Socrates “Is it possible for anything to be realized in deed as it is spoken in word, or is it the nature of things that action should partake of exact truth less than speech, even if some deny it? Do you admit it or not?” “I do,” he said. “Then don’t insist,” said I, “that I must exhibit as realized in action precisely what we expounded in words. But if we can discover how a state might be constituted most nearly answering to our description, you must say that we have discovered that possibility of realization which you demanded.

Socrates Will you not be content if you get this?” “I for my part would.” “And I too,” he said.

“Next, it seems, we must try to discover and point out what it is that is now badly managed in our cities, and that prevents them from being so governed, and what is the smallest change that would bring a state to this manner of government, preferably a change in one thing, if not, then in two, and, failing that, the fewest possible in number and the slightest in potency.”

“By all means,” he said. “There is one change, then,” said I, “which I think that we can show would bring about the desired transformation. It is not a slight or an easy thing but it is possible.” “What is that?” said he. “I am on the very verge,” said I, “of what we likened to the greatest wave of paradox. But say it I will, even if, to keep the figure, it is likely to wash us away on billows of laughter and scorn. Listen.” “I am all attention,” he said. “Unless,” said I, “either philosophers become kings

in our states or those whom we now call our kings and rulers take to the pursuit of philosophy seriously and adequately, and there is a conjunction of these two things, political power and philosophic intelligence, while the motley horde of the natures who at present pursue either apart from the other are compulsorily excluded, there can be no cessation of troubles, dear Glaucon, for our states, nor, I fancy, for the human race either. Nor, until this happens, will this constitution which we have been expounding in theory

ever be put into practice within the limits of possibility and see the light of the sun. But this is the thing that has made me so long shrink from speaking out, because I saw that it would be a very paradoxical saying. For it is not easy to see that there is no other way of happiness either for private or public life.”

Socrates Whereupon he, “Socrates,” said he, “after hurling at us such an utterance and statement as that, you must expect to be attacked by a great multitude of our men of light and leading, who forthwith will, so to speak, cast off their garments

Socrates and strip and, snatching the first weapon that comes to hand, rush at you with might and main, prepared to do dreadful deeds. And if you don’t find words to defend yourself against them, and escape their assault, then to be scorned and flouted will in very truth be the penalty you will have to pay.” “And isn’t it you,” said I, “that have brought this upon me and are to blame?” “And a good thing, too,” said he; “but I won’t let you down, and will defend you with what I can. I can do so with my good will and my encouragement, and perhaps I might answer your questions more suitably than another.

Socrates So, with such an aid to back you, try to make it plain to the doubters that the truth is as you say.” “I must try,” I replied, “since you proffer so strong an alliance. I think it requisite, then, if we are to escape the assailants you speak of, that we should define for them whom we mean by the philosophers, who we dare to say ought to be our rulers. When these are clearly discriminated it will be possible to defend ourselves by showing that to them by their very nature belong the study of philosophy

Socrates and political leadership, while it befits the other sort to let philosophy alone and to follow their leader.” “It is high time,” he said, “to produce your definition.” “Come, then, follow me on this line, if we may in some fashion or other explain our meaning.” “Proceed,” he said. “Must I remind you, then,” said I, “or do you remember, that when we affirm that a man is a lover of something, it must be apparent that he is fond of all of it? It will not do to say that some of it he likes and some does not.”

“I think you will have to remind me,” he said,

“for I don’t apprehend at all.” “That reply, Glaucon,” said I, “befitted another rather than you. It does not become a lover to forget that all adolescents in some sort sting and stir the amorous lover of youth and appear to him deserving of his attention and desirable. Is not that your “reaction” to the fair? One, because his nose is tip-tilted, you will praise as piquant, the beak of another you pronounce right-royal, the intermediate type you say strikes the harmonious mean,

the swarthy are of manly aspect, the white are children of the gods divinely fair, and as for honey-hued, do you suppose the very word is anything but the euphemistic invention of some lover who can feel no distaste for sallowness when it accompanies the blooming time of youth?”

Socrates “And, in short, there is no pretext

Socrates you do not allege and there is nothing you shrink from saying to justify you in not rejecting any who are in the bloom of their prime.” “If it is your pleasure,” he said, “to take me as your example of this trait in lovers, I admit it for the sake of the argument.” “Again,” said I, “do you not observe the same thing in the lovers of wine? They welcome every wine on any pretext.” “They do, indeed.” “And so I take it you have observed that men who are covetous of honor, if they can’t get themselves elected generals, are captains of a company. And if they can’t be honored

Socrates by great men and dignitaries, are satisfied with honor from little men and nobodies. But honor they desire and must have.” “Yes, indeed.” “Admit, then, or reject my proposition. When we say a man is keen about something, shall we say that he has an appetite for the whole class or that he desires only a part and a part not?” “The whole,” he said. “Then the lover of wisdom, too, we shall affirm, desires all wisdom, not a part and a part not.”

Socrates “Certainly.” “The student, then, who is finical about his studies, especially when he is young and cannot yet know by reason what is useful and what is not, we shall say is not a lover of learning or a lover of wisdom, just as we say that one who is dainty about his food is not really hungry, has not an appetite for food, and is not a lover of food, but a poor feeder.” “We shall rightly say so.” “But the one who feels no distaste in sampling every study, and who attacks his task of learning gladly and cannot get enough of it, him we shall justly pronounce the lover of wisdom, the philosopher, shall we not?” To which Glaucon replied,

Socrates “You will then be giving the name to a numerous and strange band, for all the lovers of spectacles are what they are, I fancy, by virtue of their delight in learning something. And those who always want to hear some new thing are a very queer lot to be reckoned among philosophers. You couldn’t induce them to attend a serious debate or any such entertainment, but as if they had farmed out their ears to listen to every chorus in the land, they run about to all the Dionysiac festivals, never missing one, either in the towns or in the country-villages. Are we to designate all these, then, and similar folk

Socrates and all the practitioners of the minor arts as philosophers?” “Not at all,” I said; “but they do bear a certain likeness to philosophers.”

“Whom do you mean, then, by the true philosophers?” “Those for whom the truth is the spectacle of which they are enamored,” said I. “Right again,” said he; “but in what sense do you mean it?” “It would be by no means easy to explain it to another,” I said, “but I think that you will grant me this.” “What?” “That since the fair and honorable is the opposite of the base and ugly, they are two.”

Socrates “Of course.” “And since they are two, each is one.” “That also.” “And in respect of the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and all the ideas or forms, the same statement holds, that in itself each is one, but that by virtue of their communion with actions and bodies and with one another they present themselves everywhere, each as a multiplicity of aspects.” “Right,” he said. “This, then,” said I, “is my division. I set apart and distinguish those of whom you were just speaking, the lovers of spectacles and the arts,

Socrates and men of action, and separate from them again those with whom our argument is concerned and who alone deserve the appellation of philosophers or lovers of wisdom.” “What do you mean?” he said. “The lovers of sounds and sights,” I said, “delight in beautiful tones and colors and shapes and in everything that art fashions out of these, but their thought is incapable of apprehending and taking delight in the nature of the beautiful in itself.” “Why, yes,” he said, “that is so.” “And on the other hand, will not those be few who would be able to approach beauty itself and contemplate it in and by itself?”

Socrates “They would, indeed.” “He, then, who believes in beautiful things, but neither believes in beauty itself nor is able to follow when someone tries to guide him to the knowledge of it—do you think that his life is a dream or a waking? Just consider. Is not the dream state, whether the man is asleep or awake, just this: the mistaking of resemblance for identity?” “I should certainly call that dreaming,” he said. “Well, then, take the opposite case: the man whose thought recognizes a beauty in itself,

Socrates and is able to distinguish that self-beautiful and the things that participate in it, and neither supposes the participants to be it nor it the participants—is his life, in your opinion, a waking or a dream state?” “He is very much awake,” he replied. “Could we not rightly, then, call the mental state of the one as knowing, knowledge, and that of the other as opining, opinion?” “Assuredly.” “Suppose, now, he who we say opines but does not know should be angry and challenge our statement as not true.

Socrates Can we find any way of soothing him and gently winning him over, without telling him too plainly that he is not in his right mind?” “We must try,” he said. “Come, then, consider what we are to say to him, or would you have us question him in this fashion—premising that if he knows anything, nobody grudges it him, but we should be very glad to see him knowing something—but tell us this: Does he who knows know something or nothing? Do you reply in his behalf.” “I will reply,” he said, “that he knows something.” “Is it something that is or is not?”