an outlandish slough, is by her gentle aid lifted upwards; and she uses as handmaids and helpers in the work of conversion, the sciences which we have been discussing. Custom terms them sciences, but they ought to have some other name, implying greater clearness than opinion and less clearness than science: and this, in our previous sketch, was called understanding.  But why should we dispute about names when we have realities of such importance to consider?

Gl.  Why indeed, he said, when any name will do which expresses the thought of the mind with clearness?

Soc.  At any rate, we are satisfied, as before, to have four divisions; two for intellect and two for opinion, and to call the first division science, the second understanding, the third belief, and the fourth perception of shadows, opinion being concerned with becoming, and intellect with being; and so to make a proportion: –As being is to becoming, so is pure intellect to opinion.  And as intellect is to opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to the perception of shadows. But let us defer the further correlation and subdivision of the subjects of opinion and of intellect, for it will be a long enquiry, many times longer than this has been.

Gl.  As far as I understand, I agree.

Soc.  And do you also agree, I said, in describing the dialectician as one who attains a conception of the essence of each thing? And he who does not possess and is therefore unable to impart this conception, in whatever degree he fails, may in that degree also be said to fail in intelligence? Will you admit so much?

Gl.  Yes, he said; how can I deny it?

Soc.  And you would say the same of the conception of the good?  Until the person is able to abstract and define rationally the idea of good, and unless he can run the gauntlet of all objections, and is ready to disprove them, not by appeals to opinion, but to absolute truth, never faltering at any step of the argument–unless he can do all this, you would say that he knows neither the idea of good nor any other good; he apprehends only a shadow, if anything at all, which is given by opinion and not by science; –dreaming and slumbering in this life, before he is well awake here, he arrives at the world below, and has his final quietus.

Gl.  In all that I should most certainly agree with you.

Soc.  And surely you would not have the children of your ideal State, whom you are nurturing and educating–if the ideal ever becomes a reality–you would not allow the future rulers to be like posts, having no reason in them, and yet to be set in authority over the highest matters.... Then you will make a law that they shall have such an education as will enable them to attain the greatest skill in asking and answering questions?

Gl.  Yes, he said, you and I together will make it.

Soc.  Dialectic, then, as you will agree, is the coping-stone of the sciences, and is set over them; no other science can be placed higher–the nature of knowledge can no further go?

Gl.  I agree....

Book VII concludes thus:

Soc. Well... and you would agree (would you not?) that what has been said about the State and the government is not a mere dream, and although difficult, not impossible, but only possible in the way which has been supposed; that is to say, when the true philosopher-kings are born in a State, one or more of them, despising the honors of this present world which they deem mean and worthless, esteeming above all things right and the honor that springs from right, and regarding justice as the greatest and most necessary of all things, whose ministers they are, and whose principles will be exalted by them when they set in order their own city?

Gl. How will they proceed?

Soc. They will begin by sending out into the country all the inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old, and will take possession of their children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents; these they will train in their own habits and laws, I mean in the laws which we have given them: and in this way the State and constitution of which we were speaking will soonest and most easily attain happiness, and the nation which has such a constitution will gain most.

Gl. Yes, that will be the best way. And I think, Socrates, that you have very well described how, if ever, such a constitution might come into being.

Soc. Enough, then, of the perfect State, and of the man who bears its image--there is no difficult