Complete Works (252 page)

Such things must happen to him as well.

Then can’t we confidently assert that those desires of even the money-loving and honor-loving parts that follow knowledge and argument and pursue with their help those pleasures that reason approves will attain the truest pleasures possible for them, because they follow truth, and the [e] ones that are most their own, if indeed what is best for each thing is most its own?

And indeed it is best.

Therefore, when the entire soul follows the philosophic part, and there is no civil war in it, each part of it does its own work exclusively and is just, and in particular it enjoys its own pleasures, the best and truest
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pleasures possible for it.

Absolutely.

But when one of the other parts gains control, it won’t be able to secure its own pleasure and will compel the other parts to pursue an alien and untrue pleasure.

That’s right.

And aren’t the parts that are most distant from philosophy and reason the ones most likely to do this sort of compelling?

They’re much more likely.

And isn’t whatever is most distant from reason also most distant from law and order?

Clearly.

And didn’t the erotic and tyrannical desires emerge as most distant from these things? [b]

By far.

And weren’t the kingly and orderly ones least distant?

Yes.

Then I suppose that a tyrant will be most distant from a pleasure that is both true and his own and that a king will be least distant.

Necessarily.

So a tyrant will live most unpleasantly, and a king most pleasantly.

Necessarily.

Do you know how much more unpleasant a tyrant’s life is than a king’s?

I will if you tell me.

There are, it seems, three pleasures, one genuine and two illegitimate, and a tyrant is at the extreme end of the illegitimate ones, since he flees both law and reason and lives with a bodyguard of certain slavish pleasures. But [c] it isn’t easy, all the same, to say just how inferior he is to a king, except perhaps as follows. A tyrant is somehow third from an oligarch, for a democrat was between them.

Yes.

Then, if what we said before is true, doesn’t he live with an image of pleasure that is third from an oligarch’s with respect to truth?
²
He does.

Now, an oligarch, in turn, is third from a king, if we identify a king and an aristocrat. [d]

Yes, he’s third.

So a tyrant is three times three times removed from true pleasure.

Apparently so.

It seems then, on the basis of the magnitude of its number, that the image of tyrannical pleasure is a plane figure.

Exactly.

But then it’s clear that, by squaring and cubing it, we’ll discover how far a tyrant’s pleasure is from that of a king.

It is clear to a mathematician, at any rate.

Then, turning it the other way around, if someone wants to say how far a king’s pleasure is from a tyrant’s, he’ll find, if he completes the calculation, that a king lives seven hundred and twenty-nine times more [e] pleasantly than a tyrant and that a tyrant is the same number of times more wretched.

That’s an amazing calculation of the difference between the pleasure
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and pain of the two men, the just and the unjust.

Yet it’s a true one, and one appropriate to human lives, if indeed days, nights, months, and years are appropriate to them.

And of course they are appropriate.

Then, if a good and just person’s life is that much more pleasant than the life of a bad and unjust person, won’t its grace, fineness, and virtue be incalculably greater?

By god, it certainly will.

[b] All right, then. Since we’ve reached this point in the argument, let’s return to the first things we said, since they are what led us here. I think someone said at some point that injustice profits a completely unjust person who is believed to be just. Isn’t that so?

It certainly is.

Now, let’s discuss this with him, since we’ve agreed on the respective powers that injustice and justice have.

How?

By fashioning an image of the soul in words, so that the person who says this sort of thing will know what he is saying.

[c] What sort of image?

One like those creatures that legends tell us used to come into being in ancient times, such as the Chimera, Scylla, Cerberus, or any of the multitude of others in which many different kinds of things are said to have grown together naturally into one.

Yes, the legends do tell us of such things.

Well, then, fashion a single kind of multicolored beast with a ring of many heads that it can grow and change at will—some from gentle, some from savage animals.

[d] That’s work for a clever artist. However, since words are more malleable than wax and the like, consider it done.

Then fashion one other kind, that of a lion, and another of a human being. But make the first much the largest and the other second to it in size.

That’s easier—the sculpting is done.

Now join the three of them into one, so that they somehow grow together naturally.

They’re joined.

Then, fashion around them the image of one of them, that of a human being so that anyone who sees only the outer covering and not what’s [e] inside will think it is a single creature, a human being.

It’s done.

Then, if someone maintains that injustice profits this human being and that doing just things brings no advantage, let’s tell him that he is simply saying that it is beneficial for him, first, to feed the multiform beast well and make it strong, and also the lion and all that pertains to him; second, to starve and weaken the human being within, so that he is dragged along
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wherever either of the other two leads; and, third, to leave the parts to bite and kill one another rather than accustoming them to each other and making them friendly.

Yes, that’s absolutely what someone who praises injustice is saying.

But, on the other hand, wouldn’t someone who maintains that just things are profitable be saying, first, that all our words and deeds should insure that the human being within this human being has the most control; second, that he should take care of the many-headed beast as a farmer does his [b] animals, feeding and domesticating the gentle heads and preventing the savage ones from growing; and, third, that he should make the lion’s nature his ally, care for the community of all his parts, and bring them up in such a way that they will be friends with each other and with himself?

Yes, that’s exactly what someone who praises justice is saying.

From every point of view, then, anyone who praises justice speaks truly, and anyone who praises injustice speaks falsely. Whether we look at the matter from the point of view of pleasure, good reputation, or advantage, a praiser of justice tells the truth, while one who condemns it has nothing [c] sound to say and condemns without knowing what he is condemning.

In my opinion, at least, he knows nothing about it.

Then let’s persuade him gently—for he isn’t wrong of his own will—by asking him these questions. Should we say that this is the original basis for the conventions about what is fine and what is shameful? Fine things are those that subordinate the beastlike parts of our nature to the human—or better, perhaps, to the divine; shameful ones are those that enslave the [d] gentle to the savage? Will he agree or what?

He will, if he takes my advice.

In light of this argument, can it profit anyone to acquire gold unjustly if, by doing so, he enslaves the best part of himself to the most vicious? If he got the gold by enslaving his son or daughter to savage and evil men, it wouldn’t profit him, no matter how much gold he got. How, then, [e] could he fail to be wretched if he pitilessly enslaves the most divine part of himself to the most godless and polluted one and accepts golden gifts in return for a more terrible destruction than Eriphyle’s when she took
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the necklace in return for her husband’s soul?
³

A much more terrible one, Glaucon said. I’ll answer for him.

And don’t you think that licentiousness has long been condemned for just these reasons, namely, that because of it, that terrible, large, and multiform beast is let loose more than it should be?

Clearly.

And aren’t stubbornness and irritability condemned because they inharmoniously increase and stretch the lionlike and snakelike part? [b]

Certainly.

And aren’t luxury and softness condemned because the slackening and loosening of this same part produce cowardice in it?

Of course.

And aren’t flattery and slavishness condemned because they subject the spirited part to the moblike beast, accustoming it from youth on to being insulted for the sake of the money needed to satisfy the beast’s insatiable appetites, so that it becomes an ape instead of a lion?

[c] They certainly are.

Why do you think that the condition of a manual worker is despised?

Or is it for any other reason than that, when the best part is naturally weak in someone, it can’t rule the beasts within him but can only serve them and learn to flatter them?

Probably so.

Therefore, to insure that someone like that is ruled by something similar to what rules the best person, we say that he ought to be the slave of that best person who has a divine ruler within himself. It isn’t to harm the [d] slave that we say he must be ruled, which is what Thrasymachus thought to be true of all subjects, but because it is better for everyone to be ruled by divine reason, preferably within himself and his own, otherwise imposed from without, so that as far as possible all will be alike and friends, governed by the same thing.

Yes, that’s right.

This is clearly the aim of the law, which is the ally of everyone. But it’s also our aim in ruling our children, we don’t allow them to be free until we establish a constitution in them, just as in a city, and—by fostering their best part with our own—equip them with a guardian and ruler similar
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to our own to take our place. Then, and only then, we set them free.

Clearly so.

Then how can we maintain or argue, Glaucon, that injustice, licentiousness, and doing shameful things are profitable to anyone, since, even though he may acquire more money or other sort of power from them, they make him more vicious?

There’s no way we can.

Or that to do injustice without being discovered and having to pay the penalty is profitable? Doesn’t the one who remains undiscovered become [b] even more vicious, while the bestial part of the one who is discovered is calmed and tamed and his gentle part freed, so that his entire soul settles into its best nature, acquires moderation, justice, and reason, and attains a more valuable state than that of having a fine, strong, healthy body, since the soul itself is more valuable than the body?

That’s absolutely certain.

Then won’t a person of understanding direct all his efforts to attaining [c] that state of his soul? First, he’ll value the studies that produce it and despise the others.

Clearly so.

Second, he won’t entrust the condition and nurture of his body to the irrational pleasure of the beast within or turn his life in that direction, but neither will he make health his aim or assign first place to being strong, healthy, and beautiful, unless he happens to acquire moderation as a result. Rather, it’s clear that he will always cultivate the harmony of his body for the sake of the consonance in his soul. [d]

He certainly will, if indeed he’s to be truly trained in music and poetry.

Will he also keep order and consonance in his acquisition of money, with that same end in view? Or, even though he isn’t dazzled by the size of the majority into accepting their idea of blessed happiness, will he increase his wealth without limit and so have unlimited evils?

Not in my view.

Rather, he’ll look to the constitution within him and guard against [e] disturbing anything in it, either by too much money or too little. And, in this way, he’ll direct both the increase and expenditure of his wealth, as far as he can.

That’s exactly what he’ll do.

And he’ll look to the same thing where honors are concerned. He’ll willingly share in and taste those that he believes will make him better,
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but he’ll avoid any public or private honor that might overthrow the established condition of his soul.

If that’s his chief concern, he won’t be willing to take part in politics.

Yes, by the dog, he certainly will, at least in his own kind of city. But he may not be willing to do so in his fatherland, unless some divine good luck chances to be his.

I understand. You mean that he’ll be willing to take part in the politics of the city we were founding and describing, the one that exists in theory, for I don’t think it exists anywhere on earth. [b]

But perhaps, I said, there is a model of it in heaven, for anyone who wants to look at it and to make himself its citizen on the strength of what he sees. It makes no difference whether it is or ever will be somewhere, for he would take part in the practical affairs of that city and no other.

Probably so, he said.

1
. Reading
kai
before
aisthanesthai
in a2.

2
. Third because the Greeks always counted the first as well as the last member of a series, e.g. the day after tomorrow was the third day from today.

3
. Eriphyle was bribed with a golden necklace by Polynices to persuade her husband, Amphiaraus, to join the “Seven Against Thebes.” He was killed. See
Odyssey
xi.326–27; Pindar,
Nemean
9.16 ff.

Book X

Indeed, I said, our city has many features that assure me that we were
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entirely right in founding it as we did, and, when I say this, I’m especially thinking of poetry.

What about it in particular? Glaucon said.

That we didn’t admit any that is imitative. Now that we have distinguished the separate parts of the soul, it is even clearer, I think, that such poetry should be altogether excluded. [b]