Complete Works (255 page)

I can’t disagree with you.

And so, Glaucon, when you happen to meet those who praise Homer [e] and say that he’s the poet who educated Greece, that it’s worth taking up his works in order to learn how to manage and educate people, and that one should arrange one’s whole life in accordance with his teachings, you should welcome these people and treat them as friends, since they’re as good as they’re capable of being, and you should agree that Homer is the
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most poetic of the tragedians and the first among them. But you should also know that hymns to the gods and eulogies to good people are the only poetry we can admit into our city. If you admit the pleasure-giving Muse, whether in lyric or epic poetry, pleasure and pain will be kings in your city instead of law or the thing that everyone has always believed to be best, namely, reason.

That’s absolutely true.

Then let this be our defense—now that we’ve returned to the topic of poetry—that, in view of its nature, we had reason to banish it from the [b] city earlier, for our argument compelled us to do so. But in case we are charged with a certain harshness and lack of sophistication, let’s also tell poetry that there is an ancient quarrel between it and philosophy, which is evidenced by such expressions as “the dog yelping and shrieking at its master,” “great in the empty eloquence of fools,” “the mob of wise men that has mastered Zeus,”
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and “the subtle thinkers, beggars all.” Nonetheless, if [c] the poetry that aims at pleasure and imitation has any argument to bring forward that proves it ought to have a place in a well-governed city, we at least would be glad to admit it, for we are well aware of the charm it exercises. But, be that as it may, to betray what one believes to be the truth is impious. What about you, Glaucon, don’t you feel the charm of the pleasure-giving Muse, especially when you study her through the eyes of Homer? [d]

Very much so.

Therefore, isn’t it just that such poetry should return from exile when it has successfully defended itself, whether in lyric or any other meter?

Certainly.

Then we’ll allow its defenders, who aren’t poets themselves but lovers of poetry, to speak in prose on its behalf and to show that it not only gives pleasure but is beneficial both to constitutions and to human life. Indeed, we’ll listen to them graciously, for we’d certainly profit if poetry were [e] shown to be not only pleasant but also beneficial.

How could we fail to profit?

However, if such a defense isn’t made, we’ll behave like people who have fallen in love with someone but who force themselves to stay away from him, because they realize that their passion isn’t beneficial. In the same way, because the love of this sort of poetry has been implanted in us by the upbringing we have received under our fine constitutions, we are well disposed to any proof that it is the best and truest thing. But if
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it isn’t able to produce such a defense, then, whenever we listen to it, we’ll repeat the argument we have just now put forward like an incantation so as to preserve ourselves from slipping back into that childish passion for poetry which the majority of people have. And we’ll go on chanting that such poetry is not to be taken seriously or treated as a serious undertaking with some kind of hold on the truth, but that anyone who is anxious about the constitution within him must be careful when he hears it and must [b] continue to believe what we have said about it.

I completely agree.

Yes, for the struggle to be good rather than bad is important, Glaucon, much more important than people think. Therefore, we mustn’t be tempted by honor, money, rule, or even poetry into neglecting justice and the rest of virtue.

After what we’ve said, I agree with you, and so, I think, would anyone else.

[c] And yet we haven’t discussed the greatest rewards and prizes that have been proposed for virtue.

They must be inconceivably great, if they’re greater than those you’ve already mentioned.

Could anything really great come to pass in a short time? And isn’t the time from childhood to old age short when compared to the whole of time?

It’s a mere nothing.

Well, do you think that an immortal thing should be seriously concerned [d] with that short period rather than with the whole of time?

I suppose not, but what exactly do you mean by this?

Haven’t you realized that our soul is immortal and never destroyed?

He looked at me with wonder and said: No, by god, I haven’t. Are you really in a position to assert that?

I’d be wrong not to, I said, and so would you, for it isn’t difficult.

It is for me, so I’d be glad to hear from you what’s not difficult about it.

Listen, then.

Just speak, and I will.

Do you talk about good and bad?

I do.

And do you think about them the same way I do? [e]

What way is that?

The bad is what destroys and corrupts, and the good is what preserves and benefits.

I do.

And do you say that there is a good and a bad for everything? For example, ophthalmia for the eyes, sickness for the whole body, blight for grain, rot for wood, rust for iron or bronze. In other words, is there, as I
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say, a natural badness and sickness for pretty well everything?

There is.

And when one of these attaches itself to something, doesn’t it make the thing in question bad, and in the end, doesn’t it disintegrate it and destroy it wholly?

Of course.

Therefore, the evil that is natural to each thing and the bad that is peculiar to it destroy it. However, if they don’t destroy it, nothing else will, for the good would never destroy anything, nor would anything neither good nor bad. [b]

How could they?

Then, if we discover something that has an evil that makes it bad but isn’t able to disintegrate and destroy it, can’t we infer that it is naturally incapable of being destroyed?

Probably so.

Well, what about the soul? Isn’t there something that makes it bad?

Certainly, all the things we were mentioning: Injustice, licentiousness, cowardice, and lack of learning. [c]

Does any of these disintegrate and destroy the soul? Keep your wits about you, and let’s not be deceived into thinking that, when an unjust and foolish person is caught, he has been destroyed by injustice, which is evil in a soul. Let’s think about it this way instead: Just as the body is worn out, destroyed, and brought to the point where it is a body no longer by disease, which is evil in a body, so all the things we mentioned just now reach the point at which they cease to be what they are through their own peculiar evil, which attaches itself to them and is present in them. Isn’t that so? [d]

Yes.

Then look at the soul in the same way. Do injustice and the other vices that exist in a soul—by their very presence in it and by attaching themselves to it—corrupt it and make it waste away until, having brought it to the point of death, they separate it from the body?

That’s not at all what they do.

But surely it’s unreasonable to suppose that a thing is destroyed by the badness proper to something else when it is not destroyed by its own?

That is unreasonable.

Keep in mind, Glaucon, that we don’t think that a body is destroyed by the badness of food, whether it is staleness, rottenness, or anything [e] else. But if the badness of the food happens to implant in the body an evil proper to a body, we’ll say that the body was destroyed by its own evil, namely, disease. But, since the body is one thing and food another, we’ll
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never judge that the body is destroyed by the badness of food, unless it implants in it the body’s own natural and peculiar evil.

That’s absolutely right.

By the same argument, if the body’s evil doesn’t cause an evil in the soul that is proper to the soul, we’ll never judge that the soul, in the absence of its own peculiar evil, is destroyed by the evil of something else. We’d never accept that
anything
is destroyed by an evil proper to something else.

That’s also reasonable.

Then let’s either refute our argument and show that we were wrong, or, as long as it remains unrefuted, let’s never say that the soul is destroyed by a fever or any other disease or by killing either, for that matter, not [b] even if the body is cut up into tiny pieces. We mustn’t say that the soul is even close to being destroyed by these things until someone shows us that these conditions of the body make the soul more unjust and more impious. When something has the evil proper to something else in it, but its own peculiar evil is absent, we won’t allow anyone to say that it is [c] destroyed, no matter whether it is a soul or anything else whatever.

And you may be sure that no one will ever prove that the souls of the dying are made more unjust by death.

But if anyone dares to come to grips with our argument, in order to avoid having to agree that our souls are immortal, and says that a dying man does become more vicious and unjust, we’ll reply that, if what he says is true, then injustice must be as deadly to unjust people as a disease, [d] and those who catch it must die of it because of its own deadly nature, with the worst cases dying quickly and the less serious dying more slowly. As things now stand, however, it isn’t like that at all. Unjust people do indeed die of injustice, but at the hands of others who inflict the death penalty on them.

By god, if injustice were actually fatal to those who contracted it, it wouldn’t seem so terrible, for it would be an escape from their troubles. But I rather think that it’s clearly the opposite, something that kills other [e] people if it can, while, on top of making the unjust themselves lively, it even brings them out at night. Hence it’s very far from being deadly to its possessors.

You’re right, for if the soul’s own evil and badness isn’t enough to kill and destroy it, an evil appointed for the destruction of something else will hardly kill it. Indeed, it won’t kill anything at all except the very thing it is appointed to destroy.

“Hardly” is right, or so it seems.

Now, if the soul isn’t destroyed by a single evil, whether its own or something else’s, then clearly it must always be. And if it always is, it
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is immortal.

Necessarily so.

So be it. And if it is so, then you realize that there would always be the same souls, for they couldn’t be made fewer if none is destroyed, and they couldn’t be made more numerous either. If anything immortal is increased, you know that the increase would have to come from the mortal, and then everything would end up being immortal.

That’s true.

Then we mustn’t think such a thing, for the argument doesn’t allow it, nor must we think that the soul in its truest nature is full of multicolored variety and unlikeness or that it differs with itself. [b]

What do you mean?

It isn’t easy for anything composed of many parts to be immortal if it isn’t put together in the finest way, yet this is how the soul now appeared to us.

It probably isn’t easy.

Yet our recent argument and others as well compel us to believe that the soul
is
immortal. But to see the soul as it is in truth, we must not study it as it is while it is maimed by its association with the body and other evils—which is what we were doing earlier—but as it is in its pure state, [c] that’s how we should study the soul, thoroughly and by means of logical reasoning. We’ll then find that it is a much finer thing than we thought and that we can see justice and injustice as well as all the other things we’ve discussed far more clearly. What we’ve said about the soul is true of it as it appears at present. But the condition in which we’ve studied it is like that of the sea god Glaucus, whose primary nature can’t easily be made out by those who catch glimpses of him. Some of the original parts [d] have been broken off, others have been crushed, and his whole body has been maimed by the waves and by the shells, seaweeds, and stones that have attached themselves to him, so that he looks more like a wild animal than his natural self. The soul, too, is in a similar condition when we study it, beset by many evils. That, Glaucon, is why we have to look somewhere else in order to discover its true nature.

To where?

To its philosophy, or love of wisdom. We must realize what it grasps [e] and longs to have intercourse with, because it is akin to the divine and immortal and what always is, and we must realize what it would become if it followed this longing with its whole being, and if the resulting effort lifted it out of the sea in which it now dwells, and if the many stones and
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shells (those which have grown all over it in a wild, earthy, and stony profusion because it feasts at those so-called happy feastings on earth) were hammered off it. Then we’d see what its true nature is and be able to determine whether it has many parts or just one and whether or in what manner it is put together. But we’ve already given a decent account, I think, of what its condition is and what parts it has when it is immersed in human life.

We certainly have.

And haven’t we cleared away the various other objections to our argument without having to invoke the rewards and reputations of justice, as [b] you said Homer and Hesiod did?
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And haven’t we found that justice itself is the best thing for the soul itself, and that the soul—whether it has the ring of Gyges or even it together with the cap of Hades
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—should do just things?

We have. That’s absolutely true.

Then can there now be any objection, Glaucon, if in addition we return to justice and the rest of virtue both the kind and quantity of wages that [c] they obtain for the soul from human beings and gods, whether in this life or the next?

None whatever.

Then will you give me back what you borrowed from me during the discussion?

What are you referring to in particular?

I granted your request that a just person should seem unjust and an unjust one just, for you said that, even if it would be impossible for these things to remain hidden from both gods and humans, still, this had to be granted for the sake of argument, so that justice itself could be judged in [d] relation to injustice itself. Don’t you remember that?