Complete Works (236 page)

Moreover, when you are looking to see whether a soul is philosophic or not, you’ll look to see whether it is just and gentle, from youth on, or savage and hard to associate with.

Certainly.

And here’s something I think you won’t leave out. [c]

What?

Whether he’s a slow learner or a fast one. Or do you ever expect anyone to love something when it pains him to do it and when much effort brings only small return?

No, it couldn’t happen.

And what if he could retain nothing of what he learned, because he was full of forgetfulness? Could he fail to be empty of knowledge?

How could he?

Then don’t you think that, if he’s laboring in vain, he’d inevitably come to hate both himself and that activity in the end?

Of course.

Then let’s never include a forgetful soul among those who are sufficiently [d] philosophical for our purposes, but look for one with a good memory.

Absolutely.

Now, we’d certainly say that the unmusical and graceless element in a person’s nature draws him to lack of due measure.

Of course.

And do you think that truth is akin to what lacks due measure or to what is measured?

To what is measured.

Then, in addition to those other things, let’s look for someone whose thought is by nature measured and graceful and is easily led to the form of each thing that is.

Of course.

Well, then, don’t you think the properties we’ve enumerated are compatible with one another and that each is necessary to a soul that is to have [e] an adequate and complete grasp of that which is?

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They’re all completely necessary.

Is there any objection you can find, then, to a pursuit that no one can adequately follow unless he’s by nature good at remembering, quick to learn, high-minded, graceful, and a friend and relative of truth, justice, courage, and moderation?

Not even Momus
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could find one.

When such people have reached maturity in age and education, wouldn’t you entrust the city to them and to them alone?

And Adeimantus replied: No one would be able to contradict the things you’ve said, Socrates, but on each occasion that you say them, your hearers [b] are affected in some such way as this. They think that, because they’re inexperienced in asking and answering questions, they’re led astray a little bit by the argument at every question and that, when these little bits are added together at the end of the discussion, great is their fall, as the opposite of what they said at the outset comes to light. Just as inexperienced checkers players are trapped by the experts in the end and can’t make a [c] move, so they too are trapped in the end and have nothing to say in this different kind of checkers, which is played not with disks but with words. Yet the truth isn’t affected by this outcome. I say this with a view to the present case, for someone might well say now that he’s unable to oppose you as you ask each of your questions, yet he sees that of all those who take up philosophy—not those who merely dabble in it while still young in order to complete their upbringing and then drop it, but those who continue in it for a longer time—the greatest number become cranks, not [d] to say completely vicious, while those who seem completely decent are rendered useless to the city because of the studies you recommend.

When I’d heard him out, I said: Do you think that what these people say is false?

I don’t know, but I’d be glad to hear what you think.

You’d hear that they seem to me to speak the truth.

How, then, can it be true to say that there will be no end to evils in our [e] cities until philosophers—people we agree to be useless—rule in them?

The question you ask needs to be answered by means of an image or simile.

And you, of course, aren’t used to speaking in similes!

So! Are you making fun of me now that you’ve landed me with a claim that’s so hard to establish? In any case, listen to my simile, and you’ll appreciate all the more how greedy for images I am. What the most decent
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people experience in relation to their city is so hard to bear that there’s no other single experience like it. Hence to find an image of it and a defense for them, I must construct it from many sources, just as painters paint goat-stags by combining the features of different things. Imagine, then, that something like the following happens on a ship or on many ships. The shipowner is bigger and stronger than everyone else on board, but he’s hard of hearing, a bit short-sighted, and his knowledge of seafaring [b] is equally deficient. The sailors are quarreling with one another about steering the ship, each of them thinking that he should be the captain, even though he’s never learned the art of navigation, cannot point to anyone who taught it to him, or to a time when he learned it. Indeed, they claim that it isn’t teachable and are ready to cut to pieces anyone who says that it is. They’re always crowding around the shipowner, begging him and doing everything possible to get him to turn the rudder over to [c] them. And sometimes, if they don’t succeed in persuading him, they execute the ones who do succeed or throw them overboard, and then, having stupefied their noble shipowner with drugs, wine, or in some other way, they rule the ship, using up what’s in it and sailing while drinking and feasting, in the way that people like that are prone to do. Moreover, they call the person who is clever at persuading or forcing the shipowner to let them rule a “navigator,” a “captain,” and “one who knows ships,” and [d] dismiss anyone else as useless. They don’t understand that a true captain must pay attention to the seasons of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds, and all that pertains to his craft, if he’s really to be the ruler of a ship. And they don’t believe there is any craft that would enable him to determine how he should steer the ship, whether the others want him to or not, or [e] any possibility of mastering this alleged craft or of practicing it at the same time as the craft of navigation. Don’t you think that the true captain will be called a real stargazer, a babbler, and a good-for-nothing by those who sail in ships governed in that way, in which such things happen?
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I certainly do.

I don’t think that you need to examine the simile in detail to see that the ships resemble cities and their attitude to the true philosophers, but you already understand what I mean.

Indeed, I do.

Then first tell this simile to anyone who wonders why philosophers aren’t honored in the cities, and try to persuade him that there would be [b] far more cause for wonder if they were honored.

I will tell him.

Next tell him that what he says is true, that the most decent among the philosophers are useless to the majority. Tell him not to blame those decent people for this but the ones who don’t make use of them. It isn’t natural for the captain to beg the sailors to be ruled by him nor for the wise to knock at the doors of the rich—the man who came up with that wisecrack made a mistake. The natural thing is for the sick person, rich [c] or poor, to knock at the doctor’s door, and for anyone who needs to be ruled to knock at the door of the one who can rule him. It isn’t for the ruler, if he’s truly any use, to beg the others to accept his rule. Tell him that he’ll make no mistake in likening those who rule in our cities at present to the sailors we mentioned just now, and those who are called useless stargazers to the true captains.

That’s absolutely right.

Therefore, it isn’t easy for the best ways of life to be highly esteemed by people who, as in these circumstances, follow the opposite ways. By far the greatest and most serious slander on philosophy, however, results [d] from those who profess to follow the philosophic way of life. I mean those of whom the prosecutor of philosophy declared that the greatest number are completely vicious and the most decent useless. And I admitted that what he said was true, didn’t I?

Yes.

And haven’t we explained why the decent ones are useless?

Yes, indeed.

Then, do you next want us to discuss why it’s inevitable that the greater number are vicious and to try to show, if we can, that philosophy isn’t [e] responsible for this either?

Certainly.

Then, let’s begin our dialogue by reminding ourselves of the point at which we began to discuss the nature that someone must have if he is to become a fine and good person. First of all, if you remember, he had to
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be guided by the truth and always pursue it in every way, or else he’d really be a boaster, with no share at all in true philosophy.

That’s what was said.

And isn’t this view completely contrary to the opinions currently held about him?

It certainly is.

Then, won’t it be reasonable for us to plead in his defense that it is the nature of the real lover of learning to struggle toward what is, not to remain with any of the many things that are believed to be, that, as he moves on, he neither loses nor lessens his erotic love until he grasps the [b] being of each nature itself with the part of his soul that is fitted to grasp it, because of its kinship with it, and that, once getting near what really is and having intercourse with it and having begotten understanding and truth, he knows, truly lives, is nourished, and—at that point, but not before—is relieved from the pains of giving birth?

That is the most reasonable defense possible.

Well, then, will such a person have any part in the love of falsehood, or will he entirely hate it?

He’ll hate it. [c]

And if truth led the way, we’d never say, I suppose, that a chorus of evils could ever follow in its train.

How could it?

But rather a healthy and just character, with moderation following it.

That’s right.

What need is there, then, to marshal all over again from the beginning the members of the philosophic nature’s chorus in their inevitable array? Remember that courage, high-mindedness, ease in learning, and a good memory all belong to it. Then you objected, saying that anyone would be compelled to agree with what we said, but that, if he abandoned the [d] argument and looked at the very people the argument is about, he’d say that some of them were useless, while the majority had every kind of vice. So we examined the reason for this slander and have now arrived at the point of explaining why the majority of them are bad. And it’s for this reason that we’ve again taken up the nature of the true philosophers and defined what it necessarily has to be.

That’s true. [e]

We must now look at the ways in which this nature is corrupted, how it’s destroyed in many people, while a small number (the ones that are called useless rather than bad) escape. After that, we must look in turn at the natures of the souls that imitate the philosophic nature and establish themselves in its pursuits, so as to see what the people are like who thereby
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arrive at pursuits they are unworthy of and that is beyond them and who, because they often strike false notes, bring upon philosophy the reputation that you said it has with everyone everywhere.

In what ways is this nature corrupted?

I’ll try to enumerate them for you if I can. I suppose that everyone would agree that only a few natures possess all the qualities that we just now said were essential to becoming a complete philosopher and that seldom occur naturally among human beings. Or don’t you think so? [b]

I certainly do.

Consider, then, the many important ways in which these few can be corrupted.

What are they?

What will surprise you most, when you hear it, is that each of the things we praised in that nature tends to corrupt the soul that has it and to drag it away from philosophy. I mean courage, moderation, and the other things we mentioned.

That does sound strange.

[c] Furthermore, all the things that are said to be good also corrupt it and drag it away—beauty, wealth, physical strength, relatives who are powerful in the city, and all that goes with these. You understand what I have in mind?

I do, and I’d be glad to learn about it more precisely.

Correctly grasp the general point I’m after, and it will be clear to you, and what I’ve said before won’t seem so strange.

What do you want me to do?

[d] We know that the more vigorous any seed, developing plant, or animal is, the more it is deficient in the things that are appropriate for it to have when it is deprived of suitable food, season, or location. For the bad is more opposed to the good than it is to the merely not good.

Of course.

Then it’s reasonable to say that the best nature fares worse, when unsuitably nurtured, than an ordinary one.

It is.

Then won’t we say the same thing about souls too, Adeimantus, that [e] those with the best natures become outstandingly bad when they receive a bad upbringing? Or do you think that great injustices and pure wickedness originate in an ordinary nature rather than in a vigorous one that has been corrupted by its upbringing? Or that a weak nature is ever the cause of either great good or great evil?

No, you’re right.

Now, I think that the philosophic nature as we defined it will inevitably
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grow to possess every virtue if it happens to receive appropriate instruction, but if it is sown, planted, and grown in an inappropriate environment, it will develop in quite the opposite way, unless some god happens to come to its rescue. Or do you agree with the general opinion that certain young people are actually corrupted by sophists—that there are certain sophists with significant influence on the young who corrupt them through private teaching? Isn’t it rather the very people who say this who are the greatest sophists of all, since they educate most completely, turning young and [b] old, men and women, into precisely the kind of people they want them to be?

When do they do that?

When many of them are sitting together in assemblies, courts, theaters, army camps, or in some other public gathering of the crowd, they object very loudly and excessively to some of the things that are said or done and approve others in the same way, shouting and clapping, so that the [c] very rocks and surroundings echo the din of their praise or blame and double it. In circumstances like that, what is the effect, as they say, on a young person’s heart? What private training can hold out and not be swept away by that kind of praise or blame and be carried by the flood wherever it goes, so that he’ll say that the same things are beautiful or ugly as the crowd does, follow the same pursuits as they do, and be the same sort of person as they are?