If you please.

Then I guess, that while he is ignorant of the truth he will be likely to honour his father and his mother and his supposed relations more than the flatterers; he will be less willing to see. them in want, or to do any violence to them, or say anything evil of them, and he will be less willing to disobey them in important matters.

He will.

But when he has made the discovery, I should imagine that he would diminish his honour and regard for them, and would become more devoted to the flatterers; their influence over him would greatly increase; he would now live after their ways, and openly associate with them, and, unless he were of an unusually good disposition, he would think no more of his parents or other supposed friends.

Well, all that is extremely probable. But how is the image applicable to the disciples of philosophy?

In this way you know that there are certain principles about justice and honour, which were taught us in childhood, and under their parental authority we have been brought up, obeying and valuing them.

That is true.

There are also opposite maxims and habits of pleasure which flatter and attract our soul, but do not influence those who have any sense of right, and they continue to obey and value the maxims of their fathers.

True.

Now, when a man is in this state, and the questioning spirit asks what is fair or honourable, and he answers as the legislator has taught him, and then arguments come again and again and refute his words, and he is driven into believing that nothing is fair any more than foul, or just and good any more than the opposite, and the same of all his time-honoured notions, do you think that he will still obey and value them?

Impossible.

And when he ceases to think them honourable and natural 539 as heretofore, and he fails to discover the true, can he be expected to pursue any life other than that which flatters his desires?

He cannot.

And from being a keeper of the law he is converted into a breaker of it?

Unquestionably.

Now all this is very natural in students of philosophy such as I have described, and also, as I was just now saying, most excusable.

Yes, he said; and, I may add, pitiable.

Therefore, that your feelings may not be moved to pity about our citizens who are thirty years of age, every care must be taken in introducing them to dialectic.

Certainly.

There is a danger lest they should taste the dear delight too carly; for young men, as you may have observed, when they first get the taste in their mouths, argue for amusement, and are always contradicting and refuting others in imitation of those who refute them; like puppy-dogs, they delight to tear and pull at all who come near them.

Yes, he said, there is nothing of which they are fonder.

And when they have made many conquests and received defeats at the hands of many, they violently and speedily get into a way of not believing anything that they believed before, and hence, not only they, but philosophy generally, has a bad name with the rest of the world.

Too true, he said.

But when a man begins to get older, he will no longer be guilty of such insanity; he will imitate the dialectician who is secking for truth, and not the eristic, who is contradicting for the sake of amusement; and the greater moderation of his character will increase instead of diminishing the honour of the pursuit. Very true, he said.

And did we not make special provision for this, when we said that the disciples of philosophy were to be orderly and steadfast, not, as now, any chance aspirant or intruder?

Very true.

Suppose, I said, that the study of philosophy be continued diligently and earnestly and exclusively for twice the number of years which were passed in bodily exercise-will that be enough?

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Would you say six or four years? he asked.

Say five years, I replied; at the end of that time they must be sent down into the den and compelled to hold any military or other office which young men are qualified to hold: in this way they will get their experience of life, and there will be an opportunity of trying whether, when they are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they will stand firm or flinch.

And how long is this stage of their lives to last?

Fifteen years, I answered; and when they have reached fifty years of age, then let those who still survive and have distinguished themselves in every deed and in all knowledge come at last to their consummation: the time has now arrived at which they must raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all things, and behold the absolute good; for that is the pattern according to which they are to order the State and the lives of individuals, and the remainder of their own lives also, making philosophy their chief pursuit; but, when their turn comes, toiling also at politics and ruling for the public good, not as if they were doing some great thing, but of necessity; and when they have brought up others like themselves and left them in their place to be governors of the State, then they will depart to the Islands of the Blest and dwell there; and the city will give them public memorials and sacrifices and honour them, if the Pythian oracle consent, as demigods, and at any rate as blessed and divine.

You are a sculptor, Socrates, and have made statues of our governors quite faultless.

Yes, I said, Glaucon, and of our governesses too; for you must not suppose that what I have been saying applies to men only and not to women as far as their natures can go.

There you are right, he said, if, as we described, they are to have all things in common with the men.

Well, I said, and you would agree (would you not?) that what has been said about the State and the government is not a mere dream, and although difficult not impossible, but only possible in the way which has been supposed; that is to say, when the true philosopher kings, one or more of them, are born in a State, despising the honours of this present world which they deem mean and worthless, above all esteeming right and the honour

that springs from right, and regarding justice as the greatest and most necessary of all things, whose ministers they are, and whose principles will be exalted by them when they set in order their own city?

How will they proceed?

They will begin by sending out into the country all the inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old, and will take possession of their children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents; they will then train them in their own habits and laws, that is to say, in those which we have given them and in this way the State and constitution of which we were speaking will soonest and most easily succeed, and the nation which has such a constitution will be most benefited.

Yes, that will be the best way. And I think, Socrates, that you have very well described how, if ever, such a constitution might come into being.

And have we not said enough of the State, and of the man who corresponds to the State, for there is no difficulty in seeing how we shall describe him?

There is no difficulty, he replied, and I say with you, enough.

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AND so, Glaucon, we have arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect State wives and children are to be in common; and education and the arts of war and peace are also to be common, and the best philosophers and the bravest warriors are to be their kings?

That, replied Glaucon, has been acknowledged.

Yes, I said; and we have further acknowledged that the governors, when appointed themselves, would take their soldiers and place them in houses such as we were describing; nor would any one say that anything which he had was his own-their houses were to be common; and about their property, you remember what we agreed?

Yes, I remember that no one was to have any of the ordinary possessions of mankind; they were to be warrior athletes and guardians, receiving from the other citizens, in lieu of annual payment, only their maintenance, and they were to take care of themselves and of the whole State.

True, I said; and now that this division of our work is concluded, let us find the point at which we digressed, that we may return into the old path.

There is no difficulty in returning, he replied; you were speaking then as now, as if you had finished the description of the State; and you said that such a State was good, and that the man was good who answered thereto, although you had more 544 excellent things to relate both of State and man. And you

said further, that if this was the true form, then the others were false; and of the false forms, you said, as I remember, that there were four principal ones, and that their defects and the defects of the individuals corresponding to them, were worth examining. Having seen all the individuals, and finally agreed as to who was