Very true.

If the element of spirit is naturally weak in him this is soon accomplished, but if he have a good deal, then the power of music weakening the spirit renders him excitable; he soon flames up, and is speedily extinguished; instead of having spirit he becomes irritable and violent and very discontented. Exactly.

Thus in gymnastics also, if a man works hard and is a great feeder, and the reverse of a great student of music and philosophy, at first the high condition of his body fills him with pride and spirit, until he is twice the man that he was.

Certainly.

But if he do nothing else, and never cultivates the Muses, even that intelligence which there may be in him, having no taste of any sort of learning or inquiry or thought or music, becomes feeble and dull and blind, because never roused or sustained, and because the senses are not purged of their mists. True, he said.

And he ends by becoming a hater of philosophy, uncultivated, never using the weapon of persuasion, he is like a wild beast, all violence and fierceness, and knows no other way of dealing; and he lives in all ignorance and evil conditions, and has no sense of propriety and grace.

That is quite true, he said.

And as there are two principles of human nature, one the spirited and the other the philosophical, my belief is that God has given mankind two arts answering to them (and only 412 indirectly to the soul and body), in order that these two principles may be duly attuned and harmonized with one another.

That I am disposed to believe.

And he who mingles music with gymnastic in the fairest proportions, and best attempers them to the soul, may be called the true musician and harmonist in a far higher sense than the tuner of the strings.

I dare say, Socrates.

And such a presiding genius will be always required in our State if the government is to last.

Yes, he will be absolutely necessary.

Such, then, are our principles of nurture and education. There would be no use in going into further details about their

dances, their hunting or chasing with dogs, their gymnastic and equestrian contests; for these all follow the general principle, and there will be no longer any difficulty in discovering them. I dare say that there will be no difficulty.

Very well, I said; and what is the next question? Must we not ask who are to be rulers and who subjects?

Certainly.

There can be no doubt that the elder sort must rule the younger.

Clearly.

And that the best of the elder sort must rule.

That is also clear.

Now, are not the best husbandmen those who are most devoted to husbandry?

Yes.

And as we must have the best guardians of our city, must they not be those who have most the character of guardians ? Yes.

And to this end they ought to be wise and efficient, and to have a special interest about the State?

True.

And a man will be most likely to care about that which he happens to love?

That may be truly inferred.

And he will be most likely to love that which he regards as having the same interests with himself, and anything the good or evil fortune of which he imagines to involve as a result his own good or evil fortune, and to be proportionably careless when he is less concerned?

Very true, he replied.

Then there must be a selection. Let us note among the guardians those who in their whole life show the greatest desire to do what is for the good of their country, and will not do what is against her interests.

Those are the right men.

They will have to be watched at every turn of their lives, in order that we may see whether they preserve this resolution, and never, under the influence either of force or enchantment, forget or let go their duty to the State.

I do not understand, he said, the meaning of the latter words.

I will explain them to you, I replied. A resolution may go out of a man's mind either with his will or against his will; with his will when he gets rid of a falsehood, against his will whenever he is deprived of a truth.

413

I understand, he said, the willing loss of a resolution; the meaning of the unwilling I have yet to learn.

Why, I said, do you not see that men are unwillingly deprived of good, and willingly of evil? Is not to have lost the truth an evil, and to have the truth a good? and you would allow that to conceive things as they are is to have the truth? Yes, he replied; I agree with you in thinking that mankind are deprived of truth against their will.

And do they not experience this involuntary effect owing either to theft, or force, or enchantment?

Still, he replied, I do not understand you.

I fear that I must have been talking darkly, like the tragedians. All that I mean is that some men change and others forget; persuasion steals away the hearts of the one class, and time of the other; and this I call theft. Now you understand me?

Yes.

Those again who are forced, are those whom the violence of some pain or grief compels to change their opinion.

That, he said, I understand, and you are quite right. And you would also acknowledge with me that those are enchanted who change their minds either under the softer influence of pleasure, or the sterner influence of fear?

Yes, he said; everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

Therefore, as I was just now saying, we must inquire who are the best guardians of their own conviction that the interest of the State is to be the rule of all their actions. We must watch them from their youth upwards, and propose deeds for them to perform in which they are most likely to forget or to be deceived, and he who remembers and is not deceived is to be selected, and he who fails in the trial is to be rejected. That will be the way.

Yes.

And there should also be toils and pains and conflicts prescribed for them, in which they will give further proof of the same qualities.

Very right, he replied.

And then, I said, we must try them with enchantments-that is the third sort of test-and see what will be their behavior; like those who take colts amid noises and cries to see if they are of a timid nature, so must we take our youth amid terrors of some kind, and again pass them into pleasures, and try them more thoroughly than gold is tried in the fire, in order to discover whether they are armed against all enchantments, and of a noble bearing always, good guardians of themselves and of the music which they have learned, and retain under all circumstances a rhythmical and harmonious nature, such as will be most serviceable to the man himself and to the State. And he who at every age, as boy and youth and in mature life, has come out of the trial victorious and pure, shall be appointed a ruler and guardian of the State; he shall 414 be honored in life and death, and shall receive sepulture and other memorials of honor, the greatest that we have to give. And as he is chosen his opposite is rejected. I am inclined to think that this is the sort of way in which our rulers and guardians should be chosen. I speak generally, and not with any pretension to exactness.

And, speaking generally, I agree with you, he said.

And perhaps the word "guardian" in the fullest sense ought to be applied to this class only who are our warriors abroad and our peacemakers at home, and who save us from those who might have the will or the power to injure us. The young men whom we before called guardians may be more properly designated auxiliaries and allies of the principles of the rulers.

[Socrates suggests that the citizens be told an old Phoenician myth as part of their education. 10]

They are to be informed that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received from us an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were in process of formation and nourishment in the womb of

10 In this place, as also in Laws, II., 663, Socrates advises that the people should be taught as literal truth a myth, which is intended to convey a lesson. Here as elsewhere he justifies a certain kind of falsehood. Observe that the Socratic method" in this case does not consist in asking questions but in the inculcation of truth by myth.

the earth, where they themselves and their arms and appurterances were manufactured; and when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and, their country being their mother and also their nurse, they are therefore bound to advise for her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the

earth and their own brothers. . . . Citizens, we shall say 415 to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and these he has composed of gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; others of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has made of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. But as you are of the same original family, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims to the rulers, as a first principle, that before all they should watch over their offspring, and see what elements mingle in their nature; for if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child because he has to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be others sprung from the artisan class who are raised to honor, and become guardians and auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will then be destroyed. Such is the tale; is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it?

Not in the present generation, he replied; I do not see any way of accomplishing this; but their sons may be made to believe, and their sons' sons, and posterity after them.

I see the difficulty, I replied; yet even this amount of belief may make them care more for the city and for one another. Enough, however, of the fiction, which may now be borne on the wings of rumor, while we arm our earth-born heroes, and lead them forth under the command of their rulers. Let them look around and select a spot whence they can best prevent insurrection, if any prove refractory within, and also defend themselves against enemies, who like wolves may come down on the fold from without; there let them encamp, and when they have encamped, let them sacrifice and prepare their dwellings.