Dialogues quotes

You will see, he said, in a moment what progress he has made and what he is like. He had scarcely said the word, when Charmides entered.

Now you know, my friend, that I cannot measure anything, and of the beautiful, I am simply such a measure as a white line is of chalk; for almost all young persons appear to be beautiful in my eyes.

But at that moment, when I saw him coming in, I confess that I was quite astonished at his beauty and stature; all the world seemed to be enamoured of him; amazement and confusion reigned when he entered; and a troop of lovers followed him.

He is as fair and good within, as he is without, replied Critias.

Then, before we see his body, should we not ask him to show us his soul, naked and undisguised?

he is just of an age at which he will like to talk.

but if you have not yet acquired this quality, I must use the charm before I give you the medicine. Please, therefore, to inform me whether you admit the truth of what Critias has been saying;—have you or have you not this quality of temperance?

Charmides blushed, and the blush heightened his beauty, for modesty is becoming in youth

; he then said very ingenuously, that he really could not at once answer, either yes, or no, to the question which I had asked:

But what matter, said Charmides, from whom I heard this?

No matter at all, I replied; for the point is not who said the words, but whether they are true or not.

There you are in the right, Socrates, he replied.

And at this moment I pursue the argument chiefly for my own sake, and perhaps in some degree also for the sake of my other friends.

For is not the discovery of things as they truly are, a good common to all mankind?

Yes, certainly, Socrates, he said.

The person who pleased us most at first sight or upon a slight acquaintance, when we have seen him again, and under different circumstances, may make a much less favourable impression on our minds.

Young people swear “eternal friendships,” but at these innocent perjuries their elders laugh.

No one forms a friendship with the intention of renouncing it;

The word of counsel or sympathy has been uttered too obtrusively, at the wrong time, or in the wrong manner; or the need of it has not been perceived until too late.

“Oh if he had only told me” has been the silent thought of many a troubled soul.

And some things have to be indicated rather than spoken, because the very mention of them tends to disturb the equability of friendship. The alienation of friends, like many other human evils, is commonly due to a want of tact and insight.

The sweet draught of sympathy is not inexhaustible; and it tends to weaken the person who too freely partakes of it. Thus we see that there are many causes which impair the happiness of friends.

We may expect a friendship almost divine, such as philosophers have sometimes dreamed of: we find what is human.

The good of it is necessarily limited; it does not take the place of marriage; it affords rather a solace than an arm of support. It had better not be based on pecuniary obligations; these more often mar than make a friendship.

It exists among the bad or inferior sort of men almost as much as among the good; the bad and good, and “the neither bad nor good,” are drawn together in a strange manner by personal attachment.

The essence of it is loyalty, without which it would cease to be friendship.

Another question 9) may be raised, whether friendship can safely exist between young persons of different sexes, not connected by ties of relationship, and without the thought of love or marriage;

Neither will he by “shadowed hint reveal” the secrets great or small which an unfortunate mistake has placed within his reach.

He who is of a noble mind will dwell upon his own faults rather than those of another, and will be ready to take upon himself the blame of their separation.

He will feel pain at the loss of a friend; and he will remember with gratitude his ancient kindness.

He will feel pain at the loss of a friend; and he will remember with gratitude his ancient kindness.

But he will not lightly renew a tie which has not been lightly broken

… These are a few of the Problems of Friendship, some of them suggested by the “Lysis,” others by modern life, which he who wishes to make or keep a friend may profitably study. (Compare Bacon, “Essay on Friendship”; Cicero De amicitia.)

do not say that you are, or that you are not, in love; the confession is too late; for I see that you are not only in love, but are already far gone in your love.

Simple and foolish as I am, the Gods have given me the power of understanding affections of this kind.

Whereupon he blushed more and more.

When I heard this, I said:

O ridiculous Hippothales! how can you be making and singing hymns in honour of yourself before you have won?

But my songs and verses, he said, are not in honour of myself, Socrates.

All people have their fancies; some desire horses, and others dogs; and some are fond of gold, and others of honour. Now, I have no violent desire of any of these things; but

I have a passion for friends; and I would rather have a good friend than the best cock or quail in the world

: I would even go further, and say the best horse or dog. Yea, by the dog of Egypt, I should greatly prefer a real friend to all the gold of Darius, or even to Darius himself:

but I have a passion for friends; and I would rather have a good friend than the best cock or quail in the world: I would even go further, and say the best horse or dog.

Yea, by the dog of Egypt, I should greatly prefer a real friend to all the gold of Darius, or even to Darius himself: I am such a lover of friends as that.

And when I see you and Lysis, at your early age, so easily possessed of this treasure, and so soon, he of you, and you of him, I am amazed and delighted, seeing that I myself, although I am now advanced in years, am so …

Why really, I said, the truth is that I do not know; but my head is dizzy with thinking of the argument, and therefore I hazard the conjecture, that “the beautiful is the friend,” as the old proverb says.

Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls.

For I affirm that the good is the beautiful. You will agree to that?

if there is not, let us seek further counsel. Is this a slight matter about which you and Lysimachus are deliberating? Are you not risking the greatest of your possessions?

For children are your riches; and upon their turning out well or ill depends the whole order of their father’s house.

Great care, then, is required in this matter?

Such an one makes me merry with the sound of his voice; and when I hear him I am thought to be a lover of discourse; so eager am I in drinking in his words.

But a man whose actions do not agree with his words is an annoyance to me; and the better he speaks the more I hate him, and then I seem to be a hater of discourse.

As to Socrates, I have no knowledge of his words, but of old, as would seem, I have had experience of his deeds; and his deeds show that free and noble sentiments are natural to him.

Then according to your statement, you and I, Laches, are not attuned to the Dorian mode, which is a harmony of words and deeds; for our deeds are not in accordance with our words.

Anyone would say that we had courage who saw us in action, but not, I imagine, he who heard us talking about courage just now.

And is this condition of ours satisfactory?

I am ready to go on, Socrates; and yet I am unused to investigations of this sort. But the spirit of controversy has been aroused in me by what has been said; and I am really grieved at being thus unable to express my meaning.

For I fancy that I do know the nature of courage; but, somehow or other, she has slipped away from me, and I cannot get hold of her and tell her nature.

But, my dear friend, should not the good sportsman follow the track, and not be lazy?

and if we are both equally ignorant of the things which a man who is good for anything should know, that, I suppose, will be of no consequence.

You certainly appear to me very like the rest of the world, looking at your neighbour and not at yourself.

I am of opinion that enough has been said on the subject which we have been discussing;

But I cannot advise that we remain as we are. And if anyone laughs at us for going to school at our age, I would quote to them the authority of Homer, who says, that “Modesty is not good for a needy man.”

Let us then, regardless of what may be said of us, make the education of the youths our own education.

I like your proposal, Socrates; and as I am the oldest, I am also the most eager to go to school with the boys. Let me beg a favour of you: Come to my house tomorrow at dawn, and we will advise about these matters.

Socrates:

And is not the wiser always the fairer, sweet friend?

Companion: But have you really met, Socrates, with some wise one?

And what am I doing?

You are going to commit your soul to the care of a man whom you call a Sophist.

And yet I hardly think that you know what a Sophist is; and if not, then you do not even know to whom you are committing your soul and whether the thing to which you commit yourself be good or evil.

I proceeded:

Is not a Sophist, Hippocrates, one who deals wholesale or retail in the food of the soul?

To me that appears to be his nature.

he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again.

He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly implying that virtue is capable of being taught.

This is the notion of all who retaliate upon others either privately or publicly. And the Athenians, too, your own citizens, like other men, punish and take vengeance on all whom they regard as evil doers;

No one would instruct, no one would rebuke, or be angry with those whose calamities they suppose to be due to nature or chance; they do not try to punish or to prevent them from being what they are; they do but pity them.

Who is so foolish as to chastise or instruct the ugly, or the diminutive, or the feeble?

And for this reason. Because he knows that good and evil of this kind is the work of nature and of chance;

Now when there is all this care about virtue private and public, why, Socrates, do you still wonder and doubt whether virtue can be taught?

Cease to wonder, for the opposite would be far more surprising.

But why then do the sons of good fathers often turn out ill? There is nothing very wonderful in this; for, as I have been saying, the existence of a state implies that virtue is not any man’s private possession.

“And is this a sort of thing which is of the nature of the holy, or of the nature of the unholy?” I should be angry at his putting such a question, and should say, “

Peace, man; nothing can be holy if holiness is not holy.

” What would you say? Would you not answer in the same way?

And in like manner if you want to hear me and Protagoras discoursing, you must ask him to shorten his answers, and keep to the point, as he did at first; if not, how can there be any discussion?

For discussion is one thing, and making an oration is quite another, in my humble opinion.

But you see, Socrates, said Callias, that Protagoras may fairly claim to speak in his own way, just as you claim to speak in yours.

This sort of entertainment they decline, and prefer to talk with one another, and put one another to the proof in conversation. And these are the models which I desire that you and I should imitate.

Leaving the poets, and keeping to ourselves, let us try the mettle of one another and make proof of the truth in conversation.

If you have a mind to ask, I am ready to answer; or if you would rather, do you answer, and give me the opportunity of resuming and completing our unfinished argument.

For if a man had all that sort of knowledge that ever was, he would not be at all the wiser; he would only be able to play with men, tripping them up and oversetting them with distinctions of words.

He would be like a person who pulls away a stool from someone when he is about to sit down, and then laughs and makes merry at the sight of his friend overturned and laid on his back.

And you must regard all that has hitherto passed between you and them as merely play. But in what is to follow I am certain that they will exhibit to you their serious purpose, and keep their promise (I will show them how);

What is that? he asked.

Fortune, Cleinias, I replied; which all, even the most foolish, admit to be the greatest of goods.

On second thoughts, I added, how narrowly, O son of Axiochus, have you and I escaped making a laughingstock of ourselves to the strangers.

He asked what was the meaning of this, and I replied:

Surely wisdom is good-fortune; even a child may know that.

The simple-minded youth was amazed; and, observing his surprise, I said to him: Do you not know, Cleinias, that flute-players are most fortunate and successful in performing on the flute?

You think, I said, that to act with a wise man is more fortunate than to act with an ignorant one?

Then wisdom always makes men fortunate: for by wisdom no man would ever err, and therefore he must act rightly and succeed, or his wisdom would be wisdom no longer.

We contrived at last, somehow or other, to agree in a general conclusion, that he who had wisdom had no need of fortune. I then recalled to his mind the previous state of the question.

That is quite true, I said.

And the wrong use of a thing is far worse than the non-use; for the one is an evil, and the other is neither a good nor an evil.

You admit that?

You wish him, he said, to become wise and not to be ignorant?

You wish him to be what he is not, and no longer to be what he is?

I was thrown into consternation at this.

You are running away, Socrates, said Dionysodorus, and refusing to answer.

No wonder, I said, for I am not a match for one of you, and a fortiori I must run away from two.

I am no Heracles; and even Heracles could not fight against the Hydra, who was a she-Sophist, and had the wit to shoot up many new heads when one of them was cut off;

Then you beat your father, he said.

I should have far more reason to beat yours, said Ctesippus; what could he have been thinking of when he begat such wise sons?

much good has this father of you and your brethren the puppies got out of this wisdom of yours.

but if there must be an audience, let him only be present who is willing to pay a handsome fee;—you should be careful of this;—and if you are wise, you will also bid your disciples discourse with no man but you and themselves.

For only what is rare is valuable; and “water,” which, as Pindar says, is the “best of all things,” is also the cheapest.

And now I have only to request that you will receive Cleinias and me among your pupils.

Socrates:

Do you then be reasonable, Crito, and do not mind whether the teachers of philosophy are good or bad, but think only of philosophy herself.

Try and examine her well and truly, and if she be evil seek to turn away all men from her, and not your sons only;

Whereupon I ask him, whether his own name of Cratylus is a true name or not, and he answers “Yes.” And Socrates? “Yes.” Then every man’s name, as I tell him, is that which he is called. To this he replies—“

If all the world were to call you Hermogenes, that would not be your name.

” And when I am anxious to have a further explanation he is ironical and mysterious, and seems to imply that he has a notion of his own about the matter, if he would only tell, and could entirely convince me, if he chose to …

I fancy to myself Heracleitus repeating wise traditions of antiquity as old as the days of Cronos and Rhea, and of which Homer also spoke.

Heracleitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same water twice.

Well, then, how can we avoid inferring that he who gave the names of Cronos and Rhea to the ancestors of the Gods, agreed pretty much in the doctrine of Heracleitus? Is the giving of the names of streams to both of them purely accidental?

there is a serious and also a facetious explanation of both these names; the serious explanation is not to be had from me, but there is no objection to your hearing the facetious one; for the Gods too love a joke.

Διόνυσος is simply διδοὺς οἶνον (giver of wine), Διδοίνυσος, as he might be called in fun⁠—and οἶνος is properly οἰόνους, because wine makes those who drink, think (οἴεσθαι) that they have a mind (νοῦν) when they have none.

The derivation of Aphrodite, born of the foam (ἀφρὸς), may be fairly accepted on the authority of Hesiod.

Another man professes to laugh at all this, and says, as Anaxagoras says, that justice is mind, for mind, as they say, has absolute power, and mixes with nothing, and orders all things, and passes through all things.

At last, my friend, I find myself in far greater perplexity about the nature of justice than I was before I began to learn.

But still I am of opinion that the name, which has led me into this digression, was given to justice for the reasons which I have mentioned.

Yes; and the very word θάλλειν (to flourish) seems to figure the growth of youth, which is swift and sudden ever. And this is expressed by the legislator in the name, which is a compound of θεῖν (running), and ἅλλεσθαι (leaping).

Pray observe how I gallop away when I get on smooth ground.

There are a good many names generally thought to be of importance, which have still to be explained.

And you, Socrates, appear to me to be an oracle, and to give answers much to my mind, whether you are inspired by Euthyphro, or whether some Muse may have long been an inhabitant of your breast, unconsciously to yourself.

Excellent Cratylus, I have long been wondering at my own wisdom; I cannot trust myself.

And I think that I ought to stop and ask myself What am I saying?

Well, but that will be quite enough for me, if you will tell me whether the nonsense would be true or false, or partly true and partly false:—which is all that I want to know.

I should say that he would be putting himself in motion to no purpose; and that his words would be an unmeaning sound like the noise of hammering at a brazen pot.

But let us see, Cratylus, whether we cannot find a meeting-point, for you would admit that the name is not the same with the thing named?

What of that, Cratylus?

Are we to count them like votes? and is correctness of names the voice of the majority?

Are we to say of whichever sort there are most, those are the true ones?

This may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely to be untrue; and therefore I would not have you be too easily persuaded of it.

Reflect well and like a man, and do not easily accept such a doctrine; for you are young and of an age to learn. And when you have found the truth, come and tell me.

I will do as you say, though I can assure you, Socrates, that I have been considering the matter already, and the result of a great deal of trouble and consideration is that I incline to Heracleitus.

Now I have no leisure for such enquiries; shall I tell you why?

I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.

And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself:

Very true, my good friend; and I hope that you will excuse me when you hear the reason, which is, that

I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country.

Though I do indeed believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city into the country, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved.

Though I do indeed believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city into the country, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved.

For only hold up before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me all round Attica, and over the wide world.

And now having arrived, I intend to lie down, and do you choose any posture in which you can read best. Begin.

Now I am certain that this is not an invention of my own, who am well aware that I know nothing, and therefore

I can only infer that I have been filled through the ears, like a pitcher, from the waters of another, though I have actually forgotten in my stupidity who was my informant.

That is grand:—but never mind where you heard the discourse or from whom; let that be a mystery not to be divulged even at my earnest desire.

You are a dear golden ass if you suppose me to mean that Lysias has altogether missed the mark, and that I can make a speech from which all his arguments are to be excluded.

The worst of authors will say something which is to the point.

Who, for example, could speak on this thesis of yours without praising the discretion of the non-lover and blaming the indiscretion of the lover? These are the commonplaces of the subject which must come in (for what else is there to be said?)

Now I am a diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my own use, as you might say of a bad writer—his writing is good enough for him; and I am beginning to see that I was in error.

O my friend, how prophetic is the human soul!

At the time I had a sort of misgiving, and, like Ibycus, “I was troubled; I feared that I might be buying honour from men at the price of sinning against the gods.” Now I recognize my error.

“I told a lie when I said” that the beloved ought to accept the non-lover when he might have the lover, because the one is sane, and the other mad.

It might be so if madness were simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men.

For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona when out of their senses have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life, but when in their senses few or none.

if he can do so we will allow him to carry off the palm.

And we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings, and the proof shall be one which the wise will receive, and the witling disbelieve.

But first of all, let us view the affections and actions of the soul divine and human, and try to ascertain the truth about them.

and after the manner of his God he behaves in his intercourse with his beloved and with the rest of the world during the first period of his earthly existence.

Everyone chooses his love from the ranks of beauty according to his character, and this he makes his god, and fashions and adorns as a sort of image which he is to fall down and worship.

The followers of Zeus desire that their beloved should have a soul like him;

Anyone may see that there is no disgrace in the mere fact of writing.

The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly.

And what is well and what is badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?

There is time enough. And I believe that the grasshoppers chirruping after their manner in the heat of the sun over our heads are talking to one another and looking down at us.

What would they say if they saw that we, like the many, are not conversing, but slumbering at midday, lulled by their voices, too indolent to think?

Would they not have a right to laugh at us? They might imagine that we were slaves, who, coming to rest at a place of resort of theirs, like sheep lie asleep at noon around the well.

You have too good an opinion of me if you think that I have any such insight into his principles of composition.

At any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole?

Can this be said of the discourse of Lysias? See whether you can find any more connection in his words than in the epitaph which is said by some to have been inscribed on the grave of Midas the Phrygian.

You may very likely be right, Socrates.

The method which proceeds without analysis is like the groping of a blind man.

Yet, surely, he who is an artist ought not to admit of a comparison with the blind, or deaf. The rhetorician, who teaches his pupil to speak scientifically, will particularly set forth the nature of that being to which he addresses his speeches;

I think, Socrates, that this is admirable, if only practicable.

But even to fail in an honourable object is honourable.

Enough appears to have been said by us of a true and false art of speaking.

or who deemed that writing was at all better than knowledge and recollection of the same matters?

I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.

And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer.

Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?

I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.

You mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image?

Should we not offer up a prayer first of all to the local deities?

Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one.

May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he only can bear and carry.—Anything more? The prayer, I think, is enough for me.

and that almost all poets do speak of the same things?

Why then, Socrates, do I lose attention and go to sleep and have absolutely no ideas of the least value, when anyone speaks of any other poet; but when Homer is mentioned, I wake up at once and am all attention and have plenty to say?

The reason, my friend, is obvious. No one can fail to see that you speak of Homer without any art or knowledge. If you were able to speak of him by rules of art, you would have been able to speak of all other poets;

Yes, indeed, Socrates; I very much wish that you would: for I love to hear you wise men talk.

O that we were wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so; but you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas I am a common man, who only speak the truth.

For consider what a very commonplace and trivial thing is this which I have said—a thing which any man might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the same.

for they tell us that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees, winging their way from flower to flower. And this is true.

For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him

: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles. Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men;

Not all, Ion, surely. Have you already forgotten what you were saying?

A rhapsode ought to have a better memory.

Why, what am I forgetting?

But if, as I believe, you have no art, but speak all these beautiful words about Homer unconsciously under his inspiring influence, then I acquit you of dishonesty, and shall only say that you are inspired.

Which do you prefer to be thought, dishonest or inspired?

There is a great difference, Socrates, between the two alternatives; and inspiration is by far the nobler.

For to speak or to hear others speak of philosophy always gives me the greatest pleasure, to say nothing of the profit. But when I hear another strain, especially that of you rich men and traders, such conversation displeases me; and

I pity you who are my companions, because you think that you are doing something when in reality you are doing nothing.

And I dare say that you pity me in return, whom you regard as an unhappy creature, and very probably you are right. But I certainly know of you what you only think of me—there is the difference.

How strange, said Agathon; then you must call him again, and keep calling him.

Let him alone, said my informant; he has a way of stopping anywhere and losing himself without any reason.

I believe that he will soon appear; do not therefore disturb him.

and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.

For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms?

He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time;

He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?

The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him.

That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover.

this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.”

He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair;

and as he cut them one after another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: he would thus learn a lesson of humility.

so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making one of two, and healing the state of man.

Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half.

Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women who lust after men:

… are satisfied to attain this?”—there is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need.

And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.

There was a time, I say, when we were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians.

herein is an excellent proof of her tenderness—that she walks not upon the hard but upon the soft.

Let us adduce a similar proof of the tenderness of Love; for he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon the skulls of men, which are not so very soft, but in the hearts and souls of both gods and men, which are of all things the softest: in them he walks and dwells and makes his home.

Not in every soul without exception, for where there is hardness he departs, where there is softness there he dwells;

I cannot refute you, Socrates, said Agathon:—Let us assume that what you say is true.

Say rather, beloved Agathon, that you cannot refute the truth; for Socrates is easily refuted.

And now, taking my leave of you, I would rehearse a tale of love which I heard from Diotima of Mantineia, a woman wise in this and in many other kinds of knowledge, who in the days of old, when the Athenians offered sacrifice before …

And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes.

In the first place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him; and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always in distress.

Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources;

But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this:

No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom.

Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.”

The truth of the matter is this: No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom.

For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.

” “But who then, Diotima,” I said, “are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?” “A child may answer that question,” she replied; “they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them.

For my heart leaps within me more than that of any Corybantian reveller, and my eyes rain tears when I hear them. And I observe that many others are affected in the same manner.

I have heard Pericles and other great orators, and I thought that they spoke well, but I never had any similar feeling; my soul was not stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish state.

But this Marsyas has often brought me to such a pass, that I have felt as if I could hardly endure the life which I am leading (this, Socrates, you will admit);

For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the concerns of the Athenians; therefore I hold my ears and tear myself away from him.

And he is the only person who ever made me ashamed, which you might think not to be in my nature, and there is no one else who does the same.

For I know that I cannot answer him or say that I ought not to do as he bids, but when I leave his presence the love of popularity gets the better of me.

And therefore I run away and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed of what I have confessed to him.

Many a time have I wished that he were dead, and yet I know that I should be much more sorry than glad, if he were to die: so that I am at my wit’s end.

And this is what I and many others have suffered from the flute-playing of this satyr. Yet hear me once more while I show you how exact the image is, and how marvellous his power. For let me tell you; none of you know him;

and he who has suffered, as they say, is willing to tell his fellow-sufferers only, as they alone will be likely to understand him, and will not be extreme in judging of the sayings or doings which have been wrung from his agony.

For I have been bitten by a more than viper’s tooth; I have known in my soul, or in my heart, or in some other part, that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than any serpent’s tooth, the pang of philosophy, which will make a man say or do anything.

And you whom I see around me, Phaedrus and Agathon and Eryximachus and Pausanias and Aristodemus and Aristophanes, all of you, and I need not say Socrates himself, have had experience of the same madness and passion in your longing after wisdom.

for judges you shall be of the haughty virtue of Socrates—nothing more happened, but in the morning when I awoke (let all the gods and goddesses be my witnesses)

I arose as from the couch of a father or an elder brother.

What do you suppose must have been my feelings, after this rejection, at the thought of my own dishonour? And yet I could not help wondering at his natural temperance and self-restraint and manliness.

And he has taught you the habit of answering questions in a grand and bold style, which becomes those who know, and is the style in which he himself answers all comers; and any Hellene who likes may ask him anything.

How different is our lot! my dear Meno. Here at Athens there is a dearth of the commodity, and all wisdom seems to have emigrated from us to you.

I am certain that if you were to ask any Athenian whether virtue was natural or acquired, he would laugh in your face, and say: “Stranger, you have far too good an opinion of me, if you think that I can answer your question.

and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons—and very good ones they were, as I thought—at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is.

And I think that you are very wise in not voyaging and going away from home, for if you did in other places as you do in Athens, you would be cast into prison as a magician.

You are a rogue, Meno, and had all but caught me.

there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection.

And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of enquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive.

In that confiding, I will gladly enquire with you into the nature of virtue.

but then he thought that he knew, and answered confidently as if he knew, and had no difficulty; now he has a difficulty, and neither knows nor fancies that he knows.

Is he not better off in knowing his ignorance?

I think that he is.

And if the truth of all things always existed in the soul, then the soul is immortal.

Wherefore be of good cheer, and try to recollect what you do not know, or rather what you do not remember.

I feel, somehow, that I like what you are saying.

And I have no wish to be acquainted.

Then, my dear friend, how can you know whether a thing is good or bad of which you are wholly ignorant?

Quite well; I am sure that I know what manner of men these are, whether I am acquainted with them or not.

Socrates, I think that you are too ready to speak evil of men: and, if you will take my advice, I would recommend you to be careful.

Perhaps there is no city in which it is not easier to do men harm than to do them good, and this is certainly the case at Athens, as I believe that you know.

O Meno, I think that Anytus is in a rage. And he may well be in a rage, for he thinks, in the first place, that I am defaming these gentlemen;

and is your knowledge of religion and of things pious and impious so very exact, that, supposing the circumstances to be as you state them, you are not afraid lest you too may be doing an impious thing in bringing an action against your father?

The best of Euthyphro, and that which distinguishes him, Socrates, from other men, is his exact knowledge of all such matters. What should I be good for without it?

Rare friend! I think that I cannot do better than be your disciple.

I really do not know, Socrates, how to express what I mean.

For somehow or other our arguments, on whatever ground we rest them, seem to turn round and walk away from us.

Your words, Euthyphro, are like the handiwork of my ancestor Daedalus; and if I were the sayer or propounder of them, you might say that my arguments walk away and will not remain fixed where they are placed because I am a descendant of his.

Nay, Socrates, I shall still say that you are the Daedalus who sets arguments in motion; not I, certainly, but you make them move or go round, for they would never have stirred, as far as I am concerned.

Then I must be a greater than Daedalus: for whereas he only made his own inventions to move, I move those of other people as well.

And the beauty of it is, that I would rather not. For I would give the wisdom of Daedalus, and the wealth of Tantalus, to be able to detain them and keep them fixed. But enough of this.

That is an expression which you may use, if you like.

But I have no particular liking for anything but the truth.

I wish, however, that you would tell me what benefit accrues to the gods from our gifts. There is no doubt about what they give to us; for there is no good thing which they do not give;

and therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would excuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his country:—Am I making an unfair request of you?

Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.

And first, I have to reply to the older charges and to my first accusers, and then I will go on to the later ones. For of old I have had many accusers, who have accused me falsely to you during many years;

Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to confess the truth, but I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves.

Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

The poets appeared to me to be much in the same case; and I further observed that upon the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise.

and as I said at the beginning, I cannot expect to get rid of such a mass of calumny all in a moment. And this, O men of Athens, is the truth and the whole truth; I have concealed nothing, I have dissembled nothing.

And yet, I know that my plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth?

—Hence has arisen the prejudice against me; and this is the reason of it, as you will find out either in this or in any future enquiry.

Is not that true, Meletus, of horses, or of any other animals? Most assuredly it is; whether you and Anytus say yes or no.

Happy indeed would be the condition of youth if they had one corrupter only, and all the rest of the world were their improvers.

But you, Meletus, have sufficiently shown that you never had a thought about the young: your carelessness is seen in your not caring about the very things which you bring against me.

For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.

I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private.

This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth.

that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death, fancying that I was wise when I was not wise.

For the fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows what he does not know?

I have something more to say, at which you may be inclined to cry out; but I believe that to hear me will be good for you, and therefore I beg that you will not cry out.

I would have you know, that if you kill such an one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me.

Nothing will injure me, not Meletus nor yet Anytus—they cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure a better than himself. I do not deny that Anytus may, perhaps, kill him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights;

and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life.

I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.

You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me.

… so fitting as maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots were drawn by two horses or by many.

For I am in want, and he has enough; and he only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality.

And if I am to estimate the penalty fairly, I should say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return.

I thought at the time that I ought not to do anything common or mean when in danger: nor do I now repent of the style of my defence;

I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.

For neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use every way of escaping death.

and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything.

The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them.

and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them.

And now I depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death—they too go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by my award—let them abide by theirs.

What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions!

In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not.

For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.

… had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others.

Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?

In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble;

And if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways⁠—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

and for that reason I did not awake you, because I wished to minimize the pain. I have always thought you to be of a happy disposition; but never did I see anything like the easy, tranquil manner in which you bear this calamity.

Why, Crito, when a man has reached my age he ought not to be repining at the approach of death.

And yet other old men find themselves in similar misfortunes, and age does not prevent them from repining.

Now, can there be a worse disgrace than this—that I should be thought to value money more than the life of a friend? For the many will not be persuaded that I wanted you to escape, and that you refused.

But why, my dear Crito, should we care about the opinion of the many?

Good men, and they are the only persons who are worth considering, will think of these things truly as they occurred.

I beseech you therefore, Socrates, be persuaded by me, and do as I say.

Dear Crito, your zeal is invaluable, if a right one; but if wrong, the greater the zeal the greater the danger;

and therefore we ought to consider whether I shall or shall not do as you say.

For neither will you nor any that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids.

Now you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws, but of men.

But if you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the covenants and agreements which you have made with us, and wronging those whom you ought least of all to wrong, that is to say, yourself, your friends, your country, and …

Nay; but if they who call themselves friends are good for anything, they will—to be sure they will. “Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up.

Think not of life and children first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice first, that you may be justified before the princes of the world below.

For neither will you nor any that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil;

I have nothing to say, Socrates.

Leave me then, Crito, to fulfil the will of God, and to follow whither he leads.

Phaedo: I have nothing at all to do, and will try to gratify your wish.

To be reminded of Socrates is always the greatest delight to me, whether I speak myself or hear another speak of him.

Echecrates: You will have listeners who are of the same mind with you, and I hope that you will be as exact as you can.

But I had not the pleasure which I usually feel in philosophical discourse (for philosophy was the theme of which we spoke).

I was pleased, but in the pleasure there was also a strange admixture of pain

; for I reflected that he was soon to die, and this double feeling was shared by us all; we were laughing and weeping by turns, especially the excitable Apollodorus—you know the sort of man?

persons who excite themselves are sometimes obliged to take a second or even a third dose.

Then, said Socrates, let him mind his business and be prepared to give the poison twice or even thrice if necessary; that is all.

I knew quite well what you would say, replied Crito; but I was obliged to satisfy him.

it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in fact, as men say, takes away from us the power of thinking at all.

Whence come wars, and fightings, and factions? whence but from the body and the lusts of the body?

wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body; and by reason of all these impediments we have no time to give to philosophy;

… be if they trembled and repined, instead of rejoicing at their departure to that place where, when they arrive, they hope to gain that which in life they desired—and this was wisdom—and at the same time to be rid of the company of their enemy.

Many a man has been willing to go to the world below animated by the hope of seeing there an earthly love, or wife, or son, and conversing with them.

And will he who is a true lover of wisdom, and is strongly persuaded in like manner that only in the world below he can worthily enjoy her, still repine at death? Will he not depart with joy?

And do not courageous men face death because they are afraid of yet greater evils?

Then all but the philosophers are courageous only from fear, and because they are afraid; and yet that a man should be courageous from fear, and because he is a coward, is surely a strange thing.

And are not the temperate exactly in the same case? They are temperate because they are intemperate—which might seem to be a contradiction, but is nevertheless the sort of thing which happens with this foolish temperance.

Yet the exchange of one fear or pleasure or pain for another fear or pleasure or pain, and of the greater for the less, as if they were coins, is not the exchange of virtue.

O my blessed Simmias, is there not one true coin for which all things ought to be exchanged?

—and that is wisdom; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything truly bought or sold, whether courage or temperance or justice.

What then is to be the result? Shall we exclude the opposite process?

And shall we suppose nature to walk on one leg only?

Must we not rather assign to death some corresponding process of generation?

But do you think that every man is able to give an account of these very matters about which we are speaking?

Would that they could, Socrates, but I rather fear that tomorrow, at this time, there will no longer be anyone alive who is able to give an account of them such as ought to be given.

Then you are not of opinion, Simmias, that all men know these things?

Still I suspect that you and Simmias would be glad to probe the argument further.

Like children, you are haunted with a fear that when the soul leaves the body, the wind may really blow her away and scatter her; especially if a man should happen to die in a great storm and not when the sky is calm.

Cebes answered with a smile: Then, Socrates, you must argue us out of our fears—and yet, strictly speaking, they are not our fears, but there is a child within us to whom death is a sort of hobgoblin;

Socrates said:

Let the voice of the charmer be applied daily until you have charmed away the fear.

And where shall we find a good charmer of our fears, Socrates, when you are gone?

And where shall we find a good charmer of our fears, Socrates, when you are gone?

Hellas, he replied, is a large place, Cebes, and has many good men, and there are barbarous races not a few: seek for him among them all, far and wide, sparing neither pains nor money; for there is no better way of spending your money.

And you must seek among yourselves too; for you will not find others better able to make the search.

Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans?

For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are.

But men, because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, nor the swallow, nor yet the …

For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are.

But men, because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they sing a lament at the last

, not considering that no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, nor the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe;

This is the state of mind, Simmias and Cebes, in which I approach the argument.

And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates

: agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth;

Let us then, in the first place, he said, be careful of allowing or of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no health or soundness in any arguments at all.

Rather say that we have not yet attained to soundness in ourselves, and that we must struggle manfully and do our best to gain health of mind

—you and all other men having regard to the whole of your future life, and I myself in the prospect of death. For at this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a philosopher;

… his difficulty, I quite imagined that no answer could be given to him, and therefore I was surprised at finding that his argument could not sustain the first onset of yours, and not impossibly the other, whom you call Cadmus, may share a similar fate.

Nay, my good friend, said Socrates, let us not boast, lest some evil eye should put to flight the word which I am about to speak.

That, however, may be left in the hands of those above, while I draw near in Homeric fashion, and try the mettle of your words.

These hopes I would not have sold for a large sum of money, and I seized the books and read them as fast as I could in my eagerness to know the better and the worse.

What expectations I had formed, and how grievously was I disappointed!

As I proceeded, I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and other eccentricities.

But to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this is the way in which mind acts, and not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking.

I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition, which the many, feeling about in the dark, are always mistaking and misnaming.

And thus one man makes a vortex all round and steadies the earth by the heaven; another gives the air as a support to the earth, which is a sort of broad trough.

and when they are satisfactorily ascertained, then, with a sort of hesitating confidence in human reason, you may, I think, follow the course of the argument; and if that be plain and clear, there will be no need for any further enquiry.

But then, O my friends, he said, if the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity!

And the danger of neglecting her from this point of view does indeed appear to be awful.

And the danger of neglecting her from this point of view does indeed appear to be awful.

If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying

, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls.

But now, inasmuch as the soul is manifestly immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom.

For the soul when on her progress to the world below takes nothing with her but nurture and education

; and these are said greatly to benefit or greatly to injure the departed, at the very beginning of his journey thither.

and of these, such as have duly purified themselves with philosophy live henceforth altogether without the body, in mansions fairer still which may not be described, and of which the time would fail me to tell.

Wherefore, Simmias, seeing all these things, what ought not we to do that we may obtain virtue and wisdom in this life? Fair is the prize, and the hope great!

A man of sense ought not to say, nor will I be very confident, that the description which I have given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true.

We will do our best, said Crito: And in what way shall we bury you?

In any way that you like; but you must get hold of me, and take care that I do not run away from you.

Then he turned to us, and added with a smile:—I cannot make Crito believe that I am the same Socrates who have been talking and conducting the argument;

but I am right in not following their example, for I do not think that I should gain anything by drinking the poison a little later;

I should only be ridiculous in my own eyes for sparing and saving a life which is already forfeit.

Please then to do as I say, and not to refuse me.

And our friend Gorgias is one of the best, and the art in which he is a proficient is the noblest.

Polus has been taught how to make a capital speech, Gorgias; but he is not fulfilling the promise which he made to Chaerephon.

What do you mean, Socrates?

Now if you are one of my sort, I should like to cross-examine you, but if not I will let you alone. And what is my sort? you will ask.

I am one of those who are very willing to be refuted if I say anything which is not true, and very willing to refute anyone else who says what is not true, and quite as ready to be refuted as to refute

; for I hold that this is the greater gain of the two, just as the gain is greater of being cured of a very great evil than of curing another.

for I hold that this is the greater gain of the two, just as the gain is greater of being cured of a very great evil than of curing another.

For I imagine that there is no evil which a man can endure so great as an erroneous opinion about the matters of which we are speaking

; and if you claim to be one of my sort, let us have the discussion out, but if you would rather have done, no matter;—let us make an end of it.

And in the course of our investigations, as you will see yourself, the rhetorician has been acknowledged to be incapable of making an unjust use of rhetoric, or of willingness to do injustice.

By the dog, Gorgias, there will be a great deal of discussion, before we get at the truth of all this.

And do even you, Socrates, seriously believe what you are now saying about rhetoric? What!

Will you understand my answer?

Rhetoric, according to my view, is the ghost or counterfeit of a part of politics.

Ignoble, I should say, if I am compelled to answer, for I call what is bad ignoble: though I doubt whether you understand what I was saying before.

And are the good rhetoricians meanly regarded in states, under the idea that they are flatterers?

Is that a question or the beginning of a speech?

I am asking a question.

Well then, I say to you that here are two questions in one, and I will answer both of them.

And I tell you, Polus, that rhetoricians and tyrants have the least possible power in states, as I was just now saying; for they do literally nothing which they will, but only what they think best.

And is not that a great power?

Forbear, Polus!

Because you ought not to envy wretches who are not to be envied, but only to pity them.

And are those of whom I spoke wretches?

… all the Macedonians, he may be supposed to be the most miserable and not the happiest of them, and I dare say that there are many Athenians, and you would be at the head of them, who would rather be any other Macedonian than Archelaus!

I praised you at first, Polus, for being a rhetorician rather than a reasoner.

And this, as I suppose, is the sort of argument with which you fancy that a child might refute me, and by which I stand refuted when I say that the unjust man is not happy. But, my good friend, where is the refutation?

A proposition which is harder of refutation than the other, Socrates.

Say rather, Polus, impossible; for who can refute the truth?

What do you mean?

… them will be happier than the other—neither he who unjustly acquires a tyranny, nor he who suffers in the attempt, for of two miserables one cannot be the happier, but that he who escapes and becomes a tyrant is the more miserable of the two.

Do you laugh, Polus? Well, this is a new kind of refutation⁠—when anyone says anything, instead of refuting him to laugh at him.

But do you not think, Socrates, that you have been sufficiently refuted, when you say that which no human being will allow? Ask the company.

Clearly he who was never out of health.

Yes; for happiness surely does not consist in being delivered from evils, but in never having had them.

And suppose the case of two persons who have some evil in their bodies, and that one of them is healed and delivered from evil, and another is not healed, but retains the evil—which of them is the most miserable?

Tell me, Chaerephon, is Socrates in earnest, or is he joking?

I should say, Callicles, that he is in most profound earnest; but you may well ask him.

By the gods, and I will. Tell me, Socrates, are you in earnest, or only in jest? For if you are in earnest, and what you say is true, is not the whole of human life turned upside down;

or, if you leave her word unrefuted, by the dog the god of Egypt, I declare, O Callicles, that Callicles will never be at one with himself, but that his whole life will be a discord.

And yet, my friend, I would rather that my lyre should be inharmonious, and that there should be no music in the chorus which I provided; aye, or that the whole world should be at odds with me, and oppose me, rather than that I myself should be at odds with myself, and contradict myself.

O Socrates, you are a regular declaimer, and seem to be running riot in the argument.

When Polus was speaking of the conventionally dishonourable, you assailed him from the point of view of nature; for by the rule of nature, to suffer injustice is the greater disgrace because the greater evil; but conventionally, to do evil is the more disgraceful.

For the suffering of injustice is not the part of a man, but of a slave, who indeed had better die than live

; since when he is wronged and trampled upon, he is unable to help himself, or any other about whom he cares. The reason, as I conceive, is that the makers of laws are the majority who are weak;

Yes, Callicles, and also about the same things.

Yes, by the Gods, you are literally always talking of cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors, as if this had to do with our argument.

But why will you not tell me in what a man must be superior and wiser in order to claim a larger share; will you neither accept a suggestion, nor offer one?

… you profess to be a votary of the truth, and the truth is this:—that luxury and intemperance and licence, if they be provided with means, are virtue and happiness—all the rest is a mere bauble, agreements contrary to nature, foolish talk of men, nothing worth.

There is a noble freedom, Callicles, in your way of approaching the argument; for what you say is what the rest of the world think, but do not like to say.

And I must beg of you to persevere, that the true rule of human life may become manifest.

But the more you pour in, the greater the waste; and the holes must be large for the liquid to escape.

The life which you are now depicting is not that of a dead man, or of a stone, but of a cormorant; you mean that he is to be hungering and eating?

And he is to be thirsting and drinking?

Well, then, Socrates, you shall ask these little peddling questions, since Gorgias wishes to have them.

I envy you, Callicles, for having been initiated into the great mysteries before you were initiated into the lesser.

I thought that this was not allowable. But to return to our argument:—Does not a man cease from thirsting and from the pleasure of drinking at the same moment?

I do not understand you, Socrates, and I wish that you would ask someone who does.

Here is a gentleman who cannot endure to be improved or to subject himself to that very chastisement of which the argument speaks!

I do not heed a word of what you are saying, and have only answered hitherto out of civility to Gorgias.

And now I will proceed to argue according to my own notion. But if any of you think that I arrive at conclusions which are untrue you must interpose and refute me, for I do not speak from any knowledge of what I am saying;

I am an enquirer like yourselves, and therefore, if my opponent says anything which is of force, I shall be the first to agree with him.

I am speaking on the supposition that the argument ought to be completed; but if you think otherwise let us leave off and go our ways.

but since you, Callicles, are unwilling to continue, I hope that you will listen, and interrupt me if I seem to you to be in error.

And if you refute me, I shall not be angry with you as you are with me, but I shall inscribe you as the greatest of benefactors on the tablets of my soul.

My good fellow, never mind me, but get on.

for every man is pleased when he is spoken to in his own language and spirit, and dislikes any other. But perhaps you, sweet Callicles, may be of another mind. What do you say?

Somehow or other your words, Socrates, always appear to me to be good words; and yet, like the rest of the world, I am not quite convinced by them.

The reason is, Callicles, that the love of Demus which abides in your soul is an adversary to me; but I dare say that if we recur to these same matters, and consider them more thoroughly, you may be convinced for all that.

Somehow or other your words, Socrates, always appear to me to be good words; and yet, like the rest of the world, I am not quite convinced by them.

The reason is, Callicles, that the love of Demus which abides in your soul is an adversary to me

; but I dare say that if we recur to these same matters, and consider them more thoroughly, you may be convinced for all that. Please, then, to remember that there are two processes of training all things, including body and soul;

And, therefore, when Pericles first began to speak in the assembly, the Athenians were not so good as when he spoke last?

Nay, my friend, “likely” is not the word; for if he was a good citizen, the inference is certain.

And what difference does that make?

Can anything be more irrational, my friends, than this?

You, Callicles, compel me to be a mob-orator, because you will not answer.

And you are the man who cannot speak unless there is someone to answer?

you seem to think that you are living in another country, and can never be brought into a court of justice, as you very likely may be brought by some miserable and mean person.

Then I must indeed be a fool, Callicles, if I do not know that in the Athenian State any man may suffer anything.

And if I am brought to trial and incur the dangers of which you speak, he will be a villain who brings me to trial—of that I am very sure, for no good man would accuse the innocent.

Nor shall I be surprised if I am put to death. Shall I tell you why I anticipate this?

I think that I am the only or almost the only Athenian living who practises the true art of politics; I am the only politician of my time.

Now, seeing that when I speak my words are not uttered with any view of gaining favour, and that I look to what is best and not to what is most pleasant, having no mind to use those arts and graces which you recommend, I …

and if I died from want of ability to do so, that would indeed grieve me. But if I died because I have no powers of flattery or rhetoric, I am very sure that you would not find me repining at death.

For no man who is not an utter fool and coward is afraid of death itself, but he is afraid of doing wrong.

For to go to the world below having one’s soul full of injustice is the last and worst of all evils. And in proof of what I say, if you have no objection, I should like to tell you a story.

For no man who is not an utter fool and coward is afraid of death itself, but he is afraid of doing wrong.

For to go to the world below having one’s soul full of injustice is the last and worst of all evils.

And in proof of what I say, if you have no objection, I should like to tell you a story.

From this tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, I draw the following inferences:—

Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else.

And after they are separated they retain their several natures, as in life; the body keeps the same habit, and the results of treatment or accident are distinctly visible in it:

Such good and true men, however, there have been, and will be again, at Athens and in other states, who have fulfilled their trust righteously; and there is one who is quite famous all over Hellas, Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus.

But, in general, great men are also bad, my friend.

As I was saying, Rhadamanthus, when he gets a soul of the bad kind, knows nothing about him, neither who he is, nor who his parents are; he knows only that he has got hold of a villain;

“Holding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.” Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these things, and I consider how I shall present my soul whole and undefiled before the judge in that day.

Renouncing the honours at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when I die, to die as well as I can.

And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same.

When we have practised virtue together, we will apply ourselves to politics, if that seems desirable, or we will advise about whatever else may seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge then.

In our present condition we ought not to give ourselves airs, for even on the most important subjects we are always changing our minds; so utterly stupid are we!

Let us, then, take the argument as our guide, which has revealed to us that the best way of life is to practise justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let us go;

If I were still able to go and see you I would not ask you to come to me. But at my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you should come oftener to the Piraeus.

For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

Do not then deny my request, but make our house your resort and keep company with these young men; we are old friends, and you will be quite at home with us.

I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them.

For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many.

The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and tempers;

How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles—are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak;

I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master.

His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom;

… love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men.

And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth.

That is true, he said.

To be sure, he answered, and went away laughing to the sacrifices.

Tell me then, O thou heir of the argument, what did Simonides say, and according to you truly say, about justice?

He said that the repayment of a debt is just, and in saying so he appears to me to be right.

You mean when money is not wanted, but allowed to lie?

That is to say, justice is useful when money is useless?

And when you want to keep a pruning-hook safe, then justice is useful to the individual and to the state; but when you want to use it, then the art of the vinedresser?

and how ready I am to praise anyone who appears to me to speak well you will very soon find out when you answer; for I expect that you will answer well.

Listen, then, he said; I proclaim that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.

And now why do you not praise me? But of course you won’t.

In the strictest of all senses, he said. And now cheat and play the informer if you can; I ask no quarter at your hands. But you never will be able, never.

And do you imagine, I said, that I am such a madman as to try and cheat, Thrasymachus? I might as well shave a lion.

Why, he said, you made the attempt a minute ago, and you failed.

… man besides taking away the money of the citizens has made slaves of them, then, instead of these names of reproach, he is termed happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by all who hear of his having achieved the consummation of injustice.

For mankind censure injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it.

And thus, as I have shown, Socrates, injustice, when on a sufficient scale, has more strength and freedom and mastery than justice; and, as I said at first, justice is the interest of the stronger, whereas injustice is a man’s own profit and interest.

For which I am indebted to you, I said, now that you have grown gentle towards me and have left off scolding. Nevertheless, I have not been well entertained; but that was my own fault and not yours.

As an epicure snatches a taste of every dish which is successively brought to table, he not having allowed himself time to enjoy the one before, so have I gone from one subject to another without having discovered what I sought at first, the nature of justice.

I left that enquiry and turned away to consider whether justice is virtue and wisdom or evil and folly; and when there arose a further question about the comparative advantages of justice and injustice, I could not refrain from passing on to that.

For I know not what justice is, and therefore I am not likely to know whether it is or is not a virtue, nor can I say whether the just man is happy or unhappy.

With these words I was thinking that I had made an end of the discussion; but the end, in truth, proved to be only a beginning.

For Glaucon, who is always the most pugnacious of men, was dissatisfied at Thrasymachus’ retirement; he wanted to have the battle out. So he said to me:

I am delighted, he replied, to hear you say so, and shall begin by speaking, as I proposed, of the nature and origin of justice.

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good.

And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither;

therefore, let him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state of life the opposite of the former.

Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences.

And let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust.

being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.

Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up for the decision, first one and then the other, as if they were two statues.

I do my best, he said. And now that we know what they are like there is no difficulty in tracing out the sort of life which awaits either of them. This I will proceed to describe;

But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me.

Since then, as philosophers prove, appearance tyrannizes over truth and is lord of happiness, to appearance I must devote myself.

I will describe around me a picture and shadow of virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house; behind I will trail the subtle and crafty fox, as Archilochus, greatest of sages, recommends.

And they exchange with one another, and one gives, and another receives, under the idea that the exchange will be for their good.

Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.

Now the first and greatest of necessities is food, which is the condition of life and existence.

and they will roast myrtle-berries and acorns at the fire, drinking in moderation. And with such a diet they may be expected to live in peace and health to a good old age, and bequeath a similar life to their children after them.

Yes, Socrates, he said, and if you were providing for a city of pigs, how else would you feed the beasts?

But what would you have, Glaucon? I replied.

And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming;—your dog is a true philosopher.

Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing.

And must not an animal be a lover of learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance?

That was my meaning when I said that we must teach music before gymnastics.

You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.

And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are …

What do you mean? he said.

I mean that no one is willingly deceived in that which is the truest and highest part of himself, or about the truest and highest matters; there, above all, he is most afraid of a lie having possession of him.

Still, he said, I do not comprehend you.

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?

After music comes gymnastic, in which our youth are next to be trained.

Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as soon as a man has a livelihood he should practise 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?

I fear that I must have been talking darkly, like the tragedians.

I only mean that some men are changed by persuasion and that others forget; argument steals away the hearts of one class, and time of the other; and this I call theft.

Now you understand me?

And you would also acknowledge that the enchanted are those who change their minds either under the softer influence of pleasure, or the sterner influence of fear?

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

Therefore, as I was just now saying, we must enquire who are the best guardians of their own conviction that what they think the interest of the State is to be the rule of their lives.

Here, then, is a discovery of new evils, I said, against which the guardians will have to watch, or they will creep into the city unobserved.

Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

That is very true, he replied; but still I should like to know, Socrates, how our city will be able to go to war, especially against an enemy who is rich and powerful, if deprived of the sinews of war.

That will be the best way of settling them.

Also, I said, the State, if once started well, moves with accumulating force like a wheel.

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions, and these good constitutions taking root in a good education improve more and more, and this improvement affects the breed in man as in other animals.

Such cases are very common, he said, with invalids of this sort.

Yes, I replied; and the charming thing is that they deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth, which is simply that, unless they give up eating and drinking and wenching and idling, neither drug nor cautery nor spell nor amulet nor any other remedy will avail.

Charming! he replied. I see nothing charming in going into a passion with a man who tells you what is right.

… the charming thing is that they deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth, which is simply that, unless they give up eating and drinking and wenching and idling, neither drug nor cautery nor spell nor amulet nor any other remedy will avail.

Charming! he replied. I see nothing charming in going into a passion with a man who tells you what is right.

These gentlemen, I said, do not seem to be in your good graces.

Yes, he said, I do; but not of all of them, for there are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen, and these are not much to be admired.

What do you mean? I said; you should have more feeling for them. When a man cannot measure, and a great many others who cannot measure declare that he is four cubits high, can he help believing what they say?

Nay, he said, certainly not in that case.

I should like to hear what you are saying once more, for I do not think that I perfectly understand you.

I mean that courage is a kind of salvation.

Of the opinion respecting things to be feared, what they are and of what nature, which the law implants through education;

Temperance, I replied, is the ordering or controlling of certain pleasures and desires; this is curiously enough implied in the saying of “a man being his own master”; and other traces of the same notion may be found in language.

There is something ridiculous in the expression “master of himself”; for the master is also the servant and the servant the master; and in all these modes of speaking the same person is denoted.

The meaning is, I believe, that in the human soul there is a better and also a worse principle; and when the better has the worse under control, then a man is said to be master of himself; and this is a term of praise:

I will, but you must show me the way.

Here is no path, I said, and the wood is dark and perplexing; still we must push on.

Here I saw something: Halloo! I said, I begin to perceive a track, and I believe that the quarry will not escape.

Here I saw something: Halloo! I said, I begin to perceive a track, and I believe that the quarry will not escape.

Truly, I said, we are stupid fellows.

Why, my good sir, at the beginning of our enquiry, ages ago, there was justice tumbling out at our feet, and we never saw her; nothing could be more ridiculous.

Once more then, O my friend, we have alighted upon an easy question—whether the soul has these three principles or not?

An easy question! Nay, rather, Socrates, the proverb holds that hard is the good.

Very true, I said; and I do not think that the method which we are employing is at all adequate to the accurate solution of this question; the true method is another and a longer one.

And is not the creation of justice the institution of a natural order and government of one by another in the parts of the soul, and the creation of injustice the production of a state of things at variance with the natural order?

Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice the disease and weakness and deformity of the same?

And do not good practices lead to virtue, and evil practices to vice?

Yes, but discourse should have a limit.

Yes, Socrates, said Glaucon, and the whole of life is the only limit which wise men assign to the hearing of such discourses.

But never mind about us; take heart yourself and answer the question in your own way: What sort of community of women and children is this which is to prevail among our guardians?

By Zeus, he said, the problem to be solved is anything but easy.

Why yes, I said, but the fact is that when a man is out of his depth, whether he has fallen into a little swimming bath or into mid ocean, he has to swim all the same.

And must not we swim and try to reach the shore: we will hope that Arion’s dolphin or some other miraculous help may save us?

I want to know whether ideals are ever fully realized in language?

Does not the word express more than the fact, and must not the actual, whatever a man may think, always, in the nature of things, fall short of the truth?

What do you say?

Shall we then be guilty of any impropriety in calling them lovers of opinion rather than lovers of wisdom, and will they be very angry with us for thus describing them?

I shall tell them not to be angry; no man should be angry at what is true.

But those who love the truth in each thing are to be called lovers of wisdom and not lovers of opinion.

… just now doing their character and profession, and then mankind will see that he of whom you are speaking is not such as they supposed—if they view him in this new light, they will surely change their notion of him, and answer in another strain.

Who can be at enmity with one who loves them, who that is himself gentle and free from envy will be jealous of one in whom there is no jealousy?

Nay, let me answer for you, that in a few this harsh temper may be found but not in the majority of mankind.

his eye is ever directed towards things fixed and immutable, which he sees neither injuring nor injured by one another, but all in order moving according to reason; these he imitates, and to these he will, as far as he can, conform himself.

Can a man help imitating that with which he holds reverential converse?

And the philosopher holding converse with the divine order, becomes orderly and divine, as far as the nature of man allows; but like everyone else, he will suffer from detraction.

Not, he said, with the assurance of positive certainty; he has no right to do that: but he may say what he thinks, as a matter of opinion.

And do you not know, I said, that all mere opinions are bad, and the best of them blind?

You would not deny that those who have any true notion without intelligence are only like blind men who feel their way along the road?

And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term “many” is applied there is an absolute; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each.

The many, as we say, are seen but not known, and the ideas are known but not seen.

And what is the organ with which we see the visible things?

And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passersby spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?

To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error.

… a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good.

Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.

And will our pupils, when they hear this, refuse to take their turn at the toils of State, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of their time with one another in the heavenly light?

Assuredly not, he said;

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

But do you imagine that men who are unable to give and take a reason will have the knowledge which we require of them?

Because a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind.

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Then, my good friend, I said, do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find out the natural bent.

First of all, I said, consider the nature of the qualification.

Just think what would happen if pilots were to be chosen according to their property, and a poor man were refused permission to steer, even though he were a better pilot?

You mean that they would shipwreck?

of the stingless class are those who in their old age end as paupers; of the stingers come all the criminal class, as they are termed.

Clearly then, whenever you see paupers in a State, somewhere in that neighbourhood there are hidden away thieves, and cutpurses and robbers of temples, and all sorts of malefactors.

Well, I said, and in oligarchical States do you not find paupers?

and, if he is emulous of anyone who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that.

His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.

Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality.

and this is the case not only in the seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government.

The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty?

Well, I said, I meant to refer to the class of idle spendthrifts, of whom the more courageous are the leaders and the more timid the followers, the same whom we were comparing to drones, some stingless, and others having stings.

These two classes are the plagues of every city in which they are generated, being what phlegm and bile are to the body.

And the good physician and lawgiver of the State ought, like the wise bee-master, to keep them at a distance and prevent, if possible, their ever coming in;

Yes, that is their way.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.

Yes, that is quite clear.

and this is real tyranny, about which there can be no longer a mistake: as the saying is, the people who would escape the smoke which is the slavery of freemen, has fallen into the fire which is the tyranny of slaves.

Thus liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery.

Very well; and may we not rightly say that we have sufficiently discussed the nature of tyranny, and the manner of the transition from democracy to tyranny?

or if they want anything from anybody, they in their turn are equally ready to bow down before them: they profess every sort of affection for them; but when they have gained their point they know them no more.

They are always either the masters or servants and never the friends of anybody; the tyrant never tastes of true freedom or friendship.

And may we not rightly call such men treacherous?

Yes, he said, and we were perfectly right.

Let us then sum up in a word, I said, the character of the worst man: he is the waking reality of what we dreamed.

And this is he who being by nature most of a tyrant bears rule, and the longer he lives the more of a tyrant he becomes.

… who is ill-governed in his own person—the tyrannical man, I mean—whom you just now decided to be the most miserable of all—will not he be yet more miserable when, instead of leading a private life, he is constrained by fortune to be a public tyrant?

He has to be master of others when he is not master of himself

: he is like a diseased or paralytic man who is compelled to pass his life, not in retirement, but fighting and combating with other men.

thither they neither look, nor do they ever find their way, neither are they truly filled with true being, nor do they taste of pure and abiding pleasure.

Like cattle, with their eyes always looking down and their heads stooping to the earth, that is, to the dining-table, they fatten and feed and breed

, and, in their excessive love of these delights, they kick and butt at one another with horns and hoofs which are made of iron; and they kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust.

What shall he profit, if his injustice be undetected and unpunished?

He who is undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced and humanized

;

And I think that you must have observed again and again what a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.

They are like faces which were never really beautiful, but only blooming; and now the bloom of youth has passed away from them?

Here is another point: The imitator or maker of the image knows nothing of true existence; he knows appearances only. Am I not right?

… painting or drawing, and imitation in general, when doing their own proper work, are far removed from truth, and the companions and friends and associates of a principle within us which is equally removed from reason, and that they have no true or healthy aim.

The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior, and has inferior offspring.

And is this confined to the sight only, or does it extend to the hearing also, relating in fact to what we term poetry?

he thinks that the pleasure is a gain, and why should he be supercilious and lose this and the poem too?

Few persons ever reflect, as I should imagine, that from the evil of other men something of evil is communicated to themselves.

And so the feeling of sorrow which has gathered strength at the sight of the misfortunes of others is with difficulty repressed in our own.

What, are there any greater still? If there are, they must be of an inconceivable greatness.

Why, I said, what was ever great in a short time? The whole period of three score years and ten is surely but a little thing in comparison with eternity?

Say rather “nothing,” he replied.

we have not introduced the rewards and glories of justice, which, as you were saying, are to be found in Homer and Hesiod; but justice in her own nature has been shown to be best for the soul in her own nature.

Let a man do what is just, whether he have the ring of Gyges or not, and even if in addition to the ring of Gyges he put on the helmet of Hades.

And now, Glaucon, there will be no harm in further enumerating how many and how great are the rewards which justice and the other virtues procure to the soul from gods and men, both in life and after death.

But there was every other quality, and the all mingled with one another, and also with elements of wealth and poverty, and disease and health; and there were mean states also.

And here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme peril of our human state

; and therefore the utmost care should be taken.

then he took from the knees of Lachesis lots and samples of lives, and having mounted a high pulpit, spoke as follows: “Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality.

Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius

; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honours or dishonours her he will have more or less of her;

And according to the report of the messenger from the other world this was what the prophet said at the time: “Even for the last comer, if he chooses wisely and will live diligently, there is appointed a happy and not undesirable existence.

Let not him who chooses first be careless, and let not the last despair.

” And when he had spoken, he who had the first choice came forward and in a moment chose the greatest tyranny;

Perceiving this, and with the view of eliciting information from them, he told them the tales of Phoroneus and Niobe, and also of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and he endeavoured to count the generations which had since passed. Thereupon an aged priest said to him: “

O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are ever young, and there is no old man who is a Hellene.

” “What do you mean?” he asked. “In mind,” replied the priest, “I mean to say that you are children; there is no opinion or tradition of knowledge among you which is white with age; and I will tell you why.

And the world being thus created according to the eternal pattern is the copy of something; and we may assume that words are akin to the matter of which they speak.

What is spoken of the unchanging or intelligible must be certain and true; but what is spoken of the created image can only be probable; being is to becoming what truth is to belief.

And amid the variety of opinions which have arisen about God and the nature of the world we must be content to take probability for our rule, considering that I, who am the speaker, and you, who are the judges, are only men;

Timaeus: Why did the Creator make the world? …

He was good, and therefore not jealous, and being free from jealousy he desired that all things should be like himself.

Wherefore he set in order the visible world, which he found in disorder. Now he who is the best could only create the fairest;

The sight of them and their revolutions has given us the knowledge of number and time, the power of enquiry, and philosophy, which is the great blessing of human life; not to speak of the lesser benefits which even the vulgar can appreciate.

God gave us the faculty of sight that we might behold the order of the heavens and create a corresponding order in our own erring minds.

To the like end the gifts of speech and hearing were bestowed upon us;

and at length, when the bonds which unite the triangles of the marrow become undone, they in turn unloose the bonds of the soul; and if the release be according to nature, she then flies away with joy.

For the death which is natural is pleasant, but that which is caused by violence is painful.

Everyone may understand the origin of diseases. They may be occasioned by the disarrangement or disproportion of the elements out of which the body is framed.

When men are in this evil plight of body, and evil forms of government and evil discourses are superadded, and there is no education to save them, they are corrupted through two causes; but of neither of them are they really the authors.

For the planters are to blame rather than the plants, the educators and not the educated.

Still, we should endeavour to attain virtue and avoid vice; but this is part of another subject.

And he who, instead of accepting his destiny, endeavours to prolong his life by medicine, is likely to multiply and magnify his diseases.

Regimen and not medicine is the true cure, when a man has time at his disposal.

Enough of the nature of man and of the body, and of training and education. The subject is a great one and cannot be adequately treated as an appendage to another. To sum up all in a word:

Like some philosophers in modern times, who are accused of making a theory first and finding their facts afterwards, the advocates of either opinion never thought of applying either to themselves or to their adversaries the criterion of fact.

They were mastered by their ideas and not masters of them.

Like the Heraclitean fanatics whom Plato has ridiculed in the “Theaetetus” (179 E, 180), they were incapable of giving a reason of the faith that was in them, and had all the animosities of a religious sect.

His cosmos would necessarily be imperfect and unequal, being the first attempt to impress form and order on the primaeval chaos of human knowledge.

He would see all things as in a dream.

The ancient physical philosophers have been charged by Dr. Whewell and others with wasting their fine intelligences in wrong methods of enquiry; and their progress in moral and political philosophy has been sometimes contrasted with their supposed failure in physical investigations.

He would, perhaps, have said that “the first things are known only to God and to him of men whom God loves.”

How often have the gaps in Theology been concealed from the eye of faith!

And we may say that only by an effort of metaphysical imagination can we hope to understand Plato from his own point of view; we must not ask for consistency.

after a while they look at them closely and hold them in their hands. They begin to arrange them in classes and to connect causes with effects. General notions are necessary to the apprehension of particular facts, the metaphysical to the physical.

Before men can observe the world, they must be able to conceive it.

To do justice to the subject, we should consider the physical philosophy of the ancients as a whole; we should remember, (1) that the nebular theory was the received belief of several of the early physicists;

The “idols” of Bacon are nearly as common now as ever; they are inherent in the human mind, and when they have the most complete dominion over us, we are least able to perceive them.

We recognize them in the ancients, but we fail to see them in ourselves.

Such reflections, although this is not the place in which to dwell upon them at length, lead us to take a favourable view of the speculations of the “Timaeus.”

… difficulty, by the help of Aristotle and later writers, in criticizing the “Timaeus” of Plato, in pointing out the inconsistencies of the work, in dwelling on the ignorance of anatomy displayed by the author, in showing the fancifulness or unmeaningness of some of his reasons.

But the “Timaeus” still remains the greatest effort of the human mind to conceive the world as a whole which the genius of antiquity has bequeathed to us.

One more aspect of the “Timaeus” remains to be considered—the mythological or geographical.

It mattered little whether the description in Plato agreed with the locality assigned to it or not. It was a legend so adapted to the human mind that it made a habitation for itself in any country.

It was an island in the clouds, which might be seen anywhere by the eye of faith.

It was a subject especially congenial to the ponderous industry of certain French and Swedish writers, who delighted in heaping up learning of all sorts but were incapable of using it.

M. Martin has written a valuable dissertation on the opinions entertained respecting the Island of Atlantis in ancient and modern times. It is a curious chapter in the history of the human mind.

The tale of Atlantis is the fabric of a vision, but it has never ceased to interest mankind.

It was variously regarded by the ancients themselves. The stronger heads among them, like Strabo and Longinus, were as little disposed to believe in the truth of it as the modern reader in Gulliver or Robinson Crusoe.

When I had completed my task, I in return imposed this other task upon you. You conferred together and agreed to entertain me today, as I had entertained you, with a feast of discourse.

Here am I in festive array, and no man can be more ready for the promised banquet.

Hermocrates: And we too, Socrates, as Timaeus says, will not be wanting in enthusiasm; and there is no excuse for not complying with your request.

and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, and reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many years ago the events of which he was speaking happened. Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said:

O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you.

Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age.

Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant.

I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age.

And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes.

And therefore, as Hermocrates has told you, on my way home yesterday I at once communicated the tale to my companions as I remembered it; and after I left them, during the night by thinking I recovered nearly the whole of it.

Truly, as is often said, the lessons of our childhood make a wonderful impression on our memories

; for I am not sure that I could remember all the discourse of yesterday, but I should be much surprised if I forgot any of these things which I have heard very long ago.

But when they express only the copy or likeness and not the eternal things themselves, they need only be likely and analogous to the real words.

As being is to becoming, so is truth to belief.

If then, Socrates, amid the many opinions about the gods and the generation of the universe, we are not able to give notions which are altogether and in every respect exact and consistent with one another, do not be surprised.

If then, Socrates, amid the many opinions about the gods and the generation of the universe, we are not able to give notions which are altogether and in every respect exact and consistent with one another, do not be surprised.

Enough, if we adduce probabilities as likely as any others; for we must remember that I who am the speaker, and you who are the judges, are only mortal men, and we ought to accept the tale which is probable and enquire no further.

Socrates: Excellent, Timaeus; and we will do precisely as you bid us. The prelude is charming, and is already accepted by us—may we beg of you to proceed to the strain?

Timaeus: Let me tell you then why the creator made this world of generation.

He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy of anything.

And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be.

and as this was eternal, he sought to make the universe eternal, so far as might be. Now the nature of the ideal being was everlasting, but to bestow this attribute in its fullness upon a creature was impossible.

Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image of eternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity; and this image we call time.

For there were no days and nights and months and years before the heaven was created, but when he constructed the heaven he created them also.

I will therefore now proceed to speak of the higher use and purpose for which God has given them to us.

The sight in my opinion is the source of the greatest benefit to us, for had we never seen the stars, and the sun, and the heaven, none of the words which we have spoken about the universe would ever have been uttered.

But now the sight of day and night, and the months and the revolutions of the years, have created number, and have given us a conception of time, and the power of enquiring about the nature of the universe;

For if the matter were like any of the supervening forms, then whenever any opposite or entirely different nature was stamped upon its surface, it would take the impression badly, because it would intrude its own shape.

Wherefore, that which is to receive all forms should have no form;

as in making perfumes they first contrive that the liquid substance which is to receive the scent shall be as inodorous as possible;

And herein is a proof that God has given the art of divination not to the wisdom, but to the foolishness of man.

No man, when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration;

but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled in sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession.

And at last, when the bonds by which the triangles of the marrow are united no longer hold, and are parted by the strain of existence, they in turn loosen the bonds of the soul, and she, obtaining a natural release, flies away with joy.

For that which takes place according to nature is pleasant, but that which is contrary to nature is painful.

And thus death, if caused by disease or produced by wounds, is painful and violent; but that sort of death which comes with old age and fulfils the debt of nature is the easiest of deaths, and is accompanied with pleasure rather than with pain.

And in general, all that which is termed the incontinence of pleasure and is deemed a reproach under the idea that the wicked voluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for reproach.

For no man is voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against his will.

And in the case of pain too in like manner the soul suffers much evil from the body.

… are added and evil discourses are uttered in private as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in youth to cure these evils, then all of us who are bad become bad from two causes which are entirely beyond our control.

In such cases the planters are to blame rather than the plants, the educators rather than the educated.

But however that may be, we should endeavour as far as we can by education, and studies, and learning, to avoid vice and attain virtue; this, however, is part of another subject.

for it is more our duty to speak of the good than of the evil.

Everything that is good is fair, and the fair is not without proportion, and the animal which is to be fair must have due proportion.

Now we perceive lesser symmetries or proportions and reason about them, but of the highest and greatest we take no heed; for there is no proportion or disproportion more productive of health and disease, and virtue and vice, than that between soul and body.

Hermocrates: The warning, Socrates, which you have addressed to him, I must also take to myself.

But remember, Critias, that faint heart never yet raised a trophy; and therefore you must go and attack the argument like a man.

First invoke Apollo and the Muses, and then let us hear you sound the praises and show forth the virtues of your ancient citizens.

And next, if I have not forgotten what I heard when I was a child, I will impart to you the character and origin of their adversaries.

For friends should not keep their stories to themselves, but have them in common.

Yet, before proceeding further in the narrative, I ought to warn you, that you must not be surprised if you should perhaps hear Hellenic names given to foreigners. I will tell you the reason of this:

And could we hear it? I asked.

Nothing easier, he replied; when he was a youth he made a careful study of the piece; at present his thoughts run in another direction; like his grandfather Antiphon he is devoted to horses.

But, if that is what you want, let us go and look for him; he dwells at Melita, which is quite near, and he has only just left us to go home.

just as our authority does not extend to the gods, nor our knowledge know anything which is divine, so by parity of reason they, being gods, are not our masters, neither do they know the things of men.

Yet, surely, said Socrates, to deprive God of knowledge is monstrous.

These, Socrates, said Parmenides, are a few, and only a few of the difficulties in which we are involved if ideas really are and we determine each one of them to be an absolute unity.

… like Ibycus, who, when in his old age, against his will, he fell in love, compared himself to an old racehorse, who was about to run in a chariot race, shaking with fear at the course he knew so well—this was his simile of himself.

And I also experience a trembling when I remember through what an ocean of words I have to wade at my time of life.

But I must indulge you, as Zeno says that I ought, and we are alone. Where shall I begin? And what shall be our first hypothesis, if I am to attempt this laborious pastime?

Nor as the same or different, nor in contact or separation, nor in any of those states which we enumerated as appearing to be;—the others neither are nor appear to be any of these, if one is not?

Then may we not sum up the argument in a word and say truly: If one is not, then nothing is?

Let thus much be said;

they are ships without ballast, and go darting about, and are mad rather than courageous; and the steadier sort, when they have to face study, prove stupid and cannot remember.

Whereas he moves surely and smoothly and successfully in the path of knowledge and enquiry; and he is full of gentleness, flowing on silently like a river of oil; at his age, it is wonderful.

That is good news; whose son is he?

In the first place, there would be an absurdity in assuming that he who asked the question would understand from our answer the nature of “clay,” merely because we added “of the image-makers,” or of any other workers.

How can a man understand the name of anything, when he does not know the nature of it?

Then he who does not know what science or knowledge is, has no knowledge of the art or science of making shoes?

but I can neither persuade myself that I have a satisfactory answer to give, nor hear of anyone who answers as you would have him; and I cannot shake off a feeling of anxiety.

These are the pangs of labour, my dear Theaetetus; you have something within you which you are bringing to the birth.

I do not know, Socrates; I only say what I feel.

And that I myself practise midwifery?

Let me tell you that I do though, my friend: but you must not reveal the secret, as the world in general have not found me out; and therefore they only say of me, that I am the strangest of mortals and drive men to their wits’ end.

Did you ever hear that too?

Or that anything appears the same to you as to another man? Are you so profoundly convinced of this?

Rather would it not be true that it never appears exactly the same to you, because you are never exactly the same?

And if that with which I compare myself in size, or which I apprehend by touch, were great or white or hot, it could not become different by mere contact with another unless it actually changed;

Yes, Socrates, and I am amazed when I think of them; by the Gods I am! and I want to know what on earth they mean; and there are times when my head quite swims with the contemplation of them.

I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

He was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris (the messenger of heaven) is the child of Thaumas (wonder). But do you begin to see what is the explanation of this perplexity on the hypothesis which we attribute to Protagoras?

and when in a dream we seem to be narrating dreams, the resemblance of the two states is quite astonishing.

You see, then, that a doubt about the reality of sense is easily raised, since there may even be a doubt whether we are awake or in a dream.

And as our time is equally divided between sleeping and waking, in either sphere of existence the soul contends that the thoughts which are present to our minds at the time are true;

And may not the same be said of madness and other disorders? the difference is only that the times are not equal.

And is truth or falsehood to be determined by duration of time?

That would be in many ways ridiculous.

You, Theodorus, are a lover of theories, and now you innocently fancy that I am a bag full of them, and can easily pull one out which will overthrow its predecessor.

But you do not see that in reality none of these theories come from me; they all come from him who talks with me.

I only know just enough to extract them from the wisdom of another, and to receive them in a spirit of fairness. And now I shall say nothing myself, but shall endeavour to elicit something from our young friend.

Once more we shall have to begin, and ask “What is knowledge?” and yet, Theaetetus, what are we going to do?

Like a good-for-nothing cock, without having won the victory, we walk away from the argument and crow.

After the manner of disputers, we were satisfied with mere verbal consistency, and were well pleased if in this way we could gain an advantage.

many a Heracles, many a Theseus, mighty in words, has broken my head; nevertheless I am always at this rough exercise, which inspires me like a passion. Please, then, to try a fall with me, whereby you will do yourself good as well as me.

I consent; lead me whither you will, for I know that you are like destiny; no man can escape from any argument which you may weave for him.

But I am not disposed to go further than you suggest.

I will illustrate my meaning, Theodorus, by the jest which the clever witty Thracian handmaid is said to have made about Thales, when he fell into a well as he was looking up at the stars.

She said, that he was so eager to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was before his feet.

This is a jest which is equally applicable to all philosophers. For the philosopher is wholly unacquainted with his next-door neighbour; he is ignorant, not only of what he is doing, but he hardly knows whether he is a man or an animal;

If you could only persuade everybody, Socrates, as you do me, of the truth of your words, there would be more peace and fewer evils among men.

Evils, Theodorus, can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good.

Having no place among the gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the mortal nature, and this earthly sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can;

Yes, if he wishes; but I would rather have heard about the doctrine of rest.

Invite Socrates to an argument⁠—invite horsemen to the open plain; do but ask him, and he will answer.

Nevertheless, Theodorus, I am afraid that I shall not be able to comply with the request of Theaetetus.

Indeed, Socrates, I cannot answer; my only notion is, that these, unlike objects of sense, have no separate organ, but that the mind, by a power of her own, contemplates the universals in all things.

You are a beauty, Theaetetus, and not ugly, as Theodorus was saying; for he who utters the beautiful is himself beautiful and good.

And besides being beautiful, you have done me a kindness in releasing me from a very long discussion, if you are clear that the soul views some things by herself and others through the bodily organs.

You are quite right, and perhaps there will be no harm in retracing our steps and beginning again.

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

Well, and what is the difficulty? Do we not speak of false opinion, and say that one man holds a false and another a true opinion, as though there were some natural distinction between them?

We have at length satisfactorily proven beyond a doubt there are these two sorts of opinion?

Alas, Theaetetus, what a tiresome creature is a man who is fond of talking!

What makes you say so?

And is it not shameless when we do not know what knowledge is, to be explaining the verb “to know”?

The truth is, Theaetetus, that we have long been infected with logical impurity.

Thousands of times have we repeated the words “we know,” and “do not know,” and “we have or have not science or knowledge,” as if we could understand what we are saying to one another, so long as we remain ignorant about knowledge;

Knowledge was said by us to be true opinion; and true opinion is surely unerring, and the results which follow from it are all noble and good.

He who led the way into the river, Theaetetus, said “The experiment will show”; and perhaps if we go forward in the search, we may stumble upon the thing which we are looking for; but if we stay where we are, nothing will come to light.

Very true; let us go forward and try.

How is that, and what profession do you mean?

The profession of the great wise ones who are called orators and lawyers; for these persuade men by their art and make them think whatever they like, but they do not teach them.

Do you imagine that there are any teachers in the world so clever as to be able to convince others of the truth about acts of robbery or violence, of which they were not eyewitnesses, while a little water is flowing in the clepsydra?

Such a supposition, Socrates, is monstrous and unmeaning.

But if he cannot know both without knowing each, then if he is ever to know the syllable, he must know the letters first; and thus the fine theory has again taken wings and departed.

Yes, we did not keep watch properly. Perhaps we ought to have maintained that a syllable is not the letters, but rather one single idea framed out of them, having a separate form distinct from them.

I am sure, Socrates, that you have elicited from me a good deal more than ever was in me.

And does not my art show that you have brought forth wind, and that the offspring of your brain are not worth bringing up?

But if, Theaetetus, you should ever conceive afresh, you will be all the better for the present investigation, and if not, you will be soberer and humbler and gentler to other men, and will be too modest to fancy that you know what you do …

And does not my art show that you have brought forth wind, and that the offspring of your brain are not worth bringing up?

But if, Theaetetus, you should ever conceive afresh, you will be all the better for the present investigation, and if not, you will be soberer and humbler and gentler to other men, and will be too modest to fancy that you know what you do not know.

These are the limits of my art; I can no further go, nor do I know aught of the things which great and famous men know or have known in this or former ages.

These are the limits of my art; I can no further go, nor do I know aught of the things which great and famous men know or have known in this or former ages.

The office of a midwife I, like my mother, have received from God; she delivered women, I deliver men; but they must be young and noble and fair.

And now I have to go to the porch of the King Archon, where I am to meet Meletus and his indictment. Tomorrow morning, Theodorus, I shall hope to see you again at this place.

Yes, and with a fresh pedigree, for he is the moneymaking species of the Eristic, disputatious, controversial, pugnacious, combative, acquisitive family, as the argument has already proven.

How true was the observation that he was a many-sided animal, and not to be caught with one hand, as they say!

Then you must catch him with two.

I do seem to myself to see one very large and bad sort of ignorance which is quite separate, and may be weighed in the scale against all other sorts of ignorance put together.

When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.

And this, if I am not mistaken, is the kind of ignorance which specially earns the title of stupidity.

That is certainly the best and wisest state of mind.

For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must admit that refutation is the greatest and chiefest of purifications, and he who has not been refuted, though he be the Great King himself, is in an awful state of impurity; he is uninstructed and deformed in those things in which he who would be truly blessed ought to be fairest and purest.

And who are the ministers of this art? I am afraid to say the Sophists.

Yet the Sophist has a certain likeness to our minister of purification.

Yes, the same sort of likeness which a wolf, who is the fiercest of animals, has to a dog, who is the gentlest. But he who would not be found tripping, ought to be very careful in this matter of comparisons, for they are most slippery things.

Nevertheless, let us assume that the Sophists are the men. I say this provisionally, for I think that the line which divides them will be marked enough if proper care is taken.

In what a strange complication of being and not-being we are involved!

Strange! I should think so. See how, by his reciprocation of opposites, the many-headed Sophist has compelled us, quite against our will, to admit the existence of not-being.

The difficulty is how to define his art without falling into a contradiction.

Alas, Theaetetus, methinks that we are now only beginning to see the real difficulty of the enquiry into the nature of it.

O my friend, do you not see that nothing can exceed our ignorance, and yet we fancy that we are saying something good?

I certainly thought that we were; and I do not at all understand how we never found out our desperate case.

In this region we shall always discover the philosopher, if we look for him; like the Sophist, he is not easily discovered, but for a different reason.

Because the Sophist runs away into the darkness of not-being, in which he has learned by habit to feel about, and cannot be discovered because of the darkness of the place.

Is not that true?

It seems to be so.

And the philosopher, always holding converse through reason with the idea of being, is also dark from excess of light; for the souls of the many have no eye which can endure the vision of the divine.

Yes; that seems to be quite as true as the other.

For certainly, my friend, the attempt to separate all existences from one another is a barbarism and utterly unworthy of an educated or philosophical mind.

The attempt at universal separation is the final annihilation of all reasoning; for only by the union of conceptions with one another do we attain to discourse of reason.

And, observe that we were only just in time in making a resistance to such separatists, and compelling them to admit that one thing mingles with another.

here is another; for we have still to show that falsehood exists in the sphere of language and opinion, and there will be another and another line of defence without end.

Anyone, Theaetetus, who is able to advance even a little ought to be of good cheer, for what would he who is dispirited at a little progress do, if he were making none at all, or even undergoing a repulse?

Such a faint heart, as the proverb says, will never take a city: but now that we have succeeded thus far, the citadel is ours, and what remains is easier.

Give me the knowledge which you would wish me to gain.

Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that what is called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with herself?

But the stream of thought which flows through the lips and is audible is called speech?

And what shall we say of human art?

Do we not make one house by the art of building, and another by the art of drawing, which is a sort of dream created by man for those who are awake?

And other products of human creation are also twofold and go in pairs; there is the thing, with which the art of making the thing is concerned, and the image, with which imitation is concerned.

What do you mean, Socrates?

I mean that you rate them all at the same value, whereas they are really separated by an interval, which no geometrical ratio can express.

By Ammon, the god of Cyrene, Socrates, that is a very fair hit; and shows that you have not forgotten your geometry.

Yes, give the other a turn, as you propose.

The young always do better when they have intervals of rest.

I think, Stranger, that both of them may be said to be in some way related to me; for the one, as you affirm, has the cut of my ugly face, the other is called by my name.

No matter;—whichever suggests itself to us in the course of conversation.

Very good, Socrates; and, if you continue to be not too particular about names, you will be all the richer in wisdom when you are an old man.

And now, as you say, leaving the discussion of the name—can you see a way in which a person, by showing the art of herding to be of two kinds, may cause that which is now sought amongst twice the number of things, to be …

Neither let us be in too great haste to arrive quickly at the political science; for this mistake has already brought upon us the misfortune of which the proverb speaks.

The misfortune of too much haste, which is too little speed.

And all the better, Stranger;—we got what we deserved.

In these divisions, Socrates, I descry what would make another famous jest.

Human beings have come out in the same class with the freest and airiest of creation, and have been running a race with them.

I remark that very singular coincidence.

Then here, Socrates, is still clearer evidence of the truth of what was said in the enquiry about the Sophist?

That the dialectical method is no respecter of persons, and does not set the great above the small, but always arrives in her own way at the truest result.

And now, I will not wait for you to ask, but will of my own accord take you by the shorter road to the definition of a king.

there is a famous tale, of which a good portion may with advantage be interwoven, and then we may resume our series of divisions, and proceed in the old path until we arrive at the desired summit. Shall we do as I say?

Listen, then, to a tale which a child would love to hear; and you are not too old for childish amusement.

There did really happen, and will again happen, like many other events of which ancient tradition has preserved the record, the portent which is traditionally said to have occurred in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes.

Very true; but what is the imperfection which still remains? I wish that you would tell me.

The higher ideas, my dear friend, can hardly be set forth except through the medium of examples; every man seems to know all things in a dreamy sort of way, and then again to wake up and to know nothing.

I fear that I have been unfortunate in raising a question about our experience of knowledge.

Certainly; the law treats us all precisely in the manner which you describe.

A perfectly simple principle can never be applied to a state of things which is the reverse of simple.

Then if the law is not the perfection of right, why are we compelled to make laws at all? The reason of this has next to be investigated.

… or any ministerial service, or draught-playing, or any science conversant with number, whether simple or square or cube, or comprising motion—I say, if all these things were done in this way according to written regulations, and not according to art, what would be the result?

All the arts would utterly perish, and could never be recovered, because enquiry would be unlawful. And human life, which is bad enough already, would then become utterly unendurable.

But what, if while compelling all these operations to be regulated by written law, we were to appoint as the guardian of the laws someone elected by a show of hands, or by lot, and he caring nothing about the laws, were to act contrary …

Any other art, built on such a foundation and thus conducted, would ruin all that it touched.

Ought we not rather to wonder at the natural strength of the political bond?

For States have endured all this, time out of mind, and yet some of them still remain and are not overthrown, though many of them, like ships at sea, founder from time to time, and perish and have perished and will hereafter perish, through the …

… and on the other hand those which incline to order and gentleness, and which are represented in the figure as spun thick and soft, after the manner of the woof—these, which are naturally opposed, she seeks to bind and weave together in the following manner:

First of all, she takes the eternal element of the soul and binds it with a divine cord, to which it is akin, and then the animal nature, and binds that with human cords.

I do not understand what you mean.

Rights of intermarriage, and ties which are formed between States by giving and taking children in marriage, or between individuals by private betrothals and espousals. For most persons form marriage connections without due regard to what is best for the procreation of children.

They seek after wealth and power, which in matrimony are objects not worthy even of a serious censure.

There is no need to consider them at all.

How and why is that?

Because courage, when untempered by the gentler nature during many generations, may at first bloom and strengthen, but at last bursts forth into downright madness.

And then, again, the soul which is overfull of modesty and has no element of courage in many successive generations, is apt to grow too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless.

Then let us begin with the goddess herself, of whom Philebus says that she is called Aphrodite, but that her real name is Pleasure.

The awe which I always feel, Protarchus, about the names of the gods is more than human⁠—it exceeds all other fears.

And now I would not sin against Aphrodite by naming her amiss; let her be called what she pleases. But Pleasure I know to be manifold, and with her, as I was just now saying, we must begin, and consider what her nature is.

That seems to be very near the truth, Socrates.

Happy would the wise man be if he knew all things, and the next best thing for him is that he should know himself.

Why do I say so at this moment? I will tell you. You, Socrates, have granted us this opportunity of conversing with you, and are ready to assist us in determining what is the best of human goods.

But is such a life eligible?

I cannot answer you, Socrates; the argument has taken away from me the power of speech.

We must keep up our spirits;—let us now take the life of mind and examine it in turn.

And if this is true, pleasure cannot be truly said to share either in the first or second place, and does not, if I may trust my own mind, attain even to the third.

Truly, Socrates, pleasure appears to me to have had a fall; in fighting for the palm, she has been smitten by the argument, and is laid low.

I must say that mind would have fallen too, and may therefore be thought to show discretion in not putting forward a similar claim.

I must obey you, Protarchus; nor is the task which you impose a difficult one; but did I really, as Philebus implies, disconcert you with my playful solemnity, when I asked the question to what class mind and knowledge belong?

Yet the answer is easy, since all philosophers assert with one voice that mind is the king of heaven and earth⁠—in reality they are magnifying themselves.

And perhaps they are right. But still I should like to consider the class of mind, if you do not object, a little more fully.

I have indeed, and yet I did not observe that you had answered.

A jest is sometimes refreshing, Protarchus, when it interrupts earnest.

I think, friend, that we have now pretty clearly set forth the class to which mind belongs and what is the power of mind.

Ay; let us enquire into that, for we shall lose nothing.

Nay, Protarchus, we shall surely lose the puzzle if we find the answer.

A fair retort; but let us proceed.

Certainly it does; and in that case, Socrates, as we were saying, the opinion is false, but no one could call the actual pleasure false.

How eagerly, Protarchus, do you rush to the defence of pleasure!

Nay, Socrates, I only repeat what I hear.

Yes, there is a natural connection between them.

And you remember also how at the sight of tragedies the spectators smile through their tears?

And are you aware that even at a comedy the soul experiences a mixed feeling of pain and pleasure?

True, Protarchus; and so the purest white, and not the greatest or largest in quantity, is to be deemed truest and most beautiful?

And we shall be quite right in saying that a little pure white is whiter and fairer and truer than a great deal that is mixed.

There is no need of adducing many similar examples in illustration of the argument about pleasure;

Then now let us mingle, Protarchus, at the same time offering up a prayer to Dionysus or Hephaestus, or whoever is the god who presides over the ceremony of mingling.

Are not we the cupbearers? and here are two fountains which are flowing at our side: one, which is pleasure, may be likened to a fountain of honey; the other, wisdom, a sober draught in which no wine mingles, is of water unpleasant but healthful; out of these we must seek to make the fairest of all possible mixtures.

Tell me first;—should we be most likely to succeed if we mingled every sort of pleasure with every sort of wisdom?

And still there must be something more added, which is a necessary ingredient in every mixture.

Unless truth enter into the composition, nothing can truly be created or subsist.

Quite impossible;

… knows that any want of measure and symmetry in any mixture whatever must always of necessity be fatal, both to the elements and to the mixture, which is then not a mixture, but only a confused medley which brings confusion on the possessor of it.

And now the power of the good has retired into the region of the beautiful; for measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue all the world over.

Also we said that truth was to form an element in the mixture.

Very good; but there still remains the third test: Has mind a greater share of beauty than pleasure, and is mind or pleasure the fairer of the two?

No one, Socrates, either awake or dreaming, ever saw or imagined mind or wisdom to be in aught unseemly, at any time, past, present, or future.

But when we see someone indulging in pleasures, perhaps in the greatest of pleasures, the ridiculous or disgraceful nature of the action makes us ashamed;

He will reconcile the contending factions, and unite them against their external enemies. “Certainly.”

Every legislator will aim at the greatest good, and the greatest good is not victory in war, whether civil or external, but mutual peace and goodwill, as in the body health is preferable to the purgation of disease.

He who makes war his object instead of peace, or who pursues war except for the sake of peace, is not a true statesman. “And yet, Stranger, the laws both of Crete and Sparta aim entirely at war.” Perhaps so;

To return to the question of drinking: shall we have total abstinence, as you have, or hard drinking, like the Scythians and Thracians, or moderate potations like the Persians? “Give us arms, and we send all these nations flying before us.”

My good friend, be modest; victories and defeats often arise from unknown causes, and afford no proof of the goodness or badness of institutions.

The stronger overcomes the weaker, as the Athenians have overcome the Ceans, or the Syracusans the Locrians, who are, perhaps, the best governed state in that part of the world. People are apt to praise or censure practices without enquiring into the nature of them.

but if you ask what is the good of education in general, I answer, that education makes good men, and that good men act nobly and overcome their enemies in battle.

Victory is often suicidal to the victors, because it creates forgetfulness of education, but education itself is never suicidal.

“You imply that the regulation of convivial meetings is a part of education; how will you prove this?” I will tell you. But first let me offer a word of apology.

Now the fairest and most useful of strains will be uttered by the elder men, and therefore we cannot let them off. But how can we make them sing?

For a discreet elderly man is ashamed to hear the sound of his own voice in private, and still more in public. The only way is to give them drink; this will mellow the sourness of age.

No one should be allowed to taste wine until they are eighteen; from eighteen to thirty they may take a little; but when they have reached forty years, they may be initiated into the mystery of drinking. Thus they will become softer and more impressible;

And what songs shall he sing? “At Crete and Lacedaemon we only know choral songs.” Yes; that is because your way of life is military.

Your young men are like wild colts feeding in a herd together; no one takes the individual colt and trains him apart, and tries to give him the qualities of a statesman as well as of a soldier.

He who was thus trained would be a greater warrior than those of whom Tyrtaeus speaks, for he would be courageous, and yet he would know that courage was only fourth in the scale of virtue.

And how could the legislator have prevented this evil?—the remedy is easy to see now, but was not easy to foresee at the time. “What is the remedy?” The institutions of Sparta may teach you, Megillus.

Wherever there is excess, whether the vessel has too large a sail, or the body too much food, or the mind too much power, there destruction is certain.

And similarly, a man who possesses arbitrary power is soon corrupted, and grows hateful to his dearest friends. In order to guard against this evil, the God who watched over Sparta gave you two kings instead of one, that they might balance one another;

the whole audience, instead of being mute, became vociferous, and a theatrocracy took the place of an aristocracy. Could the judges have been free, there would have been no great harm done; a musical democracy would have been well enough—but conceit has been our ruin.

Everybody knows everything, and is ready to say anything; the age of reverence is gone, and the age of irreverence and licentiousness has succeeded.

“Most true.” And with this freedom comes disobedience to rulers, parents, elders—in the latter days to the law also; the end returns to the beginning, and the old Titanic nature reappears—men have no regard for the Gods or for oaths;

Then there is some hope for your citizens; had the city been on the sea, and dependent for support on other countries, no human power could have preserved you from corruption. Even the distance of eleven miles is hardly enough.

For the sea, although an agreeable, is a dangerous companion, and a highway of strange morals and manners as well as of commerce.

But as the country is only moderately fertile there will be no great export trade and no great returns of gold and silver, which are the ruin of states. Is there timber for shipbuilding? “There is no pine, nor much cypress;

There is nothing, however, which perfects men’s virtue more than legislation and colonization. And yet I have a word to say which may seem to be depreciatory of legislators. “What is that?”

I was going to make the saddening reflection, that accidents of all sorts are the true legislators⁠—wars and pestilences and famines and the frequent recurrence of bad seasons.

The observer will be inclined to say that almost all human things are chance; and this is certainly true about navigation and medicine, and the art of the general. But there is another thing which may equally be said. “What is it?”

I am endeavouring to show you how easy under the conditions supposed, and how difficult under any other, is the task of giving a city good laws. “How do you mean?”

Let us old men attempt to mould in words a constitution for your new state, as children make figures out of wax.

“Proceed. What constitution shall we give—democracy, oligarchy, or aristocracy?” To which of these classes, Megillus, do you refer your own state? “The Spartan constitution seems to me to contain all these elements. Our state is a democracy and also an aristocracy;

When I call the ruler the servant or minister of the law, this is not a mere paradox, but I mean to say that upon a willingness to obey the law the existence of the state depends. “Truly, Stranger, you have a keen vision.”

Why, yes; every man when he is old has his intellectual vision most keen.

And now shall we call in our colonists and make a speech to them? Friends, we say to them, God holds in His hand the beginning, middle, and end of all things, and He moves in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His will.

But if the legislator would persuade as well as command, he will add prefaces to his laws which will predispose the citizens to virtue.

Even a little accomplished in the way of gaining the hearts of men is of great value. For most men are in no particular haste to become good.

As Hesiod says:

And whether a man escapes punishment or not, he is equally miserable; for in the one case he is not cured, and in the other case he perishes that the rest may be saved.

The glory of man is to follow the better and improve the inferior.

And the soul is that part of man which is most inclined to avoid the evil and dwell with the good.

and so of property and external goods. No man should heap up riches that he may leave them to his children.

The best condition for them as for the state is a middle one, in which there is a freedom without luxury. And the best inheritance of children is modesty.

But modesty cannot be implanted by admonition only—the elders must set the example. He who would train the young must first train himself.

The best condition for them as for the state is a middle one, in which there is a freedom without luxury. And the best inheritance of children is modesty. But modesty cannot be implanted by admonition only—the elders must set the example.

He who would train the young must first train himself.

He who honours his kindred and family may fairly expect that the Gods will give him children. He who would have friends must think much of their favours to him, and little of his to them.

He who honours his kindred and family may fairly expect that the Gods will give him children.

He who would have friends must think much of their favours to him, and little of his to them.

He who prefers to an Olympic, or any other victory, to win the palm of obedience to the laws, serves best both the state and his fellow-citizens.

I will now speak of those particulars which are matters of praise and blame only, and which, although not enforced by the law, greatly affect the disposition to obey the law.

Truth has the first place among the gifts of Gods and men, for truth begets trust; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool.

Neither the ignorant nor the untrustworthy man is happy; for they have no friends in life, and die unlamented and untended. Good is he who does no injustice—better who prevents others from doing any—best of all who joins the rulers in punishing injustice.

for no man voluntarily does evil or allows evil to exist in his soul. And therefore he who deals with the curable sort must be long-suffering and forbearing; but the incurable shall have the vials of our wrath poured out upon him.

The greatest of all evils is self-love, which is thought to be natural and excusable, and is enforced as a duty, and yet is the cause of many errors.

The lover is blinded about the beloved, and prefers his own interests to truth and right; but the truly great man seeks justice before all things. Self-love is the source of that ignorant conceit of knowledge which is always doing and never succeeding.

He would create a kindly spirit between creditors and debtors: those who have should give to those who have not, and poverty should be held to be rather the increase of a man’s desires than the diminution of his property.

Goodwill is the only safe and enduring foundation of the political society; and upon this our city shall be built.

The lawgiver, if he is wise, will not proceed with the arrangement of the state until all disputes about property are settled. And for him to introduce fresh grounds of quarrel would be madness.

for where men are in the dark about each other’s characters, there can be no justice or right administration. Every man should be true and single-minded, and should not allow himself to be deceived by others.

And now the game opens, and we begin to move the pieces.

At first sight, our constitution may appear singular and ill-adapted to a legislator who has not despotic power; but on second thoughts will be deemed to be, if not the very best, the second best.

On the other hand, an utterly bad man is generally profligate and poor, while he who acquires honestly, and spends what he acquires on noble objects, can hardly be very rich.

A very rich man is therefore not a good man, and therefore not a happy one.

But the object of our laws is to make the citizens as friendly and happy as possible, which they cannot be if they are always at law and injuring each other in the pursuit of gain.

To this end, let us make four classes in which the citizens may be placed according to the measure of their original property, and the changes of their fortune.

The greatest of evils is revolution; and this, as the law will say, is caused by extremes of poverty or wealth.

The limit of poverty shall be the lot, which must not be diminished, and may be increased fivefold, but not more. He who exceeds the limit must give up the excess to the state;

The citizens will not tolerate a settlement in which they are deprived of gold and silver, and have the number of their families regulated, and the sites of their houses fixed by law.

It will be said that our city is a mere image of wax.

And the legislator will answer: “I know it, but I maintain that we ought to set forth an ideal which is as perfect as possible. If difficulties arise in the execution of the plan, we must avoid them and carry out the remainder.

“Why do not you and Megillus join us?”

Athens is proud, and Sparta too; and they are both a long way off.

But let me proceed with my scheme. When the state is permanently established, the mode of election will be as follows: All who are serving, or have served, in the army will be electors;

These are the principal means of preserving the state, but perpetual care will also be required.

When a ship is sailing on the sea, vigilance must not be relaxed night or day; and the vessel of state is tossing in a political sea, and therefore watch must continually succeed watch, and rulers must join hands with rulers.

A small body will best perform this duty, and therefore the greater part of the 360 senators may be permitted to go and manage their own affairs, but a twelfth portion must be set aside in each month for the administration of the state.

One minister remains, who will have the general superintendence of education. He must be not less than fifty years old, and be himself the father of children born in wedlock. His office must be regarded by all as the highest in the state.

For the right growth of the first shoot in plants and animals is the chief cause of matured perfection.

Man is supposed to be a tame animal, but he becomes either the gentlest or the fiercest of creatures, accordingly as he is well or ill educated. Wherefore he who is elected to preside over education should be the best man possible.

His office must be regarded by all as the highest in the state. For the right growth of the first shoot in plants and animals is the chief cause of matured perfection.

Man is supposed to be a tame animal, but he becomes either the gentlest or the fiercest of creatures, accordingly as he is well or ill educated.

Wherefore he who is elected to preside over education should be the best man possible.

When a magistrate dies before his term of office has expired, another shall be elected in his place; and, if the guardian of an orphan dies, the relations shall appoint another within ten days, or be fined a drachma a day for neglect.

The city which has no courts of law will soon cease to be a city; and a judge who sits in silence and leaves the enquiry to the litigants, as in arbitrations, is not a good judge.

A few judges are better than many, but the few must be good. The matter in dispute should be clearly elicited; time and examination will find out the truth. Causes should first be tried before a court of neighbours:

Their bodies and souls should be in the most temperate condition; they should abstain from all that partakes of the nature of disease or vice, which will otherwise become hereditary.

There is an original divinity in man which preserves all things, if used with proper respect.

He who marries should make one of the two houses on the lot the nest and nursery of his young; he should leave his father and mother, and then his affection for them will be only increased by absence.

He who marries should make one of the two houses on the lot the nest and nursery of his young; he should leave his father and mother, and then his affection for them will be only increased by absence.

He will go forth as to a colony, and will there rear up his offspring, handing on the torch of life to another generation.

About property in general there is little difficulty, with the exception of property in slaves, which is an institution of a very doubtful character. The slavery of the Helots is approved by some and condemned by others;

first that they should not, if possible, be of the same country or have a common language; and secondly, that they should be treated by their master with more justice even than equals, out of regard to himself quite as much as to them.

For he who is righteous in the treatment of his slaves, or of any inferiors, will sow in them the seed of virtue.

Masters should never jest with their slaves: this, which is a common but foolish practice, increases the difficulty and painfulness of managing them.

I see that the virtue of human life depends on the due regulation of three wants or desires. The first is the desire of meat, the second of drink; these begin with birth, and make us disobedient to any voice other than that of pleasure.

The third and fiercest and greatest need is felt latest; this is love, which is a madness setting men’s whole nature on fire.

These three disorders of mankind we must endeavour to restrain by three mighty influences—fear, and law, and reason, which, with the aid of the Muses and the Gods of contests, may extinguish our lusts.

Let us consider a further point. The matters which are now in question are generally called customs rather than laws; and we have already made the reflection that, though they are not, properly speaking, laws, yet neither can they be neglected.

For they fill up the interstices of law, and are the props and ligatures on which the strength of the whole building depends.

Laws without customs never last; and we must not wonder if habit and custom sometimes lengthen out our laws. “Very true.” Up to their third year, then, the life of children may be regulated by customs such as we have described.

and we have already made the reflection that, though they are not, properly speaking, laws, yet neither can they be neglected. For they fill up the interstices of law, and are the props and ligatures on which the strength of the whole building depends.

Laws without customs never last; and we must not wonder if habit and custom sometimes lengthen out our laws.

“Very true.” Up to their third year, then, the life of children may be regulated by customs such as we have described. From three to six their minds have to be amused; but they must not be allowed to become self-willed and spoilt.

and here I shall venture to repeat my old paradox, that amusements have great influence on laws. He who has been taught to play at the same games and with the same playthings will be content with the same laws.

There is no greater evil in a state than the spirit of innovation.

In the case of the seasons and winds, in the management of our bodies and in the habits of our minds, change is a dangerous thing. And in everything but what is bad the same rule holds.

But to whom are they to be taught, and when? I must try, like the shipwright, who lays down the keel of a vessel, to build a secure foundation for the vessel of the soul in her voyage through life.

Human affairs are hardly serious, and yet a sad necessity compels us to be serious about them.

Let us, therefore, do our best to bring the matter to a conclusion. “Very good.” I say then, that God is the object of a man’s most serious endeavours. But man is created to be the plaything of the Gods;

Now how can we create this quality of immobility in the laws? I say, by not allowing innovations in the games and plays of children.

The children who are always having new plays, when grown up will be always having new laws.

Changes in mere fashions are not serious evils, but changes in our estimate of men’s characters are most serious; and rhythms and music are representations of characters, and therefore we must avoid novelties in dance and song.

and the mistress, too, should awaken her handmaidens, and not be awakened by them. Much sleep is not required either for our souls or bodies.

When a man is asleep, he is no better than if he were dead; and he who loves life and wisdom will take no more sleep than is necessary for health.

Magistrates who are wide awake at night are terrible to the bad; but they are honoured by the good, and are useful to themselves and the state.

What will be the manner of life of men in moderate circumstances, freed from the toils of agriculture and business, and having common tables for themselves and their families which are under the inspection of magistrates, male and female?

Are men who have these institutions only to eat and fatten like beasts? If they do, how can they escape the fate of a fatted beast, which is to be torn in pieces by some other beast more valiant than himself?

True, theirs is not the perfect way of life, for they have not all things in common; but the second best way of life also confers great blessings.

When the morning dawns, let the boy go to school.

As the sheep need the shepherd, so the boy needs a master; for he is at once the most cunning and the most insubordinate of creatures.

Let him be taken away from mothers and nurses, and tamed with bit and bridle, being treated as a freeman in that he learns and is taught, but as a slave in that he may be chastised by all other freemen;

for he who leads such a life neither does nor suffers injury, of which the first is very easy, and the second very difficult of attainment, and is only to be acquired by perfect virtue.

A good city has peace, but the evil city is full of wars within and without.

To guard against the danger of external enemies the citizens should practise war at least one day in every month;

The unwritten law which prohibits members of the same family from such intercourse is strictly obeyed, and no thought of anything else ever enters into the minds of men in general.

A little word puts out the fire of their lusts.

“What is it?” The declaration that such things are hateful to the Gods, and most abominable and unholy. The reason is that everywhere, in jest and earnest alike, this is the doctrine which is repeated to all from their earliest youth.

Three higher principles may be brought to bear on all these corrupt natures. “What are they?” Religion, honour, and the love of the higher qualities of the soul.

Perhaps this is a dream only, yet it is the best of dreams; and if not the whole, still, by the grace of God, a part of what we desire may be realized.

Either men may learn to abstain wholly from any loves, natural or unnatural, except of their wedded wives; or, at least, they may give up unnatural loves;

And perhaps this may improve him: for the law aims either at the reformation of the criminal, or the repression of crime.

No punishment is designed to inflict useless injury.

But if the offender be a citizen, he must be incurable, and for him death is the only fitting penalty. His iniquity, however, shall not be visited on his children, nor shall his property be confiscated.

As if all our legislation must be done today, and nothing put off until the morrow. We may surely rough-hew our materials first, and shape and place them afterwards.” That will be the natural way of proceeding. There is a further point.

Of all writings either in prose or verse the writings of the legislator are the most important.

For it is he who has to determine the nature of good and evil, and how they should be studied with a view to our instruction.

For the empirical practitioner, if he chance to meet the educated physician talking to his patient, and entering into the philosophy of his disease, would burst out laughing and say, as doctors delight in doing,

“Foolish fellow, instead of curing the patient you are educating him!”

“And would he not be right?” Perhaps; and he might add, that he who discourses in our fashion preaches to the citizens instead of legislating for them. “True.”

and this arises out of the false praise of riches, common both among Hellenes and barbarians; they think that to be the first of goods which is really the third.

For the body is not for the sake of wealth, but wealth for the body, as the body is for the soul.

If this were better understood, the crime of murder, of which avarice is the chief cause, would soon cease among men.

The judge must determine the fact; and to him also the punishment must sometimes be left. What shall the law prescribe, and what shall be left to the judge?

A city is unfortunate in which the tribunals are either secret and speechless, or, what is worse, noisy and public, when the people, as if they were in a theatre, clap and hoot the various speakers.

Such courts a legislator would rather not have; but if he is compelled to have them, he will speak distinctly, and leave as little as possible to their discretion.

A man may know what is for the public good, but if he have absolute power, human nature will impel him to seek pleasure instead of virtue, and so darkness will come over his soul and over the state.

If he had mind, he would have no need of law; for mind is the perfection of law.

But such a freeman, “whom the truth makes free,” is hardly to be found; and therefore law and order are necessary, which are the second-best, and they regulate things as they exist in part only, but cannot take in the whole.

He who is standing by and gives no assistance, shall be punished according to his class in one of four penalties—a mina, fifty, thirty, twenty drachmas. The generals and other superior officers of the army shall form the court which tries this class of offences.

Laws are made to instruct the good, and in the hope that there may be no need of them; also to control the bad, whose hardness of heart will not be hindered from crime.

The uttermost penalty will fall upon those who lay violent hands upon a parent, having no fear of the Gods above, or of the punishments which will pursue them in the world below.

And this can only be on the supposition that the soul is prior to the body. Shall we try to prove that it is so? “By all means.”

I fear that the greenness of our argument will ludicrously contrast with the ripeness of our ages.

But as we must go into the water, and the stream is strong, I will first attempt to cross by myself, and if I arrive at the bank, you shall follow.

… to persuade him that the author of all has made every part for the sake of the whole, and that the smallest part has an appointed state of action or passion, and that the least action or passion of any part has a presiding minister.

You, we say to him, are a minute fraction of this universe, created with a view to the whole; the world is not made for you, but you for the world; for the good artist considers the whole first, and afterwards the parts.

And you are annoyed at not seeing how you and the universe are all working together for the best, so far as the laws of the common creation admit. The soul undergoes many changes from her contact with bodies;

per ann.). And we may observe by the way, in speaking of craftsmen, that if our military craft do their work well, the state will praise those who honour them, and blame those who do not honour them.

Not that the first place of honour is to be assigned to the warrior; a higher still is reserved for those who obey the laws.

Most of the dealings between man and man are now settled, with the exception of such as relate to orphans and guardianships. These lead us to speak of the intentions of the dying, about which we must make regulations. I say “must”;

They were too ready to listen to the outcry of a dying man, and hence they were induced to give him an absolute power of bequest. But I would say to him:—

O creature of a day, you know neither what is yours nor yourself: for you and your property are not your own, but belong to your whole family, past and to come, and property and family alike belong to the State.

And therefore I must take out of your hands the charge of what you leave behind you, with a view to the interests of all. And I hope that you will not quarrel with us, now that you are going the way of all mankind;

Concerning duty to parents, let the preamble be as follows:—We honour the Gods in their lifeless images, and believe that we thus propitiate them.

But he who has an aged father or mother has a living image, which if he cherish it will do him far more good than any statue.

“What do you mean by cherishing them?” “I will tell you. Oedipus and Amyntor and Theseus cursed their children, and their curses took effect. This proves that the Gods hear the curses of parents who are wronged;

and besides the compensation, a suitable punishment shall be inflicted. The foolish youth who is the victim of others is to have a lighter punishment; he whose folly is occasioned by his own jealousy or desire or anger is to suffer more heavily.

Punishment is to be inflicted, not for the sake of vengeance, for what is done cannot be undone, but for the sake of prevention and reformation.

And there should be a proportion between the punishment and the crime, in which the judge, having a discretion left him, must, by estimating the crime, second the legislator, who, like a painter, furnishes outlines for him to fill up.

When more than half the evidence is proved to be false there must be a new trial.

The best and noblest things in human life are liable to be defiled and perverted.

Is not justice the civilizer of mankind? And yet upon the noble profession of the advocate has come an evil name. For he is said to make the worse appear the better cause, and only requires money in return for his services.

Book XII. If a false message be taken to or brought from other states, whether friendly or hostile, by ambassadors or heralds, they shall be indicted for having dishonoured their sacred office, and, if convicted, shall suffer a penalty.—

Stealing is mean; robbery is shameless.

Let no man deceive himself by the supposed example of the Gods, for no God or son of a God ever really practised either force or fraud. On this point the legislator is better informed than all the poets put together.

for they are both impelled by the same evil motive.

When the law punishes one man more lightly than another, this is done under the idea, not that he is less guilty, but that he is more curable.

Now a thief who is a foreigner or slave may be curable; but the thief who is a citizen, and has had the advantages of education, should be put to death, for he is incurable.

The prize is to be a crown of olive, which the victor shall offer up at the temple of his favourite war God …

In any suit which a man brings, let the indictment be scrupulously true, for justice is an honourable maiden, to whom falsehood is naturally hateful.

For example, when men are prosecuted for having lost their arms, great care should be taken by the witnesses to distinguish between cases in which they have been lost from necessity and from cowardice.

In our own day, men either deny the existence of Gods or their care of men, or maintain that they may be bribed by attentions and gifts; and the procedure of Rhadamanthus would therefore be out of date.

When the religious ideas of mankind change, their laws should also change.

Thus oaths should no longer be taken from plaintiff and defendant; simple statements of affirmation and denial should be substituted. For there is something dreadful in the thought, that nearly half the citizens of a state are perjured men.

and the procedure of Rhadamanthus would therefore be out of date. When the religious ideas of mankind change, their laws should also change. Thus oaths should no longer be taken from plaintiff and defendant; simple statements of affirmation and denial should be substituted.

For there is something dreadful in the thought, that nearly half the citizens of a state are perjured men.

There is no objection to an oath, where a man has no interest in forswearing himself; as, for example, when a judge is about to give his decision, or in voting at an election, or in the judgment of games and contests.

but in a well-ordered state it may be a great evil. Yet the absolute prohibition of foreign travel, or the exclusion of strangers, is impossible, and would appear barbarous to the rest of mankind.

Public opinion should never be lightly regarded, for the many are not so far wrong in their judgments as in their lives.

Even the worst of men have often a divine instinct, which enables them to judge of the differences between the good and bad. States are rightly advised when they desire to have the praise of men;

or if he rebel against the authority of the court, he shall be brought before the guardians of the law, and if found guilty he shall be put to death.

Man having been born, educated, having begotten and brought up children, and gone to law, fulfils the debt of nature.

The rites which are to be celebrated after death in honour of the Gods above and below shall be determined by the Interpreters.

The dead shall be buried in uncultivated places, where they will be out of the way and do least injury to the living.

For no one either in life or after death has any right to deprive other men of the sustenance which mother earth provides for them.

No sepulchral mound is to be piled higher than five men can raise it in five days, and the gravestone shall not be larger than is sufficient to contain an inscription of four heroic verses.

The dead are only to be exposed for three days, which is long enough to test the reality of death.

The legislator will instruct the people that the body is a mere shadow or image, and that the soul, which is our true being, is gone to give an account of herself before the Gods below.

When they hear this, the good are full of hope, and the evil are terrified. It is also said that not much can be done for anyone after death.

Do you remember the names of the Fates?

Lachesis, the giver of the lots, is the first of them; Clotho, the spinster, the second; Atropos, the unchanging one, is the third and last, who makes the threads of the web irreversible.

And we too want to make our laws irreversible, for the unchangeable quality in them will be the salvation of the state, and the source of health and order in the bodies and souls of our citizens. “But can such a quality be implanted?”

You are quite right, Athenian Stranger, and we will do as you say.

At our time of life, Cleinias, there should be no feeling of irritation.

I will not at present determine whether he who censures the Cretan or Lacedaemonian polities is right or wrong. But I believe that I can tell better than either of you what the many say about them.

and in another, and even a worse manner, they will be the slaves of those who are able to endure amid pleasures, and have had the opportunity of enjoying them, they being often the worst of mankind.

One half of their souls will be a slave, the other half free; and they will not be worthy to be called in the true sense men and freemen.

Tell me whether you assent to my words?

And what if besides being a coward he has no skill?

He is a miserable fellow, not fit to be a commander of men, but only of old women.

And what would you say of someone who blames or praises any sort of meeting which is intended by nature to have a ruler, and is well enough when under his presidency?

And can you show that what you have been saying is true?

To be absolutely sure of the truth of matters concerning which there are many opinions, is an attribute of the Gods not given to man, Stranger;

but I shall be very happy to tell you what I think, especially as we are now proposing to enter on a discussion concerning laws and constitutions.

Very good; I will try to find a way of explaining my meaning, and you shall try to have the gift of understanding me. But first let me make an apology.

The Athenian citizen is reputed among all the Hellenes to be a great talker, whereas Sparta is renowned for brevity, and the Cretans have more wit than words.

Now I am afraid of appearing to elicit a very long discourse out of very small materials. For drinking indeed may appear to be a slight matter, and yet is one which cannot be rightly ordered according to nature, without correct principles of music;

But let us not quarrel with one another about a word, provided that the proposition which has just been granted hold good: to wit, that those who are rightly educated generally become good men.

Neither must we cast a slight upon education, which is the first and fairest thing that the best of men can ever have, and which, though liable to take a wrong direction, is capable of reformation.

And this work of reformation is the great business of every man while he lives.

Do we not consider each of ourselves to be one?

And each one of us has in his bosom two counsellors, both foolish and also antagonistic; of which we call the one pleasure, and the other pain.

Also there are opinions about the future, which have the general name of expectations; and the specific name of fear, when the expectation is of pain; and of hope, when of pleasure;

And will he not be in a most wretched plight?

Then not only an old man but also a drunkard becomes a second time a child?

Is there any argument which will prove to us that we ought to encourage the taste for drinking instead of doing all we can to avoid it?

Let me once more recall our doctrine of right education; which, if I am not mistaken, depends on the due regulation of convivial intercourse.

Pleasure and pain I maintain to be the first perceptions of children, and I say that they are the forms under which virtue and vice are originally present to them.

As to wisdom and true and fixed opinions, happy is the man who acquires them, even when declining in years; and we may say that he who possesses them, and the blessings which are contained in them, is a perfect man.

If we three know what is good in song and dance, then we truly know also who is educated and who is uneducated; but if not, then we certainly shall not know wherein lies the safeguard of education, and whether there is any or not.

Let us follow the scent like hounds, and go in pursuit of beauty of figure, and melody, and song, and dance; if these escape us, there will be no use in talking about true education, whether Hellenic or barbarian.

And what is beauty of figure, or beautiful melody? When a manly soul is in trouble, and when a cowardly soul is in similar case, are they likely to use the same figures and gestures, or to give utterance to the same sounds?

For what good can the just man have which is separated from pleasure? Shall we say that glory and fame, coming from Gods and men, though good and noble, are nevertheless unpleasant, and infamy pleasant?

Certainly not, sweet legislator.

Or shall we say that the not-doing of wrong and there being no wrong done is good and honourable, although there is no pleasure in it, and that the doing wrong is pleasant, but evil and base?

How! Then may Heaven make us to be of one mind, for now we are of two.

To me, dear Cleinias, the truth of what I am saying is as plain as the fact that Crete is an island.

And, if I were a lawgiver, I would try to make the poets and all the citizens speak in this strain, and I would inflict the heaviest penalties on anyone in all the land who should dare to say that there are bad men who …

… worth anything, if he ever ventures to tell a lie to the young for their good, could not invent a more useful lie than this, or one which will have a better effect in making them do what is right, not on compulsion but voluntarily.

Truth, Stranger, is a noble thing and a lasting, but a thing of which men are hard to be persuaded.

And yet the story of the Sidonian Cadmus, which is so improbable, has been readily believed, and also innumerable other tales.

Hence in those days mankind were not very poor; nor was poverty a cause of difference among them; and rich they could not have been, having neither gold nor silver:—such at that time was their condition.

And the community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles; in it there is no insolence or injustice, nor, again, are there any contentions or envyings.

And therefore they were good, and also because they were what is called simple-minded; and when they were told about good and evil, they in their simplicity believed what they heard to be very truth and practised it.

and God has given these two arts to man in order to provide him with all such things, that, when reduced to the last extremity, the human race may still grow and increase.

Hence in those days mankind were not very poor; nor was poverty a cause of difference among them; and rich they could not have been, having neither gold nor silver

:—such at that time was their condition. And the community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles; in it there is no insolence or injustice, nor, again, are there any contentions or envyings.

And we must suppose this event to have taken place many ages after the deluge?

A marvellous forgetfulness of the former destruction would appear to have come over them

, when they placed their town right under numerous streams flowing from the heights, trusting for their security to not very high hills, either.

That the other two states were always to come to the rescue against a rebellious third.

Many persons say that legislators ought to impose such laws as the mass of the people will be ready to receive; but this is just as if one were to command gymnastic masters or physicians to treat or cure their pupils or patients in an agreeable manner.

Whereas the physician may often be too happy if he can restore health, and make the body whole, without any very great infliction of pain.

but in music there first arose the universal conceit of omniscience and general lawlessness;—freedom came following afterwards, and men, fancying that they knew what they did not know, had no longer any fear, and the absence of fear begets shamelessness.

For what is this shamelessness, which is so evil a thing, but the insolent refusal to regard the opinion of the better by reason of an over-daring sort of liberty?

Consequent upon this freedom comes the other freedom, of disobedience to rulers; and then the attempt to escape the control and exhortation of father, mother, elders, and when near the end, the control of the laws also;

These are also natural advantages.

Because no city ought to be easily able to imitate its enemies in what is mischievous.

How does that bear upon any of the matters of which we have been speaking?

To what are you referring?

I was going to say that man never legislates, but accidents of all sorts, which legislate for us in all sorts of ways.

The violence of war and the hard necessity of poverty are constantly overturning governments and changing laws.

this is thought by them to be the best way of expressing the natural definition of justice.

Justice is said by them to be the interest of the stronger.

I will:—“Surely,” they say, “the governing power makes whatever laws have authority in any state?”

And when I call the rulers servants or ministers of the law, I give them this name not for the sake of novelty, but because I certainly believe that upon such service or ministry depends the well- or ill-being of the state.

For that state in which the law is subject and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but I see that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every blessing which the Gods can confer.

Truly, Stranger, you see with the keen vision of age.

Now, according to our view, such governments are not polities at all, nor are laws right which are passed for the good of particular classes and not for the good of the whole state.

States which have such laws are not polities but parties, and their notions of justice are simply unmeaning.

I say this, because I am going to assert that we must not entrust the government in your state to anyone because he is rich, or because he possesses any other advantage, such as strength, or stature, or again birth:

… youth which is free from flattery, and at the same time not in need of the necessaries of life, is the best and most harmonious of all, being in accord and agreement with our nature, and making life to be most entirely free from sorrow.

Let parents, then, bequeath to their children not a heap of riches, but the spirit of reverence.

We, indeed, fancy that they will inherit reverence from us, if we rebuke them when they show a want of reverence.

for where old men have no shame, there young men will most certainly be devoid of reverence.

The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own admonitions in practice.

He who honours his kindred, and reveres those who share in the same Gods and are of the same blood and family, may fairly expect that the Gods who preside over generation will be propitious to him, and will quicken his seed.

the good, however, which he has, is not to be undervalued by us because it is possessed by him, but must be acquired by us also to the utmost of our power.

Let every man, then, freely strive for the prize of virtue, and let there be no envy.

For the unenvious nature increases the greatness of states—he himself contends in the race, blasting the fair fame of no man;

And the soul, as we said, is of a truth deemed by all men the most honourable. In the soul, then, which is the most honourable part of him, no one, if he could help, would admit, or allow to continue the greatest of evils.

The unrighteous and vicious are always to be pitied in any case; and one can afford to forgive as well as pity him who is curable

, and refrain and calm one’s anger, not getting into a passion, like a woman, and nursing ill-feeling. But upon him who is incapable of reformation and wholly evil, the vials of our wrath should be poured out;

There are also minor precepts which are often repeated, and are quite as useful; a man should recollect them and remind himself of them.

For when a stream is flowing out, there should be water flowing in too; and recollection flows in while wisdom is departing.

Therefore I say that a man should refrain from excess either of laughter or tears, and should exhort his neighbour to do the same;

But why, Stranger, do not you and Megillus take a part in our new city?

O, Cleinias, Athens is proud, and Sparta too; and they are both a long way off.

But you and likewise the other colonists are conveniently situated as you describe. I have been speaking of the way in which the new citizens may be best managed under present circumstances;

and yet they must be elected in some way, and they are not to be inferior men, but the best possible.

For as the proverb says, “a good beginning is half the business”

; and “to have begun well” is praised by all, and in my opinion is a great deal more than half the business, and has never been praised by anyone enough.

And therefore, although we are compelled to use both equalities, we should use that into which the element of chance enters as seldom as possible. Thus, O my friends, and for the reasons given, should a state act which would endure and be saved.

But as a ship sailing on the sea has to be watched night and day, in like manner a city also is sailing on a sea of politics, and is liable to all sorts of insidious assaults

; and therefore from morning to night, and from night to morning, rulers must join hands with rulers, and watchers with watchers, receiving and giving up their trust in a perpetual succession.

and he who is of the opposite temper ought to seek the opposite alliance. Let there be one word concerning all marriages:—

Every man shall follow, not after the marriage which is most pleasing to himself, but after that which is most beneficial to the state.

For somehow everyone is by nature prone to that which is likest to himself, and in this way the whole city becomes unequal in property and in disposition; and hence there arise in most states the very results which we least desire to happen.

for he cannot help leaving the impression of himself on the souls and bodies of his offspring, and he begets children in every way inferior. And especially on the day and night of marriage should a man abstain from such things.

For the beginning, which is also a God dwelling in man, preserves all things, if it meet with proper respect from each individual.

He who marries is further to consider, that one of the two houses in the lot is the nest and nursery of his young, and there he is to marry and make a home for himself and bring up his children, going away from his …

There I can no longer agree, Cleinias: you amaze me.

To bring him up in such a way would be his utter ruin; for the beginning is always the most critical part of education.

Let us see whether I am right.

The point about which you and I differ is of great importance, and I hope that you, Megillus, will help to decide between us.

For I maintain that the true life should neither seek for pleasures, nor, on the other hand, entirely avoid pains, but should embrace the middle state

, which I just spoke of as gentle and benign, and is a state which we by some divine presage and inspiration rightly ascribe to God.

and no one of them reflects that there will follow what I just now called the greatest of evils to states.

Changes in bodily fashions are no such serious evils, but frequent changes in the praise and censure of manners are the greatest of evils, and require the utmost prevision.

And now do we still hold to our former assertion, that rhythms and music in general are imitations of good and evil characters in men? What say you?

Well, then, let us give all the greater heed to one another’s words.

The argument affirms that any change whatever except from evil is the most dangerous of all things

; this is true in the case of the seasons and of the winds, in the management of our bodies and the habits of our minds—true of all things except, as I said before, of the bad.

Living as they do, they would never dare at all to imitate the Sauromatides, who, when compared with ordinary women, would appear to be like men. Let him who will, praise your legislators, but I must say what I think.

The legislator ought to be whole and perfect, and not half a man only

;

I will tell you.

There is a difficulty in opposing many myriads of mouths.

Well, and have we not already opposed the popular voice in many important enactments?

I think that our answer should be as follows:

Best of strangers, we will say to them, we also according to our ability are tragic poets, and our tragedy is the best and noblest; for our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy.

You are poets and we are poets, both makers of the same strains, rivals and antagonists in the noblest of dramas, which true law can alone perfect, as our hope is.

for our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life, which we affirm to be indeed the very truth of tragedy.

You are poets and we are poets, both makers of the same strains, rivals and antagonists in the noblest of dramas, which true law can alone perfect, as our hope is.

Do not then suppose that we shall all in a moment allow you to erect your stage in the agora, or introduce the fair voices of your actors, speaking above our own, and permit you to harangue our women and children, and the common people, …

But it is necessary also to consider and know uncomely persons and thoughts, and those which are intended to produce laughter in comedy, and have a comic character in respect of style, song, and dance, and of the imitations which these afford.

For serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites, if a man is really to have intelligence of either

; but he cannot carry out both in action, if he is to have any degree of virtue.

I certainly am afraid of the difficulties to which you allude, but I am still more afraid of those who apply themselves to this sort of knowledge, and apply themselves badly.

For entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with an ill bringing up, are far more fatal.

All freemen I conceive, should learn as much of these branches of knowledge as every child in Egypt is taught when he learns the alphabet.

To what are you referring?

Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious; whereas the very opposite is the truth.

Perhaps what I am saying may seem paradoxical, and at variance with the usual language of age.

Moreover, those who would regulate these matters rightly should consider, that our city among existing cities has no fellow, either in respect of leisure or command of the necessaries of life, and that like an individual she ought to live happily.

And those who would live happily should in the first place do no wrong to one another, and ought not themselves to be wronged by others; to attain the first is not difficult, but there is great difficulty in acquiring the power of not being wronged.

No man can be perfectly secure against wrong, unless he has become perfectly good; and cities are like individuals in this, for a city if good has a life of peace, but if evil, a life of war within and without.

to attain the first is not difficult, but there is great difficulty in acquiring the power of not being wronged.

No man can be perfectly secure against wrong, unless he has become perfectly good; and cities are like individuals in this, for a city if good has a life of peace, but if evil, a life of war within and without.

Wherefore the citizens ought to practise war—not in time of war, but rather while they are at peace.

many of whom are not without ability, but they are unfortunate.

Must not they be truly unfortunate whose souls are compelled to pass through life always hungering?

Then that is one cause, Stranger; but you spoke of another.

and this similarity of name causes all the difficulty and obscurity.

Dear is the like in virtue to the like, and the equal to the equal; dear also, though unlike, is he who has abundance to him who is in want.

And when either of these friendships becomes excessive, we term the excess love.

When the poet introduces on the stage a Thyestes or an Oedipus, or a Macareus having secret intercourse with his sister, he represents him, when found out, ready to kill himself as the penalty of his sin.

You are very right in saying that tradition, if no breath of opposition ever assails it, has a marvellous power.

Am I not also right in saying that the legislator who wants to master any of the passions which master man may easily know how to subdue them?

… using the language almost of philosophy, beginning at the beginning of the disease and discoursing about the whole nature of the body, he would burst into a hearty laugh—he would say what most of those who are called doctors always have at their tongue’s end:

Foolish fellow, he would say, you are not healing the sick man, but you are educating him; and he does not want to be made a doctor, but to get well.

And would he not be right?

and should not other writings either agree with them, or if they disagree, be deemed ridiculous?

We should consider whether the laws of states ought not to have the character of loving and wise parents, rather than of tyrants and masters, who command and threaten, and, after writing their decrees on walls, go their ways

; and whether, in discoursing of laws, we should not take the gentler view of them which may or may not be attainable—at any rate, we will show our readiness to entertain such a view, and be prepared to undergo whatever may be the result.

… wrong, because he is afraid that he may inform of some base and evil deeds of his own, or for any similar reason, in such a case let him pay the penalty of murder, as he would have done if he had slain a citizen.

There are things about which it is terrible and unpleasant to legislate, but impossible not to legislate.

If, for example, there should be murders of kinsmen, either perpetrated by the hands of kinsmen, or by their contrivance, voluntary and purely malicious, which most often happen in ill-regulated and ill-educated states, and may perhaps occur even in a country where a man would …

for there is no law or order which is above knowledge, nor can mind, without impiety, be deemed the subject or slave of any man, but rather the lord of all. I speak of mind, true and free, and in harmony with nature.

But then there is no such mind anywhere, or at least not much; and therefore we must choose law and order, which are second best.

These look at things as they exist for the most part only, and are unable to survey the whole of them. And therefore I have spoken as I have.

… either of the wrath of the Gods above, or of the punishments that are spoken of in the world below, but transgresses in contempt of ancient and universal traditions as though he were too wise to believe in them, requires some extreme measure of prevention.

Now death is not the worst that can happen to men; far worse are the punishments which are said to pursue them in the world below.

But although they are most true tales, they work on such souls no prevention; for if they had any effect there would be no slayers of mothers, or impious hands lifted up against parents;

One which you who live in a different atmosphere would never guess.

A very grievous sort of ignorance which is imagined to be the greatest wisdom.

At Athens there are tales preserved in writing which the virtue of your state, as I am informed, refuses to admit.

Seeing you thus in earnest, I would fain offer up a prayer that I may succeed: but I must proceed at once.

Who can be calm when he is called upon to prove the existence of the Gods?

Who can avoid hating and abhorring the men who are and have been the cause of this argument;

Shall we, then, take this as the next point to which our attention should be directed?

Let us be on our guard lest this most deceptive argument with its youthful looks, beguiling us old men, give us the slip and make a laughingstock of us.

Who knows but we may be aiming at the greater, and fail of attaining the lesser?

And he contrived a general plan by which a thing of a certain nature found a certain seat and room. But the formation of qualities he left to the wills of individuals.

For every one of us is made pretty much what he is by the bent of his desires and the nature of his soul.

Yes, that is probably true.

This is the justice of heaven, which neither you nor any other unfortunate will ever glory in escaping, and which the ordaining powers have specially ordained; take good heed thereof, for it will be sure to take heed of you.

If you say: I am small and will creep into the depths of the earth, or I am high and will fly up to heaven, you are not so small or so high but that you shall pay the fitting penalty, either here or in the world below or in some still more savage place whither you shall be conveyed.

This is also the explanation of the fate of those whom you saw, who had done unholy and evil deeds, and from small beginnings had grown great, and you fancied that from being miserable they had become happy;

and in that conflict the Gods and demigods are our allies, and we are their property.

Injustice and insolence and folly are the destruction of us, and justice and temperance and wisdom are our salvation; and the place of these latter is in the life of the Gods, although some vestige of them may occasionally be discerned among mankind.

But upon this earth we know that there dwell souls possessing an unjust spirit, who may be compared to brute animals, which fawn upon their keepers, whether dogs or shepherds, or the best and most perfect masters;

What do you mean, Stranger?

O Cleinias, a man when he is about to die is an intractable creature, and is apt to use language which causes a great deal of anxiety and trouble to the legislator.

He wants to have the entire control of all his property, and will use angry words.

But if anyone thinks that too great power is thus given to the guardians of the law, let him bring his adversaries into the court of the select judges, and there have the points in dispute determined.

And he who loses the cause shall have censure and blame from the legislator, which, by a man of sense, is felt to be a penalty far heavier than a great loss of money.

Thus will orphan children have a second birth.

And he who loses the cause shall have censure and blame from the legislator, which, by a man of sense, is felt to be a penalty far heavier than a great loss of money.

Thus will orphan children have a second birth.

After their first birth we spoke of their nurture and education, and after their second birth, when they have lost their parents, we ought to take measures that the misfortune of orphanhood may be as little sad to them as possible.

… his mistress by a slave—and this be proven—the offspring of the woman and its father shall be sent away by the women who superintend marriage into another country, and the guardians of the law shall send away the offspring of the man and its mother.

Neither God, nor a man who has understanding, will ever advise anyone to neglect his parents.

To a discourse concerning the honour and dishonour of parents, a prelude such as the following, about the service of the Gods, will be a suitable introduction: There are ancient customs about the Gods which are universal, and they are of two kinds:

but he who has injured another through his own folly, when overcome by pleasure or pain, in cowardly fear, or lust, or envy, or implacable anger, shall endure a heavier punishment.

Not that he is punished because he did wrong, for that which is done can never be undone, but in order that in future times, he, and those who see him corrected, may utterly hate injustice, or at any rate abate much of their evildoing.

Having an eye to all these things, the law, like a good archer, should aim at the right measure of punishment, and in all cases at the deserved punishment.

Not that he is punished because he did wrong, for that which is done can never be undone, but in order that in future times, he, and those who see him corrected, may utterly hate injustice, or at any rate abate much of their evildoing.

Having an eye to all these things, the law, like a good archer, should aim at the right measure of punishment, and in all cases at the deserved punishment.

In the attainment of this the judge shall be a fellow-worker with the legislator, whenever the law leaves to him to determine what the offender shall suffer or pay;

and in whichever way the decision may be given, the previous suit shall be determined accordingly.

There are many noble things in human life, but to most of them attach evils which are fated to corrupt and spoil them.

Is not justice noble, which has been the civiliser of humanity? How then can the advocate of justice be other than noble? And yet upon this profession which is presented to us under the fair name of art has come an evil reputation.

… ambassador, what they have never said, let him be indicted for having violated, contrary to the law, the commands and duties imposed upon him by Hermes and Zeus, and let there be a penalty fixed, which he shall suffer or pay if he be convicted.

Theft is a mean, and robbery a shameless thing; and none of the sons of Zeus delight in fraud and violence, or ever practised either.

Wherefore let no one be deluded by poets or mythologers into a mistaken belief of such things, nor let him suppose, when he thieves or is guilty of violence, that he is doing nothing base, but only what the Gods themselves do.

for the many are not so far wrong in their judgment of who are bad and who are good, as they are removed from the nature of virtue in themselves.

Even bad men have a divine instinct which guesses rightly, and very many who are utterly depraved form correct notions and judgments of the differences between the good and bad.

And the generality of cities are quite right in exhorting us to value a good reputation in the world, for there is no truth greater and more important than this—that he who is really good (I am speaking of the men who would be perfect) …

For a city which has no experience of good and bad men or intercourse with them, can never be thoroughly and perfectly civilised, nor, again, can the citizens of a city properly observe the laws by habit only, and without an intelligent understanding of them.

And there always are in the world a few inspired men whose acquaintance is beyond price, and who spring up quite as much in ill-ordered as in well-ordered cities.

These are they whom the citizens of a well-ordered city should be ever seeking out, going forth over sea and over land to find him who is incorruptible—that he may establish more firmly institutions in his own state which are good already, and amend what …