Book V

Socrates“So I call a city and constitution like this good and correct, and a man like this too. And if this one is correct, I call the others bad and mistaken, both in how they manage cities and in how they shape the character of individual souls. They fall into four forms of badness.”

“Which ones are those?” he said.

I was about to list them in order, as each seemed to me to develop 449b out of the one before. But Polemarchus—who was sitting a little way from Adeimantus—reached out his hand and took hold of Adeimantus’ cloak at the top, by the shoulder, drew him close, and leaning forward himself said something to him in a low voice. We didn’t catch any of it except this: “Shall we let it go,” he said, “or what shall we do?”

“Certainly not,” said Adeimantus, speaking aloud now.

And I said, “What exactly is it you’re not letting go?”

“You,” he said. 449c

“Why me,” I said, “exactly?”

“We think you’re shirking,” he said, “and cheating us out of a whole part of the argument, and not the smallest part, to avoid going through it. You thought you’d get away with it by saying, offhandedly, that where women and children are concerned it’s obvious to everyone that ‘what friends have will be held in common.’”

“Well, wasn’t that right, Adeimantus?” I said.note

“Yes,” he said. “But this ‘right,’ like everything else, needs explaining: what form will this sharing take? There could be many. 449d So don’t pass over the one you mean. We’ve been waiting a long time, expecting you to say something about producing children—how they’ll produce them, and how they’ll raise them once they’re born—and about this whole sharing of women and children you speak of. We think it makes a great difference, all the difference, to a constitution whether this is done rightly or not.

“So now, since you’re taking up another constitution before you’ve dealt with this adequately, we’ve decided what 450a you heard: not to let you go until you’ve gone through all of it, just as you did the rest.”

“Count me in on this vote too,” said Glaucon.

“Don’t worry, Socrates,” said Thrasymachus. “Take it that we’ve all decided this.”

“What a thing you’ve done,” I said, “seizing on me like this! What a huge argument about the constitution you’re starting up again, as if from the beginning. I was delighted to think I’d already finished with it, and glad if anyone would let it be and accept what was said at the time. By calling for it now, 450b you don’t know what a swarm of arguments you’re stirring up. I saw it then and passed it by, so as not to cause a great deal of trouble.”

“What?” said Thrasymachus. “Do you think these people came here to go prospecting for gold, and not to listen to arguments?”

“Yes,” I said, “but in moderate measure.”note

“For people with sense, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “the measure for listening to arguments like these is a whole lifetime. But never mind about us. Don’t grow weary of going through, in the way 450c that seems best to you, what we’re asking: what sharing of children and women there will be among our guardians, and how the children will be raised while they’re still young, in the period between birth and education, which seems to be the most demanding of all. So try to tell us how it should be done.”

“It isn’t easy to go through, my fortunate friend,” I said. “It raises many doubts, even more than what we discussed before. People might doubt that what’s proposed is possible; and even if it could be done perfectly, they’ll doubt, on that score too, that it would be for the best. 450d That’s why I hesitate to touch on it, my dear friend: I’m afraid the argument may seem to be mere wishful thinking.”

“Don’t hesitate,” he said. “Your audience won’t be unreasonable, or distrustful, or ill-disposed.”

And I said, “My excellent friend, are you saying that to encourage me?”

“I am,” he said.

“Then you’re doing just the opposite,” I said. “If I were confident that I knew what I was talking about, your encouragement would be fine. When you’re among sensible people who are your friends, it’s safe and reassuring to speak the truth you know about the most important and 450e dearest things;

but to make arguments while you’re still in doubt and searching, as 451a I’m doing, is frightening and risky. It isn’t that I’m afraid of being laughed at—that would be childish—but that I’ll slip from the truth and lie there fallen, dragging my friends down with me, in matters where slipping matters most. I bow to Adrasteia, Glaucon, for what I’m about to say. I really do think it a lesser offense to kill someone unintentionally than to deceive people about what is fine, good and just in laws and customs. That’s a risk better run among enemies than 451b among friends. So you’re a fine one to encourage me!”note

Glaucon laughed and said, “Well, Socrates, if the argument does us any harm, we’ll release you, as in a case of homicide: you’ll be clean, and not our deceiver. So take heart and speak.”

“Well,” I said, “in that case, too, the one who is released is clean, as the law says; and if it holds there, it likely holds here as well.”

“Then speak,” he said, “as far as that’s concerned.”

“Then let’s follow that up by giving them a birth and upbringing to match, and see whether it suits us or not.”

“How?” he said.

“Like this. Do we think the female guard dogs should guard what the males guard, hunt with them, and do everything else in common? Or should the females stay indoors, as if they were unfit because they bear and rear the puppies, while the males work and have the whole care of the flocks?” 451e

“Everything in common,” he said, “except that we treat the females as weaker and the males as stronger.”

“Is it possible,” I said, “to use any animal for the same things, if you don’t give it the same upbringing and education?”

“It isn’t possible.”

“So if we’re going to use the women for the same things as the men, we have to teach them the same things too.” 452a

“Yes.”

“Now, the men were given music and physical training.”

“Yes.”

“Then the women too must be given these two arts, and what pertains to war, and must be used in the same ways.”

“That’s what follows from what you say,” he said.

“Perhaps,” I said, “since it goes against custom, a lot of what we’re now saying would look ridiculous if it were carried out as we describe.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“What do you see as the most ridiculous part of it?” I said. “Isn’t it obviously the women exercising naked in the wrestling schools alongside 452b the men—not only the young ones, but the older ones too, like the old men in the gymnasiums who, wrinkled and unpleasant to look at, still love their exercise?”

“By Zeus, yes,” he said. “That would look ridiculous, at least as things are now.”

“Still,” I said, “since we’ve set out to speak, we mustn’t be afraid of the jokes of the wits—all the many things they’d say about such a change in physical training 452c and in music, and not least about women bearing arms and riding horses.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“But since we’ve begun to speak, we must press on to the rough part of the law. We’ll ask the wits to give up their usual business for once and be serious, and we’ll remind them that it wasn’t long ago that the Greeks thought it shameful and ridiculous, as most non-Greeks still do now, for men to be seen naked. When first the Cretans and then the Spartans began exercising naked, 452d the wits of that time were free to make a comedy of the whole thing. Don’t you think so?”

“I do.”

“But once it became clear, I think, to those who practiced it that stripping was better than covering up all such parts, what looked ridiculous to the eye melted away before what reason had shown to be best. And this showed that anyone is foolish who thinks anything ridiculous except what is bad; who tries to raise a laugh by looking to any sight as ridiculous except that of folly 452e and badness; and who, again, earnestly pursues the fine with his eye on any target other than the good.”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Then mustn’t we first reach agreement on whether these things are possible or not, and let anyone who wants to dispute it, whether in jest or in earnest, argue the question: 453a is female human nature capable of sharing in all the tasks of the male kind, or in none, or in some but not others? And which group does war belong to? Isn’t that the finest way to start, and so, most likely, the finest way to finish?”

“By far,” he said.

“Would you like us, then,” I said, “to argue against ourselves on the others’ behalf, so that the opposing case doesn’t fall to a siege undefended?” 453b

“Nothing’s stopping us,” he said.

“Then let’s say on their behalf: ‘Socrates and Glaucon, there’s no need for anyone else to dispute with you. You yourselves, at the start of founding the city you were founding, agreed that each person must do the one job that is his own by nature.’”

“We did agree, I think. Of course we did.”

“‘Can it be that a woman doesn’t differ enormously from a man in nature?’”

“Of course she differs.”

“‘Then isn’t it right to assign each of them a different job too, 453c the one that suits its own nature?’”

“Certainly.”

“‘Then how can you not be making a mistake now, and contradicting yourselves, when you say that men and women must do the same things, though their natures are as far apart as can be?’ Will you have any defense to offer against that, my remarkable friend?”

“Not very easily, on the spur of the moment,” he said. “But I’ll ask you—I’m asking you now—to set out the argument on our side too, whatever it is.”

“These are the things, Glaucon,” I said, “and many others 453d like them, that I foresaw long ago; they’re why I was afraid and hesitated to touch the law about acquiring and raising women and children.”

“No, by Zeus,” he said, “it doesn’t look like an easy one.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “But here’s how things stand: whether you fall into a little swimming pool or into the middle of the vast sea, you have to swim all the same.”

“Certainly.”

“Then we too must swim and try to get safely out of the argument, hoping that a dolphin might pick us up, or for some other unlikely rescue.” 453e

“So it seems,” he said.

“Come on, then,” I said, “let’s see if we can find a way out. We agree that different natures should pursue different occupations, and that a woman’s nature and a man’s are different. Yet now we say that these different natures should pursue the same occupations. Is that the charge against us?”

“Exactly.”

“What a splendid power the art of contradiction has, Glaucon!” I said.

“Why do you say that?”note

“Because,” I said, “many people seem to me to fall into it even against their will, and to think they’re having a discussion, not a quarrel. That’s because they can’t examine what is said by dividing it into its kinds; instead they chase after contradictions of what was said by fastening on the mere word, and they use quarreling, not discussion, with one another.”

“That does happen to many people,” he said. “But surely it doesn’t apply to us at the moment?” 454b

“It certainly does,” I said. “At any rate, we’re in danger of getting into contradiction without meaning to.”

“How?”

“We’re very bravely and contentiously chasing after the literal words of the claim that a nature that isn’t the same shouldn’t have the same occupations. But we didn’t examine at all what kind of sameness or difference of nature we meant, or what it bore on, when we defined things back then, assigning different occupations to a different nature and the same ones to the same nature.”

“No,” he said, “we didn’t examine that.” 454c

“So it seems,” I said, “we might as well ask ourselves whether bald men and long-haired men have the same nature and not opposite ones; and then, once we agree that they’re opposite, if bald men are shoemakers, not to allow long-haired men to be, or if long-haired men are, not to allow the others.”

“That would be ridiculous,” he said.

“And is it ridiculous for any other reason,” I said, “than that back then we weren’t positing sameness and difference of nature in every sense, but were attending only to the kind of difference and likeness 454d that bears on the occupations themselves? For instance, we said that a man and a woman who both have a doctor’s soul have the same nature. Or don’t you think so?”

“I do.”

“But that a doctor and a carpenter have different natures?”

“Of course.”

“So too,” I said, “with the male kind and the female kind: if either turns out to differ from the other with respect to some art or other occupation, we’ll say that occupation should be assigned to the one suited to it. But if they turn out to differ only in this, that the female bears children 454e and the male begets them, we’ll say it hasn’t yet been shown at all that a woman differs from a man with respect to what we’re talking about, and we’ll go on thinking that our guardians and their women should pursue the same occupations.”

“And rightly,” he said.

“Next, then, we’ll ask the person who says the opposite 455a to teach us just this: in what art or occupation concerned with the organization of a city is the nature of a woman and of a man not the same but different?”

“That’s fair, anyway.”

“Well, perhaps someone else might say what you said a little earlier: that it’s not easy to give an adequate answer on the spot, but not at all hard after some thought.”

“He might.”

“Then shall we ask the person who raises this objection to follow 455b us, and see whether we can somehow show him that there is no occupation concerned with running a city that is peculiar to women?”

“Certainly.”

“‘Come on then,’ we’ll say to him, ‘answer this. Is this what you meant when you said that one person is naturally gifted for something and another isn’t: that the one learns it easily, the other with difficulty? That the one, after a little learning, can discover much more beyond what he learned, while the other, after much learning and practice, can’t even hold on to what he learned? And that in the one the body adequately serves the mind, while in 455c the other it works against it? Are there any other marks than these by which you distinguished the naturally gifted from the ungifted in each field?’”

“No one,” he said, “will say there are any others.”

“Then do you know of anything that human beings practice in which the male kind doesn’t surpass the female in all these respects? Or should we go on at length about weaving, and looking after the cakes and the stews—where women do seem to count for something, and where it’s most laughable of all 455d for them to be beaten?”

“What you say is true,” he said: “the one kind is far outdone by the other in practically everything. Many women, it’s true, are better than many men at many things; but on the whole it is as you say.”

“So, my friend, there’s no occupation among those who run a city that belongs to a woman because she’s a woman, or to a man because he’s a man. The natural gifts are distributed alike in both creatures. By 455e nature a woman shares in every occupation, and so does a man, but in all of them a woman is weaker than a man.”

“Certainly.”

“Then shall we assign everything to men and nothing to women?”

“How could we?”

“No: there is, I think, as we’ll say, one woman with a gift for medicine and another without, one who is musical by nature and another unmusical.”

“Of course.”

“And isn’t there one woman who is athletic and warlike, and another who is unwarlike and no lover of physical training?”

“I think so.”

“And what about this: one a lover of wisdom and another a hater of wisdom? One spirited and another spiritless?”

“That too.”

“So one woman is fit to be a guardian, and another isn’t. Or wasn’t this the sort of nature we selected in the men, too, who were fit to be guardians?”

“It was.”

“So for guarding the city, a woman and a man have the same nature, except insofar as hers is weaker and his stronger.”

“Evidently.” 456b

“Then women of this sort must be selected to live with men of this sort and to guard alongside them, since they’re capable and akin to them in nature.”

“Certainly.”

“And mustn’t the same natures be assigned the same pursuits?”

“The same.”

“So we’ve come round in a circle to where we were before, and we agree that it isn’t contrary to nature to give music and physical training to the women among the guardians.”

“Absolutely.”

“So the laws we were making weren’t impossible, or like mere wishful prayers, 456c since the law we laid down was in accordance with nature. It’s rather the present practice, which runs counter to it, that turns out, it seems, to be against nature.”

“So it seems.”

“Now, wasn’t our inquiry whether what we were proposing was possible, and whether it was best?”

“It was.”

“And it’s been agreed that it’s possible?”

“Yes.”

“And next we have to reach agreement that it’s best?”

“Clearly.”

“Well then, when it comes to making a woman a guardian, we won’t have one education to make our men and another to make our women, 456d especially since it’s taking over the same nature?”

“No, not a different one.”

“Then what’s your opinion about this?”

“About what?”

“About supposing, in your own mind, that one man is better and another worse. Or do you think they’re all alike?”

“Not at all.”

“Then in the city we were founding, which do you think we’ve turned into better men: the guardians, who received the education we described, or the shoemakers, who were educated in shoemaking?”

“That’s a ridiculous question,” he said.

“I understand,” I said. “Well, of all the other citizens, aren’t these 456e the best?”

“By far.”

“And won’t these women be the best of the women?”

“That too,” he said, “by far.”

“Is there anything better for a city than that it should come to have the best possible women and men?”

“There isn’t.”

“And music and physical training, applied as 457a we described, will bring this about?”

“Of course.”

“So the practice we were laying down is not only possible but also best for the city.”

“Yes.”

“Then the guardians’ women must strip for exercise, since they’ll be clothed in excellence instead of cloaks, and they must share in war and in the rest of the guarding of the city, and do nothing else; but of these same tasks the lighter ones must be given to the women rather than to the men, because of the weakness of their sex. As 457b for the man who laughs at naked women exercising for the sake of what’s best, he ‘plucks the unripe fruit’ of wisdom with his laughter. He doesn’t know, it seems, what he’s laughing at or what he’s doing. For this is the finest thing that is said, and ever will be said: that what is beneficial is fine, and what is harmful is shameful.”note

“Absolutely.”

“So may we say that, in discussing the law about women, we’re escaping this one wave, as it were? We haven’t been completely swamped by laying down that our guardians, 457c male and female, must share all their pursuits in common; instead, the argument somehow agrees with itself that what it proposes is both possible and beneficial?”

“And it’s no small wave you’re escaping,” he said.

“You’ll say it isn’t a big one,” I said, “once you see the next.”

“Tell me, then; let me see it,” he said.

“Following on this one,” I said, “and on the others before it, there comes, I think, this law.”

“There could well be plenty of dispute about both,” he said.

“You’re talking about an alliance of arguments against me,” I said. “I thought I’d run away from one of them at least, if you thought it beneficial, and that I’d be left with only whether it’s possible or not.”

“But you didn’t slip away unnoticed,” he said. “Give an account of both.”

“I’ll have to pay the penalty,” I said. “But do me this 458a one favor. Let me take a holiday, the way lazy-minded people like to feast on their own thoughts when they walk alone. People like that, you know, before they find out how any of the things they desire can come about, skip that question, so as not to wear themselves out deliberating about what’s possible and what isn’t. They assume that what they want is already there, and go straight on to arrange the rest, enjoying themselves as they run through all they’ll do once it’s happened—making a soul that was lazy to begin with 458b lazier still. Well, I’m going soft myself now. I want to put those questions off and examine later how these things are possible. For now I’ll assume they are possible and consider, if you’ll let me, how the rulers will arrange them when they happen, and show that carrying them out would be the most advantageous thing of all for both the city and the guardians.

“I’ll let you,” he said. “Go ahead and look.”

“Well then,” I said, “I think that if the rulers are to be worthy 458c of that name, and their auxiliaries likewise, the latter will be willing to do what they’re ordered, and the former will give the orders—in some cases obeying the laws themselves, and in others, the ones we leave to their discretion, imitating the laws.”

“Probably,” he said.

“Then you, their lawgiver,” I said, “just as you selected the men, will select the women too and hand them over, as close in nature to the men as possible. And since they’ll have houses and common meals together, and no one will own anything of that sort privately, 458d they’ll be together; and mixing together both in the gymnasia and in the rest of their upbringing, they’ll be drawn, I think, by an innate necessity to have sex with one another. Or don’t you think I’m talking about necessities?”

“Not geometrical necessities,” he said, “but erotic ones, which are probably sharper than the others when it comes to persuading and pulling along the great mass of people.”

“Very much so,” I said. “But next, Glaucon: for them to have sex with one another in a disorderly way, or to do anything else that way, would neither 458e be holy in a city of happy people, nor will the rulers allow it.”

“No, because it isn’t just,” he said.

“Then clearly our next step will be to make marriages as sacred as we possibly can; and the sacred ones would be the most beneficial.”

“Absolutely.” 459a

“Then how will they be most beneficial? Tell me this, Glaucon. I see you have hunting dogs in your house, and a great many pedigree birds. Well then, by Zeus, have you paid any attention to their matings and breeding?”

“In what respect?” he said.

“First, among these animals themselves, though they’re all well bred, aren’t there some that are, and turn out to be, the best?”

“There are.”

“Then do you breed from all of them alike, or are you keen to breed as far as possible from the best?”

“From the best.” 459b

“And from the youngest, or from the oldest, or as far as possible from those in their prime?”

“From those in their prime.”

“And if they aren’t bred this way, you think your breed of birds and of dogs will be much worse?”

“I do,” he said.

“And what about horses,” I said, “and the other animals? Do you think it’s any different with them?”

“It would be strange if it were,” he said.

“Good heavens, my dear friend,” I said, “how supremely skilled our rulers will need to be, if the same holds for the human race too.” 459c

“Well, it does,” he said. “But why do you say so?”

“Because they’ll need to use a lot of drugs,” I said. “For bodies that don’t need drugs but are willing to follow a regimen, we think even a rather ordinary doctor will do. But when drugs are actually needed, we know that a bolder doctor is required.”

“True. But what are you getting at?”

“This,” I said. “Our rulers will probably have to use a good deal of falsehood and deception for the benefit 459d of those they rule. And we said, I think, that all such things are useful as a kind of drug.”

“And rightly,” he said.

“Well, it seems this ‘rightly’ will come into play not least in marriages and procreation.”

“How so?”

“From what we’ve agreed,” I said, “the best men must have sex with the best women as often as possible, and the most inferior men with the most inferior women as seldom as possible; and the offspring of the former must be reared, 459e but not those of the latter, if the flock is to be of the highest quality. And all this must happen without anyone knowing except the rulers themselves, if the herd of guardians is to be as free as possible from faction.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“So we must establish by law certain festivals at which we’ll bring together the brides and bridegrooms, with sacrifices, and hymns 460a composed by our poets to suit the marriages that take place. The number of marriages we’ll leave to the rulers, so that they can keep the number of men as constant as possible, taking into account wars, diseases and everything of that sort, and so that our city, as far as possible, becomes neither large nor small.”

“Right,” he said.

“And I think some clever lots must be devised, so that at each pairing the inferior man we mentioned blames chance, not the rulers.”

“Certainly,” he said. 460b

“And to those of the young men who are good in war or elsewhere we must give honors and prizes, and in particular a more generous license to sleep with the women, so that at the same time, under a plausible pretext, as many as possible of the children will be sired by such men.”

“Right.”

“And the offspring, as they’re born, will be taken over by the officials appointed for this—whether men or women or both, since offices, of course, are shared by women and men alike—”

“Yes.” 460c

“The children of the good, I think, they’ll take to the fold, to nurses living apart in a certain part of the city; but those of the inferior, and any of the others born defective, they’ll hide away, as is fitting, in a secret and unknown place.”

“Yes,” he said, “if the breed of guardians is to stay pure.”

“And they’ll also see to the children’s feeding, bringing the mothers to the fold when their breasts are full, and using every contrivance 460d to make sure no mother recognizes her own child; they’ll provide other women who have milk if the mothers themselves haven’t enough; and they’ll see to it that the mothers nurse only for a moderate length of time, while the sleepless nights and the rest of the labor they’ll hand over to wet nurses and nannies?”

“You’re making childbearing very easy for the guardians’ women,” he said.

“As it should be,” I said. “But let’s go through the next point we proposed. We said that offspring should come from parents in their prime.”

“True.” 460e

“Do you agree, then, that a reasonable length for the prime is twenty years for a woman and thirty for a man?”

“Which years?” he said.

“A woman,” I said, “should bear children for the city from the age of twenty to forty; a man, once he’s past his sharpest prime for running, should father children for the city from then until fifty-five.”

“For both of them, at any rate,” he said, “that’s the prime of body and of understanding.”

“Then if anyone older or younger than this takes part in procreation for the community, we’ll say his offense is neither holy nor just, since he’s fathering a child for the city who, if it goes undetected, will be born without the sacrifices and prayers that priestesses and priests and the whole city will offer at each marriage—that from good parents ever better, and from useful parents ever more 461b useful offspring may come—but will be born instead under cover of darkness, out of terrible lack of self-control.”

“Right,” he said.

“The same law applies,” I said, “if a man still of procreating age touches a woman of that age without a ruler pairing them. We’ll say he’s foisting on the city a child that is illegitimate, unbetrothed and unhallowed.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“But when the women and the men are past the age for procreation, I suppose we’ll leave them free to have sex 461c with whomever they like—except that a man may not with his daughter, his mother, his daughter’s children or his mother’s mother and those above her, nor a woman with her son, her father, or their descendants and ancestors. And we’ll leave them free only after instructing them all to do their utmost, preferably, not to let even a single pregnancy see the light, if one occurs; but if one forces its way through, to deal with it on the understanding that there is no rearing for such a child.”

“That’s reasonable enough,” he said. “But fathers and 461d daughters, and the others you just mentioned—how will they tell who is whose?”

“They won’t,” I said. “But from the day a man becomes a bridegroom, all the children born in the tenth month after that, and in the seventh too, he’ll call his sons if they’re male and his daughters if they’re female, and they’ll call him father. In the same way he’ll call their offspring his grandchildren, and they in turn will call his generation grandfathers and grandmothers. And those born during the period when their mothers and fathers were having children 461e they’ll call brothers and sisters—so that, as we were just saying, they won’t have sex with one another. But the law will allow brothers and sisters to live together, if the lot falls that way and the Pythia approves as well.”note

“Quite right,” he said.

“This, then, Glaucon, is the sharing of women and children among the guardians of your city, and this is its character. That it’s consistent with the rest of the constitution and by far the best, we must next confirm from the argument. Or how shall we proceed?”

“That way, by Zeus,” he said.

“Well, isn’t the starting point for reaching agreement to ask ourselves what we can name as the greatest good in the organization of a city—the thing the lawgiver must aim at in laying down the laws—and what the greatest evil, and then to examine whether what we’ve just described fits the track of the good for us and doesn’t fit that of the evil?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Do we know of any greater evil for a city than whatever tears 462b it apart and makes it many instead of one? Or any greater good than whatever binds it together and makes it one?”

“We don’t.”

“And doesn’t the sharing of pleasure and pain bind it together, when, as far as possible, all the citizens rejoice and grieve alike over the same gains and losses?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Whereas the privatizing of such feelings dissolves it, when some are devastated and others overjoyed at the same 462c things happening to the city and to those in it?”

“Of course.”

“And doesn’t that come about when the citizens don’t say words like ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ in unison? And likewise with ‘someone else’s’?”

“Exactly.”

“So the city in which the greatest number say ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’ of the same thing and in the same way is the best governed?”

“By far.”

“And that’s the city that most closely resembles a single person? For example, when one of us has a finger struck, the whole community that stretches through the body to the soul, organized into a single structure under the ruling part 462d within it, perceives it, and all of it feels the pain together, the whole along with the suffering part; and that’s why we say the person has a pain in his finger. And the same account holds for any other part of a person, both for pain when a part is suffering and for pleasure when it’s getting better?”

“The same,” he said. “And as for what you’re asking, the best-governed city is the one that lives most like this.”

“Then when one of its citizens experiences anything, good 462e or bad, such a city, I think, will be the most ready to say that the experience is its own, and the whole city will share the pleasure or share the pain.”

“It must,” he said, “if it’s well governed.”

“It’s time,” I said, “for us to return to our own city and look there for the conclusions of our argument, to see whether it has them most of all, or some other city has them more.”

“Yes, we should,” he said.

“Well then: in other cities there are rulers and people, and in this one too?”

“There are.”

“And all of these will call one another citizens?”

“Of course.”

“But besides ‘citizens,’ what do the people in other cities call their rulers?”

“In most, masters; in democracies, just this very name, rulers.”

“And what about the people in our city? Besides ‘citizens,’ what do they say their rulers are?” 463b

“Saviors and auxiliaries,” he said.

“And what do these call the people?”

“Paymasters and providers.”

“And what do the rulers in other cities call their peoples?”

“Slaves,” he said.

“And what do the rulers call one another?”

“Fellow rulers,” he said.

“And ours?”

“Fellow guardians.”

“Can you tell me whether any of the rulers in other cities can address one of his fellow rulers as one of his own and another as an outsider?”

“Yes, many can.”

“And he regards and speaks of the one who is his own as belonging to him, 463c and of the outsider as not belonging to him?”

“Yes.”

“And what about your guardians? Could any of them regard or address any of his fellow guardians as an outsider?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Whomever he meets, he’ll think he’s meeting a brother or a sister, a father or a mother, a son or a daughter, or their descendants or ancestors.”

“Very well put,” I said. “But tell me this too. Will you legislate for them only the family names, or 463d also that they’re to act in all things in keeping with the names? Toward their fathers, for instance, doing all that the law prescribes about fathers—respect, care, and the duty to obey one’s parents—or else it won’t go well for him with gods or with men, since he’d be acting neither piously nor justly if he did otherwise? Will these be the sayings that all the citizens chant in the children’s ears from the start—about their fathers, whoever is pointed out to them as such, and about their other relatives—or will they be others?” 463e

“These,” he said. “It would be ridiculous for them just to mouth the names of kinship without the deeds.”

“So of all cities, it’s in this one that, when any one person is doing well or badly, they’ll most of all say in unison the phrase we mentioned just now: ‘mine is doing well,’ or ‘mine is doing badly.’”

“Very true, again,” he said.

“And didn’t we say that along with this belief and this way of speaking there follows a sharing of pleasures and pains?”

“And we were right to say so.”

“So our citizens will share most fully in one and the same thing, which they’ll call ‘mine’; and sharing in that, they’ll have the fullest sharing of pain and pleasure?”

“By far.”

“And the cause of this, besides the rest of our arrangements, is the sharing of women and children among the guardians?”

“Far more than anything else,” he said. 464b

“But we agreed that this was the greatest good for a city, when we likened a well-governed city to a body and the way it relates to a part of itself in pain and pleasure.”

“And we were right to agree,” he said.

“So the sharing of children and women among the auxiliaries has turned out to be the cause of the greatest good for the city.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“And it’s consistent with what we said before, too. We said, I think, that they mustn’t have private houses, or land, or 464c any possessions, but must receive their sustenance from the others as wages for their guarding and all spend it in common, if they were to be real guardians.”

“Right,” he said.

“Then, as I say, don’t both what was said before and what’s being said now make them still more genuine guardians? Don’t they keep them from tearing the city apart by applying ‘mine’ not to the same thing but each to something different—one man dragging into his own house whatever he can acquire apart from the others, 464d another into his own separate house, with a separate wife and children, creating private pleasures and pains for things that are private? Won’t they instead share one belief about what is their own, all straining toward the same end, and be as far as possible alike in what they feel of pain and pleasure?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“And what about lawsuits and accusations against one another? Won’t they all but vanish from among them, since they own nothing private except their bodies, and everything else is shared? And so won’t 464e they be free of all the factional strife that people fall into over the possession of money, or children and relatives?”

“They’re bound to be rid of it,” he said.

“Nor would there rightly be any suits for violence or assault among them. For we’ll say it’s fine and just for people to defend themselves against others of their own age, and we’ll make the care of their bodies compulsory.”

“Right,” he said.

“And this law has another merit,” I said. “If someone gets angry with someone else, by venting his anger in this way he’d be less likely to go on to more serious conflicts.”

“Certainly.”

“And an older person will be charged with ruling and disciplining all the younger ones.”

“Clearly.”

“And it’s likely that a younger person will never try to use violence on an older one or strike him, unless the rulers order it. Nor, I think, will he dishonor him in any other way; for there are two guardians enough to stop him, fear and shame: shame 465b forbidding him to lay hands on those who may be his parents, and fear that the others will come to the victim’s aid, some as sons, some as brothers, some as fathers.”

“That’s how it works out,” he said.

“So in every way the men will keep peace with one another as a result of the laws?”

“A great deal of peace.”

“And if these men don’t quarrel among themselves, there’s no fear that the rest of the city will ever split into factions against them or against one another.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“As for the pettiest of the evils they’d be rid of, I hesitate 465c even to mention them, they’re so unseemly: the poor flattering the rich; all the perplexities and pains people have in raising children and in making money for the necessary upkeep of their households—borrowing here, refusing to pay there, scraping it together somehow and handing it over to their wives and servants to manage. All the things, my friend, that they suffer over these matters, and what sort of things they are, are obvious, mean-spirited, and not worth talking about.” 465d

“Obvious even to a blind man,” he said.

“They’ll be rid of all these things, and they’ll live a life more blessed than the most blessed life that Olympic victors live.”

“How?”

“Those victors are counted happy for only a small part of what these men have. Our guardians’ victory is finer, and their maintenance at public expense is more complete. The victory they win is the preservation of the whole city, and they and their children are crowned with sustenance and everything else life needs; they receive honors 465e from their own city while they live, and when they die they’re given a worthy burial.”

“Very fine things,” he said.note

“Do you remember, then,” I said, “that earlier someone’s argument—I forget whose—reproached us for not making the guardians happy, 466a since, though they could have all the citizens’ possessions, they would have nothing? And we said, I think, that we’d look into this later if the occasion arose, but that for now we were making our guardians guardians, and the city as happy as we could, and weren’t fashioning it with an eye to one group in it and making that group happy?”

“I remember,” he said.

“Well then, now that the life of our auxiliaries appears far finer and better than that of Olympic victors, 466b does it look at all comparable to the life of shoemakers, or of any other craftsmen, or of farmers?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Still, what I said there it’s right to say here as well. If the guardian tries to become happy in such a way that he’s no longer even a guardian, and a life so moderate, so secure, and—as we claim—the best isn’t enough for him, but a foolish, adolescent opinion about happiness takes hold of him and drives 466c him to use his power to make everything in the city his own, he’ll find out that Hesiod was truly wise when he said that half is somehow more than the whole.”

“If he takes my advice,” he said, “he’ll stay with this life.”note

“Then do you agree,” I said, “to the partnership of the women with the men that we’ve described—in education, in children, and in guarding the other citizens? That whether they stay in the city or go to war, they must guard together and 466d hunt together like dogs, and share in everything in every way as far as possible; and that in doing this they’ll be doing what’s best, and nothing contrary to the nature of female in relation to male, by which the two are naturally made to share with each other?”

“I agree,” he said.

“Then what remains,” I said, “is to determine whether it’s really possible for this partnership to arise among human beings, as it does among other animals, and in what way it’s possible?”

“You got in ahead of me,” he said, “with just what I was going to take up.” 466e

“As for war,” I said, “I think it’s clear how they’ll fight.”

“How?” he said.

“They’ll campaign together, and they’ll also take any of their children who are sturdy enough along to the war, so that, like the children of other craftsmen, they can watch the work they’ll have to do themselves when they’re grown;

and, besides watching, they’ll assist and wait on them in everything to do with the war, and look after their fathers and mothers. Or haven’t you noticed how it goes in the crafts—how the sons of potters, for instance, spend a long time as helpers, watching, before they put their own hands to the potting?”

“Very much so.”

“Then should potters take more care to train their sons, through experience and by watching what’s appropriate, than the guardians take with theirs?”

“That would be absurd,” he said.

“And besides, every animal fights exceptionally hard 467b when its offspring are present.”

“That’s so. But the risk, Socrates, is no small one. If they suffer a defeat, as tends to happen in war, they lose their children as well as themselves, and make it impossible for the rest of the city to recover.”

“What you say is true,” I said. “But do you think the first thing to provide for is that they never run any risk at all?”

“Not at all.”

“Well then, if they must take a risk somewhere, shouldn’t it be where success will make them better?”

“Obviously.” 467c

“And do you think it makes little difference, and isn’t worth a risk, whether or not children who are to become men of war get to watch what war involves?”

“No, it does make a difference, for the purpose you mention.”

“So we must start from this, making the children spectators of war, and devise some safety for them as well, and all will be well. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“Now in the first place,” I said, “their fathers won’t be ignorant, so far as human beings can know, but will be good judges of which 467d campaigns are dangerous and which aren’t?”

“Probably,” he said.

“So they’ll take them on some and be careful to avoid others.”

“Right.”

“And I suppose,” I said, “they won’t put the worst men in charge of them, but those whose experience and age qualify them to be leaders and tutors.”

“Yes, that’s fitting.”

“But of course, we’ll say, many unexpected things have happened to many people.”

“Very much so.”

“To meet that sort of thing, then, my friend, we must give them wings while they’re still small children, so that if need be they can fly off and escape.” 467e

“What do you mean?” he said.

“We must put them on horseback as young as possible,” I said, “and once they’ve learned to ride, take them on horseback to watch—not on spirited, combative horses, but on the swiftest and most obedient to the rein. That way they’ll get the best view of their own work, and, if need be, they’ll make the safest escape, following their older leaders.”

“I think you’re right,” he said.

“And what about the conduct of war?” I said. “How should your soldiers behave toward one another and toward the enemy? Am I seeing this rightly or not?”

“Tell me,” he said, “what you have in mind this time.”

“Among themselves,” I said, “anyone who deserts his post, or throws away his arms, or does anything of the kind out of cowardice—shouldn’t he be made into some kind of craftsman or a farmer?”

“Certainly.”

“And anyone taken alive by the enemy—shouldn’t we make a present of him to his captors, to use their catch however they like?” 468b

“Absolutely.”

“And the man who distinguishes himself and wins a name for bravery—don’t you think that first of all, while still on campaign, he should be crowned by each of the youths and boys serving with him, one after another? Or not?”

“I do.”

“And what about having them clasp his right hand?”

“That too.”

“But this next thing, I suspect,” I said, “you won’t go along with.”

“What’s that?”

“That he should kiss and be kissed by each of them.”

“Most of all,” he said. “And I’d add to the law that, 468c as long as they’re on that campaign, no one he wants to kiss should be allowed to refuse, so that if anyone happens to be in love with someone, male or female, he’ll be all the keener to win the prize for valor.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ve already said that a good man will have more marriages open to him than the others, and will be chosen more often than the others for such things, so that as many children as possible are born from someone like him.”

“Yes, we said so,” he said.

“What’s more, according to Homer too, it’s right to honor 468d the good among the young in ways like these. Homer says that Ajax, after he’d distinguished himself in battle, was ‘honored with the long cuts of the chine,’ since this was the honor proper to a brave man in his prime, one that would build up his strength at the same time as it honored him.”

“Quite right,” he said.note

“Then in this, at least,” I said, “we’ll follow Homer. At sacrifices and on all such occasions we too will honor the good, to the extent that they show themselves good, with hymns and with the things we just mentioned, and besides these with ‘seats of honor, and meat, 468e and cups brimming full,’ so that as we honor good men and women we also train them.”

“Excellent,” he said.

“Very well. And of those who die on campaign, whoever dies having distinguished himself—won’t we say first of all that he belongs to the golden race?”

“Absolutely.”

“And won’t we believe Hesiod, that when any of this race die, 469a ‘they become holy spirits dwelling on earth, noble, warders-off of evil, guardians of mortal men’?”

“Yes, we’ll believe him.”

“Then we’ll ask the god how we should lay to rest such spirit-like and godlike people, and with what distinction, and do it in whatever way he directs?”

“Of course we will.”note

“And for all time afterward we’ll tend their tombs as the tombs of spirits, 469b and pay them reverence? And we’ll observe these same customs when anyone dies of old age or in any other way, among those judged exceptionally good in their lives?”

“That’s only just,” he said.

“Next: how will our soldiers deal with the enemy?”

“In what respect?”

“First, as to enslavement: does it seem right for Greeks to enslave Greek cities? Or should they, as far as they can, not allow any other city to do it either, and make it their custom to spare the Greek 469c people, on guard against enslavement by non-Greeks?”

“Sparing them makes all the difference in the world,” he said.

“Then they won’t themselves own a Greek slave, and they’ll advise the other Greeks to do the same?”

“Certainly,” he said. “That way they’d be more inclined to turn against the non-Greeks and keep their hands off one another.”

“And what about stripping the dead of anything but their arms,” I said, “once they’ve won—is that a good practice? Doesn’t it give cowards an excuse 469d not to go after the man who’s still fighting, as though they were doing their duty by poking about over a corpse? Many armies have been lost before now through that kind of plundering.”

“Very much so.”

“And don’t you think it’s greedy and unworthy of a free man to rob a corpse, and the mark of a small, womanish mind to treat the dead man’s body as the enemy, when the enemy has flown off and left behind only what he fought with? Or do you think people who do this 469e behave any differently from dogs that snap at the stones thrown at them but leave the thrower alone?”

“Not a bit differently,” he said.

“Then we must give up robbing corpses and preventing the enemy from taking up their dead?”

“We certainly must, by Zeus,” he said.

“Nor, I take it, will we carry weapons to the temples to dedicate them, especially Greek ones, if we care at all 470a about the goodwill of the other Greeks. Rather, we’ll be afraid that bringing such things from our own kin to a temple may be a pollution—unless, that is, the god says otherwise.”

“Quite right,” he said.

“And what about laying waste Greek land and burning houses? What will your soldiers do to the enemy?”

“I’d be glad to hear your opinion,” he said.

“Well, in my view,” I said, “they should do neither, 470b but should carry off the year’s harvest. Do you want me to tell you why?”

“Certainly.”

“It seems to me that just as there are two names, war and civil strife, so there are two things, answering to two kinds of discord. By the two I mean what is one’s own and akin, on the one hand, and what is alien and foreign, on the other. Hostility with one’s own is called civil strife; hostility with the alien, war.”

“There’s nothing off the mark in that,” he said. 470c

“Now see whether this is on the mark, too. I say that the Greek people is its own and akin to itself, but foreign and alien to the non-Greek.”

“Well put,” he said.

“So when Greeks fight non-Greeks, and non-Greeks Greeks, we’ll say they’re at war and are enemies by nature, and this hostility must be called war. But when Greeks do anything of the kind to Greeks, we’ll say they’re friends by nature, but that in such a case Greece is sick and divided against itself, 470d and this kind of hostility must be called civil strife.”

“I agree to think of it that way,” he said.

“Now consider,” I said, “that in what’s now agreed to be civil strife, wherever something like this happens and a city is split, if each side ravages the other’s fields and burns their houses, the strife is thought to be accursed and neither side to love its city—otherwise they’d never dare to ravage their nurse and mother. What’s thought reasonable is for the victors to carry off the crops 470e of the vanquished, and to keep in mind that they’ll be reconciled and won’t be at war forever.”

“Yes,” he said, “that way of thinking belongs to far more civilized people than the other.”

“Well then,” I said, “the city you’re founding—won’t it be Greek?”

“It must be,” he said.

“Then won’t its people be good and civilized?”

“Very much so.”

“And won’t they love their fellow Greeks? Won’t they regard Greece as their own, and share in the same religious rites as the other Greeks?”

“Very much so.”

“Then won’t they regard a quarrel with Greeks, since they’re their own kin, as civil strife, and not even call it war?”

“Right.”

“And they’ll quarrel as people who will one day be reconciled?”

“Certainly.”

“Then they’ll bring the others to their senses in a kindly way, not punishing them with slavery or destruction, since they’re correctors, not enemies.”

“Just so,” he said.

“Being Greeks, then, they won’t ravage Greece or burn homes, and they won’t agree that everyone in each city is their enemy—men, women, and children—but that their enemies are always just the few who are to blame for the quarrel. 471b And for all these reasons they won’t be willing to ravage these people’s land, since most of them are friends, or to tear down their houses; they’ll carry the quarrel only so far as it takes for the guilty to be compelled by the innocent, who are suffering, to pay the penalty.”

“I agree,” he said, “that this is how our citizens should treat their opponents, and that they should treat the non-Greeks the way Greeks now treat one another.”

“Shall we lay down this law too for the guardians, then: not to ravage land 471c or burn houses?”

“Let’s lay it down,” he said, “and say that this and what came before are good.”

“But really, Socrates, I think that if someone lets you talk about things like this, you’ll never get around to what you pushed aside earlier before saying all this: whether this constitution can come into being, and how it could ever possibly do so. I grant that if it did come about, everything would be good for the city where it did, and I’ll even add what you leave out: they’d fight their enemies 471d best, because they’d be least likely to desert one another, since they’d know one another and call one another by these names—brothers, fathers, sons. And if the women joined the campaign too, whether in the same ranks or posted in the rear, to frighten the enemy or in case help were ever needed, I know that this would make them altogether invincible. And I can see all the good things at home that are being left out, all the good things they would have.

“That’s quite a sudden raid you’ve made on my argument,” I said, “and you’ve no sympathy for my dawdling. Perhaps you don’t realize that I’ve barely escaped two waves, and now you’re bringing on the biggest and most difficult one, the third. When you see and hear it, you’ll surely forgive me, and see that I had good reason to hesitate and be afraid to state so paradoxical an idea and try to examine it.”

“The more you talk like this,” he said, “the less we’ll let you off 472b from telling us how this constitution can come into being. So speak, and don’t waste time.”note

“Well then,” I said, “first we must remember that we got here by looking for what justice is like, and injustice.”

“We must. But what of it?” he said.

“Nothing. But if we find what justice is like, will we also insist that the just man must not differ from it in any way, but be in every respect such as justice 472c is? Or will we be content if he comes as close to it as possible and has a greater share in it than anyone else?”

“That’s it,” he said. “We’ll be content.”

“It was for the sake of a model, then,” I said, “that we were looking for what justice itself is like, and for what the perfectly just man would be like, if he existed; and likewise for injustice and the most unjust man. We wanted to look at them, at how they appear to us in point of happiness and its opposite, so that we’d be compelled to agree about ourselves as well: that whoever is most 472d like them will have a lot most like theirs. It wasn’t in order to prove that these things could come into being.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“Do you think a painter would be any less good if he painted a model of what the most beautiful human being would be like, and rendered everything in the picture well, but couldn’t prove that such a man could actually exist?”

“By Zeus, I don’t,” he said.

“Well, weren’t we too, as we say, making a model 472e of a good city in words?”

“Certainly.”

“Then do you think what we said is any less good because we can’t prove that it’s possible to run a city as we described?”

“Of course not,” he said.

“That, then, is the truth of it,” I said. “But if, to please you, I must also put my mind to proving how and in what respect it would be most possible, then for the purposes of that proof, agree with me on the same points again.”

“Which ones?”

“Can anything be done as it’s said? Or is it the nature of doing to have less hold on truth than saying does, even if some people don’t think so? Do you agree with this or not?”

“I agree,” he said.

“Then don’t force me to show that what we described in words must come about in fact exactly as described. If we can manage to discover how a city could be run as nearly as possible in the way we’ve described, say that we’ve 473b discovered that the things you demand are possible. Or won’t you be content to get that much? I would be.”

“So would I,” he said.

“Next, it seems, we should try to seek out and show what is being done badly in cities now, which keeps them from being run this way, and what is the smallest change that would bring a city to this kind of constitution—preferably one change; if not, two; if not, as few in number and as slight in effect as possible.” 473c

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “I think we can show that with one change the city would be transformed—not a small or easy change, but a possible one.”

“What change?” he said.

“I’ve now come,” I said, “to the very thing we likened to the biggest wave. But it will be said all the same, even if it’s going to drown me in ridicule and contempt, like a wave that quite literally bursts out laughing. Consider what I’m about to say.”

“Say it,” he said.

And he said, “Socrates, what a word and argument you’ve let fly! Now that you’ve said it, you can expect a great many people, and 474a not negligible ones, to throw off their cloaks, so to speak, this very moment, and, stripped for action, grab whatever weapon comes to hand and charge at you full tilt, ready to do who knows what. If you don’t fend them off with argument and escape, you’ll really pay the price of being laughed to scorn.”

“Well, aren’t you the one to blame for this?” I said.

“And a good thing I did,” he said. “But I won’t betray you. I’ll defend you with what I can, and what I can offer is goodwill and encouragement, and perhaps I’d give you more fitting answers 474b than someone else would. So, with a helper like that, try to show the unbelievers that things are as you say.”

“I must try,” I said, “since you’re offering such a mighty alliance. Now if we’re going to escape the people you mention, I think we need to define for them whom we mean by the philosophers we dare to say must rule. That way, once they’re clearly marked out, one can defend oneself by showing 474c that some people are suited by nature to take up philosophy and to lead in a city, while the rest are suited to leave it alone and follow the leader.”

“Now would be the time to define them,” he said.

“Come on, then, follow me this way, and let’s see if we can somehow explain it adequately.”

“Lead on,” he said.

“Will I need to remind you, then,” I said, “or do you remember that when we say someone loves something, he must, if the phrase is used correctly, clearly not love one part of it and not another, but cherish all of it?” 474d

“It seems you’ll need to remind me,” he said. “I don’t quite get it.”

“Someone else might say what you’re saying, Glaucon,” I said, “but it doesn’t suit a man given to love to forget that all boys in their bloom somehow sting and stir a man who loves boys and is given to love, since they seem worthy of his attention and his affection. Isn’t that how you all behave toward the beautiful ones? One has a snub nose, and you’ll praise him as ‘charming’; another’s hooked nose you call ‘regal’; the one 474e in between, you say, is perfectly proportioned; the dark ones look manly, and the fair ones are ‘children of the gods.’ And ‘honey-colored’—do you think that name is the creation of anyone but a lover who uses pet names and has no trouble with a sallow complexion, so long as it comes with the bloom of youth?”

“In short, you make every excuse 475a and use every expression so as not to reject any boy in the flower of youth.”

“If you want to make me your example of what lovers do,” he said, “I agree, for the sake of the argument.”

“And what about wine lovers?” I said. “Don’t you see them doing the very same thing, welcoming every wine on any pretext?”

“Very much so.”

“And lovers of honor, I think, you can see: if they can’t be generals, they command a company, and if they can’t be honored by greater 475b and more distinguished people, they’re content to be honored by lesser and meaner ones, since it’s honor as a whole that they desire.”

“Quite so.”

“Then say yes or no to this. When we say someone desires something, will we say he desires the whole of that kind of thing, or one part and not another?”

“The whole,” he said.

“Then we’ll say the philosopher, too, desires wisdom—not one part and not another, but all of it?”

“True.”

“Then someone who’s fussy about what he studies, especially 475c when he’s young and has no way yet of telling what’s useful and what isn’t, we won’t call a lover of learning or a philosopher—just as we say that someone fussy about his food isn’t hungry and doesn’t desire food, and isn’t a lover of food but a poor eater.”

“And we’ll be right to say so.”

“But the one who’s readily willing to taste every kind of learning, who goes to his studies gladly and can’t get enough—him we’ll rightly call a philosopher, won’t we?” 475d

And Glaucon said, “Then you’ll have many strange people of that sort. All the lovers of sights seem to me to be like that, because they enjoy learning things; and the lovers of sounds are a very strange lot to count among philosophers. They’d never willingly attend a discussion or spend time that way, but as if they’d hired out their ears to listen to every chorus, they run around at the Dionysia, never missing one, whether in the towns or in the villages. Are we going to call all these people, and others who learn such things, 475e and the practitioners of the minor arts, philosophers?”

“Not at all,” I said, “though they’re like philosophers.”note

“Then who are the true ones?” he said.

“Those who love the sight of truth,” I said.

“That’s right, too,” he said. “But what do you mean by it?”

“It wouldn’t be at all easy to explain to someone else,” I said, “but I think you’ll agree with me on this.”

“On what?”

“Since the beautiful is the opposite of the ugly, they’re two.”

“Of course.”

“And since they’re two, each is one?”

“That too.”

“And the same account holds for just and unjust, good and bad, and all the forms: each is itself one, but because they show up everywhere in association with actions and bodies and one another, each appears to be many.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“Well, this is where I draw the line,” I said. “On one side I put those you were just talking about, the lovers of sights, the lovers of crafts, and the practical people; 476b and on the other, the ones our argument is about, the only ones who could rightly be called philosophers.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“The lovers of sounds and sights, I suppose,” I said, “delight in beautiful sounds and colors and shapes and everything made from such things, but their mind is incapable of seeing and delighting in the nature of the beautiful itself.”

“Yes, that’s certainly how it is,” he said.

“And those who are able to approach the beautiful itself and see it by itself—wouldn’t they be rare?” 476c

“Very much so.”

“So someone who believes in beautiful things but doesn’t believe in beauty itself, and can’t follow if someone leads him to knowledge of it—does he seem to you to be living in a dream or awake? Consider: isn’t this what dreaming is, whether one is asleep or awake—taking something that is like something else to be not a likeness but the very thing it resembles?”

“I’d certainly say,” he said, “that such a person is dreaming.”

“And what about the opposite case: someone who believes in something beautiful itself, 476d and can discern both it and the things that participate in it, and takes neither the participants to be it nor it to be the participants—does he seem to you to be living awake or in a dream?”

“Very much awake,” he said.

“Then we’d be right to call this man’s thought knowledge, since he knows, and the other’s opinion, since he opines?”

“Certainly.”

“What if this person, who we say opines but doesn’t know, gets angry with us and disputes that what we say is true? 476e Will we have some way to soothe him and gently persuade him, while hiding from him that he isn’t quite sound?”

“We certainly must,” he said.

“Come on, then, consider what we’ll say to him. Or would you like us to question him like this, telling him that if he knows something, nobody begrudges it—on the contrary, we’d be glad to see someone who knows something? ‘But tell us this: does the one who knows know something or nothing?’ You answer me on his behalf.”

“I’ll answer,” he said, “that he knows something.”

“Something that is, or something that is not?”

“Something that is. How could something that is not be known?”

“So we’re sure enough of this, even if we were to examine it from more angles: what completely is, is completely knowable, and what in no way is, is in every way unknowable?”

“Quite sure enough.”

“Very well. And if something were such as both to be and not to be, wouldn’t it lie between what purely is and what in no way is?”

“Between.”

“Then since knowledge was set over what is, and ignorance of necessity over what is not, for what lies between we must also look for something between 477b ignorance and knowledge, if there is such a thing?”

“Certainly.”

“Now do we say that opinion is something?”

“Of course.”

“A different power from knowledge, or the same?”

“Different.”

“So opinion is set over one thing and knowledge over another, each according to its own power.”

“Yes.”

“Now knowledge is naturally set over what is, to know what is as it is? But no—I think we first need to make a distinction.”

“What distinction?” 477c

“We’ll say that powers are a class of the things that are, by which we can do what we can do, and by which anything else can do whatever it can. For example, I call sight and hearing powers, if you understand the kind of thing I mean.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Then hear how they strike me. In a power I don’t see any color or shape or anything of the sort, as I do in many other things, which I look at to distinguish, in my own mind, some things from others. In a power 477d I look only to what it’s set over and what it accomplishes, and that’s how I’ve come to call each of them a power: the one set over the same thing and accomplishing the same thing I call the same power, and the one set over something different and accomplishing something different I call a different one. What about you? How do you do it?”

“The same way,” he said.

“Come back to this point, then, my excellent friend,” I said. “Knowledge: do you say that it is itself a kind of power, or what class do you put it in?”

“In that one,” he said, “and it’s the strongest of all the powers.” 477e

“And what about opinion? Shall we assign it to power, or to some other kind?”

“To no other kind,” he said. “What enables us to form opinions is nothing other than opinion.”

“But a little while ago you agreed that knowledge and opinion are not the same.”

“How could anyone with any sense,” he said, “treat what is infallible as the same as what is not infallible?”

“Good,” I said. “So clearly we agree that opinion is something other than knowledge.” 478a

“Something other.”

“Then each of them, having a different power, is by nature directed at a different thing?”

“Necessarily.”

“Knowledge, I take it, is directed at what is, to know what is as it is?”

“Yes.”

“And opinion, we say, at forming opinions?”

“Yes.”

“About the very same thing that knowledge knows? Will the same thing be both knowable and an object of opinion? Or is that impossible?”

“Impossible,” he said, “given what we’ve agreed. If different powers are by nature directed at different things, and both of these, opinion 478b and knowledge, are powers, and each is different, as we say, then it follows that the knowable and the object of opinion can’t be the same.”

“Then if what is is knowable, the object of opinion would be something other than what is?”

“Something other.”

“Well then, does opinion have what is not as its object? Or is it impossible even to form an opinion about what is not? Think about it. Doesn’t someone who forms an opinion bring his opinion to bear on something? Or is it possible to form an opinion, and yet form an opinion about nothing?”

“Impossible.”

“So someone who forms an opinion forms an opinion about some one thing?”

“Yes.”

“But surely what is not would most correctly be called not some one thing but 478c nothing?”

“Certainly.”

“And to what is not we necessarily assigned ignorance, and to what is, knowledge?”

“Rightly,” he said.

“So one forms opinions neither about what is nor about what is not?”

“No.”

“Then opinion would be neither ignorance nor knowledge?”

“It seems not.”

“Then does it lie outside them, surpassing either knowledge in clarity or ignorance in obscurity?”

“Neither.”

“Then does opinion strike you,” I said, “as darker than knowledge but brighter than ignorance?”

“Very much so,” he said. 478d

“And it lies within the two of them?”

“Yes.”

“Then opinion would be between them.”

“Exactly.”

“Now didn’t we say earlier that if something turned up that both is and is not at the same time, it would lie between what purely is and what in every way is not, and that neither knowledge nor ignorance would be directed at it, but whatever in turn turned up between ignorance and knowledge?”

“Right.”

“And now what we call opinion has turned up between them?”

“It has.” 478e

“So what’s left for us, it seems, is to find the thing that shares in both, in being and in not being, and couldn’t rightly be called purely either one; so that, if it turns up, we can justly call it the object of opinion, assigning extremes to extremes and what is between to what is between. Isn’t that so?”

“It is.”

“With this laid down, then, let him tell me, I’ll say, let him answer me, 479a this fine fellow who thinks there is no beautiful itself, no form of beauty itself that stays always the same in the same respects, but believes in the many beautiful things—that lover of sights who can’t bear it if anyone says that the beautiful is one, or the just, and so on. ‘My excellent friend,’ we’ll say, ‘of these many beautiful things, is there one that won’t also appear ugly? Of the just things, one that won’t appear unjust? Of the pious things, one that won’t appear impious?’” 479b

“No,” he said, “they’re bound to appear somehow both beautiful and ugly, and the same goes for everything else you ask about.”

“What about the many doubles? Do they appear any less halves than doubles?”

“Not at all.”

“And big and small things, light and heavy ones—will they be called by whatever names we give them any more than by the opposites?”

“No,” he said, “each of them will always have something of both.”

“Then is each of the many things any more what someone says it is than it is not?”

“They’re like the double meanings people play with at dinner parties,” he said, 479c “and the children’s riddle about the eunuch hitting the bat—what he hit it with and what it was sitting on. These things too have a double meaning, and you can’t firmly conceive any of them as being or as not being, or as both, or as neither.”

“Then do you know what to do with them,” I said, “or where you could put them better than between being and not being? They surely won’t appear darker than what is not, so as to be more not, 479d or brighter than what is, so as to be more.”note

“Very true,” he said.

“Then we’ve found, it seems, that the many conventions of the many about the beautiful and the rest roll around somewhere between what is not and what purely is.”

“We have.”

“But we agreed beforehand that if anything of that sort turned up, it should be called an object of opinion, not of knowledge: the wanderer in between, caught by the power in between.”

“We did agree.” 479e

“Those, then, who look at many beautiful things but don’t see the beautiful itself, and can’t follow someone else who leads them to it, who look at many just things but not the just itself, and so on for everything—we’ll say that they have opinions about everything but know nothing of what they have opinions about.”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“And what about those who look at each of the things themselves, which are always the same in the same respects? Won’t we say they know, and don’t merely have opinions?”

“That’s necessary too.”

“And won’t we say that these welcome and love the things 480a that knowledge is about, and the others the things opinion is about? Or don’t we remember saying that the others love and look at beautiful sounds and colors and things of that kind, but can’t even bear the idea that the beautiful itself is something?”

“We remember.”

“Then will we be striking a false note if we call them lovers of opinion rather than lovers of wisdom? And will they be very angry with us if we speak that way?”

“Not if they take my advice,” he said. “It isn’t right to be angry at the truth.”note

“Then those who welcome each thing itself that is must be called lovers of wisdom, and not lovers of opinion?”

“Absolutely.”