Socrates “For if you grant admission to the honeyed muse¹ in lyric or epic, pleasure and pain will be lords of your city instead of law and that which shall from time to time have approved itself to the general reason as the best.” “Most true,” he said. 607b

“Let us, then, conclude our return to the topic of poetry and our apology, and affirm that we really had good grounds then for dismissing her from our city, since such was her character. For reason constrained us.² And let us further say to her, lest she condemn us for harshness and rusticity, that there is from of old a quarrel³ between philosophy and poetry. For such expressions as the yelping hound barking at her master and mighty in the idle babble ⁴ 607c of fools, ⁵ and the mob that masters those who are too wise for their own good, ⁶ and the subtle thinkers who reason that after all they are poor, and countless others are tokens of this ancient enmity. But nevertheless let it be declared that, if the mimetic and dulcet poetry can show any reason for her existence in a well-governed state, we would gladly admit her, since we ourselves are very conscious of her spell. But all the same it would be impious to betray what we believe to be the truth.⁷ 607d Is not that so, friend? Do not you yourself feel her magic⁸ and especially when Homer⁹ is her interpreter?” “Greatly.” “Then may she not justly return from this exile after she has pleaded her defence, whether in lyric or other measure?” “By all means.” “And we would allow her advocates who are not poets but lovers of poetry to plead her cause¹⁰ in prose without metre, and show that she is not only delightful but beneficial to orderly government and all the life of man. And we shall listen benevolently, 607e for it will be clear gain for us if it can be shown that she bestows not only pleasure but benefit.” “How could we help being the gainers?” said he.

“But if not, my friend, even as men who have fallen in love, if they think that the love is not good for them, hard though it be,¹¹ nevertheless refrain, so we, owing to the love of this kind of poetry inbred in us by our education in these fine¹² polities of ours, 608a will gladly have the best possible case made out for her goodness and truth, but so long as she is unable to make good her defence we shall chant over to ourselves¹³ as we listen the reasons that we have given as a counter-charm to her spell, to preserve us from slipping back into the childish loves of the multitude; for we have come to see that we must not take such poetry seriously as a serious thing¹⁴ that lays hold on truth, but that he who lends an ear to it must be on his guard 608b fearing for the polity in his soul¹⁵ and must believe what we have said about poetry.” “By all means,” he said, “I concur.” “Yes, for great is the struggle,¹⁶” I said, “dear Glaucon, a far greater contest than we think it, that determines whether a man prove good or bad, so that not the lure of honor or wealth or any office, no, nor of poetry either, should incite us¹⁷ to be careless of righteousness and all excellence.” “I agree with you,” he replied, “in view of what we have set forth, and I think that anyone else would do so too.” 608c

“And yet,” said I, “the greatest rewards of virtue and the prizes proposed for her we have not set forth.” “You must have in mind an inconceivable¹⁸ magnitude,” he replied, “if there are other things greater than those of which we have spoken.¹⁹? For surely the whole time from the boy to the old man would be small compared with all time.²⁰” “Nay, it is nothing,” he said. “What then? Do you think that an immortal thing²¹ ought to be seriously concerned for such a little time, 608d and not rather for all time?” “I think so,” he said; “but what is this that you have in mind?” “Have you never perceived,” said I, “that our soul is immortal and never perishes?” And he, looking me full in the face²² in amazement,²³ said, “No, by Zeus, not I; but are you able to declare this?” “I certainly ought to be,²⁴” said I, “and I think you too can, for it is nothing hard.” “It is for me,” he said; “and I would gladly hear from you this thing that is not hard.²⁵” “Listen,” said I. “Just speak on,” he replied. “You speak of²⁶ good 608e and evil, do you not?” “I do.” “Is your notion of them the same as mine?” “What is it?” “That which destroys and corrupts in every case is the evil; that which preserves and benefits is the good.” “Yes, I think so,” he said.

“How about this: Do you say that there is for everything its special good and evil, 609a as for example for the eyes ophthalmia, for the entire body disease, for grain mildew, rotting for wood, rust for bronze and iron, and, as I say, for practically everything its congenital evil and disease²⁷?” “I do,” he said. “Then when one of these evils comes to anything does it not make the thing to which it attaches itself bad, and finally disintegrate and destroy it?” “Of course.” “Then the congenital evil of each thing and its own vice destroys it, or if that is not going to destroy it, nothing else 609b remains that could; for obviously²⁸ the good will never destroy anything, nor yet again will that which is neutral and neither good nor evil²⁹.” “How could it?” he said. “If, then, we discover³⁰ anything that has an evil which vitiates it, yet is not able to dissolve and destroy it, shall we not thereupon know that of a thing so constituted there can be no destruction?” “That seems likely,” he said. “Well, then,” said I, “has not the soul something that makes it evil?” “Indeed it has,” he said, “all the things that we were just now enumerating, 609c injustice and licentiousness and cowardice and ignorance.” “Does any one of these things dissolve and destroy it? And reflect, lest we be misled by supposing that when an unjust and foolish man is taken in his injustice he is then destroyed by the injustice, which is the vice of soul. But conceive it thus: Just as the vice of body which is disease wastes and destroys it so that it no longer is a body at all,³¹ in like manner in all the examples of which we spoke it is the specific evil which, 609d by attaching itself to the thing and dwelling in it with power to corrupt, reduces it to nonentity. Is not that so?” “Yes.” “Come, then, and consider the soul in the same way.³² Do injustice and other wickedness dwelling in it, by their indwelling and attachment to it, corrupt and wither it till they bring it to death and separate it from the body?” “They certainly do not do that,” he said. “But surely,” said I, “it is unreasonable to suppose that the vice of something else destroys a thing while its own does not.” “Yes, unreasonable.” “For observe, Glaucon,” 609e said I, “that we do not think it proper to say of the body either that it is destroyed by the badness of foods themselves, whether it be staleness or rottenness or whatever it is;³³”

“but when the badness of the foods themselves engenders in the body the defect of body, then we shall say that it is destroyed owing to these foods, but by³⁴ its own vice, which is disease. 610a But the body being one thing and the foods something else, we shall never expect the body to be destroyed by their badness, that is by an alien evil that has not produced in it the evil that belongs to it by nature.” “You are entirely right,” he replied.

“On the same principle,” said I, “if the badness of the body does not produce in the soul the soul’s badness we shall never expect the soul to be destroyed by an alien evil apart from its own defect—one thing, that is, by the evil of another.” “That is reasonable,” he said. “Either, then, we must refute this 610b and show that we are mistaken, or,³⁵ so long as it remains unrefuted, we must never say that by fever or any other disease, or yet by the knife at the throat or the chopping to bits of the entire body, there is any more likelihood of the soul perishing because of these things, until it is proved that owing to these affections of the body the soul itself becomes more unjust and unholy. But when an evil of something else occurs in a different thing and the evil that belongs to the thing is not engendered in it, 610c we must not suffer it to be said that the soul or anything else is in this way destroyed.” “But you may be sure,” he said, “that nobody will ever prove this, that the souls of the dying are made more unjust by death.” “But if anyone,” said I, “dares to come to grips with the argument³⁶ and say, in order to avoid being forced to admit the soul’s immortality, that a dying man does become more wicked and unjust,³⁷ we will postulate that, if what he says is true, injustice must be fatal 610d to its possessor as if it were a disease, and that those who catch it die because it kills them by its own inherent nature, those who have most of it quickest, and those who have less more slowly, and not, as now in fact happens, that the unjust die owing to this but by the action of others who inflict the penalty.” “Nay, by Zeus,” he said, “injustice will not appear a very terrible thing after all if it is going to be³⁸ fatal to its possessor, for that would be a release from all troubles.³⁹ But I rather think it will prove to be quite the contrary, 610e something that kills others when it can, but renders its possessor very lively indeed,⁴⁰ and not only lively but wakeful,⁴¹ so far, I ween, does it dwell⁴² from deadliness.” “You say well,” I replied; “for when the natural vice and the evil proper to it cannot kill and destroy the soul, still less⁴³ will the evil appointed for the destruction of another thing destroy the soul or anything else, except that for which it is appointed.”⁴⁴ “Still less indeed,” he said, “in all probability.”