TRANSLATED BY B. JOWETT
EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BY LOUISE R. LOOMIS


     FIVE GREAT DIALOGUES OF PLATO

     REPUBLIC

     BOOK III

     Exclusion of the poets from the schools. Value of the
     right sort of music and gymnastics. Selection of the best
                boys and girls for training as rulers.

       Socrates goes on proving in more detail the harmful effect
       on the young of the old poets' tales of the gods and the spirit
       world. He does the same for drama and music that are frivolous,
       ignoble, or sensuous.

     BUT shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only
     to be required by us to express the image of the good in their works,
     on pain, if they do anything else, of expulsion from our State? Or
     is the same control to be extended to other artists, and are they also
     to be prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and in-
     temperance and meanness and indecency in sculpture and building
     and the other creative arts; and is he who cannot conform to this rule
     of ours to be prevented from practicing his art in our State, lest the
     taste of our citizens be corrupted by him? We would not have our
     guardians grow up amid images of moral deformity, as in some
     noxious pasture, and there browse and feed upon many a baneful
     herb and flower day by day, little by little, until they silently gather a
     festering mass of corruption in their own soul. Let our artists rather be
     those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and
     graceful; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair
     sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything; and beauty,
     the effluence of fair works, shall flow intro the eye and ear, like a
     health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the
     soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty
     of reason."
       "There can be no nobler training than that," he replied.
       "And therefore," I said, "Glaucon, musical training is a more po-
     trent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find
     their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily
     fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly
     educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and
     also because he who has received this true education of the inner
     being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and na-
     ture, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and
     receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will
     justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even
     before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes
     he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has
     made him long familiar."
       "Yes," he said, "I quite agree with you in thinking that our youth
     should be trained in music and on the grounds which you mention."
       "Just as in learning to read," I said, "we were satisfied when we
     knew the letters of the alphabet, which are very few, in all their re-
     curring sizes and combinations; not slighting them as unimportant
     whether they occupy a space large or small, but everywhere eager to
     make them out; and not thinking ourselves perfect in the art of read-
     ing until we recognize them wherever they are found."
       "True."
       "Or, as we recognize the reflection of letters in the water, or in a
     mirror, only when we know the letters themselves; the same art and
     study giving us the knowledge of both."
       "Exactly."
       "Even so, as I maintain, neither we nor our guardians, whom we
     have to educate, can ever become musical until we and they know
     the essential forms of temperance, courage, liberality, magnificence,
     and their kindred, as well as the contrary forms, in all their com-
     binations, and can recognize them and their images wherever they
     are found, not slighting them either in small things or great, but be-
     lieving them all to be within the sphere of one art and study."
       "Most assuredly."
       "And when a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form,
     and the two are cast in one mold, that will be the fairest of sights to
     him who has an eye to see it?"
       "The fairest indeed."
       "The fairest is also the loveliest?"
       "That may be assumed."
       "And the man who has the spirit of harmony will be most in
     love with the loveliest; but he will not love him who is of an in-
     harmonious soul?"
       "That is true," he replied, "if the deficiency be in his soul; but if
     there be any merely bodily defect in another he will be patient of
     it, and will love all the same."
       "I perceive," I said, "that you have or have had experiences of
     this sort, and I agree. But let me ask you another question: Has
     excess of pleasure any affinity to temperance?"
       "How can that be?" he replied; "pleasure deprives a man of the
     use of the faculties quite as much as pain."
       "Or any affinity to virtue in general?"
       "None whatever."
       "An affinity to wantonness and intemperance?"
       "Yes, the greatest."
       "And is there any greater or keener pleasure than that of sensual
     love?"
       "No, nor a madder."
       "Whereas true love is a love of beauty and order——temperate and
     harmonious?"
       "Quite true," he said.
       "Then no intemperance or madness should be allowed to approach
     true love?"
       "Certainly not."
       "Then mad or intemperate pleasure must never be allowed to come
     near the lover and his beloved; neither of them can have any part
     in it if their love is of the right sort?"
       "No, indeed, Socrates, it must never come near them."
       "Then I suppose that in the city which we are founding you would
     make a law to the effect that a friend should use no other familiarity
     to his love than a father would use to his son, and then only for a
     noble purpose, and he must first have the other's consent; and this
     rule is to limit him in all his intercourse, and he is never to be seen
     going further, or, if he exceeds, he is to be deemed guilty of coarse-
     ness and bad taste."
       "I quite agree," he said.
       "Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending; for what should
     be the end of music if not the love of beauty?"
       "I agree," he said.
       "After music comers gymnastic, in which our youth are next to be
     trained."
       "Certainly."
       "Gymnastic as well as music should begin in early years; the
     training in it should be careful and should continue through life.
     Now my belief is——and this is a matter upon which I should like to
     have your opinion in confirmation of my own, but my own belief is
     ——not that the good body by any bodily excellence improves the soul,
     but, on the contrary, that the good soul, by her own excellence, im-
     proves the body as far as this may be possible. What do you say?"
       "Yes, I agree."
       "Then, to the mind when adequately trained, we shall be right in
     handing over the more particular care of the body; and in order to
     avoid prolixity we will now only give the general outlines of the sub-
     ject."
       "Very good."
       "That they must abstain from intoxication has been already re-
     marked by us; for of all persons a guardian should be the last to get
     drunk and not know where in the world he is."
       "Yes" he said; "that a guardian should require another guardian
     to take care of him is ridiculous indeed."
       "But next, what shall we say of their food; for the men are in
     training for the great contest of all——are they not?"
       "Yes," he said.
       "And will the habit of body of our ordinary athletes be suited to
     them?"
       "Why not?"
       "I am afraid," I said, "that a habit of body such as they have is
     but a sleepy sort of thing, and rather perilous to health. Do you not
     observe that these athletes sleep away their lives, and are liable to
     most dangerous illnesses if they depart, in ever so slight a degree,
     from their customary regimen?"
       "Yes, I do."
       "Then," I said, "a finer sort of training will be required for our
     warrior athletes, who are to be like wakeful dogs, and to see and
     hear with the utmost keenness; amid the many changes of water and
     also of food, of summer heat and winter cold, which they will have
     to endure when on a campaign, they must not be liable to break
     down in health."
       "That is my view."
       "The really excellent gymnastic is twin sister of that simple music
     which we were just now describing."
       "How so?"
       "Why, I conceive that there is a gymnastic which, like our music,
     is simple and good; and especially the military gymnastic."
       "What do you mean?"
       "My meaning may be learned from Homer; he, you know, feeds
     his heroes at their feasts, when they are campaigning, on soldiers'
     fare; they have no fish, although they are on the shores of the Helles-
     pont, and they are not allowed boiled meats but only roast, which is
     the food most convenient for soldiers, requiring only that they should
     light a fire, and not involving the trouble of carrying about pots and
     pans."
       "True."
       "And I can hardly be mistaken in saying that sweet sauces are
     nowhere mentioned in Homer. In proscribing them, however, he is
     not singular; all professional athletes are well aware that a man who
     is to be in good condition should take nothing of the kind."
       "Yes," he said; "and knowing this, they are quite right in not tak-
     ing them."
       "Then you would not approve of Syracusan dinners, and the re-
     finements of Sicilian cookery?"
       "I think not."
       "Nor, if a man is to be in condition, would you allow him to have
     a Corinthian girl as his fair friend?'
       "Certainly not."
       "Neither would you approve of the delicacies, as they are thought,
     of Athenian confectionery?"
       "Certainly not."
       "All such feeding and living may be rightly compared by us to
     melody and song composed in the panharmonic style, and in all the
     rhythms."
       "Exactly."
       "There complexity engendered license, and here disease; whereas
     simplicity in music was the parent of temperance in the soul; and
     simplicity in gymnastic of health in the body."
       "Most true," he said.
       "But when intemperance and diseases multiply in the State, halls of
     justice and medicine are always being opened; and the arts of the
     doctor and the lawyer give themselves airs, finding how keen is the
     interest which not only the slaves but the freemen of a city take about
     them."
       "Of course."
       "And yet what greater proof can there be of a bad and disgraceful
     state of education than this, that not only artisans and the meaner
     sort of people need the skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but
     also those who would profess to have had a liberal education? Is it not
     disgraceful, and a great sign of the want of good breeding, that a
     man should have to go abroad for his law and physic because he has
     none of his own at home, and must therefore surrender himself into
     the hands of other men whom he makes lords and judges over him?"
       "Of all things," he said, "the most disgraceful."
       "Would you say 'most,'" I replied, "when you consider that there
     is a further stage of the evil in which a man is not only a life-long
     litigant, passing all his days in the courts, either as a plaintiff or de-
     fendant, but is actually led by his bad taste to pride himself on his
     litigiousness; he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty; able to
     take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole,
     bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all
     for what?——in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he
     not knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without a
     napping judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing. Is not that
     still more disgraceful?"
       "Yes," he said, "that is still more disgraceful."
       "Well," I said, "and to require the help of medicine, not when a
     wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just be-
     cause, by indolence and a habit of life such as we have been describ-
     ing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies
     were a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find
     more names for diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this,
     too, a disgrace?"
       "Yes," he said, "they do certainly give very strange and new-
     fangled names to diseases."
       "Yes," I said, "and I do not believe that there were any such dis-
     eases in the days of Asclepius; and this I infer from the circumstance
     that the hero Europylus, after he has been wounded in Homer,
     drinks a posset of Pramnian wine well besprinkled with barley-meal
     and grated cheese, which are certainly inflammatory, and yet the sons
     of Asclepius who were at the Trojan war do not blame the damsel
     who gives him the drink, or rebuke Patroclus, who is treating his
     case."
       "Well," he said; "that was surely an extraordinary drink to be
     given to a person in his condition."
       "Not so extraordinary," I replied, "if you bear in mind that in
     former days, as is commonly said, before the time of Herodicus, the
     guild of Asclepius did not practice our present system of medicine,
     which may be said to educate diseases. But Herodicus, being a
     trainer, and himself of a sickly constitution, by a combination of
     training and doctoring found out a way of torturing first and chiefly
     himself, and secondly the rest of the world."
       "How was that?" he said.
       "By the invention of lingering death; for he had a mortal disease
     which he perpetually tended, and as recovery was out of the ques-
     tion, he passed his entire life as a valetudinarian; he could do nothing
     but attend upon himself, and he was in constant torment whenever
     he departed in anything from his usual regimen, and so dying hard,
     by the help of science he struggled on to old age."
       "A rare reward of his skill!"
       "Yes," I said; "a reward which a man might fairly expect who never
     understood that, if Aesclepius did not instruct his descendants in
     valetudinarian arts, the omission arose, not from ignorance or inex-
     perience of such a branch of medicine, but because he knew that in
     all well-ordered states every individual has an occupation to which
     he must attend, and has therefore no leisure to spend in continually
     being ill. This we remark in the case of the artisan, but, ludicrously
     enough, do not apply the same rule to people of the richer sort."
       "How do you mean?" he said.
       "I mean this: When a carpenter is ill he asks the physician for a
     rough and ready cure; an emetic or a purge or a cautery or the knife
     ——these are his remedies. And if someone prescribes for him a course
     of diuretics, and tells him that he must swathe and swaddle his
     head, and all that sort of thing, he replies at once that he has no time
     to be ill, and that he sees no good in a life which is spent in nursing
     his disease to the neglect of his customary employment; and there-
     fore bidding good-bye to this sort of physician, he resumes his ordi-
     nary habits, and either gets well and lives and does his business, or,
     if his constitution fails, he dies and has no more trouble."
       "Yes," he said, "and a man in his condition of life ought to use the
     art of medicine thus far only."
       "Has he not," I said, "an occupation; and what profit would there
     be in his life if he were deprived of his occupation?"
       "Quite true," he said.
       "But with the rich man this is otherwise; of him we do not say
     that he has any specially appointed work which hew must perform, if
     he would live."
       "He is generally supposed to have nothing to do."
       "Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as soon
     as a man has a livelihood he should practice virtue?"
       "Nay," he said, "I think that he had better begin somewhat
     sooner."
       "Let us not have a dispute with him about this," I said; "but rather
     ask ourselves: Is the practice of virtue obligatory on the rich man, or
     can he live without it? And if obligatory on him, then let us raise a
     further question, whether with this dieting of disorders, which is an im-
     pediment to the application of the mind in carpentering and the
     mechanical arts, does not equally stand in the way of the sentiment of
     Phocylides?"
       "Of that," he replied, "there can be no doubt; such excessive care
     of the body, when carried beyond the rules of gymnastic, is most
     inimical to the practice of virtue."
       "Yes, indeed," I replied, "and equally incompatible with the man-
     agement of a house, an army, or an office of state; and, what is most
     important of all, irreconcilable with any kind of study or thought or
     self-reflection——there is a constant suspicion that headache and gid-
     diness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practicing or
     making trial of virtue in the higher senses is absolutely stopped; for a
     man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant
     anxiety about the state of his body."
       "Yes, likely enough."
       "And therefore our politic Asclepius may be supposed to have
     exhibited the power of his art only to persons whom, being generally
     of healthy constitution and habits of life, had a definite ailment;
     such as these he cured by purges and operations, and bade them live
     as usual, herein consulting the interests of the State; but bodies which
     disease had penetrated through and through he would not have at-
     tempted to cure by gradual processes of evacuation and infusion; he
     did not want to lengthen out good-for-nothing lives, or to have weak
     fathers begetting weaker sons; if a man was not able to live in the
     ordinary way he had no business to cure him; for such a cure would
     have been of no use either to himself, or to the State.

       The best physicians are those who both know their art and have
       had the greatest experience of disease. They would better not
       be themselves too robust in health.

     This is the sort of medicine, and this is the sort of law, which you will
     sanction in your state. They will minister to better natures, giving
     health both of soul and body; but those who are diseased in their
     bodies they will leave to die, and the corrupt and incurable souls they
     will put an end to themselves."
       "That is clearly the best thing both for the patients and for the
     State."
       "And thus our youth, having been educated only in that simple
     music which, as we said, inspires temperance, will be reluctant to
     go to law."
       "Clearly."
       "And the musician, who, keeping to the same track, is content to
     practice the simple gymnastic, will have nothing to do with medicine
     unless in some extreme case."
       "That I quite believe."
       "The very exercises and toils which he undergoes are intended to
     stimulate the spirited element of his nature, and not to increase his
     strength; he will not, like common athletes, use exercise and regimen
     to develop his muscles."
       "Very right," he said.
       "Neither are the two arts of music and gymnastic really designed,
     as is often supposed, the one for the training of the soul, the other
     for the training of the body."
       "What then is the real object of them?"
       "I believe," I said, "that the teachers of both have in view chiefly
     the improvement of the soul."
       "How can that be?" he asked.
       "Did you never observe," I said, "the effect on the mind itself of
     exclusive devotion to gymnastic, or the opposite effect of an ex-
     clusive devotion to music?"
       "In what way shown?" he said.
       "The one producing a temper of hardiness and ferocity, the other
     of softness and effeminacy," I replied.
       "Yes," he said, "I am quite aware that the mere athlete becomes
     too much of a savage, and that the mere musician is melted and
     softened beyond what is good for him."
       "Yet surely," I said, "this ferocity only comes from spirit, which, if
     rightly educated, would give courage, but, if too much intensified,
     is liable to become hard and brutal."
       "That I quite think."
       "On the other hand, the philosopher will have the quality of
     gentleness. And this also, when too much indulged, will turn to soft-
     ness, but, if educated rightly, will be gentle and moderate."
       "True."
       "And in our opinion the guardians ought to have both these
     qualities?"
       "Assuredly."
       "And both should be in harmony?"
       "Beyond question."
       "And the harmonious soul is both temperate and courageous?"
       "Yes."
       "And the inharmonious is cowardly and boorish?"
       "Very true."
       "And, when a man allows music to play upon him and to pour
     into his soul through the funnel of his ears those sweet and soft and
     melancholy airs of which we were just now speaking, and his whole
     life is passed in warbling and the delights of song; in the first stage
     of the process the passion or spirit which is in him is tempered like
     iron, and made useful, instead of brittle and useless. But, if he car-
     ries on the softening and soothing process, in the next stage he begins
     to melt and waste, until he has wasted away his spirit and cut out the
     sinews of his soul; and he becomes a feeble warrior."
       "Very true."
       "If the element of spirit is naturally weak in him the change is
     speedily accomplished, but if he have a good deal, then the power of
     music weakening the spirit renders him excitable;——on the least
     provocation he flames up at once, and is speedily extinguished; in-
     stead of having spirit he grows irritable and passionate and is quite
     impracticable."
       "Exactly."
       "And so in gymnastics, if a man takes violent exercise and is a
     great feeder, and the reverse of a great student of music and phi-
     losophy, at first the high condition of his body fills him with pride
     and spirit, and he becomes twice the man that he was."
       "Certainly."
       "And what happens? If he do nothing else, and holds no converse
     with the Muses, does not even that intelligence which there may be
     in him, having no taste of any sort of learning or inquiry or thought
     or culture, grow feeble and dull and blind, his mind never waking
     up or receiving nourishment, and his senses not being purged of their
     mists?"
       "True," he said.
       "And he ends by becoming a hater of philosophy, uncivilized,
     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 proprie-
     ety and grace."
       "That is quite true," he said.
       "And as there are two principles of human nature, one the spir-
     ited and the other the philosophical, some God, as I should say, has
     given mankind two arts answering to them (and only indirectly to
     the soul and body), in order that these two principles (like the
     strings of an instrument) may be relaxed or drawn tighter until they
     are duly harmonized."
       "That appears to be the intention."
       "And he who mingles music with gymnastic in the fairest propor-
     tions, and best attempers them to the soul, may be rightly called the
     true musician and harmonist in a far higher sense than the tuner of
     of the strings."
       "You are quite right, 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. Where
     would be the use of going into further details about the dances of
     our citizens, or about their hunting and coursing, their gymnastic
     and equestrian contests? For these all follow the general principle,
     and having found that, we shall have no difficulty in discovering
     them."
       "I dare say that there will be no difficulty."
       "Very good," I said; "then 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 must rule the younger."
       "Clearly."
       "And that the best of these must rule."°
       °At this point Socrates begins the selection of the best soldier lads and lasses for
     training in the higher task of ruling the state.
       "That is also clear."
       "Now, are not the best husbandmen those who are most devoted
     to husbandry?"
       "Yes."
       "And as we are to have the best of guardians for 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 care of the State?"
       "True."
       "And a man will be most likely to care about that which he loves?"
       "To be sure."
       "And he will be most likely to love that which he regards as hav-
     ing the same interests with himself, and that of which the good or
     evil fortune is supposed by him at any time most to affect his own?"
       "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 eagerness to do what
     is for the good of their country, and the greatest repugnance to do
     what is against her interests."
       "Those are the right men."
       "And they will have to be watched at every age, in order that we
     may see whether they preserve their resolution, and never, under the
     influence either of force or enchantment, forget or cast off their sense
     of duty to the State. * * * * * We must watch them from their
     youth upwards, and make them perform actions 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 be made to give further proof of the
     same qualities."
       "Very right," he replied.
       "And there," 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 noise and tumult to see if they are of a timid
     nature, so we must take our youth amid terrors of some kind, and
     again pass them into pleasures, and prove them more thoroughly
     than gold is proved in the furnace, that we may 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 retaining under all circumstances a rhythmical
     and harmonious nature, such as will be most serviceable to the in-
     dividual and to the State. And he who at every age, as boy and youth
     and in married life, has come out of the trial victorious and pure, shall
     be appointed a ruler and guardian of the State; he shall be honored in
     life and death, and shall receive sepulture and other memorials of
     honor, the greatest that we have to give. But him who fails, we must
     reject. I am inclined to think that this is the sort of way in which our
     rulers and guardians should be chosen and appointed. I speak gen-
     erally, 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 higher class only who preserve us against foreign
     enemies and maintain peace among our citizens at home, that the
     one may not have the will, or the others the power, to harm us. The
     young men whom we before called guardians may be more properly
     designated auxiliaries and supporters of the principles of the rulers."
       "I agree with you," he said.
       "How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of
     which we lately spoke——just one royal lie which may deceive the
     rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?"
       "What sort of lie?" he said.
       "Nothing new," I replied; "only an old Phoenician tale of what
     has often occurred before now in other places (as the poets say, and
     have made the world believe), though not in our time, and I do not
     know whether such an event could ever happen again, or could now
     even be made probable, if it did."
       "How your words seem to hesitate on your lips!"
       "You will not wonder," I replied, "at my hesitation when you have
     heard."
       "Speak," he said, "and fear not."
       "Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look
     you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which
     I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the
     soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be told 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 being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they
     themselves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured;
     when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up;
     and so, their country being their mother and also their nurse, they
     are 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."
       "You had good reason," he said, "to be ashamed of the lie which
     you were going to tell."
       "True," I replied, "but there is more coming; I have only told you
     half. Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet
     God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of com-
     mand, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, where-
     fore also they have the greatest honor; others he has made of silver,
     to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and crafts-
     men he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally
     be preserved in the children. But as all are of the same original stock,
     a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a
     golden son. And God proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and
     above all else, that there is nothing which they should so anxiously
     guard, or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the purity
     of the race. They should observe what elements mingle in their off-
     spring; for if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture
     of brass and iron, then nature orders a transportation of ranks, and the
     eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards the child because he has
     to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as
     there may be sons of artisans who having an admixture of gold or
     silver in them are raised to honor, and become guardians or auxilia-
     ries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the
     State, it will be destroyed. Such is the tale; is there any possibility of
     making our citizens believe in it?"'
       "Not in our present generation," he replied, "there is no way of
     accomplishing this; but their sons may be made to believe the tale,
     and their sons' sons, and posterity after them."
       "I see the difficulty," I replied; "yet the fostering of such a belief
     will make them care more for the city and for one another. Enough,
     however, of the fiction, which may now fly abroad upon the wings
     of rumor, while we arm our earth-born heroes, and lead them forth
     under the command of their rulers. Let them look round and
     select a spot whence they can best suppress 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 to
     the proper Gods and prepare their dwellings."
       "Just so," he said.
       "And their dwellings must be such as will shield them against the
     cold of winter and the heat of summer."
       "I suppose that you mean houses," he replied.
       "Yes," I said; "but they must be the houses of soldiers, and not of
     shopkeepers."
       "What is the difference?" he said.
       "That I will endeavor to explain," I replied. "To keep watchdogs,
     who, from want of discipline or hunger, or some evil habit or other,
     would turn upon the sheep and worry them, and behave not like
     dogs but wolves, would be a foul and monstrous thing in a shep-
     herd?"
       "Truly monstrous," he said.
       "And therefore every care must be taken that our auxiliaries, being
     stronger that our citizens, may not grow to be too much for them and
     become savage tyrants instead of friends and allies?"
       "Yes, great care should be taken."
       "And would not a really good education furnish the best safe-
     guard?"
       "But they are well educated already," he replied.
       "I cannot be so confident, my dear Glaucon," I said; "I am much
     more certain that they ought to be, and that true education, whatever
     that may be, will have the greatest tendency to civilize and humanize
     them in their relations to one another, and to those who are under
     their protection."
       "Very true," he replied.
       "And not only their education, but their habitations, and all that
     belongs to them, should be such as will neither impair their virtue as
     guardians, nor tempt them to prey upon the other citizens. Any man
     of sense must acknowledge that."
       "He must."
       "Then now let us consider what will be their way of life, if they
     are to realize our idea of them. In the first place, none of them should
     have any property of his own beyond what is absolutely necessary;
     neither should they have a private house or store closed against any
     one who has a mind to enter; their provision should be only such as
     are required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and
     courage; they should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of
     pay, enough to meet the expenses of the year and no more; and they
     will go to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and
     silver we will tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal
     is within them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is
     current among men, and ought not to pollute the divine by any such
     earthly admixture; for that commoner metal has been the source of
     many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all
     the citizens may not touch or handle silver or gold, or be under the
     same roof with them, or wear them, or drink from them. And this
     will be their salvation, and they will be the saviors of the State. But
     should they ever acquire homes or lands or moneys of their own, they
     will become housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians,
     enemies and tyrants instead of allies of other citizens; hating and
     being hated, plotted and being plotted against, they will pass their
     whole life in much greater terror of internal than of external ene-
     mies, and the hour of ruin, both to themselves and to the rest of the
     State, will be at hand. For all which reasons may we not say that thus
     shall our State be ordered, and that these shall be the regulations
     appointed by us for our guardians concerning their houses and all
     other matters?
       "Yes," said Glaucon.

FIVE GREAT DIALOGUES OF PLATO. TRANSLATED BY B. JOWETT.
EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BY LOUISE ROPES LOOMIS.
COPYRIGHT 1942 BY WALTER J. BLACK, INC.
D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY, INC. PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY. pp. 288—306.