Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
After this, I said, compare our nature, in respect of education and its lack, to an experience like this. Picture people living in an underground cave-like dwelling, with an entrance open to the light that runs the whole length of the cave. They've been there since childhood, legs and necks bound in chains, so that they stay put and can only look straight ahead,
unable to turn their heads around because of the chains. Their light is a fire that burns far off, above and behind them; and higher up, between that fire and the prisoners, runs a road, beside which — look — a low wall has been built, like the screen puppeteers set up in front of their audience, over which they show their puppets. — I see it, he said. — Then picture, alongside
this wall, people carrying all sorts of implements that project above it, and statues of men and other animals worked in stone and wood and every material, some of the carriers presumably talking, others silent. — This is a strange image, he said, and strange prisoners. — Like us, I said. Because, to begin with, do you think such people would have seen anything
of themselves or one another except the shadows cast by the fire onto the wall of the cave facing them? — How could they, he said, if they'd been forced to keep their heads motionless their whole lives? — And what of the objects being carried? Wouldn't the same be true of those? — Of course. — So if they were able to talk with one another, don't you think they'd take
what they saw to be the real things? — Necessarily. — And what if the prison also had an echo from the wall facing them? Whenever one of those passing by spoke, do you think they'd suppose the voice came from anything other than the passing shadow? — No, by Zeus, I don't, he said. — Then such people, I said, would take nothing else to be the truth except the shadows
of the manufactured objects. — Quite inevitably, he said. — Now consider, I said, what their release would be like, and their cure from these chains and from this folly — what it would naturally be like, if something of this sort happened to them. Whenever one of them was freed and forced suddenly to stand up, turn his neck, walk, and look toward the light, he would suffer pain doing all this,
and because of the glare he'd be unable to make out the things whose shadows he used to see. What do you think he'd say if someone told him that what he saw before was mere nonsense, but that now, being closer to what is and turned toward more real things, he sees more correctly — and, moreover, if pointing out each of the passing objects, one forced him to answer what each one was? Don't you think
he'd be at a loss, and believe that what he used to see was truer than what was now being shown to him? — Far more so, he said. — And if one forced him to look at the light itself, wouldn't his eyes hurt, and wouldn't he flee, turning away toward the things he's able to make out, and think those really clearer than what was being pointed out to him? — Just so, he said. — And if, I said, from there
someone dragged him by force up the rough, steep ascent, and did not let go until he'd hauled him out into the sunlight, wouldn't he be pained and irritated at being dragged, and when he came into the light, with his eyes filled with the sun's brightness, wouldn't he be unable to see even one of the things now called true? — No, he said, not right away, at least.
He would need time to get used to it, I think, if he's going to see the things above. And at first he would most easily make out shadows, and after that the reflections of men and other things in water, and later the things themselves; and from there he'd more easily gaze on the things in the sky, and the sky itself, at night, looking at the light of the stars
and moon, than at the sun and its light by day. — Of course. — And last of all, I imagine, the sun — not images of it in water or in some alien place, but the sun itself, in its own place — he'd be able to look at and study as it really is. — Necessarily so, he said. — And after this he would go on to reason about
it, that this is the one that provides the seasons and the years, and governs everything in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all the things they used to see. — Clearly, he said, that's what he'd come to after those other things. — Well then? When he remembers his first dwelling and what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners then, don't you think he'd
count himself happy for the change, and pity them? — He certainly would. — And if there had been honors and praises among them then, and prizes for the one who saw the passing shadows most sharply, and best remembered which used to come before, which after, and which together, and from this was most able to divine what was going to come next — do you think he'd still desire those things
and envy those among them who were honored and held power, or would he rather have felt what Homer describes, and wish strongly 'to be a serf on the land of some landless man,' and endure anything at all, rather than hold those opinions and live that way? — Yes, he said, I think he would — that he'd endure anything rather than live that way. — And consider this too, I said.
If such a man went back down again and sat in the same seat, wouldn't his eyes be filled with darkness, coming suddenly from the sun? — Very much so, he said. — And if he had to compete again, judging those shadows, with the prisoners who had never been released, while his eyes were still failing — and this before his eyes had settled, which might take
quite some time to adjust — wouldn't he be a laughingstock, and wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyesight ruined, and that it isn't even worth trying to go up? And as for anyone who tried to free them and lead them up, if they could somehow get their hands on him and kill him, wouldn't they kill him? — They certainly would, he said. — This image, then,
my dear Glaucon, must be applied as a whole to what was said before — likening the region revealed through sight to the dwelling of the prison, and the light of the fire within it to the power of the sun; and if you take the upward journey and the viewing of things above as the soul's ascent to the intelligible region, you won't miss my
meaning, since that's what you want to hear about. Whether it's true, God only knows. But this, at any rate, is how it appears to me: in the realm of the knowable, the last thing to be seen, and only with difficulty, is the form of the good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is indeed the cause of all that is right and beautiful in everything — that in the visible realm it gives birth to light and to the lord of light, and
in the intelligible realm it is itself the sovereign source of truth and understanding — and that whoever is going to act wisely in private or in public must see it. — I agree, he said, insofar as I'm able. — Come, then, I said, agree with this too, and don't be surprised that those who have come this far are unwilling to manage human affairs, but that their souls are always straining upward
to spend their time there. That's likely enough, I think, if indeed things really are according to the image just described. — Likely indeed, he said. — Well, then — do you think it at all strange, I said, if someone coming from divine contemplations to human evils behaves awkwardly and looks utterly ridiculous, still dim-sighted and not yet sufficiently accustomed to the darkness around him, forced
to contend in courts or elsewhere about the shadows of justice, or about the statues whose shadows they are, and to dispute over how these are understood by people who have never seen justice itself? — Not strange at all, he said. — But anyone with sense, I said, would remember that there are two kinds of disturbance to the eyes, arising from two causes:
moving from light into darkness, and from darkness into light. And thinking the same things happen to the soul, whenever he saw one troubled and unable to make anything out, he wouldn't laugh unthinkingly, but would consider whether it had come from a brighter life and was dimmed by the unfamiliarity, or whether, coming from greater ignorance into greater brightness, it was dazzled by the brilliance of the glare — and so,
he would count the one happy for its experience and its life, and pity the other; and if he wanted to laugh at it, his laughter would be less ridiculous than laughter directed at the soul that has come from above, out of the light. — That's very fairly put, he said. — We must, then, I said, think of these matters like this, if what's been said is true: that education is not what some who profess it claim it to be.
They claim, I believe, to put knowledge into a soul that doesn't have it, as if putting sight into blind eyes. — That's certainly what they say, he said. — But our present argument, I said, indicates that this power is already present in each soul, and that the instrument by which each person learns is like an eye that could not be turned from darkness to light
except by turning the whole body along with them: in the same way, this instrument must be wheeled around along with the entire soul, away from that which is coming-to-be, until it becomes capable of enduring the sight of that which is, and of the brightest part of that which is — and this, we say, is the good. Isn't that so? — Yes. — Of this, then, I said, there would be a craft — of this very turning around — concerned
with how it might most easily and effectively be redirected, not with implanting sight in it, but on the understanding that it already has that, though not rightly turned, nor looking where it ought, and to contrive a way to bring this about. — So it seems, he said. — Now as for the rest of what people call the soul's virtues, they do seem to be something close to those of the body — for in truth, when they're not present beforehand, they can later be produced by habits and
practices — but the virtue of understanding, it seems, belongs to something more divine than anything else, something that never loses its power, but through the way it is turned becomes useful and beneficial, or else useless and harmful. Or have you not yet noticed, in the case of people called wicked but clever, how sharply their petty soul sees, and how keenly it discerns the things toward which it's turned, as
having no poor vision, but being compelled to serve vice, so that the more sharply it sees, the more evils it accomplishes? — Quite so, he said. — Yet this, I said, this feature of such a nature — if it had been struck off from childhood, right from the start, cut away from those leaden weights, so to speak, akin to its coming into being, weights that grow attached to it through feasting and such pleasures and gluttonies
— that turn the soul's vision downward. If it were freed from these and turned around toward the truth, that same faculty in those same men would see the truth just as sharply as it now sees the things it's turned toward. — That's likely, he said. — Well, isn't this likely too, and in fact necessary given what we've said: that neither the uneducated, who have no experience of truth, could ever adequately govern a city, nor those who are allowed to spend their whole lives in study can either —
the first because they have no single aim in life at which they must direct everything they do, in private or in public; the second because they won't willingly act at all, thinking they've already been transported, while still alive, to the Isles of the Blessed? — True, he said. — Then it's our job, I said, as founders,
to compel the best natures to reach the study we said before was the greatest — to see the good and make that ascent — and once they've gone up and seen enough, not to let them do what's now allowed. — What do you mean? — To stay there, I said, and refuse to go back down again to those
prisoners, or to share in their labors and honors, whether trivial or serious. — Then, he said, will we be wronging them, making them live a worse life when they could have a better one? — You're forgetting again, my friend, I said, that the law isn't concerned with making any one group in the city exceptionally happy, but contrives to bring this about for the city as a whole,
harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with one another whatever benefit each group is able to contribute to the community, and it produces such men in the city not in order to let each go wherever he pleases, but in order to make use of them itself, to bind the city together. — True, he said — I'd forgotten. — Consider, then, Glaucon, I said,
that we won't be wronging the philosophers who arise among us either — that we'll say something just to them when we compel them to look after and guard the others. We'll say: those who become such men in other cities are reasonably not obliged to share in the labors there, since they spring up spontaneously, against the will of the regime they live under, and it's only fair that what grows up on its own, owing its nurture to no one, should feel no urge
to pay anyone back for its upbringing. But we have bred you, for yourselves and for the rest of the city alike, to be leaders and kings in the hive, as it were — better and more completely educated than those others, and more capable of taking part in both lives. So each of you must go down in turn to live among the others and get used to seeing in the dark; once accustomed to it, you'll see a thousand times better than the people
there, and you'll recognize what each of the images is, and what it's an image of, because you've seen the truth about beautiful, just, and good things. And so the city will be governed by us and by you in a waking state, not as in a dream, the way most cities now are governed by men fighting shadows of each other and quarreling over ruling, as if that were some great good. But the truth, I imagine,
is this: in the city where those who are going to rule are least eager to rule, that city must be governed best and with the least faction; and the one with the opposite kind of rulers will be governed in the opposite way. — Quite so, he said. — Do you think, then, that our nurslings will disobey us when they hear this, and refuse to share in the city's labors each in his turn, spending most of their time living with one another in
the pure realm above? — Impossible, he said; we'll be laying just demands on just men. Yet each of them will approach ruling as something necessary, quite the opposite of what happens now with rulers in every city. — Yes, that's how it is, my friend, I said: if you can find, for those who are going to rule, a way of life better than ruling, then it's possible for you to have a well-governed city — for only in that city
will the truly rich rule, rich not in gold but in what the happy man must be rich in: a good and intelligent life. But if beggars, hungry for private goods, go into public affairs thinking that's where they should snatch their good from, it can't be done; for once ruling becomes something fought over, this kind of war, domestic and internal, destroys both the men themselves and the rest of the
city. — Very true, he said. — Do you know of any other life, then, I said, that looks down on political office besides the life of true philosophy? — No, by Zeus, he said. — But surely those who go after ruling must not be lovers of it; otherwise there will be rival lovers fighting over it. — Of course. — Whom else, then, will you compel to take up guardianship of the
city, if not those who are wisest about the things through which a city is governed best, and who have other honors and a better life than the political one? — No one else, he said. — Do you want us, then, to examine now how such men will come to be, and how one might bring them up into the light — the way certain men, in the stories, went up from Hades to join the gods? — Of course I want that, he said.
This, it seems, would not be a turning of a potsherd, but a conversion of the soul from a kind of nighttime day to the true day — an ascent to what is, which we'll call true philosophy. — Quite so. — Then we must consider what kind of study has this power. — Of course. — What, then, Glaucon, would be a study that draws the soul from what is becoming
to what is? Here's another thing I have in mind as I speak: didn't we say these men must be athletes of war when young? — Yes, we did. — Then the study we're looking for must also have that further quality. — What quality? — That it not be useless to men of war. — It certainly must, if that's possible. — Now, gymnastic and music were what they were educated in earlier, in our scheme. — Yes,
that's so, he said. — And gymnastic, I think, is concerned with what comes into being and passes away, for what it supervises is the body's growth and its wasting away. — So it seems. — Then that can't be the study we're looking for. — No. — Is it music, then, as much as we went through before? — But that, he said, was the counterpart of gymnastic, if you remember — it educated the guardians through habits, imparting a certain harmoniousness by means of harmony,
not knowledge, and a certain rhythmic quality by means of rhythm, and in its stories it had certain other kindred habits, both the mythical stories and the truer ones; but it contained no study leading toward the sort of thing you're now looking for. — You remind me most precisely, I said; it really did contain nothing of the kind. — But then, my dear
Glaucon, what could such a study be? All the crafts, after all, seemed to be somehow menial — — Of course. — And yet what other study is left, apart from music, gymnastic, and the crafts? — Come, I said, if we have nothing else to grasp outside these, let's take up one of the things that extend to everything. — What do you mean? — This common thing, for instance, which
all crafts, forms of thought, and sciences make use of — which everyone must learn among the very first things. — What is that? he said. — This trivial thing, I said — distinguishing one and two and three; I mean, in sum, number and calculation. Or isn't it the case with these that every craft and science is compelled
to partake of them? — Very much so, he said. — And war too? I said. — Necessarily so, he said. — It's quite absurd, then, I said, that Palamedes in the tragedies always makes Agamemnon out to be such a general. Have you not noticed that he says he invented number and used it to organize the ranks of the army at Troy, and to count the ships and everything else, as though before that they were uncounted and
Agamemnon, it seems, didn't even know how many feet he had, if indeed he didn't know how to count? Yet what sort of general do you suppose he was? — A strange one indeed, he said, if that were true. — Shall we then set down, I said, calculation and the ability to count as a necessary study for a man of war? — Most necessary of all, he said, if he's to understand anything of battle formations at all — or rather
if he's to be a human being at all. — Do you notice, then, I said, the same thing about this study that I do? — What is that? — It seems likely to be, by nature, one of those studies that lead toward understanding, which we're looking for — yet no one uses it correctly, though it's altogether suited to draw the mind toward being. — What do you mean? he said. — I'll try, I said, to make clear at least what I think. As I distinguish for myself which things are guides
to what we mean and which are not, join me in considering and either agree or disagree, so that we can see more clearly whether things are as I divine. — Show me, he said. — I show you, then, I said, if you can see it: some things in our perceptions don't call on the understanding to examine them, since they're adequately judged by perception itself, while others altogether summon it to examine them, since perception produces nothing sound
there. — You clearly mean, he said, things that appear at a distance, and things drawn in shadow-painting. — You haven't quite hit on what I mean, I said. — What do you mean, then? he said. — The things that don't call on it, I said, are those that don't at the same time issue in a contrary perception; but those that do issue in a contrary perception I count as calling on it, whenever perception reveals this no more than its opposite, whether it strikes
from near or from far. You'll understand more clearly what I mean this way. Here, we say, are three fingers — the smallest, the second, and the middle one. — Quite so, he said. — Think of me as speaking of them as seen from close up. But consider this about them. — What? — Each of them appears equally a finger, and in this respect it makes no difference whether
it's seen in the middle or at the end, whether white or black, thick or thin, or anything of that sort. In all these cases the soul of most people isn't compelled to ask the understanding what a finger is, since sight never signals to it that the finger is at the same time the opposite of a finger. — No, it doesn't, he said. — Then reasonably, I said,
a thing of this kind wouldn't be able to call on or awaken understanding. — Reasonably so. — But what about this: does sight see their largeness and smallness adequately, and does it make no difference to it whether one of them lies in the middle or at the end? And likewise with thickness and thinness, or softness and hardness, for touch? And do the other senses too
reveal such things adequately? Or does each of them do this instead: first, the sense assigned to the hard is necessarily also assigned to the soft, and it reports to the soul that it perceives the same thing as both hard and soft? — Yes, that's so, he said. — Then isn't it necessary, I said, that in cases like this the soul in turn be at a loss as to what this
—perception announces the hard, if it also announces the same thing as soft, and the same for light and heavy—what is the light and the heavy, if the heavy signifies light and the light signifies heavy? "Yes," he said, "these reports are indeed strange to the soul and need examination." "It's reasonable, then," I said, "that in cases like these the soul first
tries, by summoning calculation and understanding, to look into whether each of the things reported is one or two." "Of course." "And if it appears to be two, each of the two appears distinct and one?" "Yes." "So if each is one, and the two together are two, it will conceive the two as separate—for it could not conceive an inseparable two, but only one." "Correct." "And sight, in fact, sees great and
small too, we say, but not as separate—rather as something confused together, isn't that so?" "Yes." "And to clarify this, understanding in turn is compelled to see great and small not as confused but as distinguished—the opposite of what sight does." "True." "So isn't it from here, somewhere, that it first occurs to us to ask what, then, is the great and what the small?" "Absolutely."
"And this is how we came to call the one intelligible and the other visible." "Quite right," he said. "This, then, is just what I was trying to say a moment ago: that some things summon thought and others do not—those that strike perception together with their own opposites I define as summoning it, while those that do not, I define as not awakening understanding." "I understand now," he said, "and I agree that's so."
"Well then—which class do number and the one seem to belong to?" "I don't follow," he said. "Reason it out, then," I said, "from what's already been said. For if the one is adequately seen just by itself, or grasped by some other perception, it wouldn't draw the mind toward being, as we said about the finger. But if some opposite is always seen along with it, so that
it appears no more one than its opposite, then something would be needed to judge between them, and the soul within would be forced into perplexity and inquiry, stirring up its own understanding, and would ask what, then, the one itself really is—and in this way the study of the one would be among those that lead and turn the soul around toward the vision of being." "But surely,"
he said, "the sight of the one has this feature not least of all—for we see the very same thing at once as one and as an unlimited multitude." "Then if that's true of the one," I said, "doesn't the same hold for number as a whole as well?" "Of course." "And yet arithmetic and calculation deal entirely with number." "Very much so." "And these subjects appear to lead toward
truth." "Remarkably so." "Then it seems these would be among the studies we're seeking—for a warrior must learn them for the sake of troop formations, and a philosopher must learn them because he has to rise up out of becoming and grasp being, or else never become a true reckoner." "That's so," he said. "And our guardian happens to be both warrior and philosopher." "Certainly." "So this subject would be fitting
to legislate, Glaucon, and to persuade those who are going to have a share in the greatest offices of the city to take up calculation—not casually, but until they arrive, through pure thought itself, at the contemplation of the nature of numbers—not for the sake of buying and selling, as merchants or shopkeepers practice it, but for the sake of war and for the soul's own ease of
turning away from becoming toward truth and being." "Beautifully put," he said. "And indeed," I said, "I now realize, now that the subject of calculation has been mentioned, how subtle it is and how useful in many ways for what we want—provided one pursues it for the sake of knowledge and not for trafficking." "In what way?" he said. "In just this, as we were saying a moment ago—how
powerfully it draws the soul upward and forces it to discuss numbers themselves, never tolerating anyone who proposes visible or tangible bodies as the numbers under discussion. You know, I imagine, how those skilled in these matters, if someone tries in argument to cut the one itself into parts, laugh at him and won't accept it—rather, if you try to break it up, they
multiply it instead, taking care that the one should never appear to be not one but many parts." "Very true," he said. "So what do you suppose, Glaucon, would happen if someone asked them: 'My good fellows, what numbers are you discussing, in which the one is just as you claim it to be—each one perfectly equal to every other, not differing in the least, and containing no parts within itself?' What
do you think they'd answer?" "This, I think—that they're speaking of numbers that can only be thought about, and can't be handled in any other way at all." "Do you see, then, my friend," I said, "that this subject really does seem to be necessary for us, since it evidently compels the soul to use pure understanding itself in pursuit of truth itself?" "Indeed," he said, "it certainly does
do that." "And here's something else—have you noticed this: that those naturally gifted at calculation turn out to be quick, so to speak, at practically every other subject, while the slow, if trained and exercised in this, even if they gain nothing else from it, still all improve and become sharper than they were?" "That's so," he said. "And what's more, I think you won't easily find many subjects that give
more trouble to one learning and practicing them than this one." "No, indeed." "So for all these reasons, the subject shouldn't be dropped—rather, those of the best natures should be trained in it." "I agree," he said. "Let this, then," I said, "be settled as one point for us—and let's examine, second, whether the subject that comes next after it has anything to do with us." "What subject is that? Do you mean
geometry?" he said. "That's exactly it," I said. "As far as it bears on warfare," he said, "it's clearly relevant—for in setting up camp, seizing terrain, concentrating and deploying an army, and all the other formations troops take up both in battle itself and on the march, a man would differ from himself depending on whether he knew geometry or not." "But
still," I said, "for purposes like those, even a small portion of geometry and calculation would suffice. What we need to examine is whether the greater and more advanced part of it tends toward that other goal—making it easier to see the form of the good. And everything tends toward that, we say, which compels the soul to turn itself around toward that region where
dwells the most blessed part of being, which it must by every means behold." "You're right," he said. "So then, if it compels the soul to contemplate being, it's relevant; but if it compels contemplation of becoming, it isn't." "So we say." "Well then," I said, "no one with even a little experience of geometry will dispute this with us—that this science is entirely the opposite of what
is said about it by those who practice it." "How so?" he said. "They speak in a quite ridiculous and constrained way—as though they were doing something practical, and framing all their language for the sake of action, talking of 'squaring,' 'applying,' 'adding,' and all such expressions, when in fact the whole subject is pursued for the sake of knowledge." "Absolutely so," he said. "Then mustn't we agree on this further point?" "Which one?"
That it is knowledge of what always is, not of anything that comes to be and passes away." "Easy to agree," he said, "for geometrical knowledge is knowledge of what always is." "Then it would be something that draws the soul toward truth, noble friend, and produces the philosopher's habit of mind by directing upward what we now wrongly keep turned downward." "As much as possible," he said. "As much as possible, then,"
I said, "we must most strictly require that the people in your beautiful city not neglect geometry in any way. For even its side benefits are not small." "What benefits?" he said. "Those you mentioned yourself," I said, "regarding warfare—and also, for all studies generally, we know, I think, that there's a world of difference
between someone who has grasped geometry and someone who hasn't." "The whole world of difference, by Zeus," he said. "Then shall we set this down as a second subject for the young?" "Let's set it down," he said. "And what next—shall we make astronomy the third? Or don't you think so?" "I think so, certainly," he said, "for being finely attuned to seasons, months, and years is useful not only for farming and seafaring, but no less for generalship too." "You're delightful," I
said, "in seeming afraid of the crowd, lest you appear to be prescribing useless subjects. But it's really no small thing—though hard to believe—that in each of these studies some instrument of the soul is purified and rekindled, one that is being destroyed and blinded by other pursuits, though it's worth preserving more than ten thousand eyes, since by it alone is truth seen. To those who agree with this,
you'll seem to speak marvelously well; but those who have never perceived it at all will naturally think you're talking nonsense, since they see no other benefit worth mentioning coming from it. So consider right now which of the two groups you're addressing—or rather, whether you're addressing neither, but making the argument chiefly for your own sake, though you wouldn't begrudge it to anyone else either, if they could gain some
benefit from it." "That's how I choose it," he said, "to speak, ask, and answer mostly for my own sake." "Then step back a moment," I said, "for just now we took the wrong thing as coming next after geometry." "What did we take wrongly?" he said. "After plane surfaces," I said, "we took solids already in rotation, before taking up solids by themselves. The correct order is to take up the third dimension of growth right after the second,
and this concerns, I suppose, the growth of cubes and whatever partakes of depth." "Yes, it does," he said, "but this subject, Socrates, doesn't seem to have been discovered yet." "There are two reasons for that," I said—"because no city holds these studies in honor, they are pursued half-heartedly, difficult as they are, and those who seek them need a guide, without whom they wouldn't discover anything,"
"who in the first place is hard to come by, and then, even once he did appear, as things stand now, those engaged in this research, full of their own self-importance, wouldn't listen to him. But if a whole city took charge together and held these studies in honor, then such researchers would be persuaded, and being pursued continuously and intensively, the truth would become clear as to how matters stand—since even now, though disdained and stunted by the many,
and by researchers who can't even give an account of their usefulness, still, against all this, they grow by force of their own charm, and it's no wonder they've come to light at all." "And indeed," he said, "their charm is remarkable and distinctive. But tell me more clearly what you were just saying. You were placing the study of plane surfaces under geometry." "Yes," I said. "And then," he said, "first you placed"
—astronomy, next after that—but then you backed away. I was in a hurry, I said, to get through everything quickly, and that made me go too slow. The subject that comes next, the study of depth, I skipped over because of how absurd its current state of inquiry is, and went straight from geometry to astronomy, which is the movement of depth. You're right, he said, to put it that way. So, I said, let's set down astronomy as our fourth subject, on the assumption that the one we skipped will exist once a city takes it up.
That's likely, he said. And by the way, Socrates, the rebuke you gave me just now for praising astronomy in a vulgar way—I now praise it the way you approach it. It seems obvious to everyone, I think, that astronomy forces the soul to look upward and leads it from things here to things up there. Perhaps, I said, obvious to everyone but me. To me it doesn't look that way at all.
Then how does it look to you? he said. The way people who lead others up toward philosophy handle it now makes it, quite thoroughly, a matter of looking downward. What do you mean? he said. You seem to me, I said, to have formed a rather generous notion of what learning about the things above actually is. It looks to me as though, if someone tilted his head back to study patterns worked into a ceiling and learned something that way, you'd think he was studying with his intellect rather than
with his eyes. Well, maybe your view is the sound one and mine is naive. As for me, I simply can't think of any study that makes the soul look upward except one concerned with what is and what is invisible. Whether a person gapes upward or squints downward trying to learn something about the objects of sense-perception, I say he'll never actually learn it—since none of that admits of knowledge—
and his soul isn't looking up but down, even if he does his learning lying on his back, floating on land or on sea. That's a fair sentence, he said—you were right to rebuke me. But then how did you mean we ought to learn astronomy, differently from the way people learn it now, if it's going to be of any use for the purposes we're talking about? Like this, I said. These intricate patterns in the sky,
since they're worked into something visible, we should regard as the finest and most exact things of their kind that exist, yet still falling far short of the true realities—the movements by which real speed and real slowness, in true number and in all true shapes, move in relation to one another and carry along what is within them, things graspable only by reasoning and thought, not by sight. Or do you
think otherwise? Not at all, he said. Well then, I said, we should use the patterned beauty of the heavens as illustrations to help us study those higher realities, in just the way one might make use of diagrams drawn and worked out with extraordinary skill by a Daedalus or some other craftsman or painter. Anyone experienced in geometry, seeing diagrams like that, would consider them the finest examples of workmanship, while still thinking it absurd to examine them
in earnest as though from them one could learn the truth about equals or doubles or any other ratio. Of course it would be absurd, he said. Then don't you think, I said, that a genuine astronomer will feel just the same whenever he gazes at the wheeling courses of the stars? He'll suppose that the craftsman of the heavens arranged the sky and everything in it as beautifully as such works can possibly be arranged;
but as for the ratio of night to day, of these to a month, of a month to a year, and of the other stars to these and to one another—won't he think it strange, do you suppose, for anyone to hold that these things, since they have bodies and are visible, occur forever in the same unvarying way and never deviate in the slightest, and to spend every effort trying to grasp
the exact truth about them? It does seem so to me, he said, now that I hear you say it. Then it's as problems, I said, that we should pursue astronomy, just as we do geometry, and leave the actual heavens alone, if we mean to make the naturally intelligent part of the soul useful instead of useless by taking up astronomy in the true sense. That's a far bigger task, he said, than the way astronomy is practiced now. And I suspect, I said,
that we'll have to prescribe things the same way for everything else too, if we're to be of any use as lawgivers. But can you suggest anything relevant among the studies still due? I can't think of anything, he said, not off the top of my head. Well, movement doesn't offer just one form but several, I said, or so I imagine. All of them, perhaps, someone truly wise could name; but there are
two that even we can see clearly. Which are those? In addition to the one we've named, I said, there's its counterpart. Which one is that? It looks to me, I said, as though, just as our eyes are fixed on astronomy, so our ears are fixed on harmonic movement, and these two sciences are sisters to each other, as the Pythagoreans claim — and we go along with them, Glaucon. Or how do we stand on this? That's how it is, he said. Then, I said,
since it's such a large task, we'll go ask them how they account for it, and whatever else goes along with that; but through all of this we'll keep watch over our own concern. What concern is that? That the students we're raising never attempt to learn any of this in an incomplete form, one that fails to arrive always at the point where everything must arrive, as we were just saying about astronomy. Or don't you know that
they do the very same thing with harmonics? They measure the audible concords and pitches against one another, laboring endlessly, just like the astronomers. By the gods, he said, yes, and absurdly too—they talk about certain 'densities,' pressing their ears close as though hunting a sound from next door; some claim to still catch a faint tone in between and say that this is the smallest interval by which measurement should be made,
while others dispute this, insisting the notes already sound alike—both sides setting their ears ahead of their minds. You mean, I said, the good ones, the ones who torment and torture the strings, twisting them on the pegs. To keep the image from running on too long, with the striking of the plectrum and the accusations, denials, and boasts of the strings, I'll drop the image and say
I don't mean those people, but the ones we said just now we would question about harmony. They do the same thing as the astronomers—they look for numbers within these audible concords, but they never rise to the level of problems, of examining which numbers are concordant and which are not, and why in each case. That's a superhuman task you're describing, he said. Useful, though, I said,
for the search after the beautiful and the good, but useless if pursued any other way. Likely so, he said. And I imagine, I said, that the whole method covering everything we've gone through, if it arrives at their common bond and kinship with one another, and we work out how they're related to each other, will contribute something toward what we want and the effort won't be wasted;
but if not, it will be wasted. That's my guess too, he said. But this is an enormous undertaking you're describing, Socrates. The prelude to it, I said—or what else do you mean? Or don't we know that all of this is only a prelude to the very law we must learn? Surely you don't think that people skilled in these subjects are dialecticians. No, by Zeus, he said, except for
a very few I've come across. But then, I said, can people who are unable to give and receive an account ever come to know anything of what we say must be known? No, he said, not that either. Well then, Glaucon, I said, isn't this at last the very law that dialectic brings to completion? And though it belongs to the realm of thought, it's imitated by the power of sight,
which we said tries to look at living creatures themselves, and at the stars themselves, and finally at the sun itself. In just the same way, whenever someone tries, through dialectic, using reason alone and setting aside all the senses, to press on toward what each thing is in itself, and doesn't give up until he grasps by thought alone what the good itself is, he arrives
at the very limit of the intelligible, just as the other man, back then, arrived at the limit of the visible. Absolutely, he said. Well then—don't you call this journey dialectic? What else would I call it? And the release from the chains, I said, and the turning away from the shadows toward the images and the light, and the ascent out of the cave into the
sun—and once there, still lacking the strength to gaze on animals or growing things or the sun's own light, seeing instead only those divine reflections in water and shadows cast by real objects, not shadows of images thrown by some other light of that kind judged against the sun—this whole undertaking, comprising the arts we've gone through, has this same power and
leads the best part of the soul upward to the contemplation of what is best among realities, just as before the clearest part of the body was led up to the contemplation of what is brightest in the bodily, visible region. For my part, he said, I accept this account. And yet it seems to me altogether difficult to accept, and, in another way, difficult not to accept. Still—since this isn't something
to be heard just once, right now, but to be returned to again and again—let's take it, for now, that things stand as we've just said, and go on to the law itself, and go through it the way we went through the prelude. Tell me, then, what is the nature of the power of dialectic, into what kinds does it divide, and what, in turn, are its paths? For these, it seems, would be the very paths
leading to that goal itself, where, once arrived, one would find, as at the end of a journey, both rest and completion. No longer, I said, dear Glaucon, will you be able to follow—though on my side there'd be no lack of eagerness—nor would you any longer be seeing an image of what we're speaking of, but the truth itself, at least as it appears to me. Whether it really is so or not is no longer something worth
insisting on firmly. But that there is something of this kind to be seen, that much must be insisted on. Isn't that so? Of course. And also that the power of dialectic alone could reveal it, to someone experienced in what we've just gone through, and in no other way is this possible? That too, he said, is worth insisting on firmly. This much, at any rate, I said, no one will dispute when we say that some other
method attempts systematically to grasp, concerning each thing itself, what each thing is. All the other arts are directed either toward human opinions and desires, or toward coming-into-being and composition, or are wholly devoted to the care of things that grow and are put together; while the rest, the ones we said do lay hold of something of what is—geometry and the studies that follow it—we see how they dream
about what is, but are incapable of seeing it in a waking state, so long as they make use of hypotheses and leave these undisturbed, unable to give any account of them. For when the starting point is something one doesn't know, and the conclusion and the steps in between are woven together out of what one doesn't know, what means is there for such mere agreement ever to become knowledge? None, he said. Then, I said, dialectic
—this is the only method that proceeds in this way, doing away with hypotheses and going up to the very first principle itself, so as to make itself secure there, and it gently draws and leads upward the eye of the soul that is literally buried in a kind of barbarian mud, using as helpers and fellow-travelers the arts we went through—arts we often called sciences out of habit, though they need some other name, one clearer than opinion but
dimmer than science—we defined that, I think, earlier as thinking. But it seems to me that this isn't a dispute about a name, for those whose inquiry concerns matters as important as the ones now before us. — No indeed, he said. — But will it be enough if the name just somehow indicates the condition, expressed clearly in the soul? — Yes. — Then will it be enough, I said, as before, to call the first part
knowledge, the second thinking, the third belief, and the fourth imagining; and to call the last two together opinion, and the first two together intellection; and opinion concerned with becoming, intellection with being; and as being is to becoming, so intellection is to opinion; and as intellection is to opinion, so knowledge is to belief and thinking is to imagining—the proportion among the things these apply to,
and the twofold division of each—of the opinable and the intelligible—let's leave aside, Glaucon, so it doesn't fill us with a great many more arguments than the ones we've already gone through. — Well, for my part, he said, as far as I can follow, I agree with the rest. — And do you call the account of each thing's being, when someone can grasp it, dialectical? And the one who cannot give an account—to himself or to another—
to that extent you'll say he has no understanding of the matter? — How could I say otherwise? he said. — And it's the same with the good: whoever cannot mark it off by argument from everything else, distinguishing the form of the good, and cannot, as though in battle, fight his way through every refutation, striving to test things not by opinion but by being, and come through all this
with his argument unshaken—you'll say that a person in that condition neither knows the good itself nor any other good, but if he ever lays hold of some image of it, he does so by opinion, not by knowledge, and that he dreams and slumbers away his present life, and before he can wake up here he arrives first in Hades and falls completely asleep there? — By Zeus, he said, yes,
I'll say all that. — But surely your own children, whom you're rearing and educating in speech—if you were ever to rear them in fact—you wouldn't allow them, being as irrational as lines, to become rulers in the city with authority over the most important matters, would you? — No indeed, he said. — So you will legislate that they above all take hold of this education, out of which they will be most capable of asking questions and answering them
in the most scientific way? — I will legislate it, he said, together with you. — Does it seem to you, then, I said, that dialectic lies as a kind of coping-stone set above our studies, and that no other study could rightly be placed higher than this one, but that the arrangement of studies now has its completion? — It does to me, he said. — Then what remains for you, I said, is the distribution: to whom shall we give these studies,
and in what manner? — Clearly, he said. — Do you remember, then, the earlier selection of rulers, the sort we chose? — How could I not? he said. — Well, as for the rest, I said, you should suppose we need to choose those same natures: we must prefer the steadiest and most courageous, and, as far as possible, the best-looking; but besides these we must also look not only for people noble and stern in character, but also
who have qualities suited by nature to this kind of education. — What sort of thing are you distinguishing? — They need to have sharpness, my good man, I said, toward their studies, and not learn with difficulty. For souls shrink back far more in the face of demanding studies than in gymnastic exercises; the labor is more properly their own there, being private to them and not shared with
the body. — True, he said. — And we must look for someone with memory, and endurance, and thorough love of labor. Or how else do you suppose anyone will be willing both to work hard at bodily exercises and to carry through so much learning and study? — No one, he said, unless he's altogether well-endowed by nature. — The mistake made now, I said, and the dishonor that has befallen philosophy because of it,
is what we said before—that people take hold of it who aren't worthy of it; for it wasn't the illegitimate who should have taken hold of it, but the legitimate. — How so? he said. — First, I said, the one who is to take hold of it must not be lame in his love of labor—half industrious, half idle. This happens whenever someone loves gymnastics and hunting and is industrious in everything done through the body,
but is not fond of learning, nor of listening, nor inquiring, but is idle in all these; and he is likewise lame whose love of labor has shifted to the opposite of this. — What you say is very true, he said. — And with regard to truth as well, I said, we will call a soul crippled in just the same way if it hates the willing falsehood, and bears it badly itself, and is greatly indignant when others lie, but readily
accepts the unwilling falsehood, and is not indignant when caught out in ignorance, but wallows easily in ignorance like a pig? — Absolutely, he said. — And with regard to temperance, I said, and courage, and magnificence, and all the parts of virtue, we must watch no less carefully for the illegitimate as against the legitimate. For whenever a private person or a city does not know how to examine such things thoroughly
in every respect, they unknowingly make use of lame and illegitimate people for whatever purpose arises—some as friends, others as rulers. — Yes, he said, that's exactly how it is. — We, then, I said, must guard against all such things: for if we bring people sound of limb and sound of mind to so great a course of learning and so great an exercise, and educate them so, justice itself will
not blame us, and we will save the city and its constitution; but if we bring people of a different sort to this task, we will do the exact opposite in everything, and we will pour still more ridicule on philosophy. — That would indeed be shameful, he said. — Quite so, I said; but I seem to have suffered something ridiculous myself just now. — What is that? he said. — I forgot, I said, that we were playing, and I spoke
with too much intensity. For as I was speaking I glanced at philosophy, and seeing her so unworthily disgraced, I seem to have grown indignant, and, as if angry at those responsible, to have spoken what I said too seriously. — No, by Zeus, he said, not as far as I, your listener, am concerned. — Well, as far as I, the speaker, am concerned, I did. But let's not forget this: in the earlier selection we chose older people, whereas in this one
that won't be possible; for we mustn't trust Solon, who said that as a person grows old he's able to learn many things—less able, rather, than to run; all great and numerous labors belong to the young. — Necessarily, he said. — So calculation and geometry and all the preliminary education that must be taught before dialectic must be presented to them while they are children, though not in a form that makes learning compulsory
in its manner of teaching. — Why is that? — Because, I said, no free person ought to learn any subject like a slave. Bodily labors performed under compulsion do the body no harm, but no forced study stays fixed in a soul. — True, he said. — So don't raise the children in their studies by force, my excellent friend, but through play, so that you'll also be better able
to see what each is naturally suited for. — What you say makes sense, he said. — Then do you remember, I said, that we also said the children should be taken to war as spectators on horseback, and, wherever it's safe, brought close and given a taste of blood, like puppies? — I remember, he said. — In all these things, then, I said—labors,
studies, and fears—whoever always shows himself the most adept must be enrolled on a certain list. — At what age? he said. — When, I said, they are released from the compulsory gymnastic exercises; for this period, whether it lasts two or three years, makes it impossible to do anything else, since fatigue and sleep are hostile to studies. And at the same time this is itself one of the most important tests—
how each of them shows up in the gymnastic exercises. — Of course, he said. — After this period, I said, from among the twenty-year-olds those who are singled out will receive greater honors than the rest, and the subjects they learned piecemeal as children in their education must be brought together for them into a synoptic view of the kinship of the studies with one another and with the nature of what is. — That, at any rate, he said, is the only
kind of learning that is secure, in whoever it takes root. — And it is also, I said, the greatest test of a dialectical nature and its absence; for whoever can take the synoptic view is dialectical, and whoever cannot, is not. — I agree, he said. — This, then, I said, you will need to watch for—who among them proves most of this sort, and steady in their studies, steady in war
and in the other lawful pursuits—and these in turn, once they pass the age of thirty, must be selected from among the previously selected and set up in still greater honors, and tested by the power of dialectic to see who is able, releasing himself from eyes and the rest of sense-perception, to go on together with truth to being itself. And here indeed, my friend, is a task requiring great watchfulness. — In what respect especially? he said.
Don't you notice, I said, how great an evil now arises around the practice of dialectic? — What sort? he said. — Its practitioners, I said, become filled with lawlessness. — Very much so, he said. — Do you think, I said, they suffer anything strange, and do you not forgive them? — In what way especially? he said. — For example, I said, if someone were raised as a supposititious child amid great wealth, and in a large and eminent family,
and among many flatterers, and on becoming a man perceived that he was not the child of those who claimed to be his parents, and could not find those who had actually begotten him—can you divine how he would be disposed toward the flatterers and toward those who had passed him off, both in the time when he did not know about the substitution, and in the time when he did know? Or would you rather hear
my divination? — I would, he said. — I divine, then, I said, that he would honor his supposed father and mother and other relations more than the flatterers, and would be less willing to let them go without anything they needed, and less inclined to do or say anything unlawful against them, and less disobedient to them in important matters than to the flatterers, during the time when he did not
know the truth. — That's likely, he said. — But once he perceived the truth, I divine in turn that he would relax his honoring and attentiveness toward those, and intensify it toward the flatterers, and obey them far more than before, and would now actually live by their standard, associating with them openly, and would care nothing for that supposed father and the other supposed relations, unless he were altogether decent by nature.
"—nothing at all." "Everything you say," he said, "is just as it would happen. But how does this image apply to people who engage in arguments?" "Like this. We have, I suppose, beliefs from childhood about just and beautiful things, in which we were raised as if by parents, obeying them and honoring them." "We do." "And aren't there also other practices, opposite to these, that carry pleasures, which flatter"
our soul and drag it toward themselves, but do not persuade anyone who is at all moderate—people who instead honor those ancestral beliefs and obey them." "That's so." "Well then," I said, "when a question comes along to someone in that condition and asks him, 'What is the beautiful?'—and when he answers with what he heard from the lawgiver, the argument refutes him, and by refuting him again and again, in many ways, casts him down into"
the opinion that this is no more beautiful than ugly—and the same about the just and the good and whatever he held most in honor—after this, what do you think he'll do about honoring and obeying them?" "He's bound," he said, "no longer to honor them the same way, nor to obey them." "So when," I said, "he no longer regards these things as honorable and as his own, the way he did before,
and he doesn't find what's true either, is there any other life he'll turn to besides the one that flatters him? There isn't, is there?" "There isn't," he said. "He'll seem, I think, to have become lawless from having been law-abiding." "He must." "So isn't it likely," I said, "that this is what happens to people who take up arguments in that way, and, as I just said, deserves a great deal of allowance?" "Yes, and pity too," he said. "So to keep this pity from arising over
your thirty-year-olds, arguments must be handled with every kind of caution, mustn't they?" "Very much so," he said. "Now isn't this one major precaution—that they not taste arguments while young? For I don't think it's escaped you that when young men get their first taste of arguments, they misuse them as a kind of game, always using them for contradiction, and imitating those who refute, they themselves go around refuting others,
delighting like puppies in dragging and tearing at anyone nearby with argument." "Tremendously so," he said. "So when they've refuted many themselves and been refuted by many, don't they fall hard and fast into believing nothing at all of what they held before? And from this, both they themselves and the whole business of philosophy come to be discredited in the eyes of others." "Very true,"
he said. "But the older man," I said, "wouldn't want any part of that kind of madness—he'll imitate someone willing to converse and look at the truth, rather than someone playing at contradiction for the sake of a game—and he himself will become more measured, and will make the pursuit more honored instead of more dishonored." "Correct," he said. "And weren't all the things said earlier also said as a precaution about this—
that the natures to whom one gives a share in arguments should be orderly and steady, and not, as happens now, that just anyone, with no qualification at all, comes to it?" "Quite so," he said. "So is it enough to remain continuously and intensively engaged in taking up arguments, doing nothing else, but training in the opposite way from bodily exercises, for twice as many years as before?" "Do you mean six," he said, "or"
four?" "Never mind," I said, "put it at five. After this they'll have to be sent back down by you into that cave again, and compelled to hold command in matters of war and in whatever offices belong to the young, so that they aren't left behind the others in experience either. And in these posts too they must still be tested, to see whether they'll hold firm when dragged every which way, or whether they'll shift somewhat." "And how much time," he said,
are you setting for this?" "Fifteen years," I said. "And once they've turned fifty, those who have come through safely and excelled in every way, in both deeds and studies, must at last be led to the goal, and compelled to lift up the beam of the soul and look toward that very thing which gives light to all, and once they've seen the good itself, using it as a pattern, they must, each in turn, order the city and private citizens and themselves for the
remainder of their lives, each in his turn, spending the greater part of their time on philosophy, but when their turn comes, toiling in politics and ruling, each for the sake of the city, treating it not as something fine but as something necessary—and so, having always trained others of this same kind to succeed them, leaving them behind as guardians of the city, they will depart to live on the isles of the blessed. And the city will make memorials and sacrifices
for them at public expense—as to divine spirits, if the Pythia concurs, and if not, as to men blessed and godlike." "You've fashioned the rulers all beautiful, Socrates," he said, "like a sculptor." "And the female rulers too, Glaucon," I said. "Don't imagine that I've said what I've said about men any more than about women—whichever of them are born with natures"
adequate to it." "That's right," he said, "if indeed they're going to share equally in everything with the men, as we went through." "Well then," I said, "do you agree that, concerning the city and its constitution, we haven't spoken purely in the form of wishes—that these things are difficult, but possible in some way, and in no other way than as we've stated: when true philosophers, either several or one, become rulers in a city, and hold in contempt the honors now
prevailing—regarding them as unfree and worthless—and set the greatest store by what is right and the honors that come from it, and, as the greatest and most necessary thing, by justice, and serving this and increasing it, they set their own city in order?" "How?" he said. "All those in the city," I said, "who happen to be older than ten, they will send out to the countryside,
and taking charge of the children, apart from the present customs which their parents also have, they will raise them in their own ways and laws, the ones we've gone through. And in this way the city and constitution we've described will be established most quickly and most easily, and will itself be happy, and will most benefit whatever people it comes to be among." "Very much so," he said, "and as for
how it might come about, if it ever does come about, you seem to me to have put it well, Socrates." "Well then," I said, "have we now said enough about this city and about the man who resembles it? For surely it's clear what sort of man we'll say he must be." "It's clear," he said, "and as for what you're asking, it seems to me this brings it to completion."