Socrates of wisdom and virtue but are ever devoted to feastings and that sort of thing are swept downward, it seems, and back again to the center, and so sway and roam to and fro throughout their lives, but they have never transcended all this and turned their eyes to the true upper region nor been wafted there, nor ever been really filled with real things, nor ever tasted stable and pure pleasure, but with eyes ever bent upon the earth and heads bowed down over their tables they feast like cattle,

Socrates grazing and copulating, ever greedy for more of these delights; and in their greed kicking and butting one another with horns and hooves of iron they slay one another in sateless avidity, because they are vainly striving to satisfy with things that are not real the unreal and incontinent part of their souls.” “You describe in quite oracular style, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “the life of the multitude.” “And are not the pleasures with which they dwell inevitably commingled with pains, phantoms of true pleasure, illusions of scene-painting, so colored by contrary juxtaposition

Socrates as to seem intense in either kind, and to beget mad loves of themselves in senseless souls, and to be fought for, as Stesichorus says the wraith of Helen was fought for at Troy through ignorance of the truth?” “It is quite inevitable,” he said, “that it should be so.”

“So, again, must not the like hold of the high-spirited element, whenever a man succeeds in satisfying that part of his nature—his covetousness of honor by envy, his love of victory by violence, his ill-temper by indulgence in anger,

pursuing these ends without regard to consideration and reason?” “The same sort of thing,” he said, “must necessarily happen in this case too.” “Then,” said I, “may we not confidently declare that in both the gain-loving and the contentious part of our nature all the desires that wait upon knowledge and reason, and, pursuing their pleasures in conjunction with them, take only those pleasures which reason approves, will, since they follow truth, enjoy the truest pleasures, so far as that is possible for them, and also the pleasures that are proper to them and their own,

if for everything that which is best may be said to be most its “own”?” “But indeed,” he said, “it is most truly its very own.”

Socrates “Then when the entire soul accepts the guidance of the wisdom-loving part and is not filled with inner dissension, the result for each part is that it in all other respects keeps to its own task and is just, and likewise that each enjoys its own proper pleasures and the best pleasures and,

Socrates so far as such a thing is possible, the truest.” “Precisely so.” “And so when one of the other two gets the mastery the result for it is that it does not find its own proper pleasure and constrains the others to pursue an alien pleasure and not the true.” “That is so,” he said. “And would not that which is furthest removed from philosophy and reason be most likely to produce this effect?” “Quite so,” he said. “And is not that furthest removed from reason which is furthest from law and order?” “Obviously.” “And was it not made plain that the furthest removed are the erotic and tyrannical appetites?” “Quite so.”

Socrates “And least so the royal and orderly?” “Yes.” “Then the tyrant’s place, I think, will be fixed at the furthest remove from true and proper pleasure, and the king’s at the least.” “Necessarily.” “Then the tyrant’s life will be least pleasurable and the king’s most.” “There is every necessity of that.” “Do you know, then,” said I, “how much less pleasurably the tyrant lives than the king?” “I’ll know if you tell me,” he said. “There being as it appears three pleasures, one genuine and two spurious,

Socrates the tyrant in his flight from law and reason crosses the border beyond the spurious, cohabits with certain slavish, mercenary pleasures, and the measure of his inferiority is not easy to express except perhaps thus.” “How?” he said. “The tyrant, I believe, we found at the third remove from the oligarch, for the democrat came between.” “Yes.” “And would he not also dwell with a phantom of pleasure in respect of reality three stages removed from that other, if all that we have said is true?” “That is so.” “And the oligarch in turn is at the third remove from the royal man

Socrates if we assume the identity of the aristocrat and the king.” “Yes, the third.” “Three times three, then, by numerical measure is the interval that separates the tyrant from true pleasure.” “Apparently.” “The phantom of the tyrant’s pleasure is then by longitudinal mensuration a plane number.” “Quite so.” “But by squaring and cubing it is clear what the interval of this separation becomes.” “It is clear,” he said, “to a reckoner.” “Then taking it the other way about,

Socrates if one tries to express the extent of the interval between the king and the tyrant in respect of true pleasure he will find on completion of the multiplication that he lives 729 times as happily and that the tyrant’s life is more painful by the same distance.”

“An overwhelming and baffling calculation,” he said, “of the difference between the just and

Socrates the unjust man in respect of pleasure and pain!” “And what is more, it is a true number and pertinent to the lives of men if days and nights and months and years pertain to them.” “They certainly do,” he said. “Then if in point of pleasure the victory of the good and just man over the bad and unjust is so great as this, he will surpass him inconceivably in decency and beauty of life and virtue.” “Inconceivably indeed, by Zeus,” he said.

“Very good,” said I. “And now that we have come to this point in the argument,

let us take up again the statement with which we began and that has brought us to this pass. It was, I believe, averred that injustice is profitable to the completely unjust man who is reputed just. Was not that the proposition?” “Yes, that.” “Let us, then, reason with its proponent now that we have agreed on the essential nature of injustice and just conduct.” “How?” he said. “By fashioning in our discourse a symbolic image of the soul, that the maintainer of that proposition may see precisely what it is that he was saying.”

“What sort of an image?” he said. “One of those natures that the ancient fables tell of,” said I, “as that of the Chimaera or Scylla or Cerberus, and the numerous other examples that are told of many forms grown together in one.” “Yes, they do tell of them.” “Mould, then, a single shape of a manifold and many-headed beast that has a ring of heads of tame and wild beasts and can change them and cause to spring forth from itself all such growths.”

“It is the task of a cunning artist,” he said, “but nevertheless, since speech is more plastic than wax and other such media, assume that it has been so fashioned.” “Then fashion one other form of a lion and one of a man and let the first be far the largest and the second second in size.” “That is easier,” he said, “and is done.” “Join the three in one, then, so as in some sort to grow together.” “They are so united,” he said. “Then mould about them outside the likeness of one, that of the man, so that to anyone who is unable

to look within but who can see only the external sheath it appears to be one living creature, the man.” “The sheath is made fast about him,” he said.

Socrates “Let us, then say to the speaker who avers that it pays this man to be unjust, and that to do justice is not for his advantage, that he is affirming nothing else than that it profits him to feast and make strong the multifarious beast and the lion and all that pertains to the lion,

Socrates but to starve the man and so enfeeble him that he can be pulled about whithersoever either of the others drag him, and not to familiarize or reconcile with one another the two creatures but suffer them to bite and fight and devour one another.” “Yes,” he said, “that is precisely what the panegyrist of injustice will be found to say.” “And on the other hand he who says that justice is the more profitable affirms that all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us

Socrates complete domination over the entire man and make him take charge of the many-headed beast—like a farmer who cherishes and trains the cultivated plants but checks the growth of the wild—and he will make an ally of the lion’s nature, and caring for all the beasts alike will first make them friendly to one another and to himself, and so foster their growth.” “Yes, that in turn is precisely the meaning of the man who commends justice.” “From every point of view, then, the panegyrist of justice

Socrates speaks truly and the panegyrist of injustice falsely. For whether we consider pleasure, reputation, or profit, he who commends justice speaks the truth, while there is no soundness or real knowledge of what he censures in him who disparages it.” “None whatever, I think,” said he. “Shall we, then, try to persuade him gently, for he does not willingly err, by questioning him thus: Dear friend, should we not also say that the things which law and custom deem fair or foul have been accounted so for a like reason—

Socrates the fair and honorable things being those that subject the brutish part of our nature to that which is human in us, or rather, it may be, to that which is divine, while the foul and base are the things that enslave the gentle nature to the wild? Will he assent or not?” “He will if he is counselled by me.” “Can it profit any man in the light of this thought to accept gold unjustly if the result is to be that by the acceptance he enslaves the best part of himself to the worst?

Socrates Or is it conceivable that, while, if the taking of the gold enslaved his son or daughter and that too to fierce and evil men, it would not profit him, no matter how large the sum, yet that, if the result is to be the ruthless enslavement of the divinest part of himself to the most despicable and godless part, he is not to be deemed wretched

Socrates and is not taking the golden bribe much more disastrously than Eriphyle did when she received the necklace as the price of her husband’s life?”