Complete Works (228 page)

Not much.

But I suppose that when someone, who is by nature a craftsman or some other kind of money-maker, is puffed up by wealth, or by having a majority of votes, or by his own strength, or by some other such thing, and attempts [b] to enter the class of soldiers, or one of the unworthy soldiers tries to enter that of the judges and guardians, and these exchange their tools and honors, or when the same person tries to do all these things at once, then I think you’ll agree that these exchanges and this sort of meddling bring the city to ruin.

Absolutely.

Meddling and exchange between these three classes, then, is the greatest harm that can happen to the city and would rightly be called the worst [c] thing someone could do to it.

Exactly.

And wouldn’t you say that the worst thing that someone could do to his city is injustice?

Of course.

Then, that exchange and meddling is injustice. Or to put it the other way around: For the money-making, auxiliary, and guardian classes each to do its own work in the city, is the opposite. That’s justice, isn’t it, and makes the city just?

[d] I agree. Justice is that and nothing else.

Let’s not take that as secure just yet, but if we find that the same form, when it comes to be in each individual person, is accepted as justice there as well, we can assent to it. What else can we say? But if that isn’t what we find, we must look for something else to be justice. For the moment, however, let’s complete the present inquiry. We thought that, if we first tried to observe justice in some larger thing that possessed it, this would make it easier to observe in a single individual.
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We agreed that this larger thing is a city, and so we established the best city we could, knowing well [e] that justice would be in one that was good. So, let’s apply what has come to light in the city to an individual, and if it is accepted there, all will be well. But if something different is found in the individual, then we must go back and test that on the city. And if we do this, and compare them
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side by side, we might well make justice light up as if we were rubbing fire-sticks together. And, when it has come to light, we can get a secure grip on it for ourselves.

You’re following the road we set, and we must do as you say.

Well, then, are things called by the same name, whether they are bigger or smaller than one another, like or unlike with respect to that to which that name applies?

Alike.

Then a just man won’t differ at all from a just city in respect to the form [b] of justice; rather he’ll be like the city.

He will.

But a city was thought to be just when each of the three natural classes within it did its own work, and it was thought to be moderate, courageous, and wise because of certain other conditions and states of theirs.

That’s true.

Then, if an individual has these same three parts in his soul, we will expect him to be correctly called by the same names as the city if he has the same conditions in them. [c]

Necessarily so.

Then once again we’ve come upon an easy question, namely, does the soul have these three parts in it or not?

It doesn’t look easy to me. Perhaps, Socrates, there’s some truth in the old saying that everything fine is difficult.

Apparently so. But you should know, Glaucon, that, in my opinion, we will never get a precise answer using our present methods of argument—although there is another longer and fuller road that does lead to such an [d] answer. But perhaps we can get an answer that’s up to the standard of our previous statements and inquiries.

Isn’t that satisfactory? It would be enough for me at present.

In that case, it will be fully enough for me too.

Then don’t weary, but go on with the inquiry.

Well, then, we are surely compelled to agree that each of us has within himself the same parts and characteristics as the city? Where else would [e] they come from? It would be ridiculous for anyone to think that spiritedness didn’t come to be in cities from such individuals as the Thracians, Scythians, and others who live to the north of us who are held to possess spirit, or that the same isn’t true of the love of learning, which is mostly associated with our part of the world, or of the love of money, which one might say
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is conspicuously displayed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians.

It would.

That’s the way it is, anyway, and it isn’t hard to understand.

Certainly not.

But this
is
hard. Do we do these things with the same part of ourselves, or do we do them with three different parts? Do we learn with one part, get angry with another, and with some third part desire the pleasures of food, drink, sex, and the others that are closely akin to them? Or, when we set out after something, do we act with the whole of our soul, in each case? This is what’s hard to determine in a way that’s up to the standards [b] of our argument.

I think so too.

Well, then, let’s try to determine in that way whether these parts are the same or different.

How?

It is obvious that the same thing will not be willing to do or undergo opposites in the same part of itself, in relation to the same thing, at the same time. So, if we ever find this happening in the soul, we’ll know that we aren’t dealing with one thing but many. [c]

All right.

Then consider what I’m about to say.

Say on.

Is it possible for the same thing to stand still and move at the same time in the same part of itself?

Not at all.

Let’s make our agreement more precise in order to avoid disputes later on. If someone said that a person who is standing still but moving his hands and head is moving and standing still at the same time, we wouldn’t consider, I think, that he ought to put it like that. What he ought to say is that one part of the person is standing still and another part is moving. [d] Isn’t that so?

It is.

And if our interlocutor became even more amusing and was sophisticated enough to say that whole spinning tops stand still and move at the same time when the peg is fixed in the same place and they revolve, and that the same is true of anything else moving in a circular motion on the same spot, we wouldn’t agree, because it isn’t with respect to the same parts of themselves that such things both stand still and move. We’d say [e] that they have an axis and a circumference and that with respect to the axis they stand still, since they don’t wobble to either side, while with respect to the circumference they move in a circle. But if they do wobble to the left or right, front or back, while they are spinning, we’d say that they aren’t standing still in any way.

And we’d be right.

No such statement will disturb us, then, or make us believe that the same thing can be, do, or undergo opposites, at the same time, in the same
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respect, and in relation to the same thing.

They won’t make me believe it, at least.

Nevertheless, in order to avoid going through all these objections one by one and taking a long time to prove them all untrue, let’s hypothesize that this is correct and carry on. But we agree that if it should ever be shown to be incorrect, all the consequences we’ve drawn from it will also be lost.

We should agree to that.

[b] Then wouldn’t you consider all the following, whether they are doings or undergoings, as pairs of opposites: Assent and dissent, wanting to have something and rejecting it, taking something and pushing it away?

Yes, they are opposites.

What about these? Wouldn’t you include thirst, hunger, the appetites [c] as a whole, and wishing and willing somewhere in the class we mentioned? Wouldn’t you say that the soul of someone who has an appetite for a thing wants what he has an appetite for and takes to himself what it is his will to have, and that insofar as he wishes something to be given to him, his soul, since it desires this to come about, nods assent to it as if in answer to a question?

I would.

What about not willing, not wishing, and not having an appetite? Aren’t these among the very opposites—cases in which the soul pushes and drives things away?

Of course. [d]

Then won’t we say that there is a class of things called appetites and that the clearest examples are hunger and thirst?

We will.

One of these is for food and the other for drink?

Yes.

Now, insofar as it is thirst, is it an appetite in the soul for more than that for which we say that it is the appetite? For example, is thirst thirst for hot drink or cold, or much drink or little, or, in a word, for drink of a certain sort? Or isn’t it rather that, where heat is present as well as thirst, it causes the appetite to be for something cold as well, and where cold for [e] something hot, and where there is much thirst because of the presence of muchness, it will cause the desire to be for much, and where little for little? But thirst itself will never be for anything other than what it is in its nature to be for, namely, drink itself, and hunger for food.

That’s the way it is, each appetite itself is only for its natural object, while the appetite for something of a certain sort depends on additions.

Therefore, let no one catch us unprepared or disturb us by claiming that
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no one has an appetite for drink but rather good drink, nor food but good food, on the grounds that everyone after all has appetite for good things, so that if thirst is an appetite, it will be an appetite for good drink or whatever, and similarly with the others.

All the same, the person who says that has a point.

But it seems to me that, in the case of all things that are related to something, those that are of a particular sort are related to a particular sort of thing, while those that are merely themselves are related to a thing [b] that is merely itself.

I don’t understand.

Don’t you understand that the greater is such as to be greater than something? Of course.

Than the less?

Yes.

And the much greater than the much less, isn’t that so?

Yes.

And the once greater to the once less? And the going-to-be greater than the going-to-be less?

Certainly.

And isn’t the same true of the more and the fewer, the double and the half, heavier and lighter, faster and slower, the hot and the cold, and all [c] other such things?

Of course.

And what about the various kinds of knowledge? Doesn’t the same apply? Knowledge itself is knowledge of what can be learned itself (or whatever it is that knowledge is of), while a particular sort of knowledge is of a particular sort of thing. For example, when knowledge of building [d] houses came to be, didn’t it differ from the other kinds of knowledge, and so was called knowledge of building?

Of course.

And wasn’t that because it was a different sort of knowledge from all the others?

Yes.

And wasn’t it because it was of a particular sort of thing that it itself became a particular sort of knowledge? And isn’t this true of all crafts and kinds of knowledge?

It is.

Well, then, this is what I was trying to say—if you understand it now—when I said that of all things that are related to something, those that are merely themselves are related to things that are merely themselves, while those that are of a particular sort are related to things of a particular sort. [e] However, I don’t mean that the sorts in question have to be the same for them both. For example, knowledge of health or disease isn’t healthy or diseased, and knowledge of good and bad doesn’t itself become good or bad. I mean that, when knowledge became, not knowledge of the thing itself that knowledge is of, but knowledge of something of a particular sort, the result was that it itself became a particular sort of knowledge, and this caused it to be no longer called knowledge without qualification, but—with the addition of the relevant sort—medical knowledge or whatever.

I understand, and I think that that’s the way it is.

Then as for thirst, wouldn’t you include it among things that are related
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to something? Surely thirst is related to …

I know it’s related to drink.

Therefore a particular sort of thirst is for a particular sort of drink. But thirst itself isn’t for much or little, good or bad, or, in a word, for drink of a particular sort. Rather, thirst itself is in its nature only for drink itself.

Absolutely.

Hence the soul of the thirsty person, insofar as he’s thirsty, doesn’t wish [b] anything else but to drink, and it wants this and is impelled towards it.

Clearly.

Therefore, if something draws it back when it is thirsting, wouldn’t that be something different in it from whatever thirsts and drives it like a beast to drink? It can’t be, we say, that the same thing, with the same part of itself, in relation to the same, at the same time, does opposite things.

No, it can’t.

In the same way, I suppose, it’s not well put to say of the archer that his hands at the same time push the bow away and draw it towards him. We ought to say that one hand pushes it away and the other draws it towards him.

Absolutely. [c]

Now, would we assert that sometimes there are thirsty people who don’t wish to drink?

Certainly, it happens often to many different people.

What, then, should one say about them? Isn’t it that there is something in their soul, bidding them to drink, and something different, forbidding them to do so, that overrules the thing that bids?

I think so.

Doesn’t that which forbids in such cases come into play—if it comes into play at all—as a result of rational calculation, while what drives and drags them to drink is a result of feelings and diseases? [d]

Apparently.

Hence it isn’t unreasonable for us to claim that they are two, and different from one another. We’ll call the part of the soul with which it calculates the rational part and the part with which it lusts, hungers, thirsts, and gets excited by other appetites the irrational appetitive part, companion of certain indulgences and pleasures.