good

Socrates : Then it is their admiration of this poet, Alcibiades, (148c) or perhaps the result of their own study, that causes the Spartans to offer a similar prayer whether the occasion be private or public — that the gods will give them for their own benefit the beautiful as well as the GOOD : more than this no one can ever hear them pray for. The consequence is that to the present time they have been just as fortunate as any other people ; and if it has befallen them to be not invariably fortunate, it was anyhow not owing to their prayer. (148d) It rests with the gods, I conceive, to give us either what we may pray for or the reverse. And I would like to give you an account of something else, which I once heard from some of my seniors. A quarrel having arisen between the Athenians and the Spartans, it befell our city to be always unsuccessful in every battle by land and sea, and she could never win a victory. So the Athenians, in their annoyance at this result, and at a loss for some means of finding a deliverance from the trouble they were in, (148e) took counsel together and decided that the best thing they could do was to send and inquire of Ammon ; and moreover, to ask also for what reason the gods granted victory to the Spartans rather than to themselves : “for we” — such was the message — “offer up to them more and finer sacrifices than any of the Greeks, and have adorned their temples with votive emblems as no other people have done, and presented to the gods the costliest and stateliest processions year by year, and spent more money thus than (149a) all the rest of the Greeks together. But the Spartans have never taken any such pains, and indeed are so neglectful in their behavior to the gods, that they make a practice of sacrificing defective victims, and generally are very much behind us in the honors that they pay, though the wealth they possess is quite equal to that of our city.” When they had so spoken, and added the question, what they should do in order to find a deliverance from the trouble they were in, (149b) the prophet’s only answer — evidently it was all that the god allowed — was to call them to him and say : “Thus saith Ammon to the Athenians : I would rather have the reverent reserve of the Spartans than all the ritual of the Greeks.” So much he said, and not a word further. Now by “reverent reserve” I suppose the god could only mean their prayer, since in fact it differs greatly from those that are generally offered. (149c) For the Greeks in general either lead up bulls with gilded horns, or else present the gods with votive emblems, and pray for any odd thing, whether it be GOOD or bad : so when the gods hear their irreverent speech they reject all these costly processions and sacrifices. Whereas I think we ought to be very cautious, and fully consider what is to be said and what is not. And in Homer too you will find other tales of a similar sort. For he relates how the Trojans, (149d) in making their bivouac, ALCIBIADES II

And Priam, and the folk of Priam of the GOOD ashen spear. ALCIBIADES II

Socrates : Hence it is those who love the GOOD that you call lovers of gain. HIPPARCHUS

Socrates : Well then, I revoke so much for you ; so let us assume that some gain is GOOD, and some other gain evil. But the GOOD sort is no more gain than the evil sort, is it ? HIPPARCHUS

Then we agreed, it seems, by your account — if philosophizing means having knowledge of the arts in the way you describe — that philosophers are wicked and useless so long as there are arts (137b) among mankind. But I expect they are not so really, my friend, and that philosophizing is not just having a concernment in the arts or spending one’s life in meddlesome stooping and prying and accumulation of learning, but something else ; because I imagined that this life was actually a disgrace, and that people who concerned themselves with the arts were called sordid. But we shall know more definitely whether this statement of mine is true, if you will answer me this : What men know how to punish horses rightly ? (137c) Is it those who make them into the best horses, or some other men ? Those who make them into the best horses. Or again, is it not the men who know how to make dogs into the best dogs that know also how to punish them rightly ? Yes. Then it is the same art that makes them into the best dogs and punishes them rightly ? It appears so to me, he replied. Again, is the art that makes them into the best ones and punishes them rightly the same as that which knows the GOOD and the bad ones, or is it some other ? The same, he said. LOVERS

Then in the case of men also will you be prepared to agree that the art (137d) which makes them into the best men is that which punishes them rightly and distinguishes the GOOD and the bad ones ? Certainly, he said. And that which does this to one, does it also to many, and that which does it to many, does it also to one ? Yes. And so it is also with horses and everything else ? I agree. Then what is the knowledge which rightly punishes the licentious and law-breaking people in our cities ? Is it not judicature ? Yes. And is it any other art than this that you call justice ? No, only this. (137e) And that whereby they punish rightly is that whereby they know the GOOD and bad people ? It is. And whoever knows one will know many also ? Yes. And whoever does not know many will not know one ? I agree. Then if one were a horse, and did not know the GOOD and wicked horses, would one not know which sort one was oneself ? I think not. And if one were an ox and did not know the wicked and GOOD oxen, would one not know which sort one was oneself ? That is so, he said. And so it would be, if one were a dog ? He agreed. LOVERS

(138a) Well now, when one is a man, and does not know the GOOD and bad men, one surely cannot know whether one is GOOD or wicked oneself, since one is a man also oneself ? He granted this. And is “not knowing oneself” being temperate, or not being temperate ? Not being temperate. LOVERS

Socrates : I will tell you, in order that you may not share the impiety of the multitude : for there cannot conceivably be anything more impious or more to be guarded against than being mistaken in word and deed with regard to the gods, and after them, with regard to divine men ; you must take very great precaution, whenever you are about to (319a) blame or praise a man, so as not to speak incorrectly. For this reason you must learn to distinguish honest and dishonest men : for God feels resentment when one blames a man who is like himself, or praises a man who is the opposite ; and the former is the GOOD man. For you must not suppose that while stocks and stones and birds and snakes are sacred, men are not ; nay, the GOOD man is the most sacred of all these things, and the wicked man is the most defiled. MINOS

Socrates : So these have shown themselves the best lawgivers among men of ancient times — (321c) apportioners and shepherds of men ; just as Homer called the GOOD general a “shepherd of the folk.” MINOS

Socrates : Come then, in GOOD friendship’s name : if someone should ask us what it is that the GOOD lawgiver and apportioner for the body distributes to it when he makes it better, we should say, if we were to make a correct and brief answer, that it was food and labor ; the former to strengthen, and the latter to exercise and brace it. MINOS

(321d) Socrates : And if he then proceeded to ask us — And what might that be which the GOOD lawgiver and apportioner distributes to the soul to make it better ? — what would be our answer if we would avoid being ashamed of ourselves and our years ? MINOS

Socrates : Who, then, becomes false in respect to calculation, Hippias, other than the GOOD man ? For the same man is also powerful and he is also true. LESSER HIPPIAS

Socrates : The GOOD and wise geometrician, then, has the most power in both respects, has he not ? And if anyone is false in respect to diagrams, it would be this man, the GOOD geometrician ? For he has the power, and the bad one was powerless, to speak falsehood ; so that he who has no power to speak falsehood would not become false, as has been agreed. LESSER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Then in astronomy also, if anyone is false, the GOOD astronomer will be false, he who has power to speak falsehood. For he who has not power will not for he is ignorant. LESSER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Then the GOOD runner performs this bad and disgraceful act voluntarily, and the bad runner involuntarily ? LESSER HIPPIAS

Socrates : It is, then, in the nature of the GOODGOOD man to do injustice voluntarily, and of the bad man to do it involuntarily, that is, if the GOOD man has a GOOD soul. LESSER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Then he who voluntarily errs and does disgraceful and unjust acts, Hippias, if there be such a man, would be no other than the GOOD man. LESSER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Then, when those who make the laws miss the GOOD, they have missed the lawful and the law ; or what do you say ? GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : “Then, too, by wisdom the wise are wise and by the GOOD all things are GOOD, are they not ?” GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Then the beautiful is the cause of the GOOD. GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : If, then, the beautiful is the cause of GOOD, the GOOD would come into being through the beautiful ; and this is why we are eager for wisdom and all the other beautiful things, because their offspring, the GOOD, is worthy of eagerness, and, from what we are finding, it looks as if the beautiful were a sort of father of the GOOD. GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : By Zeus, my GOOD friend, then neither is the beautiful GOOD, nor the GOOD beautiful ; or does it seem to you possible, after what has been said ? GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : Does it please us, and should we be willing to say that the beautiful is not GOOD, and the GOOD not beautiful ? GREATER HIPPIAS

Socrates : “Well, then,” he will say, “beneficial is that which creates the GOOD, but that which creates and that which is created were just now seen to be different, and our argument has come round to the earlier argument, has it not ? For neither could the GOOD be beautiful nor the beautiful GOOD, (304a) if each of them is different from the other.” “Absolutely true,” we shall say, if we are reasonable ; for it is inadmissible to disagree with him who says what is right. GREATER HIPPIAS

Soc. And yet surely, my dear friend Ion, in a discussion about arithmetic, where many people are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, there is somebody who can judge which of them is the GOOD speaker ? ION

Soc. And he who judges of the GOOD will be the same as he who judges of the bad speakers ? ION

Soc. And speaking generally, in all discussions in which the subject is the same and many men are speaking, will not he who knows the GOOD know the bad speaker also ? For if he does not know the bad, neither will he know the GOOD when the same topic is being discussed. ION

Soc. And if you knew the GOOD speaker, you would also know the inferior speakers to be inferior ? ION

Then I proceeded to say : Well, but are you aware of the danger which you are incurring ? If you were going to commit your body to some one, who might do GOOD or harm to it, would you not carefully consider and ask the opinion of your friends and kindred, and deliberate many days as to whether you should give him the care of your body ? But when the soul is in question, which you hold to be of far more value than the body, and upon the GOOD or evil of which depends the well-being of your all, — about this never consulted either with your father or with your brother or with any one of us who are your companions. But no sooner does this foreigner appear, than you instantly commit your soul to his keeping. In the evening, as you say, you hear of him, and in the morning you go to him, never deliberating or taking the opinion of any one as to whether you ought to intrust yourself to him or not ; — you have quite made up your mind that you will at all hazards be a pupil of Protagoras, and are prepared to expend all the property of yourself and of your friends in carrying out at any price this determination, although, as you admit, you do not know him, and have never spoken with him : and you call him a Sophist, but are manifestly ignorant of what a Sophist is ; and yet you are going to commit yourself to his keeping. When he heard me say this, he replied : No other inference, Socrates, can be drawn from your words. 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. And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul ? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul ; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body ; for they praise indiscriminately all their GOODs, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful : neither do their customers know, with the exception of any trainer or physician who may happen to buy of them. In like manner those who carry about the wares of knowledge, and make the round of the cities, and sell or retail them to any customer who is in want of them, praise them all alike ; though I should not wonder, O my friend, if many of them were really ignorant of their effect upon the soul ; and their customers equally ignorant, unless he who buys of them happens to be a physician of the soul. If, therefore, you have understanding of what is GOOD and evil, you may safely buy knowledge of Protagoras or of any one ; but if not, then, O my friend, pause, and do not hazard your dearest interests at a game of chance. For there is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink : the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as food, you may deposit them at home and call in any experienced friend who knows what is GOOD to be eaten or drunken, and what not, and how much, and when ; and then the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But you cannot buy the wares of knowledge and carry them away in another vessel ; when you have paid for them you must receive them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited ; and therefore we should deliberate and take counsel with our elders ; for we are still young — too young to determine such a matter. And now let us go, as we were intending, and hear Protagoras ; and when we have heard what he has to say, we may take counsel of others ; for not only is Protagoras at the house of Callias, but there is Hippias of Elis, and, if I am not mistaken, Prodicus of Ceos, and several other wise men. PROTAGORAS

And is the GOOD that which is expedient for man ? PROTAGORAS

And therefore, I said, Prodicus, he blames Pittacus for saying, “Hard is the GOOD,” just as if that were equivalent to saying, Evil is the GOOD. PROTAGORAS

Let us all unite in examining his words, and see whether I am speaking the truth. Simonides must have been a lunatic, if, in the very first words of the poem, wanting to say only that to become GOOD is hard, he inserted (men) “on the one hand” (“on the one hand to become GOOD is hard”) ; there would be no reason for the introduction of (men), unless you suppose him to speak with a hostile reference to the words of Pittacus. Pittacus is saying “Hard is it to be GOOD,” and he, in refutation of this thesis, rejoins that the truly hard thing, Pittacus, is to become GOOD, not joining “truly” with “GOOD,” but with “hard.” Not, that the hard thing is to be truly GOOD, as though there were some truly GOOD men, and there were others who were GOOD but not truly GOOD (this would be a very simple observation, and quite unworthy of Simonides) ; but you must suppose him to make a trajection of the word “truly,” construing the saying of Pittacus thus (and let us imagine Pittacus to be speaking and Simonides answering him) : “O my friends,” says Pittacus, “hard is it to be GOOD,” and Simonides answers, “In that, Pittacus, you are mistaken ; the difficulty is not to be GOOD, but on the one hand, to become GOOD, four-square in hands and feet and mind, without a flaw — that is hard truly.” This way of reading the passage accounts for the insertion of (men) “on the one hand,” and for the position at the end of the clause of the word “truly,” and all that follows shows this to be the meaning. A great deal might be said in praise of the details of the poem, which is a charming piece of workmanship, and very finished, but such minutiae would be tedious. I should like, however, to point out the general intention of the poem, which is certainly designed in every part to be a refutation of the saying of Pittacus. For he speaks in what follows a little further on as if he meant to argue that although there is a difficulty in becoming GOOD, yet this is possible for a time, and only for a time. But having become GOOD, to remain in a GOOD state and be GOOD, as you, Pittacus, affirm, is not possible, and is not granted to man ; God only has this blessing ; “but man cannot help being bad when the force of circumstances overpowers him.” Now whom does the force of circumstance overpower in the command of a vessel ? — not the private individual, for he is always overpowered ; and as one who is already prostrate cannot be overthrown, and only he who is standing upright but not he who is prostrate can be laid prostrate, so the force of circumstances can only overpower him who, at some time or other, has resources, and not him who is at all times helpless. The descent of a great storm may make the pilot helpless, or the severity of the season the husbandman or the physician ; for the GOOD may become bad, as another poet witnesses : PROTAGORAS

The GOOD are sometimes GOOD and sometimes bad. But the bad does not become bad ; he is always bad. So that when the force of circumstances overpowers the man of resources and skill and virtue, then he cannot help being bad. And you, Pittacus, are saying, “Hard is it to be GOOD.” Now there is a difficulty in becoming GOOD ; and yet this is possible : but to be GOOD is an impossibility — PROTAGORAS

For he who does well is the GOOD man, and he who does ill is the bad. But what sort of doing is GOOD in letters ? and what sort of doing makes a man GOOD in letters ? Clearly the knowing of them. And what sort of well-doing makes a man a GOOD physician ? Clearly the knowledge of the art of healing the sick. “But he who does ill is the bad.” Now who becomes a bad physician ? Clearly he who is in the first place a physician, and in the second place a GOOD physician ; for he may become a bad one also : but none of us unskilled individuals can by any amount of doing ill become physicians, any more than we can become carpenters or anything of that sort ; and he who by doing ill cannot become a physician at all, clearly cannot become a bad physician. In like manner the GOOD may become deteriorated by time, or toil, or disease, or other accident (the only real doing ill is to be deprived of knowledge), but the bad man will never become bad, for he is always bad ; and if he were to become bad, he must previously have been GOOD. Thus the words of the poem tend to show that on the one hand a man cannot be continuously GOOD, but that he may become GOOD and may also become bad ; and again that PROTAGORAS

But him who does no evil, voluntarily I praise and love ; — not even the gods war against necessity. All this has a similar drift, for Simonides was not so ignorant as to say that he praised those who did no evil voluntarily, as though there were some who did evil voluntarily. For no wise man, as I believe, will allow that any human being errs voluntarily, or voluntarily does evil and dishonourable actions ; but they are very well aware that all who do evil and dishonourable things do them against their will. And Simonides never says that he praises him who does no evil voluntarily ; the word “voluntarily” applies to himself. For he was under the impression that a GOOD man might often compel himself to love and praise another, and to be the friend and approver of another ; and that there might be an involuntary love, such as a man might feel to an unnatural father or mother, or country, or the like. Now bad men, when their parents or country have any defects, look on them with malignant joy, and find fault with them and expose and denounce them to others, under the idea that the rest of mankind will be less likely to take themselves to task and accuse them of neglect ; and they blame their defects far more than they deserve, in order that the odium which is necessarily incurred by them may be increased : but the GOOD man dissembles his feelings, and constrains himself to praise them ; and if they have wronged him and he is angry, he pacifies his anger and is reconciled, and compels himself to love and praise his own flesh and blood. And Simonides, as is probable, considered that he himself had often had to praise and magnify a tyrant or the like, much against his will, and he also wishes to imply to Pittacus that he does not censure him because he is censorious. PROTAGORAS

I do not know, Socrates, he said, whether I can venture to assert in that unqualified manner that the pleasant is the GOOD and the painful the evil. Having regard not only to my present answer, but also to the whole of my life, I shall be safer, if I am not mistaken, in saying that there are some pleasant things which are not GOOD, and that there are some painful things which are GOOD, and some which are not GOOD, and that there are some which are neither GOOD nor evil. PROTAGORAS

Suppose again, I said, that the world says to me : “Why do you spend many words and speak in many ways on this subject ?” Excuse me, friends, I should reply ; but in the first place there is a difficulty in explaining the meaning of the expression “overcome by pleasure” ; and the whole argument turns upon this. And even now, if you see any possible way in which evil can be explained as other than pain, or GOOD as other than pleasure, you may still retract. Are you satisfied, then, at having a life of pleasure which is without pain ? If you are, and if you are unable to show any GOOD or evil which does not end in pleasure and pain, hear the consequences : — If what you say is true, then the argument is absurd which affirms that a man often does evil knowingly, when he might abstain, because he is seduced and overpowered by pleasure ; or again, when you say that a man knowingly refuses to do what is GOOD because he is overcome at the moment by pleasure. And that this is ridiculous will be evident if only we give up the use of various names, such as pleasant and painful, and GOOD and evil. As there are two things, let us call them by two names — first, GOOD and evil, and then pleasant and painful. Assuming this, let us go on to say that a man does evil knowing that he does evil. But some one will ask, Why ? Because he is overcome, is the first answer. And by what is he overcome ? the enquirer will proceed to ask. And we shall not be able to reply “By pleasure,” for the name of pleasure has been exchanged for that of GOOD. In our answer, then, we shall only say that he is overcome. “By what ?” he will reiterate. By the GOOD, we shall have to reply ; indeed we shall. Nay, but our questioner will rejoin with a laugh, if he be one of the swaggering sort, “That is too ridiculous, that a man should do what he knows to be evil when he ought not, because he is overcome by GOOD. Is that, he will ask, because the GOOD was worthy or not worthy of conquering the evil ?” And in answer to that we shall clearly reply, Because it was not worthy ; for if it had been worthy, then he who, as we say, was overcome by pleasure, would not have been wrong. “But how,” he will reply, “can the GOOD be unworthy of the evil, or the evil of the GOOD ?” Is not the real explanation that they are out of proportion to one another, either as greater and smaller, or more and fewer ? This we cannot deny. And when you speak of being overcome — ”what do you mean,” he will say, “but that you choose the greater evil in exchange for the lesser GOOD ?” Admitted. And now substitute the names of pleasure and pain for GOOD and evil, and say, not as before, that a man does what is evil knowingly, but that he does what is painful knowingly, and because he is overcome by pleasure, which is unworthy to overcome. What measure is there of the relations of pleasure to pain other than excess and defect, which means that they become greater and smaller, and more and fewer, and differ in degree ? For if any one says : “Yes, Socrates, but immediate pleasure differs widely from future pleasure and pain” — To that I should reply : And do they differ in anything but in pleasure and pain ? There can be no other measure of them. And do you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, and their nearness and distance, and weigh them, and then say which outweighs the other. If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of course take the more and greater ; or if you weigh pains against pains, you take the fewer and the less ; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant ; and you avoid that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful. Would you not admit, my friends, that this is true ? I am confident that they cannot deny this. PROTAGORAS

Then you agree, I said, that the pleasant is the GOOD, and the painful evil. And here I would beg my friend Prodicus not to introduce his distinction of names, whether he is disposed to say pleasurable, delightful, joyful. However, by whatever name he prefers to call them, I will ask you, most excellent Prodicus, to answer in my sense of the words. PROTAGORAS

Then, I said, if the pleasant is the GOOD, nobody does anything under the idea or conviction that some other thing would be better and is also attainable, when he might do the better. And this inferiority of a man to himself is merely ignorance, as the superiority of a man to himself is wisdom. PROTAGORAS

At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things ; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the GOOD artisans fell into the same error as the poets ; because they were GOOD workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom — therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both ; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was. APOLOGY

And now, Meletus, I must ask you another question : Which is better, to live among bad citizens, or among GOOD ones ? Answer, friend, I say ; for that is a question which may be easily answered. Do not the GOOD do their neighbors GOOD, and the bad do them evil ? APOLOGY

But you have just admitted that the GOOD do their neighbors GOOD, and the evil do them evil. Now is that a truth which your superior wisdom has recognized thus early in life, and am I, at my age, in such darkness and ignorance as not to know that if a man with whom I have to live is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him, and yet I corrupt him, and intentionally, too ; — that is what you are saying, and of that you will never persuade me or any other human being. But either I do not corrupt them, or I corrupt them unintentionally, so that on either view of the case you lie. If my offence is unintentional, the law has no cognizance of unintentional offences : you ought to have taken me privately, and warned and admonished me ; for if I had been better advised, I should have left off doing what I only did unintentionally — no doubt I should ; whereas you hated to converse with me or teach me, but you indicted me in this court, which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment. APOLOGY

And so he proposes death as the penalty. And what shall I propose on my part, O men of Athens ? Clearly that which is my due. And what is that which I ought to pay or to receive ? What shall be done to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during his whole life ; but has been careless of what the many care about — wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and speaking in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that I was really too honest a man to follow in this way and live, I did not go where I could do no GOOD to you or to myself ; but where I could do the greatest GOOD privately to everyone of you, thither I went, and sought to persuade every man among you that he must look to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the state before he looks to the interests of the state ; and that this should be the order which he observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such a one ? Doubtless some GOOD thing, O men of Athens, if he has his reward ; and the GOOD should be of a kind suitable to him. What would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, who desires leisure that he may instruct you ? There can be no more fitting reward than 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 justly, I say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return. Perhaps you may think that I am braving you in saying this, as in what I said before about the tears and prayers. But that is not the case. I speak rather because I am convinced that I never intentionally wronged anyone, although I cannot convince you of that — for we have had a short conversation only ; but if there were a law at Athens, such as there is in other cities, that a capital cause should not be decided in one day, then I believe that I should have convinced you ; but now the time is too short. I cannot in a moment refute great slanders ; and, as I am convinced that I never wronged another, I will assuredly not wrong myself. I will not say of myself that I deserve any evil, or propose any penalty. Why should I ? Because I am afraid of the penalty of death which Meletus proposes ? When I do not know whether death is a GOOD or an evil, why should I propose a penalty which would certainly be an evil ? Shall I say imprisonment ? And why should I live in prison, and be the slave of the magistrates of the year — of the Eleven ? Or shall the penalty be a fine, and imprisonment until the fine is paid ? There is the same objection. I should have to lie in prison, for money I have none, and I cannot pay. And if I say exile (and this may possibly be the penalty which you will affix), I must indeed be blinded by the love of life if I were to consider that when you, who are my own citizens, cannot endure my discourses and words, and have found them so grievous and odious that you would fain have done with them, others are likely to endure me. No, indeed, men of Athens, that is not very likely. And what a life should I lead, at my age, wandering from city to city, living in ever-changing exile, and always being driven out ! For I am quite sure that into whatever place I go, as here so also there, the young men will come to me ; and if I drive them away, their elders will drive me out at their desire : and if I let them come, their fathers and friends will drive me out for their sakes. APOLOGY

Soc. The GOOD are to be regarded, and not the bad ? CRITO

Socrates : So we may fairly describe each of these workings as follows : as you call either of them evil because of the evil it produces, (116a) so you must call it GOOD because of the GOOD it produces. ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : Well then, can you mention any greater things than the just, the noble, the GOOD, and the expedient ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : But whoever do you mean by the GOOD ? ALCIBIADES I

Socrates : Quite right. And now, for what is the GOOD counsel of which you speak ? ALCIBIADES I

Then temperance is not quietness, nor is the temperate life quiet, — certainly not upon this view ; for the life which is temperate is supposed to be the GOOD. And of two things, one is true, either never, or very seldom, do the quiet actions in life appear to be better than the quick and energetic ones ; or supposing that of the nobler actions, there are as many quiet, as quick and vehement : still, even if we grant this, temperance will not be acting quietly any more than acting quickly and energetically, either in walking or talking or in anything else ; nor will the quiet life be more temperate than the unquiet, seeing that temperance is admitted by us to be a GOOD and noble thing, and the quick have been shown to be as GOOD as the quiet. CHARMIDES

O Critias, I said, no sooner had you opened your mouth, than I pretty well knew that you would call that which is proper to a man, and that which is his own, GOOD ; and that the markings of the GOOD you would call doings, for I am no stranger to the endless distinctions which Prodicus draws about names. Now I have no objection to your giving names any signification which you please, if you will only tell me what you mean by them. Please then to begin again, and be a little plainer. Do you mean that this doing or making, or whatever is the word which you would use, of GOOD actions, is temperance ? CHARMIDES

And yet, my dear Critias, none of these things will be well or beneficially done, if the science of the GOOD be wanting. CHARMIDES

And why, he replied, will not wisdom be of use ? For, however much we assume that wisdom is a science of sciences, and has a sway over other sciences, surely she will have this particular science of the GOOD under her control, and in this way will benefit us. CHARMIDES

La. I have but one feeling, Nicias, or (shall I say ?) two feelings, about discussions. Some would think that I am a lover, and to others I may seem to be a hater of discourse ; for when I hear a man discoursing of virtue, or of any sort of wisdom, who is a true man and worthy of his theme, I am delighted beyond measure : and I compare the man and his words, and note the harmony and correspondence of them. And such an one I deem to be the true musician, attuned to a fairer harmony than that of the lyre, or any pleasant instrument of music ; for truly he has in his own life a harmony of words and deeds arranged, not in the Ionian, or in the Phrygian mode, nor yet in the Lydian, but in the true Hellenic mode, which is the Dorian, and no other. 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. And if his words accord, then I am of one mind with him, and shall be delighted to be interrogated by a man such as he is, and shall not be annoyed at having to learn of him : for I too agree with Solon, “that I would fain grow old, learning many things.” But I must be allowed to add “of the GOOD only.” Socrates must be willing to allow that he is a GOOD teacher, or I shall be a dull and uncongenial pupil : but that the teacher is younger, or not as yet in repute-anything of that sort is of no account with me. And therefore, Socrates, I give you notice that you may teach and confute me as much as ever you like, and also learn of me anything which I know. So high is the opinion which I have entertained of you ever since the day on which you were my companion in danger, and gave a proof of your valour such as only the man of merit can give. Therefore, say whatever you like, and do not mind about the difference of our ages. LACHES

Soc. But, my dear friend, should not the GOOD sportsman follow the track, and not be lazy ? LACHES

Soc. That is my view, Nicias ; the terrible things, as I should say, are the evils which are future ; and the hopeful are the GOOD or not evil things which are future. Do you or do you not agree with me ? LACHES

Soc. But then, my dear friend, if a man knew all GOOD and evil, and how. they are, and have been, and will be produced, would he not be perfect, and wanting in no virtue, whether justice, or temperance, or holiness ? He would possess them all, and he would know which were dangers’ and which were not, and guard against them whether they were supernatural or natural ; and he would provide the GOOD, as he would know how to deal both with gods or men. LACHES

But the real meaning of the saying, as I imagine, is, that, the GOOD are like one another, friends to one another ; and that the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves ; for they are passionate and restless, and anything which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing. Do you not agree ? LYSIS

Then, my friend, those who say that the like is friendly to the like mean to intimate, if I rightly apprehend them, that the GOOD only is the friend of the GOOD, and of him only ; but that the evil never attains to any real friendship, either with GOOD or evil. Do you agree ? LYSIS

Then now we know how to answer the question “Who are friends ?” for the argument declares “That the GOOD are friends.” LYSIS

But say that the like is not the friend of the like in so far as he is like ; still the GOOD may be the friend of the GOOD in so far as he is GOOD ? LYSIS

But then again, will not the GOOD, in so far as he is GOOD, be sufficient for himself ? Certainly he will. And he who is sufficient wants nothing — that is implied in the word sufficient. LYSIS

Have I not heard some one say, as I just now recollect, that the like is the greatest enemy of the like, the GOOD of the GOOD ? — Yes, and he quoted the authority of Hesiod, who says : LYSIS

Well, but is a just man the friend of the unjust, or the temperate of the intemperate, or the GOOD of the bad ? LYSIS

And yet there is a further consideration : may not all these notions of friendship be erroneous ? but may not that which is neither GOOD nor evil still in some cases be the friend of the GOOD ? LYSIS

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 ? LYSIS

This I say from a sort of notion that what is neither GOOD nor evil is the friend of the beautiful and the GOOD, and I will tell you why I am inclined to think so : I assume that there are three principles — the GOOD, the bad, and that which is neither GOOD nor bad. You would agree — would you not ? LYSIS

And neither is the GOOD the friend of the GOOD, nor the evil of the GOOD, nor the GOOD of the evil ; — these alternatives are excluded by the previous argument ; and therefore, if there be such a thing as friendship or love at all, we must infer that what is neither GOOD nor evil must be the friend, either of the GOOD, or of that which is neither GOOD nor evil, for nothing can be the friend of the bad. LYSIS

Then the GOOD alone is the friend of that only which is neither GOOD nor evil. LYSIS

And clearly this must have happened before that which was neither GOOD nor evil had become altogether corrupted with the element of evil — if itself had become evil it would not still desire and love the GOOD ; for, as we were saying, the evil cannot be the friend of the GOOD. LYSIS

And when anything is in the presence of evil, not being as yet evil, the presence of GOOD arouses the desire of GOOD in that thing ; but the presence of evil, which makes a thing evil, takes away the desire and friendship of the GOOD ; for that which was once both GOOD and evil has now become evil only, and the GOOD was supposed to have no friendship with the evil ? LYSIS

And therefore we say that those who are already wise, whether Gods or men, are no longer lovers of wisdom ; nor can they be lovers of wisdom who are ignorant to the extent of being evil, for no evil or ignorant person is a lover of wisdom. There remain those who have the misfortune to be ignorant, but are not yet hardened in their ignorance, or void of understanding, and do not as yet fancy that they know what they do not know : and therefore those who are the lovers of wisdom are as yet neither GOOD nor bad. But the bad do not love wisdom any more than the GOOD ; for, as we have already seen, neither is unlike the friend of unlike, nor like of like. You remember that ? LYSIS

And so, Lysis and Menexenus, we have discovered the nature of friendship — there can be no doubt of it : Friendship is the love which by reason of the presence of evil the neither GOOD nor evil has of the GOOD, either in the soul, or in the body, or anywhere. LYSIS

Then that which is neither GOOD nor evil is the friend of the GOOD because of the evil and hateful, and for the sake of the GOOD and the friend ? LYSIS

Then we have done with the notion that friendship has any further object. May we then infer that the GOOD is the friend ? LYSIS

And the GOOD is loved for the sake of the evil ? Let me put the case in this way : Suppose that of the three principles, GOOD, evil, and that which is neither GOOD nor evil, there remained only the GOOD and the neutral, and that evil went far away, and in no way affected soul or body, nor ever at all that class of things which, as we say, are neither GOOD nor evil in themselves ; — would the GOOD be of any use, or other than useless to us ? For if there were nothing to hurt us any longer, we should have no need of anything that would do us GOOD. Then would be clearly seen that we did but love and desire the GOOD because of the evil, and as the remedy of the evil, which was the disease ; but if there had been no disease, there would have been no need of a remedy. Is not this the nature of the GOOD — to be loved by us who are placed between the two, because of the evil ? but there is no use in the GOOD for its own sake. LYSIS

And have we not admitted already that the friend loves something for a reason ? and at the time of making the admission we were of opinion that the neither GOOD nor evil loves the GOOD because of the evil ? LYSIS

And shall we further say that the GOOD is congenial, and the evil uncongenial to every one ? Or again that the evil is congenial to the evil, and the GOOD to the GOOD ; and that which is neither GOOD nor evil to that which is neither GOOD nor evil ? LYSIS

Then, my boys, we have again fallen into the old discarded error ; for the unjust will be the friend of the unjust, and the bad of the bad, as well as the GOOD of the GOOD. LYSIS

But again, if we say that the congenial is the same as the GOOD, in that case the GOOD and he only will be the friend of the GOOD. LYSIS

Then what is to be done ? Or rather is there anything to be done ? I can only, like the wise men who argue in courts, sum up the arguments : — If neither the beloved, nor the lover, nor the like, nor the unlike, nor the GOOD, nor the congenial, nor any other of whom we spoke — for there were such a number of them that I cannot remember all — if none of these are friends, I know not what remains to be said. LYSIS

Soc. And is not attention always designed for the GOOD or benefit of that to which the attention is given ? As in the case of horses, you may observe that when attended to by the horseman’s art they are benefited and improved, are they not ? EUTHYPHRO

Soc. And does not gymnastic also treat of discourse concerning the GOOD or evil condition of the body ? GORGIAS

Polus. And do even you, Socrates, seriously believe what you are now saying about rhetoric ? What ! because Gorgias was ashamed to deny that the rhetorician knew the just and the honourable and the GOOD, and admitted that to any one who came to him ignorant of them he could teach them, and then out of this admission there arose a contradiction — the thing which you dearly love, and to which not he, but you, brought the argument by your captious questions — (do you seriously believe that there is any truth in all this ?) For will any one ever acknowledge that he does not know, or cannot teach, the nature of justice ? The truth is, that there is great want of manners in bringing the argument to such a pass. GORGIAS

Pol. And are the GOOD rhetoricians meanly regarded in states, under the idea that they are flatterers ? GORGIAS

Soc. Are these indifferent things done for the sake of the GOOD, or the GOOD for the sake of the indifferent ? GORGIAS

Pol. Clearly, the indifferent for the sake of the GOOD. GORGIAS

Soc. When we walk we walk for the sake of the GOOD, and under the idea that it is better to walk, and when we stand we stand equally for the sake of the GOOD ? GORGIAS

Soc. Men who do any of these things do them for the sake of the GOOD ? GORGIAS

Soc. I understand you to say, if I am not mistaken, that the honourable is not the same as the GOOD, or the disgraceful as the evil ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then rhetoric is of no use to us, Polus, in helping a man to excuse his own injustice, that of his parents or friends, or children or country ; but may be of use to any one who holds that instead of excusing he ought to accuse — himself above all, and in the next degree his family or any of his friends who may be doing wrong ; he should bring to light the iniquity and not conceal it, that so the wrong-doer may suffer and be made whole ; and he should even force himself and others not to shrink, but with closed eyes like brave men to let the physician operate with knife or searing iron, not regarding the pain, in the hope of attaining the GOOD and the honourable ; let him who has done things worthy of stripes, allow himself to be scourged, if of bonds, to be bound, if of a fine, to be fined, if of exile, to be exiled, if of death, to die, himself being the first to accuse himself and his relations, and using rhetoric to this end, that his and their unjust actions may be made manifest, and that they themselves may be delivered from injustice, which is the greatest evil. Then, Polus, rhetoric would indeed be useful. Do you say “Yes” or “No” to that ? GORGIAS

Soc. Because I am sure that if you agree with me in any of the opinions which my soul forms, I have at last found the truth indeed. For I consider that if a man is to make a complete trial of the GOOD or evilevil of the soul, he ought to have three qualities — knowledge, GOOD-will, outspokenness, which are all possessed by you. Many whom I meet are unable to make trial of me, because they are not wise as you are ; others are wise, but they will not tell me the truth, because they have not the same interest in me which you have ; and these two strangers, Gorgias and Polus, are undoubtedly wise men and my very GOOD friends, but they are not outspoken enough, and they are too modest. Why, their modesty is so great that they are driven to contradict themselves, first one and then the other of them, in the face of a large company, on matters of the highest moment. But you have all the qualities in which these others are deficient, having received an excellent education ; to this many Athenians can testify. And are my friend. Shall I tell you why I think so ? I know that you, Callicles, and Tisander of Aphidnae, and Andron the son of Androtion, and Nausicydes of the deme of Cholarges, studied together : there were four of you, and I once heard you advising with one another as to the extent to which the pursuit of philosophy should be carried, and, as I know, you came to the conclusion that the study should not be pushed too much into detail. You were cautioning one another not to be overwise ; you were afraid that too much wisdom might unconsciously to yourselves be the ruin of you. And now when I hear you giving the same advice to me which you then gave to your most intimate friends, I have a sufficient evidence of your real GOODwill to me. And of the frankness of your nature and freedom from modesty I am assured by yourself, and the assurance is confirmed by your last speech. Well then, the inference in the present case clearly is, that if you agree with me in an argument about any point, that point will have been sufficiently tested by us, and will not require to be submitted to any further test. For you could not have agreed with me, either from lack of knowledge or from superfluity of modesty, nor yet from a desire to deceive me, for you are my friend, as you tell me yourself. And therefore when you and I are agreed, the result will be the attainment of perfect truth. Now there is no nobler enquiry, Callicles, than that which you censure me for making, — What ought the character of a man to be, and what his pursuits, and how far is he to go, both in maturer years and in youth ? For be assured that if I err in my own conduct I do not err intentionally, but from ignorance. Do not then desist from advising me, now that you have begun, until I have learned clearly what this is which I am to practise, and how I may acquire it. And if you find me assenting to your words, and hereafter not doing that to which I assented, call me “dolt,” and deem me unworthy of receiving further instruction. Once more, then, tell me what you and Pindar mean by natural justice : Do you not mean that the superior should take the property of the inferior by force ; that the better should rule the worse, the noble have more than the mean ? Am I not right in my recollection ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then we are both doing wrong. Still, my dear friend, I would ask you to consider whether pleasure, from whatever source derived, is the GOOD ; for, if this be true, then the disagreeable consequences which have been darkly intimated must follow, and many others. GORGIAS

Soc. Well, then, let us remember that Callicles, the Acharnian, says that pleasure and GOOD are the same ; but that knowledge and courage are not the same, either with one another, or with the GOOD. GORGIAS

Soc. Then pleasure is not the same as GOOD fortune, or pain the same as evil fortune, and therefore the GOOD is not the same as the pleasant ? GORGIAS

Soc. Why, my friend, the inference is that the GOOD is not the same as the pleasant, or the evil the same as the painful ; there is a cessation of pleasure and pain at the same moment ; but not of GOOD and evil, for they are different. How then can pleasure be the same as GOOD, or pain as evil ? And I would have you look at the matter in another light, which could hardly, I think, have been considered by you identified them : Are not the GOOD they have GOOD present with them, as the beautiful are those who have beauty present with them ? GORGIAS

Soc. And do you call the fools and cowards GOOD men ? For you were saying just now that the courageous and the wise are the GOOD would you not say so ? GORGIAS

Soc. But surely the wise and brave are the GOOD, and the foolish and the cowardly are the bad ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then the GOOD and the bad are pleased and pained in a nearly equal degree ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then are the GOOD and bad GOOD and bad in a nearly equal degree, or have the bad the advantage both in GOOD and evil ? (i.e. in having more pleasure and more pain.) GORGIAS

Soc. Why, do you not remember saying that the GOOD were GOOD because GOOD was present with them, and the evil because evil ; and that pleasures were GOODs and pains evils ? GORGIAS

Soc. The GOOD and evil both have joy and pain, but, perhaps, the evil has more of them ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then must we not infer, that the bad man is as GOOD and bad as the GOOD, or, perhaps, even better ? — is not this a further inference which follows equally with the preceding from the assertion that the GOOD and the pleasant are the same : — can this be denied, Callicles ? GORGIAS

Soc. And ought we not to choose and use the GOOD pleasures and pains ? GORGIAS

Soc. Because, if you remember, Polus and I have agreed that all our actions are to be done for the sake of the GOOD — and will you agree with us in saying, that the GOOD is the end of all our actions, and that all our actions are to be done for the sake of the GOOD, and not the GOOD, for of them ? — will you add a third vote to our two ? GORGIAS

Soc. Let me now remind you of what I was saying to Gorgias and Polus ; I was saying, as you will not have forgotten, that there were some processes which aim only at pleasure, and know nothing of a better and worse, and there are other processes which know GOOD and evil. And I considered that cookery, which I do not call an art, but only an experience, was of the former class, which is concerned with pleasure, and that the art of medicine was of the class which is concerned with the GOOD. And now, by the god of friendship, I must beg you, Callicles, not to jest, or to imagine that I am jesting with you ; do not answer at random and contrary to your real opinion — for you will observe that we are arguing about the way of human life ; and to a man who has any sense at all, what question can be more serious than this ? — whether he should follow after that way of life to which you exhort me, and act what you call the manly part of speaking in the assembly, and cultivating rhetoric, and engaging in public affairs, according to the principles now in vogue ; or whether he should pursue the life of philosophy — and in what the latter way differs from the former. But perhaps we had better first try to distinguish them, as I did before, and when we have come to an agreement that they are distinct, we may proceed to consider in what they differ from one another, and which of them we should choose. Perhaps, however, you do not even now understand what I mean ? GORGIAS

Soc. And what do you say of his father, Meles the harp-player ? Did he perform with any view to the GOOD of his hearers ? Could he be said to regard even their pleasure ? For his singing was an infliction to his audience. And of harp playing and dithyrambic poetry in general, what would you say ? Have they not been invented wholly for the sake of pleasure ? GORGIAS

Soc. Yet, surely, Callicles, if you look you will find such a one. Suppose that we just calmly consider whether any of these was such as I have described. Will not the GOOD man, who says whatever he says with a view to the best, speak with a reference to some standard and not at random ; just as all other artists, whether the painter, the builder, the shipwright, or any other look all of them to their own work, and do not select and apply at random what they apply, but strive to give a definite form to it ? The artist disposes all things in order, and compels the one part to harmonize and accord with the other part, until he has constructed a regular and systematic whole ; and this is true of all artists, and in the same way the trainers and physicians, of whom we spoke before, give order and regularity to the body : do you deny this ? GORGIAS

Soc. And what would you say of the soul ? Will the GOOD soul be that in which disorder is prevalent, or that in which there is harmony and order ? GORGIAS

Soc. Listen to me, then, while I recapitulate the argument : — Is the pleasant the same as the GOOD ? Not the same. Callicles and I are agreed about that. And is the pleasant to be pursued for the sake of the GOOD ? or the GOOD for the sake of the pleasant ? The pleasant is to be pursued for the sake of the GOOD. And that is pleasant at the presence of which we are pleased, and that is GOOD at the presence of which we are GOOD ? To be sure. And we — GOOD, and all GOOD things whatever are GOOD when some virtue is present in us or them ? That, Callicles, is my conviction. But the virtue of each thing, whether body or soul, instrument or creature, when given to them in the best way comes to them not by chance but as the result of the order and truth and art which are imparted to them : Am I not right ? I maintain that I am. And is not the virtue of each thing dependent on order or arrangement ? Yes, I say. And that which makes a thing GOOD is the proper order inhering in each thing ? Such is my view. And is not the soul which has an order of her own better than that which has no order ? Certainly. And the soul which has order is orderly ? Of course. And that which is orderly is temperate ? Assuredly. And the temperate soul is GOOD ? No other answer can I give, Callicles dear ; have you any ? GORGIAS

Soc. Then I shall proceed to add, that if the, temperate soul is the GOOD soul, the soul which is in the opposite condition, that is, the foolish and intemperate, is the bad soul. Very true. GORGIAS

And will not the temperate man do what is proper, both in relation to the gods and to men ; — for he would not be temperate if he did not ? Certainly he will do what is proper. In his relation to other men he will do what is just ; See and in his relation to the gods he will do what is holy ; and he who does what is just and holy must be just and holy ? Very true. And must he not be courageous ? for the duty of a temperate man is not to follow or to avoid what he ought not, but what he ought, whether things or men or pleasures or pains, and patiently to endure when he ought ; and therefore, Callicles, the temperate man, being, as we have described, also just and courageous and holy, cannot be other than a perfectly GOOD man, nor can the GOOD man do otherwise than well and perfectly whatever he does ; and he who does well must of necessity be happy and blessed, and the evil man who does evil, miserable : now this latter is he whom you were applauding — the intemperate who is the opposite of the temperate. Such is my position, and these things I affirm to be true. And if they are true, then I further affirm that he who desires to be happy must pursue and practise temperance and run away from intemperance as fast as his legs will carry him : he had better order his life so as not to need punishment ; but if either he or any of his friends, whether private individual or city, are in need of punishment, then justice must be done and he must suffer punishment, if he would be happy. This appears to me to be the aim which a man ought to have, and towards which he ought to direct all the energies both of himself and of the state, acting so that he may have temperance and justice present with him and be happy, not suffering his lusts to be unrestrained, and in the never-ending desire satisfy them leading a robber’s life. Such ; one is the friend neither of God nor man, for he is incapable of communion, and he who is incapable of communion is also incapable of friendship. And philosophers tell us, Callicles, that communion and friendship and orderliness and temperance and justice bind together heaven and earth and gods and men, and that this universe is therefore called Cosmos or order, not disorder or misrule, my friend. But although you are a philosopher you seem to me never to have observed that geometrical equality is mighty, both among gods and men ; you think that you ought to cultivate inequality or excess, and do not care about geometry. — Well, then, either the principle that the happy are made happy by the possession of justice and temperance, and the miserable the possession of vice, must be refuted, or, if it is granted, what will be the consequences ? All the consequences which I drew before, Callicles, and about which you asked me whether I was in earnest when I said that a man ought to accuse himself and his son and his friend if he did anything wrong, and that to this end he should use his rhetoric — all those consequences are true. And that which you thought that Polus was led to admit out of modesty is true, viz., that, to do injustice, if more disgraceful than to suffer, is in that degree worse ; and the other position, which, according to Polus, Gorgias admitted out of modesty, that he who would truly be a rhetorician ought to be just and have a knowledge of justice, has also turned out to be true. GORGIAS

Soc. Excellent Callicles, I am not deaf, and I have heard that a great many times from you and from Polus and from nearly every man in the city, but I wish that you would hear me too. I dare say that he will kill him if he has a mind — the bad man will kill the GOOD and true. GORGIAS

And this is the reason why the pilot, although he is our saviour, is not usually conceited, any more than the engineer, who is not at all behind either the general, or the pilot, or any one else, in his saving power, for he sometimes saves whole cities. Is there any comparison between him and the pleader ? And if he were to talk, Callicles, in your grandiose style, he would bury you under a mountain of words, declaring and insisting that we ought all of us to be engine-makers, and that no other profession is worth thinking about ; he would have plenty to say. Nevertheless you despise him and his art, and sneeringly call him an engine-maker, and you will not allow your daughters to marry his son, or marry your son to his daughters. And yet, on your principle, what justice or reason is there in your refusal ? What right have you to despise the engine-maker, and the others whom I was just now mentioning ? I know that you will say, “I am better, better born.” But if the better is not what I say, and virtue consists only in a man saving himself and his, whatever may be his character, then your censure of the engine-maker, and of the physician, and of the other arts of salvation, is ridiculous. O my friend ! I want you to see that the noble and the GOOD may possibly be something different from saving and being saved : — May not he who is truly a man cease to care about living a certain time ? — he knows, as women say, that no man can escape fate, and therefore he is not fond of life ; he leaves all that with God, and considers in what way he can best spend his appointed term — whether by assimilating himself to the constitution under which he lives, as you at this moment have to consider how you may become as like as possible to the Athenian people, if you mean to be in their GOOD graces, and to have power in the state ; whereas I want you to think and see whether this is for the interest of either of us — I would not have us risk that which is dearest on the acquisition of this power, like the Thessalian enchantresses, who, as they say, bring down the moon from heaven at the risk of their own perdition. But if you suppose that any man will show you the art of becoming great in the city, and yet not conforming yourself to the ways of the city, whether for better or worse, then I can only say that you are mistaken, Callides ; for he who would deserve to be the true natural friend of the Athenian Demus, aye, or of Pyrilampes’ darling who is called after them, must be by nature like them, and not an imitator only. He, then, who will make you most like them, will make you as you desire, a statesman and orator : 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 ? GORGIAS

Soc. And must we not have the same end in view in the treatment of our city and citizens ? Must we not try and make them as GOOD as possible ? For we have already discovered that there is no use in imparting to them any other GOOD, unless the mind of those who are to have the GOOD, whether money, or office, or any other sort of power, be gentle and GOOD. Shall we say that ? GORGIAS

Soc. Nay, I ask you, not from a love of contention, but because I really want to know in what way you think that affairs should be administered among us — whether, when you come to the administration of them, you have any other aim but the improvement of the citizens ? Have we not already admitted many times over that such is the duty of a public man ? Nay, we have surely said so ; for if you will not answer for yourself I must answer for you. But if this is what the GOOD man ought to effect for the benefit of his own state, allow me to recall to you the names of those whom you were just now mentioning, Pericles, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and Themistocles, and ask whether you still think that they were GOOD citizens. GORGIAS

Soc. Nay, the view is yours, after what you have admitted. Take the case of Cimon again. Did not the very persons whom he was serving ostracize him, in order that they might not hear his voice for ten years ? and they did just the same to Themistocles, adding the penalty of exile ; and they voted that Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, should be thrown into the pit of death, and he was only saved by the Prytanis. And yet, if they had been really GOOD men, as you say, these things would never have happened to them. For the GOOD charioteers are not those who at first keep their place, and then, when they have broken — in their horses, and themselves become better charioteers, are thrown out — that is not the way either in charioteering or in any profession — What do you think ? GORGIAS

Soc. Do not repeat the old story — that he who likes will kill me and get my money ; for then I shall have to repeat the old answer, that he will be a bad man and will kill the GOOD, and that the money will be of no use to him, but that he will wrongly use that which he wrongly took, and if wrongly, basely, and if basely, hurtfully. GORGIAS

Soc. And does he who desires the honourable also desire the GOOD ? MENO

Soc. Then are there some who desire the evil and others who desire the GOOD ? Do not all men, my dear sir, desire GOOD ? MENO

Soc. But if this is true, then the GOOD are not by nature GOOD ? MENO

Soc. But if the GOOD are not by nature GOOD, are they made GOOD by instruction ? MENO

Soc. Yes, certainly, Anytus ; and many GOOD statesmen also there always have been and there are still, in the city of Athens. But the question is whether they were also GOOD teachers of their own virtue ; — not whether there are, or have been, GOOD men in this part of the world, but whether virtue can be taught, is the question which we have been discussing. Now, do we mean to say that the GOOD men our own and of other times knew how to impart to others that virtue which they had themselves ; or is virtue a thing incapable of being communicated or imparted by one man to another ? That is the question which I and Meno have been arguing. Look at the matter in your own way : Would you not admit that Themistocles was a GOOD man ? MENO

Soc. In these elegiac verses : Eat and drink and sit with the mighty, and make yourself agreeable to them ; for from the GOOD you will learn what is GOOD, but if you mix with the bad you will lose the intelligence which you already have. Do you observe that here he seems to imply that virtue can be taught ? MENO

Soc. And surely the GOOD man has been acknowledged by us to be useful ? MENO

Soc. Then if they are not given by nature, neither are the GOOD by nature GOOD ? MENO

Then, I said, a man who would be happy must not only have the GOOD things, but he must also use them ; there is no advantage in merely having them ? EUTHYDEMUS

Then the GOOD speak evil of evil things, if they speak of them as they are ? EUTHYDEMUS

Yes, indeed, he said ; and they speak evil of evil men. And if I may give you a piece of advice, you had better take care that they do not speak evil of you, since I can tell you that the GOOD speak evil of the evil. EUTHYDEMUS

But I hope that you will be of that mind, reverend Euthydemus, I said, if you are really speaking the truth, and yet I a little doubt your power to make GOOD your words unless you have the help of your brother Dionysodorus ; then you may do it. Tell me now, both of you, for although in the main I cannot doubt that I really do know all things, when I am told so by men of your prodigious wisdom — how can I say that I know such things, Euthydemus, as that the GOOD are unjust ; come, do I know that or not ? EUTHYDEMUS

That the GOOD are not unjust. EUTHYDEMUS

Quite true, I said ; and that I have always known ; but the question is, where did I learn that the GOOD are unjust ? EUTHYDEMUS

Thereupon I said, Please not to interrupt, my GOOD friend, or prevent Euthydemus from proving to me that I know the GOOD to be unjust ; such a lesson you might at least allow me to learn. EUTHYDEMUS

Soc. Dear Crito, do you not know that in every profession the inferior sort are numerous and GOOD for nothing, and the GOOD are few and beyond all price : for example, are not gymnastic and rhetoric and money-making and the art of the general, noble arts ? EUTHYDEMUS

Socrates. Son of Hipponicus, there is an ancient saying, that “hard is the knowledge of the GOOD.” And the knowledge of names is a great part of knowledge. If I had not been poor, I might have heard the fifty-drachma course of the great Prodicus, which is a complete education in grammar and language — these are his own words — and then I should have been at once able to answer your question about the correctness of names. But, indeed, I have only heard the single-drachma course, and therefore, I do not know the truth about such matters ; I will, however, gladly assist you and Cratylus in the investigation of them. When he declares that your name is not really Hermogenes, I suspect that he is only making fun of you ; — he means to say that you are no true son of Hermes, because you are always looking after a fortune and never in luck. But, as I was saying, there is a GOOD deal of difficulty in this sort of knowledge, and therefore we had better leave the question open until we have heard both sides. CRATYLUS

Soc. And may not the same be said of a king ? a king will often be the son of a king, the GOOD son or the noble son of a GOOD or noble sire ; and similarly the off spring of every kind, in the regular course of nature, is like the parent, and therefore has the same name. Yet the syllables may be disguised until they appear different to the ignorant person, and he may not recognize them, although they are the same, just as any one of us would not recognize the same drugs under different disguises of colour and smell, although to the physician, who regards the power of them, they are the same, and he is not put out by the addition ; and in like manner the etymologist is not put out by the addition or transposition or subtraction of a letter or two, or indeed by the change of all the letters, for this need not interfere with the meaning. As was just now said, the names of Hector and Astyanax have only one letter alike, which is t, and yet they have the same meaning. And how little in common with the letters of their names has Archepolis (ruler of the city) — and yet the meaning is the same. And there are many other names which just mean “king.” Again, there are several names for a general, as, for example, Agis (leader) and Polemarchus (chief in war) and Eupolemus (GOOD warrior) ; and others which denote a physician, as Iatrocles (famous healer) and Acesimbrotus (curer of mortals) ; and there are many others which might be cited, differing in their syllables and letters, but having the same meaning. Would you not say so ? CRATYLUS

Soc. And are not the GOOD wise ? CRATYLUS

Soc. And mine, too, Hermogenes. But do not be too much of a precisian, or “you will unnerve me of my strength.” When you have allowed me to add mechane (contrivance) to techne (art) I shall be at the top of my bent, for I conceive mechane to be a sign of great accomplishment — anein ; for mekos the meaning of greatness, and these two, mekos and anein, make up the word mechane. But, as I was saying, being now at the top of my bent, I should like to consider the meaning of the two words arete (virtue) and kakia (vice) arete I do not as yet understand, but kakia is transparent, and agrees with the principles which preceded, for all things being in a flux (ionton), kakia is kakos ion (going badly) ; and this evil motion when existing in the soul has the general name of kakia or vice, specially appropriated to it. The meaning of kakos ienai may be further illustrated by the use of deilia (cowardice), which ought to have come after andreia, but was forgotten, and, as I fear, is not the only word which has been passed over. Deilia signifies that the soul is bound with a strong chain (desmos), for lian means strength, and therefore deilia expresses the greatest and strongest bond of the soul ; and aporia (difficulty) is an evil of the same nature (from a not, and poreuesthai to go), like anything else which is an impediment to motion and movement. Then the word kakia appears to mean kakos ienai, or going badly, or limping and halting ; of which the consequence is, that the soul becomes filled with vice. And if kakia is the name of this sort of thing, arete will be the opposite of it, signifying in the first place ease of motion, then that the stream of the GOOD soul is unimpeded, and has therefore the attribute of ever flowing without let or hindrance, and is therefore called arete, or, more correctly, aeireite (ever-flowing), and may perhaps have had another form, airete (eligible), indicating that nothing is more eligible than virtue, and this has been hammered into arete. I daresay that you will deem this to be another invention of mine, but I think that if the previous word kakia was right, then arete is also right. CRATYLUS

Soc. Again, cherdaleon (gainful) is called from cherdos (gain), but you must alter the d into n if you want to get at the meaning ; for this word also signifies GOOD, but in another way ; he who gave the name intended to express the power of admixture (kerannumenon) and universal penetration in the GOOD ; in forming the word, however, he inserted a d instead of an n, and so made kerdos. CRATYLUS

Soc. I suppose, Hermogenes, that people do not mean by the profitable the gainful or that which pays (luei) the retailer, but they use the word in the sense of swift. You regard the profitable (lusitelou), as that which being the swiftest thing in existence, allows of no stay in things and no pause or end of motion, but always, if there begins to be any end, lets things go again (luei), and makes motion immortal and unceasing : and in this point of view, as appears to me, the GOOD is happily denominated lusiteloun — being that which looses (luon) the end (telos) of motion. Ophelimon (the advantageous) is derived from ophellein, meaning that which creates and increases ; this latter is a common Homeric word, and has a foreign character. CRATYLUS

Soc. Not if you restore the ancient form, which is more likely to be the correct one, and read dion instead of deon ; if you convert the e into an i after the old fashion, this word will then agree with other words meaning GOOD ; for dion, not deon, signifies the GOOD, and is a term of praise ; and the author of names has not contradicted himself, but in all these various appellations, deon (obligatory), ophelimon (advantageous), lusiteloun (profitable), kerdaleon (gainful), agathon (GOOD), sumpheron (expedient), euporon (plenteous), the same conception is implied of the ordering or all-pervading principle which is praised, and the restraining and binding principle which is censured. And this is further illustrated by the word zemiodes (hurtful), which if the z is only changed into d as in the ancient language, becomes demiodes ; and this name, as you will perceive, is given to that which binds motion (dounti ion). CRATYLUS

Soc. Nor can we reasonably say, Cratylus, that there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding ; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist. But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge ; and if the transition is always going on, there will always be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known : but if that which knows and that which is known exist ever, and the beautiful and the GOOD and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux, as we were just now supposing. Whether there is this eternal nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heracleitus and his followers and many others say, is a question hard to determine ; and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names : neither will he so far trust names or the givers of names as to be confident in any knowledge which condemns himself and other existences to an unhealthy state of unreality ; he will not believe that all things leak like a pot, or imagine that the world is a man who has a running at the nose. 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. CRATYLUS

To the feasts of inferior men the GOOD unbidden go ; SYMPOSIUM

To the feasts of the GOOD the GOOD unbidden go ; SYMPOSIUM

But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother in whose birth the female has no part, — she is from the male only ; this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older, there is nothing of wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by this love turn to the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent nature ; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in the very character of their attachments. For they love not boys, but intelligent, beings whose reason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which their beards begin to grow. And in choosing young men to be their companions, they mean to be faithful to them, and pass their whole life in company with them, not to take them in their inexperience, and deceive them, and play the fool with them, or run away from one to another of them. But the love of young boys should be forbidden by law, because their future is uncertain ; they may turn out GOOD or bad, either in body or soul, and much noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them ; in this matter the GOOD are a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers ought to be restrained by force ; as we restrain or attempt to restrain them from fixing their affections on women of free birth. These are the persons who bring a reproach on love ; and some have been led to deny the lawfulness of such attachments because they see the impropriety and evil of them ; for surely nothing that is decorously and lawfully done can justly be censured. SYMPOSIUM

Consider, too, how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the lover ; neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable ; but if he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed. And in the pursuit of his love the custom of mankind allows him to do many strange things, which philosophy would bitterly censure if they were done from any motive of interest, or wish for office or power. He may pray, and entreat, and supplicate, and swear, and lie on a mat at the door, and endure a slavery worse than that of any slave — in any other case friends and enemies would be equally ready to prevent him, but now there is no friend who will be ashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will charge him with meanness or flattery ; the actions of a lover have a grace which ennobles them ; and custom has decided that they are highly commendable and that there no loss of character in them ; and, what is strangest of all, he only may swear and forswear himself (so men say), and the gods will forgive his transgression, for there is no such thing as a lover’s oath. Such is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed the lover, according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world. From this point of view a man fairly argues in Athens to love and to be loved is held to be a very honourable thing. But when parents forbid their sons to talk with their lovers, and place them under a tutor’s care, who is appointed to see to these things, and their companions and equals cast in their teeth anything of the sort which they may observe, and their elders refuse to silence the reprovers and do not rebuke them — any one who reflects on all this will, on the contrary, think that we hold these practices to be most disgraceful. But, as I was saying at first, the truth as I imagine is, that whether such practices are honourable or whether they are dishonourable is not a simple question ; they are honourable to him who follows them honourably, dishonourable to him who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour in yielding to the evil, or in an evil manner ; but there is honour in yielding to the GOOD, or in an honourable manner. SYMPOSIUM

Eryximachus spoke as follows : Seeing that Pausanias made a fair beginning, and but a lame ending, I must endeavour to supply his deficiency. I think that he has rightly distinguished two kinds of love. But my art further informs me that the double love is not merely an affection of the soulsoul of man towards the fair, or towards anything, but is to be found in the bodies of all animals and in productions of the earth, and I may say in all that is ; such is the conclusion which I seem to have gathered from my own art of medicine, whence I learn how great and wonderful and universal is the deity of love, whose empire extends over all things, divine as well as human. And from medicine I would begin that I may do honour to my art. There are in the human body these two kinds of love, which are confessedly different and unlike, and being unlike, they have loves and desires which are unlike ; and the desire of the healthy is one, and the desire of the diseased is another ; and as Pausanias was just now saying that to indulge GOOD men is honourable, and bad men dishonourable : — so too in the body the GOOD and healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And this is what the physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists : for medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not ; and the best physician is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into the other ; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love, whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the constitution and make them loving friends, is skilful practitioner. Now the : most hostile are the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter and sweet, moist and dry, and the like. And my ancestor, Asclepius, knowing how to implant friendship and accord in these elements, was the creator of our art, as our friends the poets here tell us, and I believe them ; and not only medicine in every branch but the arts of gymnastic and husbandry are under his dominion. SYMPOSIUM

Any one who pays the least attention to the subject will also perceive that in music there is the same reconciliation of opposites ; and I suppose that this must have been the meaning of Heracleitus, although his words are not accurate, for he says that is united by disunion, like the harmony of bow and the lyre. Now there is an absurdity saying that harmony is discord or is composed of elements which are still in a state of discord. But what he probably meant was, that, harmony is composed of differing notes of higher or lower pitch which disagreed once, but are now reconciled by the art of music ; for if the higher and lower notes still disagreed, there could be there could be no harmony — clearly not. For harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement ; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be ; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is compounded of elements short and long, once differing and now in accord ; which accordance, as in the former instance, medicine, so in all these other cases, music implants, making love and unison to grow up among them ; and thus music, too, is concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm. Again, in the essential nature of harmony and rhythm there is no difficulty in discerning love which has not yet become double. But when you want to use them in actual life, either in the composition of songs or in the correct performance of airs or metres composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty begins, and the GOOD artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair and heavenly love — the love of Urania the fair and heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those who are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and of preserving their love ; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must be used with circumspection that the pleasure be enjoyed, but may not generate licentiousness ; just as in my own art it is a great matter so to regulate the desires of the epicure that he may gratify his tastes without the attendant evil of disease. Whence I infer that in music, in medicine, in all other things human as which as divine, both loves ought to be noted as far as may be, for they are both present. SYMPOSIUM

The course of the seasons is also full of both these principles ; and when, as I was saying, the elements of hot and cold, moist and dry, attain the harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and harmony, they bring to men, animals, and plants health and plenty, and do them no harm ; whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and affecting the seasons of the year, is very destructive and injurious, being the source of pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of diseases on animals and plants ; for hoar-frost and hail and blight spring from the excesses and disorders of these elements of love, which to know in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year is termed astronomy. Furthermore all sacrifices and the whole province of divination, which is the art of communion between gods and men — these, I say, are concerned with the preservation of the GOOD and the cure of the evil love. For all manner of impiety is likely to ensue if, instead of accepting and honouring and reverencing the harmonious love in all his actions, a man honours the other love, whether in his feelings towards gods or parents, towards the living or the dead. Wherefore the business of divination is to see to these loves and to heal them, and divination is the peacemaker of gods and men, working by a knowledge of the religious or irreligious tendencies which exist in human loves. Such is the great and mighty, or rather omnipotent force of love in general. And the love, more especially, which is concerned with the GOOD, and which is perfected in company with temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another. I dare say that I too have omitted several things which might be said in praise of Love, but this was not intentional, and you, Aristophanes, may now supply the omission or take some other line of commendation ; for I perceive that you are rid of the hiccough. SYMPOSIUM

Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the GOOD, of which Love is to us the lord and minister ; and let no one oppose him — he is the enemy of the gods who oppose him. For if we are friends of the God and at peace with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world at present. I am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not to make fun or to find any allusion in what I am saying to Pausanias and Agathon, who, as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the class which I have been describing. But my words have a wider application — they include men and women everywhere ; and I believe that if our loves were perfectly accomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love, then our race would be happy. And if this would be best of all, the best in the next degree and under present circumstances must be the nearest approach to such an union ; and that will be the attainment of a congenial love. Wherefore, if we would praise him who has given to us the benefit, we must praise the god Love, who is our greatest benefactor, both leading us in this life back to our own nature, and giving us high hopes for the future, for he promises that if we are pious, he will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us happy and blessed. This, Eryximachus, is my discourse of love, which, although different to yours, I must beg you to leave unassailed by the shafts of your ridicule, in order that each may have his turn ; each, or rather either, for Agathon and Socrates are the only ones left. SYMPOSIUM

This is he who empties men of disaffection and fills them with affection, who makes them to meet together at banquets such as these : in sacrifices, feasts, dances, he is our lord — who sends courtesy and sends away discourtesy, who gives kindness ever and never gives unkindness ; the friend of the GOOD, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods ; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him ; parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace ; regardful of the GOOD, regardless of the evil : in every word, work, wish, fear-saviour, pilot, comrade, helper ; glory of gods and men, leader best and brightest : in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in his honour and joining in that sweet strain with which love charms the souls of gods and men. Such is the speech, Phaedrus, half-playful, yet having a certain measure of seriousness, which, according to my ability, I dedicate to the god. SYMPOSIUM

You made a very GOOD speech, Agathon, replied Socrates ; but there is yet one small question which I would fain ask : — Is not the GOOD also the beautiful ? SYMPOSIUM

Then in wanting the beautiful, love wants also the GOOD ? SYMPOSIUM

I said, “O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well ; but, assuming Love to be such as you say, what is the use of him to men ?” “That, Socrates,” she replied, “I will attempt to unfold : of his nature and birth I have already spoken ; and you acknowledge that love is of the beautiful. But some one will say : Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima ? — or rather let me put the question more dearly, and ask : When a man loves the beautiful, what does he desire ?” I answered her “That the beautiful may be his.” “Still,” she said, “the answer suggests a further question : What is given by the possession of beauty ?” “To what you have asked,” I replied, “I have no answer ready.” “Then,” she said, “Let me put the word ‘GOOD’ in the place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more : If he who loves GOOD, what is it then that he loves ? “The possession of the GOOD,” I said. “And what does he gain who possesses the GOOD ?” “Happiness,” I replied ; “there is less difficulty in answering that question.” “Yes,” she said, “the happy are made happy by the acquisition of GOOD things. Nor is there any need to ask why a man desires happiness ; the answer is already final.” “You are right.” I said. “And is this wish and this desire common to all ? and do all men always desire their own GOOD, or only some men ? — what say you ?” “All men,” I replied ; “the desire is common to all.” “Why, then,” she rejoined, “are not all men, Socrates, said to love, but only some them ? whereas you say that all men are always loving the same things.” “I myself wonder,” I said, — why this is.” “There is nothing to wonder at,” she replied ; “the reason is that one part of love is separated off and receives the name of the whole, but the other parts have other names.” “Give an illustration,” I said. She answered me as follows : “There is poetry, which, as you know, is complex ; and manifold. All creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making, and the processes of all art are creative ; and the masters of arts are all poets or makers.” “Very true.” “Still,” she said, “you know that they are not called poets, but have other names ; only that portion of the art which is separated off from the rest, and is concerned with music and metre, is termed poetry, and they who possess poetry in this sense of the word are called poets.” “Very true,” I said. “And the same holds of love. For you may say generally that all desire of GOOD and happiness is only the great and subtle power of love ; but they who are drawn towards him by any other path, whether the path of money-making or gymnastics or philosophy, are not called lovers — the name of the whole is appropriated to those whose affection takes one form only — they alone are said to love, or to be lovers.” “I dare say,” I replied, “that you are right.” “Yes,” she added, “and you hear people say that lovers are seeking for their other half ; but I say that they are seeking neither for the half of themselves, nor for the whole, unless the half or the whole be also a GOOD. And they will cut off their own hands and feet and cast them away, if they are evil ; for they love not what is their own, unless perchance there be some one who calls what belongs to him the GOOD, and what belongs to another the evil. For there is nothing which men love but the GOOD. Is there anything ?” “Certainly, I should say, that there is nothing.” “Then,” she said, “the simple truth is, that men love the GOOD.” “Yes,” I said. “To which must be added that they love the possession of the GOOD ? “Yes, that must be added.” “And not only the possession, but the everlasting possession of the GOOD ?” “That must be added too.” “Then love,” she said, “may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the GOOD ?” “That is most true.” SYMPOSIUM

“Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further,” she said, “what is the manner of the pursuit ? what are they doing who show all this eagerness and heat which is called love ? and what is the object which they have in view ? Answer me.” “Nay, Diotima,” I replied, “if I had known, I should not have wondered at your wisdom, neither should I have come to learn from you about this very matter.” “Well,” she said, “I will teach you : — The object which they have in view is birth in beauty, whether of body or, soul.” “I do not understand you,” I said ; “the oracle requires an explanation.” “I will make my meaning dearer,” she replied. “I mean to say, that all men are bringing to the birth in their bodies and in their souls. There is a certain age at which human nature is desirous of procreation — procreation which must be in beauty and not in deformity ; and this procreation is the union of man and woman, and is a divine thing ; for conception and generation are an immortal principle in the mortal creature, and in the inharmonious they can never be. But the deformed is always inharmonious with the divine, and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides at birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty, the conceiving power is propitious, and diffusive, and benign, and begets and bears fruit : at the sight of ugliness she frowns and contracts and has a sense of pain, and turns away, and shrivels up, and not without a pang refrains from conception. And this is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming nature is full, there is such a flutter and ecstasy about beauty whose approach is the alleviation of the pain of travail. For love, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only.” “What then ?” “The love of generation and of birth in beauty.” “Yes,” I said. “Yes, indeed,” she replied. “But why of generation ?” “Because to the mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and immortality,” she replied ; “and if, as has been already admitted, love is of the everlasting possession of the GOOD, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with GOOD : Wherefore love is of immortality.” SYMPOSIUM

Yes, Socrates, said Cebes, there is surely reason in that. And yet how can you reconcile this seemingly true belief that God is our guardian and we his possessions, with that willingness to die which we were attributing to the philosopher ? That the wisest of men should be willing to leave this service in which they are ruled by the gods who are the best of rulers is not reasonable, for surely no wise man thinks that when set at liberty he can take better care of himself than the gods take of him. A fool may perhaps think this — he may argue that he had better run away from his master, not considering that his duty is to remain to the end, and not to run away from the GOOD, and that there is no sense in his running away. But the wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself. Now this, Socrates, is the reverse of what was just now said ; for upon this view the wise man should sorrow and the fool rejoice at passing out of life. PHAEDO

Then I must try to make a better impression upon you than I did when defending myself before the judges. For I am quite ready to acknowledge, Simmias and Cebes, that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to other gods who are wise and GOOD (of this I am as certain as I can be of anything of the sort) and to men departed (though I am not so certain of this), who are better than those whom I leave behind ; and therefore I do not grieve as I might have done, for I have GOOD hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead, and, as has been said of old, some far better thing for the GOOD than for the evil. PHAEDO

Yes, he said, Cebes, I entirely think so, too ; and we are not walking in a vain imagination ; but I am confident in the belief that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that the GOOD souls have a better portion than the evil. PHAEDO

And are we to suppose that the soul, which is invisible, in passing to the true Hades, which like her is invisible, and pure, and noble, and on her way to the GOOD and wise God, whither, if God will, my soul is also soon to go — that the soul, I repeat, if this be her nature and origin, is blown away and perishes immediately on quitting the body as the many say ? That can never be, dear Simmias and Cebes. The truth rather is that the soul which is pure at departing draws after her no bodily taint, having never voluntarily had connection with the body, which she is ever avoiding, herself gathered into herself (for such abstraction has been the study of her life). And what does this mean but that she has been a true disciple of philosophy and has practised how to die easily ? And is not philosophy the practice of death ? PHAEDO

Yes, that is very likely, Cebes ; and these must be the souls, not of the GOOD, but of the evil, who are compelled to wander about such places in payment of the penalty of their former evil way of life ; and they continue to wander until the desire which haunts them is satisfied and they are imprisoned in another body. And they may be supposed to be fixed in the same natures which they had in their former life. PHAEDO

Socrates smiled and said : O Simmias, how strange that is ; I am not very likely to persuade other men that I do not regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I am unable to persuade you, and you will keep fancying that I am at all more troubled now than at any other time. 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 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 ; which are said indeed to tune a lay of sorrow, although I do not believe this to be true of them any more than of the swans. But because they are sacred to Apollo and have the gift of prophecy and anticipate the GOOD things of another world, therefore they sing and rejoice in that day more than they ever did before. And I, too, believing myself to be the consecrated servant of the same God, and the fellow servant of the swans, and thinking that I have received from my master gifts of prophecy which are not inferior to theirs, would not go out of life less merrily than the swans. Cease to mind then about this, but speak and ask anything which you like, while the eleven magistrates of Athens allow. PHAEDO

And is not this discreditable ? The reason is that a man, having to deal with other men, has no knowledge of them ; for if he had knowledge he would have known the true state of the case, that few are the GOOD and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them. PHAEDO

What hopes 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. I might compare him to a person who began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, but who, when he endeavored to explain the causes of my several actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones and muscles ; and the bones, as he would say, are hard and have ligaments which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover the bones, which have also a covering or environment of flesh and skin which contains them ; and as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture : that is what he would say, and he would have a similar explanation of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is that the Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence ; for I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off to Megara or Boeotia — by the dog of Egypt they would, if they had been guided only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen as the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, to undergo any punishment which the State inflicts. There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. 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. Any power which in disposing them as they are disposes them for the best never enters into their minds, nor do they imagine that there is any superhuman strength in that ; they rather expect to find another Atlas of the world who is stronger and more everlasting and more containing than the GOOD is, and are clearly of opinion that the obligatory and containing power of the GOOD is as nothing ; and yet this is the principle which I would fain learn if anyone would teach me. But as I have failed either to discover myself or to learn of anyone else, the nature of the best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I have found to be the second best mode of inquiring into the cause. PHAEDO

Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul of each one can return to the place from whence she came, for she cannot grow her wings in less ; only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true, or the soul of a lover, who is not devoid of philosophy, may acquire wings in the third of the recurring periods of a thousand years ; he is distinguished from the ordinary GOOD man who gains wings in three thousand years : — and they who choose this life three times in succession have wings given them, and go away at the end of three thousand years. But the others receive judgment when they have completed their first life, and after the judgment they go, some of them to the houses of correction which are under the earth, and are punished ; others to some place in heaven whither they are lightly borne by justice, and there they live in a manner worthy of the life which they led here when in the form of men. And at the end of the first thousand years the GOOD souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots and choose their second life, and they may take any which they please. The soul of a man may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the man. But the soul which has never seen the truth will not pass into the human form. For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason ; — this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God — when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings ; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him ; they do not see that he is inspired. PHAEDRUS

And so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and loyal service from his lover, not in pretence but in reality, being also himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in former days he has blushed to own his passion and turned away his lover, because his youthful companions or others slanderously told him that he would be disgraced, now as years advance, at the appointed age and time, is led to receive him into communion. For fate which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the GOOD. And the beloved when he has received him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the GOOD-will of the lover ; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen ; they have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. And when his feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again ; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one ; there arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering. them and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love. And thus he loves, but he knows not what ; he does not understand and cannot explain his own state ; he appears to have caught the infection of blindness from another ; the lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this. When he is with the lover, both cease from their pain, but when he is away then he longs as he is longed for, and has love’s image, love for love (Anteros) lodging in his breast, which he calls and believes to be not love but friendship only, and his desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker ; he wants to see him, touch him, kiss him, embrace him, and probably not long afterwards his desire is accomplished. When they meet, the wanton steed of the lover has a word to say to the charioteer ; he would like to have a little pleasure in return for many pains, but the wanton steed of the beloved says not a word, for he is bursting with passion which he understands not ; — he throws his arms round the lover and embraces him as his dearest friend ; and, when they are side by side, he is not in it state in which he can refuse the lover anything, if he ask him ; although his fellow-steed and the charioteer oppose him with the arguments of shame and reason. PHAEDRUS

Soc. Then once more : Is it your opinion that nothing is but what becomes ? the GOOD and the noble, as well ; as all the other things which we were just now mentioning ? THEAETETUS

And I am far from saying that wisdom and the wise man have no existence ; but I say that the wise man is he who makes the evils which appear and are to a man, into GOODs which are and appear to him. And I would beg you not to my words in the letter, but to take the meaning of them as I will explain them. Remember what has been already said, — that to the sick man his food appears to be and is bitter, and to the man in health the opposite of bitter. Now I cannot conceive that one of these men can be or ought to be made wiser than the other : nor can you assert that the sick man because he has one impression is foolish, and the healthy man because he has another is wise ; but the one state requires to be changed into the other, the worse into the better. As in education, a change of state has to be effected, and the sophist accomplishes by words the change which the physician works by the aid of drugs. Not that any one ever made another think truly, who previously thought falsely. For no one can think what is not, or think anything different from that which he feels ; and this is always true. But as the inferior habit of mind has thoughts of kindred nature, so I conceive that a GOOD mind causes men to have GOOD thoughts ; and these which the inexperienced call true, I maintain to be only better, and not truer than others. And, O my dear Socrates, I do not call wise men tadpoles : far from it ; I say that they are the physicians of the human body, and the husbandmen of plants — for the husbandmen also take away the evil and disordered sensations of plants, and infuse into them GOOD and healthy sensations — aye and true ones ; and the wise and GOOD rhetoricians make the GOOD instead of the evil to seem just to states ; for whatever appears to a state to be just and fair, so long as it is regarded as such, is just and fair to it ; but the teacher of wisdom causes the GOOD to take the place of the evil, both in appearance and in reality. And in like manner the Sophist who is able to train his pupils in this spirit is a wise man, and deserves to be well paid by them. And so one man is wiser than another ; and no one thinks falsely, and you, whether you will or not, must endure to be a measure. On these foundations the argument stands firm, which you, Socrates, may, if you please, overthrow by an opposite argument, or if you like you may put questions to me — a method to which no intelligent person will object, quite the reverse. But I must beg you to put fair questions : for there is great inconsistency in saying that you have a zeal for virtue, and then always behaving unfairly in argument. The unfairness of which I complain is that you do not distinguish between mere disputation and dialectic : the disputer may trip up his opponent as often as he likes, and make fun ; but the dialectician will be in earnest, and only correct his adversary when necessary, telling him the errors into which he has fallen through his own fault, or that of the company which he has previously kept. If you do so, your adversary will lay the blame of his own confusion and perplexity on himself, and not on you ; will follow and love you, and will hate himself, and escape from himself into philosophy, in order that he may become different from what he was. But the other mode of arguing, which is practised by the many, will have just the opposite effect upon him ; and as he grows older, instead of turning philosopher, he will come to hate philosophy. I would recommend you, therefore, as I said before, not to encourage yourself in this polemical and controversial temper, but to find out, in a friendly and congenial spirit, what we really mean when we say that all things are in motion, and that to every individual and state what appears, is. In this manner you will consider whether knowledge and sensation are the same or different, but you will not argue, as you were just now doing, from the customary use of names and words, which the vulgar pervert in all sorts of ways, causing infinite perplexity to one another. THEAETETUS

Soc. Had we not reached the point at which the partisans of the perpetual flux, who say that things are as they seem to each one, were confidently maintaining that the ordinances which the state commanded 2nd thought just, were just to the state which imposed them, while they were in force ; this was especially asserted of justice ; but as to the GOOD, no one had any longer the hardihood to contend of any ordinances which the state thought and enacted to be GOOD that these, while they were in force, were really GOOD ; — he who said so would be playing with the name “GOOD,” and would, not touch the real question — it would be a mockery, would it not ? THEAETETUS

Soc. Whatever be the term used, the GOOD or expedient is the aim of legislation, and as far as she has an opinion, the state imposes all laws with a view to the greatest expediency ; can legislation have any other aim ? THEAETETUS

Soc. The possibility of error will be more distinctly recognized, if we put the question in reference to the whole class under which the GOOD or expedient fall That whole class has to do with the future, and laws are passed under the idea that they will be useful in after-time ; which, in other words, is the future. THEAETETUS

Parmenides proceeded : And would you also make absolute ideas of the just and the beautiful and the GOOD, and of all that class ? PARMENIDES

Then the nature of the beautiful in itself, and of the GOOD in itself, and all other ideas which we suppose to exist absolutely, are unknown to us ? PARMENIDES

Yes, said Parmenides ; and I think that this arises, Socrates, out of your attempting to define the beautiful, the just, the GOOD, and the ideas generally, without sufficient previous training. I noticed your deficiency, when I heard you talking here with your friend Aristoteles, the day before yesterday. The impulse that carries you towards philosophy is assuredly noble and divine ; but there is an art which is called by the vulgar idle talking, and which is of imagined to be useless ; in that you must train and exercise yourself, now that you are young, or truth will elude your grasp. PARMENIDES

Socrates. Is he not rather a god, Theodorus, who comes to us in the disguise of a stranger ? For Homer says that all the gods, and especially the god of strangers, are companions of the meek and just, and visit the GOOD and evil among men. And may not your companion be one of those higher powers, a cross-examining deity, who has come to spy out our weakness in argument, and to cross-examine us ? SOPHIST

Str. And purification was to leave the GOOD and to cast out whatever is bad ? SOPHIST

In the fulness of time, when the change was to take place, and the earth-born race had all perished, and every soul had completed its proper cycle of births and been sown in the earth her appointed number of times, the pilot of the universe let the helm go, and retired to his place of view ; and then Fate and innate desire reversed the motion of the world. Then also all the inferior deities who share the rule of the supreme power, being informed of what was happening, let go the parts of the world which were under their control. And the world turning round with a sudden shock, being impelled in an opposite direction from beginning to end, was shaken by a mighty earthquake, which wrought a new destruction of all manner of animals. Afterwards, when sufficient time had elapsed, the tumult and confusion and earthquake ceased, and the universal creature, once more at peace attained to a calm, and settle down into his own orderly and accustomed course, having the charge and rule of himself and of all the creatures which are contained in him, and executing, as far as he remembered them, the instructions of his Father and Creator, more precisely at first, but afterwords with less exactness. The reason of the falling off was the admixture of matter in him ; this was inherent in the primal nature, which was full of disorder, until attaining to the present order. From God, the constructor ; the world received all that is GOOD in him, but from a previous state came elements of evil and unrighteousness, which, thence derived, first of all passed into the world, and were then transmitted to the animals. While the world was aided by the pilot in nurturing the animals, the evil was small, and great the GOOD which he produced, but after the separation, when the world was let go, at first all proceeded well enough ; but, as time went there was more and more forgetting, and the old discord again held sway and burst forth in full glory ; and at last small was the GOOD, and great was the admixture of evil, and there was a danger of universal ruin to the world, and the things contained in him. Wherefore God, the orderer of all, in his tender care, seeing that the world was in great straits, and fearing that all might be dissolved in the storm and disappear in infinite chaos, again seated himself at the helm ; and bringing back the elements which had fallen into dissolution and disorder to the motion which had prevailed under his dispensation, he set them in order and restored them, and made the world imperishable and immortal. STATESMAN

Str. I want to know, whether any constructive art will make any, even the most trivial thing, out of bad and GOOD materials indifferently, if this can be helped ? does not all art rather reject the bad as far as possible, and accept the GOOD and fit materials, and from these elements, whether like or unlike, gathering them all into one, work out some nature or idea ? STATESMAN

Str. Only the Statesman and the GOOD legislator, having the inspiration of the royal muse, can implant this opinion, and he, only in the rightly educated, whom we were just now describing. STATESMAN

Str. Can we say that such a connection as this will lastingly unite the evil with one another or with the GOOD, or that any science would seriously think of using a bond of this kind to join such materials ? STATESMAN

Soc. And do you also remember how, with a view of securing as far as we could the best breed, we said that the chief magistrates, male and female, should contrive secretly, by the use of certain lots, so to arrange the nuptial meeting, that the bad of either sex and the GOOD of either sex might pair with their like ; and there was to be no quarrelling on this account, for they would imagine that the union was a mere accident, and was to be attributed to the lot ? TIMAEUS

Soc. And you remember how we said that the children of the GOOD parents were to be educated, and the children of the bad secretly dispersed among the inferior citizens ; and while they were all growing up the rulers were to be on the look-out, and to bring up from below in their turn those who were worthy, and those among themselves who were unworthy were to take the places of those who came up ? TIMAEUS

Tim. 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. This is in the truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do well in believing on the testimony of wise men : God desired that all things should be GOOD and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable. Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in every way better than the other. Now the deeds of the best could never be or have been other than the fairest ; and the creator, reflecting on the things which are by nature visible, found that no unintelligent creature taken as a whole was fairer than the intelligent taken as a whole ; and that intelligence could not be present in anything which was devoid of soul. For which reason, when he was framing the universe, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he might be the creator of a work which was by nature fairest and best. Wherefore, using the language of probability, we may say that the world became a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of God. TIMAEUS

These are the elements, thus of necessity then subsisting, which the creator of the fairest and best of created things associated with himself, when he made the self-sufficing and most perfect God, using the necessary causes as his ministers in the accomplishment of his work, but himself contriving the GOOD in all his creations. Wherefore we may distinguish two sorts of causes, the one divine and the other necessary, and may seek for the divine in all things, as far as our nature admits, with a view to the blessed life ; but the necessary kind only for the sake of the divine, considering that without them and when isolated from them, these higher things for which we look cannot be apprehended or received or in any way shared by us. TIMAEUS

The part of the soul which desires meats and drinks and the other things of which it has need by reason of the bodily nature, they placed between the midriff and the boundary of the navel, contriving in all this region a sort of manger for the food of the body ; and there they bound it down like a wild animal which was chained up with man, and must be nourished if man was to exist. They appointed this lower creation his place here in order that he might be always feeding at the manger, and have his dwelling as far as might be from the council-chamber, making as little noise and disturbance as possible, and permitting the best part to advise quietly for the GOOD of the whole. And knowing that this lower principle in man would not comprehend reason, and even if attaining to some degree of perception would never naturally care for rational notions, but that it would be led away by phantoms and visions night and day — to be a remedy for this, God combined with it the liver, and placed it in the house of the lower nature, contriving that it should be solid and smooth, and bright and sweet, and should also have a bitter quality, in order that the power of thought, which proceeds from the mind, might be reflected as in a mirror which receives likenesses of objects and gives back images of them to the sight ; and so might strike terror into the desires, when, making use of the bitter part of the liver, to which it is akin, it comes threatening and invading, and diffusing this bitter element swiftly through the whole liver produces colours like bile, and contracting every part makes it wrinkled and rough ; and twisting out of its right place and contorting the lobe and closing and shutting up the vessels and gates, causes pain and loathing. And the converse happens when some gentle inspiration of the understanding pictures images of an opposite character, and allays the bile and bitterness by refusing to stir or touch the nature opposed to itself, but by making use of the natural sweetness of the liver, corrects all things and makes them to be right and smooth and free, and renders the portion of the soul which resides about the liver happy and joyful, enabling it to pass the night in peace, and to practise divination in sleep, inasmuch as it has no share in mind and reason. For the authors of our being, remembering the command of their father when he bade them create the human race as GOOD as they could, that they might correct our inferior parts and make them to attain a measure of truth, placed in the liver the seat of divination. 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 he who would understand what he remembers to have been said, whether in a dream or when he was awake, by the prophetic and inspired nature, or would determine by reason the meaning of the apparitions which he has seen, and what indications they afford to this man or that, of past, present or future GOOD and evil, must first recover his wits. But, while he continues demented, he cannot judge of the visions which he sees or the words which he utters ; the ancient saying is very true, that “only a man who has his wits can act or judge about himself and his own affairs.” And for this reason it is customary to appoint interpreters to be judges of the true inspiration. Some persons call them prophets ; they are quite unaware that they are only the expositors of dark sayings and visions, and are not to be called prophets at all, but only interpreters of prophecy. TIMAEUS

But our creators, considering whether they should make a longer-lived race which was worse, or a shorter-lived race which was better, came to the conclusion that every one ought to prefer a shorter span of life, which was better, to a longer one, which was worse ; and therefore they covered the head with thin bone, but not with flesh and sinews, since it had no joints ; and thus the head was added, having more wisdom and sensation than the rest of the body, but also being in every man far weaker. For these reasons and after this manner God placed the sinews at the extremity of the head, in a circle round the neck, and glued them together by the principle of likeness and fastened the extremities of the jawbones to them below the face, and the other sinews he dispersed throughout the body, fastening limb to limb. The framers of us framed the mouth, as now arranged, having teeth and tongue and lips, with a view to the necessary and the GOOD, contriving the way in for necessary purposes, the way out for the best purposes ; for that is necessary which enters in and gives food to the body ; but the river of speech, which flows out of a man and ministers to the intelligence, is the fairest and noblest of all streams. Still the head could neither be left a bare frame of bones, on account of the extremes of heat and cold in the different seasons, nor yet be allowed to be wholly covered, and so become dull and senseless by reason of an overgrowth of flesh. The fleshy nature was not therefore wholly dried up, but a large sort of peel was parted off and remained over, which is now called the skin. This met and grew by the help of the cerebral moisture, and became the circular envelopment of the head. And the moisture, rising up under the sutures, watered and closed in the skin upon the crown, forming a sort of knot. The diversity of the sutures was caused by the power of the courses of the soul and of the food, and the more these struggled against one another the more numerous they became, and fewer if the struggle were less violent. This skin the divine power pierced all round with fire, and out of the punctures which were thus made the moisture issued forth, and the liquid and heat which was pure came away, and a mixed part which was composed of the same material as the skin, and had a fineness equal to the punctures, was borne up by its own impulse and extended far outside the head, but being too slow to escape, was thrust back by the external air, and rolled up underneath the skin, where it took root. Thus the hair sprang up in the skin, being akin to it because it is like threads of leather, but rendered harder and closer through the pressure of the cold, by which each hair, while in process of separation from the skin, is compressed and cooled. Wherefore the creator formed the head hairy, making use of the causes which I have mentioned, and reflecting also that instead of flesh the brain needed the hair to be a light covering or guard, which would give shade in summer and shelter in winter, and at the same time would not impede our quickness of perception. From the combination of sinew, skin, and bone, in the structure of the finger, there arises a triple compound, which, when dried up, takes the form of one hard skin partaking of all three natures, and was fabricated by these second causes, but designed by mind which is the principal cause with an eye to the future. For our creators well knew that women and other animals would some day be framed out of men, and they further knew that many animals would require the use of nails for many purposes ; wherefore they fashioned in men at their first creation the rudiments of nails. For this purpose and for these reasons they caused skin, hair, and nails to grow at the extremities of the limbs. And now that all the parts and members of the mortal animal had come together, since its life of necessity consisted of fire and breath, and it therefore wasted away by dissolution and depletion, the gods contrived the following remedy : They mingled a nature akin to that of man with other forms and perceptions, and thus created another kind of animal. These are the trees and plants and seeds which have been improved by cultivation and are now domesticated among us ; anciently there were only the will kinds, which are older than the cultivated. For everything that partakes of life may be truly called a living being, and the animal of which we are now speaking partakes of the third kind of soul, which is said to be seated between the midriff and the navel, having no part in opinion or reason or mind, but only in feelings of pleasure and pain and the desires which accompany them. For this nature is always in a passive state, revolving in and about itself, repelling the motion from without and using its own, and accordingly is not endowed by nature with the power of observing or reflecting on its own concerns. Wherefore it lives and does not differ from a living being, but is fixed and rooted in the same spot, having no power of self-motion. TIMAEUS

There is a corresponding enquiry concerning the mode of treatment by which the mind and the body are to be preserved, about which it is meet and right that I should say a word in turn ; for it is more our duty to speak of the GOOD than of the evil. Everything that is GOOD is fair, and the animal 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. This however we do not perceive, nor do we reflect that when a weak or small frame is the vehicle of a great and mighty soul, or conversely, when a little soul is encased in a large body, then the whole animal is not fair, for it lacks the most important of all symmetries ; but the due proportion of mind and body is the fairest and loveliest of all sights to him who has the seeing eye. Just as a body which has a leg too long, or which is unsymmetrical in some other respect, is an unpleasant sight, and also, when doing its share of work, is much distressed and makes convulsive efforts, and often stumbles through awkwardness, and is the cause of infinite evil to its own self — in like manner we should conceive of the double nature which we call the living being ; and when in this compound there is an impassioned soul more powerful than the body, that soul, I say, convulses and fills with disorders the whole inner nature of man ; and when eager in the pursuit of some sort of learning or study, causes wasting ; or again, when teaching or disputing in private or in public, and strifes and controversies arise, inflames and dissolves the composite frame of man and introduces rheums ; and the nature of this phenomenon is not understood by most professors of medicine, who ascribe it to the opposite of the real cause. And once more, when body large and too strong for the soul is united to a small and weak intelligence, then inasmuch as there are two desires natural to man, — one of food for the sake of the body, and one of wisdom for the sake of the diviner part of us — then, I say, the motions of the stronger, getting the better and increasing their own power, but making the soul dull, and stupid, and forgetful, engender ignorance, which is the greatest of diseases. There is one protection against both kinds of disproportion : — that we should not move the body without the soul or the soul without the body, and thus they will be on their guard against each other, and be healthy and well balanced. And therefore the mathematician or any one else whose thoughts are much absorbed in some intellectual pursuit, must allow his body also to have due exercise, and practise gymnastic ; and he who is careful to fashion the body, should in turn impart to the soul its proper motions, and should cultivate music and all philosophy, if he would deserve to be called truly fair and truly GOOD. And the separate parts should be treated in the same manner, in imitation of the pattern of the universe ; for as the body is heated and also cooled within by the elements which enter into it, and is again dried up and moistened by external things, and experiences these and the like affections from both kinds of motions, the result is that the body if given up to motion when in a state of quiescence is overmastered and perishes ; but if any one, in imitation of that which we call the foster-mother and nurse of the universe, will not allow the body ever to be inactive, but is always producing motions and agitations through its whole extent, which form the natural defence against other motions both internal and external, and by moderate exercise reduces to order according to their affinities the particles and affections which are wandering about the body, as we have already said when speaking of the universe, he will not allow enemy placed by the side of enemy to stir up wars and disorders in the body, but he will place friend by the side of friend, so as to create health. TIMAEUS

Pro. What do you mean, Socrates ? Do you think that any one who asserts pleasure to be the GOOD, will tolerate the notion that some Pleasures are GOOD and others bad ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Ask me whether wisdom and science and mind, and those other qualities which I, when asked by you at first what is the nature of the GOOD, affirmed to be GOOD, are not in the same case with the pleasures of which you spoke. PHILEBUS

Soc. And let us have no concealment, Protarchus, of the differences between my GOOD and yours ; but let us bring them to the light in the hope that, in the process of testing them, they may show whether pleasure is to be called the GOOD, or wisdom, or some third quality ; for surely we are not now simply contending in order that my view or that yours may prevail, but I presume that we ought both of us to be fighting for the truth. PHILEBUS

Soc. When, my boy, the one does not belong to the class of things that are born and perish, as in the instances which we were giving, for in those cases, and when unity is of this concrete nature, there is, as I was saying, a universal consent that no refutation is needed ; but when the assertion is made that man is one, or ox is one, or beauty one, or the GOOD one, then the interest which attaches to these and similar unities and the attempt which is made to divide them gives birth to a controversy. PHILEBUS

Soc. I remember to have heard long ago certain discussions about pleasure and wisdom, whether awake or in a dream I cannot tell ; they were to the effect that neither the one nor the other of them was the GOOD, but some third thing, which was different from them, and better than either. If this be clearly established, then pleasure will lose the victory, for the GOOD will cease to be identified with her : — Am I not right ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Is the GOOD perfect or imperfect ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And is the GOOD sufficient ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And no one can deny that all percipient beings desire and hunt after GOOD, and are eager to catch and have the GOOD about them, and care not for the attainment of anything which its not accompanied by GOOD. PHILEBUS

Soc. Then now there can be no doubt that neither of them has the GOOD, for the one which had would certainly have been sufficient and perfect and eligible for every living creature or thing that was able to live such a life ; and if any of us had chosen any other, he would have chosen contrary to the nature of the truly eligible, and not of his own free will, but either through ignorance or from some unhappy necessity. PHILEBUS

Soc. And now have I not sufficiently shown that Philebus, goddess is not to be regarded as identical with the GOOD ? PHILEBUS

Phi. Neither is your “mind” the GOOD, Socrates, for that will be open to the same objections. PHILEBUS

Soc. Perhaps, Philebus, you may be right in saying so of my “mind” ; but of the true, which is also the divine mind, far otherwise. However, I will not at present claim the first place for mind as against the mixed life ; but we must come to some understanding about the second place. For you might affirm pleasure and I mind to be the cause of the mixed life ; and in that case although neither of them would be the GOOD, one of them might be imagined to be the cause of the GOOD. And I might proceed further to argue in opposition to Phoebus, that the element which makes this mixed life eligible and GOOD, is more akin and more similar to mind than to pleasure. 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. PHILEBUS

Soc. And may we not say that the GOOD, being friends of the gods, have generally true pictures presented to them, and the bad false pictures ? PHILEBUS

Soc. The bad, too, have pleasures painted in their fancy as well as the GOOD ; but I presume that they are false pleasures. PHILEBUS

Soc. The bad then commonly delight in false pleasures, and the GOOD in true pleasures ? PHILEBUS

Soc. Philebus says that pleasure is the true end of all living beings, at which all ought to aim, and moreover that it is the chief GOOD of all, and that the two names “GOOD” and “pleasant” are correctly given to one thing and one nature ; Socrates, on the other hand, begins by denying this, and further says, that in nature as in name they are two, and that wisdom partakes more than pleasure of the GOOD. Is not and was not this what we were saying, Protarchus ? PHILEBUS

Soc. That the GOOD differs from all other things. PHILEBUS

Soc. Then now we must ascertain the nature of the GOOD more or less accurately, in order, as we were saying, that the second place may be duly assigned. PHILEBUS

Soc. Have we not found a road which leads towards the GOOD ? PHILEBUS

Soc. And now reason intimates to us, as at our first beginning, that we should seek the GOOD, not in the unmixed life but in the mixed. PHILEBUS

Soc. And may we not say with reason that we are now at the vestibule of the habitation of the GOOD ? PHILEBUS

Soc. 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. PHILEBUS

Soc. Then, if we are not able to hunt the GOOD with one idea only, with three we may catch our prey ; Beauty, Symmetry, Truth are the three, and these taken together we may regard as the single cause of the mixture, and the mixture as being GOOD by reason of the infusion of them. PHILEBUS

Soc. Philebus affirmed that pleasure was always and absolutely the GOOD. PHILEBUS

Soc. But not first ; no, not even if all the oxen and horses and animals in the world by their pursuit of enjoyment proclaim her to be so ; — although the many trusting in them, as diviners trust in birds, determine that pleasures make up the GOOD of life, and deem the lusts of animals to be better witnesses than the inspirations of divine philosophy. PHILEBUS

Cle. I think, Stranger, that the aim of our institutions is easily intelligible to any one. Look at the character of our country : Crete is not like Thessaly, a large plain ; and for this reason they have horsemen in Thessaly, and we have runners — the inequality of the ground in our country is more adapted to locomotion on foot ; but then, if you have runners you must have light arms — no one can carry a heavy weight when running, and bows and arrows are convenient because they are light. Now all these regulations have been made with a view to war, and the legislator appears to me to have looked to this in all his arrangements : — the common meals, if I am not mistaken, were instituted by him for a similar reason, because he saw that while they are in the field the citizens are by the nature of the case compelled to take their meals together for the sake of mutual protection. He seems to me to have thought the world foolish in not understanding that all are always at war with one another ; and if in war there ought to be common meals and certain persons regularly appointed under others to protect an army, they should be continued in peace. For what men in general term peace would be said by him to be only a name ; in reality every city is in a natural state of war with every other, not indeed proclaimed by heralds, but everlasting. And if you look closely, you will find that this was the intention of the Cretan legislator ; all institutions, private as well as public, were arranged by him with a view to war ; in giving them he was under the impression that no possessions or institutions are of any value to him who is defeated in battle ; for all the GOOD things of the conquered pass into the hands of the conquerors. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Now, which would be the better judge — one who destroyed the bad and appointed the GOOD to govern themselves ; or one who, while allowing the GOOD to govern, let the bad live, and made them voluntarily submit ? Or third, I suppose, in the scale of excellence might be placed a judge, who, finding the family distracted, not only did not destroy any one, but reconciled them to one another for ever after, and gave them laws which they mutually observed, and was able to keep them friends. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. You ought to have said, Stranger — The Cretan laws are with reason famous among the Hellenes ; for they fulfil the object of laws, which is to make those who use them happy ; and they confer every sort of GOOD. Now GOODs are of two kinds : there are human and there are divine GOODs, and the human hang upon the divine ; and the state which attains the greater, at the same time acquires the less, or, not having the greater, has neither. Of the lesser GOODs the first is health, the second beauty, the third strength, including swiftness in running and bodily agility generally, and the fourth is wealth, not the blind god (Pluto), but one who is keen of sight, if only he has wisdom for his companion. For wisdom is chief and leader of the divine dass of GOODs, and next follows temperance ; and from the union of these two with courage springs justice, and fourth in the scale of virtue is courage. All these naturally take precedence of the other GOODs, and this is the order in which the legislator must place them, and after them he will enjoin the rest of his ordinances on the citizens with a view to these, the human looking to the divine, and the divine looking to their leader mind. Some of his ordinances will relate to contracts of marriage which they make one with another, and then to the procreation and education of children, both male and female ; the duty of the lawgiver will be to take charge of his citizens, in youth and age, and at every time of life, and to give them punishments and rewards ; and in reference to all their intercourse with one another, he ought to consider their pains and pleasures and desires, and the vehemence of all their passions ; he should keep a watch over them, and blame and praise them rightly by the mouth of the laws themselves. Also with regard to anger and terror, and the other perturbations of the soul, which arise out of misfortune, and the deliverances from them which prosperity brings, and the experiences which come to men in diseases, or in war, or poverty, or the opposite of these ; in all these states he should determine and teach what is the GOOD and evil of the condition of each. In the next place, the legislator has to be careful how the citizens make their money and in what way they spend it, and to have an eye to their mutual contracts and dissolutions of contracts, whether voluntary or involuntary : he should see how they order all this, and consider where justice as well as injustice is found or is wanting in their several dealings with one another ; and honour those who obey the law, and impose fixed penalties on those who disobey, until the round of civil life is ended, and the time has come for the consideration of the proper funeral rites and honours of the dead. And the lawgiver reviewing his work, will appoint guardians to preside over these things — some who walk by intelligence, others by true opinion only, and then mind will bind together all his ordinances and show them to be in harmony with temperance and justice, and not with wealth or ambition. This is the spirit, Stranger, in which I was and am desirous that you should pursue the subject. And I want to know the nature of all these things, and how they are arranged in the laws of Zeus, as they are termed, and in those of the Pythian Apollo, which Minos and Lycurgus gave ; and how the order of them is discovered to his eyes, who has experience in laws gained either by study or habit, although they are far from being self-evident to the rest of mankind like ourselves. LAWS BOOK I

Cle. The last remark is very true, Stranger ; and I see quite clearly the advantage of an army having a GOOD leader — he will give victory in war to his followers, which is a very great advantage ; and so of other things. But I do not see any similar advantage which either individuals or states gain from the GOOD management of a feast ; and I want you to tell me what great GOOD will be effected, supposing that this drinking ordinance is duly established. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. If you mean to ask what great GOOD accrues to the state from the right training of a single youth, or of a single chorus — when the question is put in that form, we cannot deny that the GOOD is not very great in any particular instance. But if you ask what is the GOOD of education in general, the answer is easy — that education makes GOOD men, and that GOOD men act nobly, and conquer their enemies in battle, because they are GOOD. Education certainly gives victory, although victory sometimes produces forgetfulness of education ; for many have grown insolent from victory in war, and this insolence has engendered in them innumerable evils ; and many a victory has been and will be suicidal to the victors ; but education is never suicidal. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. 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 further, there is reflection about the GOOD or evil of them, and this, when embodied in a decree by the State, is called Law. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. We will suppose that he knows the GOOD to be GOOD, and the bad to be bad, and makes use of them accordingly : which now is the better trained in dancing and music — he who is able to move his body and to use his voice in what is understood to be the right manner, but has no delight in GOOD or hatred of evil ; or he who is incorrect in gesture and voice, but is right in his sense of pleapleasure and pain, and welcomes what is GOOD, and is offended at what is evil ? LAWS BOOK II

Ath. Let us see whether we understand one another : — Are not the principles of education and music which prevail among you as follows : you compel your poets to say that the GOOD man, if he be temperate and just, is fortunate and happy ; and this whether he be great and strong or small and weak, and whether he be rich or poor ; and, on the other hand, if he have a wealth passing that of Cinyras or Midas, and be unjust, he is wretched and lives in misery ? As the poet says, and with truth : I sing not, I care not about him who accomplishes all noble things, not having justice ; let him who “draws near and stretches out his hand against his enemies be a just man.” But if he be unjust, I would not have him “look calmly upon bloody death,” nor “surpass in swiftness the Thracian Boreas” ; and let no other thing that is called GOOD ever be his. For the GOODs of which the many speak are not really GOOD : first in the catalogue is placed health, beauty next, wealth third ; and then innumerable others, as for example to have a keen eye or a quick ear, and in general to have all the senses perfect ; or, again, to be a tyrant and do as you like ; and the final consummation of happiness is to have acquired all these things, and when you have acquired them to become at once immortal. But you and I say, that while to the just and holy all these things are the best of possessions, to the unjust they are all, including even health, the greatest of evils. For in truth, to have sight, and hearing, and the use of the senses, or to live at all without justice and virtue, even though a man be rich in all the so-called GOODs of fortune, is the greatest of evils, if life be immortal ; but not so great, if the bad man lives only a very short time. These are the truths which, if I am not mistaken, you will persuade or compel your poets to utter with suitable accompaniments of harmony and rhythm, and in these they must train up your youth. Am I not right ? For I plainly declare that evils as they are termed are GOODs to the unjust, and only evils to the just, and that GOODs are truly GOOD to the GOOD, but evil to the evil. Let me ask again, Are you and I agreed about this ? LAWS BOOK II

Ath. The view which identifies the pleasant and the pleasant and the just and the GOOD and the noble has an excellent moral and religious tendency. And the opposite view is most at variance with the designs of the legislator, and is, in his opinion, infamous ; for no one, if he can help, will be persuaded to do that which gives him more pain than pleasure. But as distant prospects are apt to make us dizzy, especially in childhood, the legislator will try to purge away the darkness and exhibit the truth ; he will persuade the citizens, in some way or other, by customs and praises and words, that just and unjust are shadows only, and that injustice, which seems opposed to justice, when contemplated by the unjust and evil man appears pleasant and the just most unpleasant ; but that from the just man’s point of view, the very opposite is the appearance of both of them. LAWS BOOK II

Ath. Thus, too, I should say that learning has a certain accompanying charm which is the pleasure ; but that the right and the profitable, the GOOD and the noble, are qualities which the truth gives to it. LAWS BOOK II

Ath. Then, when any one says that music is to be judged of by pleasure, his doctrine cannot be admitted ; and if there be any music of which pleasure is the criterion, such music is not to be sought out or deemed to have any real excellence, but only that other kind of music which is an imitation of the GOOD. LAWS BOOK II

Ath. Were we not saying that on such occasions the souls of the drinkers become like iron heated in the fire, and grow softer and younger, and are easily moulded by him who knows how to educate and fashion them, just as when they were young, and that this fashioner of them is the same who prescribed for them in the days of their youth, viz., the GOOD legislator ; and that he ought to enact laws of the banquet, which, when a man is confident, bold, and impudent, and unwilling to wait his turn and have his share of silence and speech, and drinking and music, will change his character into the opposite — such laws as will infuse into him a just and noble fear, which will take up arms at the approach of insolence, being that divine fear which we have called reverence and shame ? LAWS BOOK II

Ath. Why, my GOOD friend, how can we possibly suppose that those who knew nothing of all the GOOD and evil of cities could have attained their full development, whether of virtue or of vice ? LAWS BOOK III

Ath. Yes ; and I remember, and you will remember, what I said at first, that a statesman and legislator ought to ordain laws with a view to wisdom ; while you were arguing that the GOOD lawgiver ought to order all with a view to war. And to this I replied that there were four virtues, but that upon your view one of them only was the aim of legislation ; whereas you ought to regard all virtue, and especially that which comes first, and is the leader of all the rest — I mean wisdom and mind and opinion, having affection and desire in their train. And now the argument returns to the same point, and I say once more, in jest if you like, or in earnest if you like, that the prayer of a fool is full of danger, being likely to end in the opposite of what he desires. And if you would rather receive my words in earnest, I am willing that you should ; and you will find, I suspect, as I have said already, that not cowardice was the cause of the ruin of the Dorian kings and of their whole design, nor ignorance of military matters, either on the part of the rulers or of their subjects ; but their misfortunes were due to their general degeneracy, and especially to their ignorance of the most important human affairs. That was then, and is still, and always will be the case, as I will endeavour, if you will allow me, to make out and demonstrate as well as I am able to you who are my friends, in the course of the argument. LAWS BOOK III

Ath. Next, we must pass in review the government of Attica in like manner, and from this show that entire freedom and the absence of all superior authority is not by any means so GOOD as government by others when properly limited, which was our ancient Athenian constitution at the time when the Persians made their attack on Hellas, or, speaking more correctly, on the whole continent of Europe. There were four classes, arranged according to a property census, and reverence was our queen and mistress, and made us willing to live in obedience to the laws which then prevailed. Also the vastness of the Persian armament, both by sea and on land, caused a helpless terror, which made us more and more the servants of our rulers and of the laws ; and for all these reasons an exceeding harmony prevailed among us. About ten years before the naval engagement at Salamis, Datis came, leading a Persian host by command of Darius, which was expressly directed against the Athenians and Eretrians, having orders to carry them away captive ; and these orders he was to execute under pain of death. Now Datis and his myriads soon became complete masters of Eretria, and he sent a fearful report to Athens that no Eretrian had escaped him ; for the soldiers of Datis had joined hands and netted the whole of Eretria. And this report, whether well or ill founded, was terrible to all the Hellenes, and above all to the Athenians, and they dispatched embassies in all directions, but no one was willing to come to their relief, with the exception of the Lacedaemonians ; and they, either because they were detained by the Messenian war, which was then going on, or for some other reason of which we are not told, came a day too late for the battle of Marathon. After a while, the news arrived of mighty preparations being made, and innumerable threats came from the king. Then, as time went on, a rumour reached us that Darius had died, and that his son, who was young and hot-headed, had come to the throne and was persisting in his design. The Athenians were under the impression that the whole expedition was directed against them, in consequence of the battle of Marathon ; and hearing of the bridge over the Hellespont, and the canal of Athos, and the host of ships, considering that there was no salvation for them either by land or by sea, for there was no one to help them, and remembering that in the first expedition, when the Persians destroyed Eretria, no one came to their help, or would risk the danger of an alliance with them, they thought that this would happen again, at least on land ; nor, when they looked to the sea, could they descry any hope of salvation ; for they were attacked by a thousand vessels and more. One chance of safety remained, slight indeed and desperate, but their only one. They saw that on the former occasion they had gained a seemingly impossible victory, and borne up by this hope, they found that their only refuge was in themselves and in the Gods. All these things created in them the spirit of friendship ; there was the fear of the moment, and there was that higher fear, which they had acquired by obedience to their ancient laws, and which I have several times in the preceding discourse called reverence, of which the GOOD man ought to be a willing servant, and of which the coward is independent and fearless. If this fear had not possessed them, they would never have met the enemy, or defended their temples and sepulchres and their country, and everything that was near and dear to them, as they did ; but little by little they would have been all scattered and dispersed. LAWS BOOK III

Ath. In the first place, let us speak of the laws about music — that is to say, such music as then existed — in order that we may trace the growth of the excess of freedom from the beginning. Now music was early divided among us into certain kinds and manners. One sort consisted of prayers to the Gods, which were called hymns ; and there was another and opposite sort called lamentations, and another termed paeans, and another, celebrating the birth of Dionysus, called, I believe, “dithyrambs.” And they used the actual word “laws,” or nomoi, for another kind of song ; and to this they added the term “citharoedic.” All these and others were duly distinguished, nor were the performers allowed to confuse one style of music with another. And the authority which determined and gave judgment, and punished the disobedient, was not expressed in a hiss, nor in the most unmusical shouts of the multitude, as in our days, nor in applause and clapping of hands. But the directors of public instruction insisted that the spectators should listen in silence to the end ; and boys and their tutors, and the multitude in general, were kept quiet by a hint from a stick. Such was the GOOD order which the multitude were willing to observe ; they would never have dared to give judgment by noisy cries. And then, as time went on, the poets themselves introduced the reign of vulgar and lawless innovation. They were men of genius, but they had no perception of what is just and lawful in music ; raging like Bacchanals and possessed with inordinate delights-mingling lamentations with hymns, and paeans with dithyrambs ; imitating the sounds of the flute on the lyre, and making one general confusion ; ignorantly affirming that music has no truth, and, whether GOOD or bad, can only be judged of rightly by the pleasure of the hearer. And by composing such licentious works, and adding to them words as licentious, they have inspired the multitude with lawlessness and boldness, and made them fancy that they can judge for themselves about melody and song. And in this way the theatres from being mute have become vocal, as though they had understanding of GOOD and bad in music and poetry ; and instead of an aristocracy, an evil sort of theatrocracy has grown up. For if the democracy which judged had only consisted of educated persons, no fatal harm would have been done ; 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 ? LAWS BOOK III

Ath. That when there has been a contest for power, those who gain the upper hand so entirely monopolize the government, as to refuse all share to the defeated party and their descendants — they live watching one another, the ruling class being in perpetual fear that some one who has a recollection of former wrongs will come into power and rise up against them. 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 any one because he is rich, or because he possesses any other advantage, such as strength, or stature, or again birth : but he who is most obedient to the laws of the state, he shall win the palm ; and to him who is victorious in the first degree shall be given the highest office and chief ministry of the gods ; and the second to him who bears the second palm ; and on a similar principle shall all the other be assigned to those who come next in order. 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. LAWS BOOK IV

Ath. Then what life is agreeable to God, and becoming in his followers ? One only, expressed once for all in the old saying that “like agrees with like, with measure measure,” but things which have no measure agree neither with themselves nor with the things which have. Now God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man, as men commonly say (Protagoras) : the words are far more true of him. And he who would be dear to God must, as far as is possible, be like him and such as he is. Wherefore the temperate man is the friend of God, for he is like him ; and the intemperate man is unlike him, and different from him, and unjust. And the same applies to other things ; and this is the conclusion, which is also the noblest and truest of all sayings — that for the GOOD man to offer sacrifice to the Gods, and hold converse with them by means of prayers and offerings and every kind of service, is the noblest and best of all things, and also the most conducive to a happy life, and very fit and meet. But with the bad man, the opposite of this is true : for the bad man has an impure soul, whereas the GOOD is pure ; and from one who is polluted, neither GOOD man nor God can without impropriety receive gifts. Wherefore the unholy do only waste their much service upon the Gods, but when offered by any holy man, such service is most acceptable to them. This is the mark at which we ought to aim. But what weapons shall we use, and how shall we direct them ? In the first place, we affirm that next after the Olympian Gods and the Gods of the State, honour should be given to the Gods below ; they should receive everything in even and of the second choice, and ill omen, while the odd numbers, and the first choice, and the things of lucky omen, are given to the Gods above, by him who would rightly hit the mark of piety. Next to these Gods, a wise man will do service to the demons or spirits, and then to the heroes, and after them will follow the private and ancestral Gods, who are worshipped as the law prescribes in the places which are sacred to them. Next comes the honour of living parents, to whom, as is meet, we have to pay the first and greatest and oldest of all debts, considering that all which a man has belongs to those who gave him birth and brought him up, and that he must do all that he can to minister to them, first, in his property, secondly, in his person, and thirdly, in his soul, in return for the endless care and travail which they bestowed upon him of old, in the days of his infancy, and which he is now to pay back to them when they are old and in the extremity of their need. And all his life long he ought never to utter, or to have uttered, an unbecoming word to them ; for of light and fleeting words the penalty is most severe ; Nemesis, the messenger of justice, is appointed to watch over all such matters. When they are angry and want to satisfy their feelings in word or deed, he should give way to them ; for a father who thinks that he has been wronged by his son may be reasonably expected to be very angry. At their death, the most moderate funeral is best, neither exceeding the customary expense, nor yet falling short of the honour which has been usually shown by the former generation to their parents. And let a man not forget to pay the yearly tribute of respect to the dead, honouring them chiefly by omitting nothing that conduces to a perpetual remembrance of them, and giving a reasonable portion of his fortune to the dead. Doing this, and living after this manner, we shall receive our reward from the Gods and those who are above us (i.e., the demons) ; and we shall spend our days for the most part in GOOD hope. And how a man ought to order what relates to his descendants and his kindred and friends and fellow-citizens, and the rites of hospitality taught by Heaven, and the intercourse which arises out of all these duties, with a view to the embellishment and orderly regulation of his own life — these things, I say, the laws, as we proceed with them, will accomplish, partly persuading, and partly when natures do not yield to the persuasion of custom, chastising them by might and right, and will thus render our state, if the Gods co-operate with us, prosperous and happy. But of what has to be said, and must be said by the legislator who is of my way of thinking, and yet, if said in the form of law, would be out of place — of this I think that he may give a sample for the instruction of himself and of those for whom he is legislating ; and then when, as far as he is able, he has gone through all the preliminaries, he may proceed to the work of legislation. Now, what will be the form of such prefaces ? There may be a difficulty in including or describing them all under a single form, but I think that we may get some notion of them if we can guarantee one thing. LAWS BOOK IV

Athenian Stranger. Listen, all ye who have just now heard the laws about Gods, and about our dear forefathers : — Of all the things which a man has, next to the Gods, his soul is the most divine and most truly his own. Now in every man there are two parts : the better and superior, which rules, and the worse and inferior, which serves ; and the ruling part of him is always to be preferred to the subject. Wherefore I am right in bidding every one next to the Gods, who are our masters, and those who in order follow them (i.e., the demons), to honour his own soul, which every one seems to honour, but no one honours as he ought ; for honour is a divine GOOD, and no evil thing is honourable ; and he who thinks that he can honour the soul by word or gift, or any sort of compliance, without making her in any way better, seems to honour her, but honours her not at all. For example, every man, from his very boyhood, fancies that he is able to know everything, and thinks that he honours his soul by praising her, and he is very ready to let her do whatever she may like. But I mean to say that in acting thus he injures his soul, and is far from honouring her ; whereas, in our opinion, he ought to honour her as second only to the Gods. Again, when a man thinks that others are to be blamed, and not himself, for the errors which he has committed from time to time, and the many and great evils which befell him in consequence, and is always fancying himself to be exempt and innocent, he is under the idea that he is honouring his soul ; whereas the very reverse is the fact, for he is really injuring her. And when, disregarding the word and approval of the legislator, he indulges in pleasure, then again he is far from honouring her ; he only dishonours her, and fills her full of evil and remorse ; or when he does not endure to the end the labours and fears and sorrows and pains which the legislator approves, but gives way before them, then, by yielding, he does not honour the soul, but by all such conduct he makes her to be dishonourable ; nor when he thinks that life at any price is a GOOD, does he honour her, but yet once more he dishonours her ; for the soul having a notion that the world below is all evil, he yields to her, and does not resist and teach or convince her that, for aught she knows, the world of the Gods below, instead of being evil, may be the greatest of all GOODs. Again, when any one prefers beauty to virtue, what is this but the real and utter dishonour of the soul ? For such a preference implies that the body is more honourable than the soul ; and this is false, for there is nothing of earthly birth which is more honourable than the heavenly, and he who thinks otherwise of the soul has no idea how greatly he undervalues this wonderful possession ; nor, again, when a person is willing, or not unwilling, to acquire dishonest gains, does he then honour his soul with gifts — far otherwise ; he sells her glory and honour for a small piece of gold ; but all the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. In a word, I may say that he who does not estimate the base and evil, the GOOD and noble, according to the standard of the legislator, and abstain in every possible way from the one and practise the other to the utmost of his power, does not know that in all these respects he is most foully and disgracefully abusing his soul, which is the divinest part of man ; for no one, as I may say, ever considers that which is declared to be the greatest penalty of evil-doing — namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men, and growing like them to fly from the conversation of the GOOD, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad. And he who is joined to them must do and suffer what such men by nature do and say to one another — a suffering which is not justice but retribution ; for justice and the just are noble, whereas retribution is the suffering which waits upon injustice ; and whether a man escape or endure this, he is miserable — in the former case, because he is not cured ; while in the latter, he perishes in order that the rest of mankind may be saved. LAWS BOOK V

Truth is the beginning of every GOOD thing, both to Gods and men ; and he who would be blessed and happy, should be from the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then he can be trusted ; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood, and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool. Neither condition is enviable, for the untrustworthy and ignorant has no friend, and as time advances he becomes known, and lays up in store for himself isolation in crabbed age when life is on the wane : so that, whether his children or friends are alive or not, he is equally solitary. — Worthy of honour is he who does no injustice, and of more than twofold honour, if he not only does no injustice himself, but hinders others from doing any ; the first may count as one man, the second is worth many men, because he informs the rulers of the injustice of others. And yet more highly to be esteemed is he who co-operates with the rulers in correcting the citizens as far as he can — he shall be proclaimed the great and perfect citizen, and bear away the palm of virtue. The same praise may be given about temperance and wisdom, and all other GOODs which may be imparted to others, as well as acquired by a man for himself ; he who imparts them shall be honoured as the man of men, and he who is willing, yet is not able, may be allowed the second place ; but he who is jealous and will not, if he can help, allow others to partake in a friendly way of any GOOD, is deserving of blame : 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 ; but the envious, who thinks that he ought to get the better by defaming others, is less energetic himself in the pursuit of true virtue, and reduces his rivals to despair by his unjust slanders of them. And so he makes the whole city to enter the arena untrained in the practice of virtue, and diminishes her glory as far as in him lies. Now every man should be valiant, but he should also be gentle. From the cruel, or hardly curable, or altogether incurable acts of injustice done to him by others, a man can only escape by fighting and defending himself and conquering, and by never ceasing to punish them ; and no man who is not of a noble spirit is able to accomplish this. As to the actions of those who do evil, but whose evil is curable, in the first place, let us remember that the unjust man is not unjust of his own free will. For no man of his own free will would choose to possess the greatest of evils, and least of all in the most honourable part of himself. 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 ; wherefore I say that GOOD men ought, when occasion demands, to be both gentle and passionate. LAWS BOOK V

Of all evils the greatest is one which in the souls of most men is innate, and which a man is always excusing in himself and never correcting ; mean, what is expressed in the saying that “Every man by nature is and ought to be his own friend.” Whereas the excessive love of self is in reality the source to each man of all offences ; for the lover is blinded about the beloved, so that he judges wrongly of the just, the GOOD, and the honourable, and thinks that he ought always to prefer himself to the truth. But he who would be a great man ought to regard, not himself or his interests, but what is just, whether the just act be his own or that of another. Through a similar error men are induced to fancy that their own ignorance is wisdom, and thus we who may be truly said to know nothing, think that we know all things ; and because we will not let others act for us in what we do not know, we are compelled to act amiss ourselves. Wherefore let every man avoid excess of self-love, and condescend to follow a better man than himself, not allowing any false shame to stand in the way. 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 ; he should veil his immoderate sorrow or joy, and seek to behave with propriety, whether the genius of his GOOD fortune remains with him, or whether at the crisis of his fate, when he seems to be mounting high and steep places, the Gods oppose him in some of his enterprises. Still he may ever hope, in the case of GOOD men, that whatever afflictions are to befall them in the future God will lessen, and that present evils he will change for the better ; and as to the GOODs which are the opposite of these evils, he will not doubt that they will be added to them, and that they will be fortunate. Such should be men’s hopes, and such should be the exhortations with which they admonish one another, never losing an opportunity, but on every occasion distinctly reminding themselves and others of all these things, both in jest and earnest. LAWS BOOK V

But, before all this, comes the following consideration : — The shepherd or herdsman, or breeder of horses or the like, when he has received his animals will not begin to train them until he has first purified them in a manner which befits a community of animals ; he will divide the healthy and unhealthy, and the GOOD breed and the bad breed, and will send away the unhealthy and badly bred to other herds, and tend the rest, reflecting that his labours will be vain and have no effect, either on the souls or bodies of those whom nature and ill nurture have corrupted, and that they will involve in destruction the pure and healthy nature and being of every other animal, if he should neglect to purify them. Now the case of other animals is not so important — they are only worth introducing for the sake of illustration ; but what relates to man is of the highest importance ; and the legislator should make enquiries, and indicate what is proper for each one in the way of purification and of any other procedure. Take, for example, the purification of a city — there are many kinds of purification, some easier and others more difficult ; and some of them, and the best and most difficult of them, the legislator, if he be also a despot, may be able to effect ; but the legislator, who, not being a despot, sets up a new government and laws, even if he attempt the mildest of purgations, may think himself happy if he can complete his work. The best kind of purification is painful, like similar cures in medicine, involving righteous punishment and inflicting death or exile in the last resort. For in this way we commonly dispose of great sinners who are incurable, and are the greatest injury of the whole state. But the milder form of purification is as follows : — when men who have nothing, and are in want of food, show a disposition to follow their leaders in an attack on the property of the rich — these, who are the natural plague of the state, are sent away by the legislator in a friendly spirit as far as he is able ; and this dismissal of them is euphemistically termed a colony. And every legislator should contrive to do this at once. Our present case, however, is peculiar. For there is no need to devise any colony or purifying separation under the circumstances in which we are placed. But as, when many streams flow together from many sources, whether springs or mountain torrents, into a single lake, we ought to attend and take care that the confluent waters should be perfectly clear, and in order to effect this, should pump and draw off and divert impurities, so in every political arrangement there may be trouble and danger. But, seeing that we are now only discoursing and not acting, let our selection be supposed to be completed, and the desired purity attained. Touching evil men, who want to join and be citizens of our state, after we have tested them by every sort of persuasion and for a sufficient time, we will prevent them from coming ; but the GOOD we will to the utmost of our ability receive as friends with open arms. LAWS BOOK V

Ath. This is what I have to say ; every one can see, that although the work of legislation is a most important matter, yet if a well-ordered city superadd to GOOD laws unsuitable offices, not only will there be no use in having the GOOD laws — not only will they be ridiculous and useless, but the greatest political injury and evil will accrue from them. LAWS BOOK VI

Ath. We will say to them — O friends and saviours of our laws, in laying down any law, there are many particulars which we shall omit, and this cannot be helped ; at the same time, we will do our utmost to describe what is important, and will give an outline which you shall fill up. And I will explain on what principle you are to act. Megillus and Cleinias and I have often spoken to one another touching these matters, and we are of opinion that we have spoken well. And we hope that you will be of the same mind with us, and become our disciples, and keep in view the things which in our united opinion the legislator and guardian of the law ought to keep in view. There was one main point about which we were agreed — that a man’s whole energies throughout life should be devoted to the acquisition of the virtue proper to a man, whether this was to be gained by study, or habit, or some mode of acquisition, or desire, or opinion, or knowledge — and this applies equally to men and women, old and young — the aim of all should always be such as I have described ; anything which may be an impediment, the GOOD man ought to show that he utterly disregards. And if at last necessity plainly compels him to be an outlaw from his native land, rather than bow his neck to the yoke of slavery and be ruled by inferiors, and he has to fly, an exile he must be and endure all such trials, rather than accept another form of government, which is likely to make men worse. These are our original principles ; and do you now, fixing your eyes upon the standard of what a man and a citizen ought or ought not to be, praise and blame the laws — blame those which have not this power of making the citizen better, but embrace those which have ; and with gladness receive and live in them ; bidding a long farewell to other institutions which aim at GOODs, as they are termed, of a different kind. LAWS BOOK VI

Ath. We were saying, if I remember rightly, that the sixty-year-old choristers of Dionysus were to be specially quick in their perceptions of rhythm and musical composition, that they might be able to distinguish GOOD and bad imitation, that is to say, the imitation of the GOOD or bad soul when under the influence of passion, rejecting the one and displaying the other in hymns and songs, charming the souls of youth, and inviting them to follow and attain virtue by the way of imitation. LAWS BOOK VII

Ath. Enough of laws relating to education and learning. But hunting and similar pursuits in like manner claim our attention. For the legislator appears to have a duty imposed upon him which goes beyond mere legislation. There is something over and above law which lies in a region between admonition and law, and has several times occurred to us in the course of discussion ; for example, in the education of very young children there were things, as we maintain, which are not to be defined, and to regard them as matters of positive law is a great absurdity. Now, our laws and the whole constitution of our state having been thus delineated, the praise of the virtuous citizen is not complete when he is described as the person who serves the laws best and obeys them most, but the higher form of praise is that which describes him as the GOOD citizen who passes through life undefiled and is obedient to the words of the legislator, both when he is giving laws and when he assigns praise and blame. This is the truest word that can be spoken in praise of a citizen ; and the true legislator ought not only to write his laws, but also to interweave with them all such things as seem to him honourable and dishonourable. And the perfect citizen ought to seek to strengthen these no less than the principles of law which are sanctioned by punishments. I will adduce an example which will clear up my meaning, and will be a sort of witness to my words. Hunting is of wide extent, and has a name under which many things are included, for there is a hunting of creatures in the water, and of creatures in the air, and there is a great deal of hunting of land animals of all kinds, and not of wild beasts only. The hunting after man is also worthy of consideration ; there is the hunting after him in war, and there is often a hunting after him in the way of friendship, which is praised and also blamed ; and there is thieving, and the hunting which is practised by robbers, and that of armies against armies. Now the legislator, in laying down laws about hunting, can neither abstain from noting these things, nor can he make threatening ordinances which will assign rules and penalties about all of them. What is he to do ? He will have to praise and blame hunting with a view to the exercise and pursuits of youth. And, on the other hand, the young man must listen obediently ; neither pleasure nor pain should hinder him, and he should regard as his standard of action the praises and injunctions of the legislator rather than the punishments which he imposes by law. This being premised, there will follow next in order moderate praise and censure of hunting ; the praise being assigned to that kind which will make the souls of young men better, and the censure to that which has the opposite effect. LAWS BOOK VII

Athenian Stranger. Next, with the help of the Delphian oracle, we have to institute festivals and make laws about them, and to determine what sacrifices will be for the GOOD of the city, and to what Gods they shall be offered ; but when they shall be offered, and how often, may be partly regulated by us. LAWS BOOK VIII

Ath. And ought the legislator alone among writers to withhold his opinion about the beautiful, the GOOD, and the just, and not to teach what they are, and how they are to be pursued by those who intend to be happy ? LAWS BOOK IX

Ath. If, my friend, we say that the whole path and movement of heaven, and of all that is therein, is by nature akin to the movement and revolution and calculation of mind, and proceeds by kindred laws, then, as is plain, we must say that the best soul takes care of the world and guides it along the GOOD pAth. LAWS BOOK X

Ath. I will explain : — When the king saw that our actions had life, and that there was much virtue in them and much vice, and that the soul and body, although not, like the Gods of popular opinion, eternal, yet having once come into existence, were indestructible (for if either of them had been destroyed, there would have been no generation of living beings) ; and when he observed that the GOOD of the soul was ever by nature designed to profit men, and the evil to harm them — he, seeing all this, contrived so to place each of the parts that their position might in the easiest and best manner procure the victory of GOOD and the defeat of evil in the whole. 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. LAWS BOOK X

Now a state which makes money from the cultivation of the soil only, and has no foreign trade, must consider what it will do about the emigration of its own people to other countries, and the reception of strangers from elsewhere. About these matters the legislator has to consider, and he will begin by trying to persuade men as far as he can. The intercourse of cities with one another is apt to create a confusion of manners ; strangers, are always suggesting novelties to strangers. When states are well governed by GOOD laws the mixture causes the greatest possible injury ; but seeing that most cities are the reverse of well-ordered, the confusion which arises in them from the reception of strangers, and from the citizens themselves rushing off into other cities, when any one either young or old desires to travel anywhere abroad at whatever time, is of no consequence. On the other hand, the refusal of states to receive others, and for their own citizens never to go to other places, is an utter impossibility, and to the rest of the world is likely to appear ruthless and uncivilized ; it is a practise adopted by people who use harsh words, such as xenelasia or banishment of strangers, and who have harsh and morose ways, as men think. And to be thought or not to be thought well of by the rest of the world is no light matter ; 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 man who would be perfect) seeks for reputation with, but not without, the reality of GOODness. And our Cretan colony ought also to acquire the fairest and noblest reputation for virtue from other men ; and there is every reason to expect that, if the reality answers to the idea, she will before of the few well-ordered cities which the sun and the other Gods behold. Wherefore, in the matter of journeys to other countries and the reception of strangers, we enact as follows : — In the first place, let no one be allowed to go anywhere at all into a foreign country who is less than forty years of age ; and no one shall go in a private capacity, but only in some public one, as a herald, or on an embassy ; or on a sacred mission. Going abroad on an expedition or in war, not to be included among travels of the class authorized by the state. To Apollo at Delphi and to Zeus at Olympia and to Nemea and to the Isthmus, — citizens should be sent to take part in the sacrifices and games there dedicated to the Gods ; and they should send as many as possible, and the best and fairest that can be found, and they will make the city renowned at holy meetings in time of peace, procuring a glory which shall be the converse of that which is gained in war ; and when they come home they shall teach the young that the institutions of other states are inferior to their own. And they shall send spectators of another sort, if they have the consent of the guardians, being such citizens as desire to look a little more at leisure at the doings of other men ; and these no law shall hinder. For a city which has no experience of GOOD and bad men or intercourse with them, can never be thoroughly, and perfectly civilized, 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 is deficient ; for without this examination and enquiry a city will never continue perfect any more than if the examination is ill-conducted. LAWS BOOK XII

Now that the whole city has been divided into parts of which the nature and number have been described, and laws have been given about all the most important contracts as far as this was possible, the next thing will be to have justice done. The first of the courts shall consist of elected judges, who shall be chosen by the plaintiff and the defendant in common : these shall be called arbiters rather than judges. And in the second court there shall be judges of the villages and tribes corresponding to the twelvefold division of the land, and before these the litigants shall go to contend for greater damages, if the suit be not decided before the first judges ; the defendant, if he be defeated the second time, shall pay a fifth more than the damages mentioned in the indictment ; and if he find fault with his judges and would try a third time, let him carry the suit before the select judges, and if he be again defeated, let him pay the whole of the damages and half as much again. And the plaintiff, if when defeated before the first judges he persist in going on to the second, shall if he wins receive in addition to the damages a fifth part more, and if defeated he shall pay a like sum ; but if he is not satisfied with the previous decision, and will insist on proceeding to a third court, then if he win he shall receive from the defendant the amount of the damages and, as I said before, half as much again, and the plaintiff, if he lose, shall pay half of the damages claimed, Now the assignment by lot of judges to courts and the completion of the number of them, and the appointment of servants to the different magistrates, and the times at which the several causes should be heard, and the votings and delays, and all the things that necessarily concern suits, and the order of causes, and the time in which answers have to be put in and parties are to appear — of these and other things akin to these we have indeed already spoken, but there is no harm in repeating what is right twice or thrice : — All lesser and easier matters which the elder legislator has omitted may be supplied by the younger one. Private courts will be sufficiently regulated in this way, and the public and state courts, and those which the magistrates must use in the administration of their several offices, exist in many other states. Many very respectable institutions of this sort have been framed by GOOD men, and from them the guardians of the law may by reflection derive what is necessary, for the order of our new state, considering and correcting them, and bringing them to the test of experience, until every detail appears to be satisfactorily determined ; and then putting the final seal upon them, and making them irreversible, they shall use them for ever afterwards. As to what relates to the silence of judges and the abstinence from words of evil omen and the reverse, and the different notions of the just and GOOD and honourable which exist in our : own as compared with other states, they have been partly mentioned already, and another part of them will be mentioned hereafter as we draw near the end. To all these matters he who would be an equal judge, shall justly look, and he shall possess writings about them that he may learn them. For of all kinds of knowledge the knowledge of GOOD laws has the greatest power of improving the learner ; otherwise there would be no meaning the divine and admirable law possessing a name akin to mind (nous, nomos). And of all other words, such as the praises and censures of individuals which occur in poetry and also in prose, whether written down or uttered in daily conversation, whether men dispute about them in the spirit of contention or weakly assent to them, as is often the case — of all these the one sure test is the writings of the legislator, which the righteous judge ought to have in his mind as the antidote of all other words, and thus make himself and the city stand upright, procuring for the GOOD the continuance and increase of justice, and for the bad, on the other hand, a conversion from ignorance and intemperance, and in general from all unrighteousness, as far as their evil minds can be healed, but to those whose web of life is in reality finished, giving death, which is the only remedy for souls in their condition, as I may say truly again and again. And such judges and chiefs of judges will be worthy of receiving praise from the whole city. LAWS BOOK XII

Thus a man is born and brought up, and after this manner he begets and brings up his own children, and has his share of dealings with other men, and suffers if he has done wrong to any one, and receives satisfaction if he has been wronged, and so at length in due time he grows old under the protection of the laws, and his end comes in the order of nature. Concerning the dead of either sex, the religious ceremonies which may fittingly be performed, whether appertaining to the Gods of the underworld or of this, shall be decided by the interpreters with absolute authority. Their sepulchres are not to be in places which are fit for cultivation, and there shall be no monuments in such spots, either large or small, but they shall occupy that part of the country which is naturally adapted for receiving and concealing the bodies of the dead with as little hurt as possible to the living. No man, living or dead, shall deprive the living of the sustenance which the earth, their foster-parent, is naturally inclined to provide for them. And let not the mound be piled higher than would be the work of five men completed in five days ; nor shall the stone which is placed over the spot be larger than would be sufficient to receive the praises of the dead included in four heroic lines. Nor shall the laying out of the dead in the house continue for a longer time than is sufficient to distinguish between him who is in a trance only and him who is really dead, and speaking generally, the third day after death will be a fair time for carrying out the body to the sepulchre. Now we must believe the legislator when he tells us that the soul is in all respects superior to the body, and that even in life what makes each one us to be what we are is only the soul ; and that the body follows us about in the likeness of each of us, and therefore, when we are dead, the bodies of the dead are quite rightly said to be our shades or images ; for the true and immortal being of each one of us which is called the soul goes on her way to other Gods, before them to give an account — which is an inspiring hope to the GOOD, but very terrible to the bad, as the laws of our fathers tell us ; and they also say that not much can be done in the way of helping a man after he is dead. But the living — he should be helped by all his kindred, that while in life he may be the holiest and justest of men, and after death may have no great sins to be punished in the world below. If this be true, a man ought not to waste his substance under the idea that all this lifeless mass of flesh which is in process of burial is connected with him ; he should consider that the son, or brother, or the beloved one, whoever he may be, whom he thinks he is laying in the earth, has gone away to complete and fulfil his own destiny, and that his duty is rightly to order the present, and to spend moderately on the lifeless altar of the Gods below. But the legislator does not intend moderation to be take, in the sense of meanness. Let the law, then, be as follows : — The expenditure on the entire funeral of him who is of the highest class shall not exceed five minae ; and for him who is of the second class, three minae, and for him who is of the third class, two minae, and for him, who is of the fourth class, one mina, will be a fair limit of expense. The guardians of the law ought to take especial care of the different ages of life, whether childhood, or manhood, or any other age. And at the end of all, let there be some one guardian of the law presiding, who shall be chosen by the friends of the deceased to superintend, and let it be glory to him to manage with fairness and moderation what relates to the dead, and a discredit to him if they are not well managed. Let the laying out and other ceremonies be in accordance with custom, but to the statesman who adopts custom as his law we must give way in certain particulars. It would be monstrous for example that he should command any man to weep or abstain from weeping over the dead ; but he may forbid cries of lamentation, and not allow the voice of the mourner to be heard outside the house ; also, he may forbid the bringing of the dead body into the open streets, or the processions of mourners in the streets, and may require that before daybreak they should be outside the city. Let these, then, be our laws relating to such matters, and let him who obeys be free from penalty ; but he who disobeys even a single guardian of the law shall be punished by them all with a fitting penalty. Other modes of burial, or again the denial of burial, which is to be refused in the case of robbers of temples and parricides and the like, have been devised and are embodied in the preceding laws, so that now our work of legislation is pretty nearly at an end ; but in all cases the end does not consist in doing something or acquiring something or establishing something — the end will be attained and finally accomplished, when we have provided for the perfect and lasting continuance of our institutions until then our creation is incomplete. LAWS BOOK XII

Ast. Well, and about the GOOD and the honourable, are we to take the same view ? Are our guardians only to know that each of them is many, or, also how and in what way they are one ? LAWS BOOK XII

But surely there must be found some science, the possession of which will cause the wisdom of him who is really wise and not wise merely in men’s opinion. Well, let us see : for in this laborious discussion we are trying our hardest to find some other science, (976d) apart from those we have mentioned, which can really and reasonably be termed wisdom ; such an acquirement as will not make one a mean and witless drudge, but will enable one to be a wise and GOOD citizen, at once a just ruler and subject of his city, and decorous. So let us examine this one first, and see what single science it is of those that we now have which, by removing itself or being absent from human nature, must render mankind the most thoughtless and senseless of creatures. (976e) Well, there is no great difficulty in making that out. For if there is one more than another, so to speak, which will do this, it is the science which gave number to the whole race of mortals ; and I believe God rather than some chance gave it to us, and so preserves us. And I must explain who it is that I believe to be God, though he be a strange one, and somehow not strange either : for why should we not believe (977a) the cause of all the GOOD things that are ours to have been the cause also of what is far the greatest, understanding ? And who is it that I magnify with the name of God, Megillus and Cleinias ? Merely Heaven, which it is most our duty to honor and pray to especially, as do all other spirits and gods. That it has been the cause of all the other GOOD things we have, we shall all admit ; that it likewise gave us number we do really say, and that it will give us this hereafter, if we will but follow its lead. (977b) For if one enters on the right theory about it, whether one be pleased to call it World-order or Olympus or Heaven — let one call it this or that, but follow where, in bespangling itself and turning the stars that it contains, it produces all their courses and the seasons and food for all. And thence, accordingly, we have understanding in general, we may say, and therewith all number, and all other GOOD things : but the greatest of these is when, after receiving its gift of numbers, one has covered the whole circuit. EPINOMIS BOOK XII

And one may judge, perhaps, for brevity’s sake how the human race needs number, by glancing at the arts — and yet that too is a great matter — but if you note the divinity of birth, and its mortality, in which awe of the divine must be acknowledged, and real number, (978a) it is not anybody who can tell how great is the power which we owe to the accompaniment of number as a whole — for it is clear that everything in music needs a distinct numeration of movement and notes — and above all, how it is the cause of all GOOD things ; and that it is the cause of no evil thing is a point that must be well understood, as it may be quickly enough. Nay, the motion that we may call unreasoned and unordered, lacking shape and rhythm and harmony, and everything that has a share of some evil, (978b) is deficient in number altogether ; and in this light must the matter be regarded by him who means to end his life in happiness. And no one who does not know the just, the GOOD, the honorable and all the rest of such qualities, with a hold on true opinion, will number them off so as fully to persuade both himself and his neighbor. EPINOMIS BOOK XII

So now I trust we may make one true statement about all these things : it cannot be that earth and heaven and all the (983c) stars and all the masses they comprise, without soul attached to each or resident in each, should pass along as they do, so exactly to every year and month and day, and that all the things that happen should happen for the GOOD of us all.And according as man is a meaner creature, he should show himself, not a babbler, but a speaker of clear sense. If, then, anyone shall speak of onrushes or natural forces or the like as in a sort the causes of bodies, he will say nothing clear : but we must firmly recall what we have said, and see whether (983d) our statement is reasonable or is utterly at fault — namely, in the first place, that existence is of two kinds, the one<one soul, and the other body, and that many things are in either, though all are different from each other and those of the one kind from those of the other, and that there is no other third thing common to any of them ; but soul differs from body. Intelligent, of course, we shall hold it to be, and the other unintelligent ; the one governs, the other is governed ; and the one is cause of all things, while the other is incapable of causing any of its experiences : so that to assert that the heavenly bodies (983e) have come into existence through anything else, and are not the offspring, as we have said, of soul and body, is great folly and unreason. However, if our statements on all such existences are to prevail, and the whole order of them is to be convincingly shown to be divine by their origin, we must certainly class them as one or the other of two things : either we must in all correctness glorify them as actual gods, (984a) or suppose them to be images produced as likenesses of the gods, creations of the gods themselves. For they are the work of no mindless or inconsiderable beings but, as we have said, we must class them as one or other of these things ; and, if classed as the latter, we must honor them far above all images : for never will fairer or more generally-known images be found among all mankind, none established in more various places, more pre-eminent in purity, majesty, and (984b) life altogether, than in the way in which their existence is altogether fashioned. EPINOMIS BOOK XII

And indeed there is much GOOD reason to suppose that formerly, (988c) when men had their first conceptions of how the gods came to exist and with what qualities, and whence, and to what kind of actions they proceeded, they were spoken of in a manner not approved or welcomed by the wise, nor were even the views of those who came later, among whom the greatest dignity was given to fire and water and the other elements, while the wonderful soul was accounted inferior ; and higher and more honored with them was a motion assigned to the body for moving itself by heat and chills and everything of that kind, (988d) instead of that which the soul had for moving both the body and itself. But now that we account it no marvel that the soul, once it is in the body, should stir and move about this and itself, neither does our soul on any reckoning mistrust her power of moving about any weight. And therefore, since we now claim that, as the soul is cause of the whole, and all GOOD things are causes of like things, while on the other hand evil things are causes of other things like them, it is no marvel (988e) that soul should be cause of all motion and stirring — that the motion and stirring towards the GOOD are the function of the best soul, and those to the opposite are the opposite — it must be that GOOD things have conquered and conquer things that are not their like. EPINOMIS BOOK XII

All this we have stated in accordance with justice, which wreaks vengeance on the impious : but now, as regards the matter under examination, it is not possible for us to disbelieve that we must deem the GOOD man (989a) to be wise ; and let us see if we may perhaps be able, either by education or by art, to perceive this wisdom which we have all this while been seeking ; for if we fall behind the just in failing to know it, our condition will be that of ignorant persons. Such, then, seems our case to me, and I must say so : for I have sought this wisdom high and low, and so far as it has been revealed to me I will try to render it plain to you. EPINOMIS BOOK XII

These are the principles in accordance with which I should advise you, as also, jointly with Dion, I advised Dionysios, bidding him in the first place to live his daily life in a way that would make him as far as possible master of himself and able to gain faithful friends and supporters, in order that he might not have the same experience as his father. For his father, having taken under his rule many great cities of Sicily which had been utterly destroyed by the barbarians, was not able to found them afresh and to establish in them trustworthy governments carried on by his own supporters, either by men who had no ties of blood with him, or by his brothers whom he had brought up when they were younger, and had raised from humble station to high office and from poverty to immense wealth. Not one of these was he able to work upon by persuasion, instruction, services and ties of kindred, so as to make him a partner in his rule ; and he showed himself inferior to Darius with a sevenfold inferiority. For Darius did not put his trust in brothers or in men whom he had brought up, but only in his confederates in the overthrow of the Mede and Eunuch ; and to these he assigned portions of his empire, seven in number, each of them greater than all Sicily ; and they were faithful to him and did not attack either him or one another. Thus he showed a pattern of what the GOOD lawgiver and king ought to be ; for he drew up laws by which he has secured the Persian empire in safety down to the present time. LETTERS LETTER VII

When this invitation came to me at that time in such terms, and those who had come from Sicily and Italy were trying to drag me thither, while my friends at Athens were literally pushing me out with their urgent entreaties, it was the same old tale — that I must not betray Dion and my Tarentine friends and supporters. Also I myself had a lurking feeling that there was nothing surprising in the fact that a young man, quick to learn, hearing talk of the great truths of philosophy, should feel a craving for the higher life. I thought therefore that I must put the matter definitely to the test to see whether his desire was genuine or the reverse, and on no account leave such an impulse unaided nor make myself responsible for such a deep and real disgrace, if the reports brought by anyone were really true. So blindfolding myself with this reflection, I set out, with many fears and with no very favourable anticipations, as was natural enough. However, I went, and my action on this occasion at any rate was really a case of “the third to the Preserver,” for I had the GOOD fortune to return safely ; and for this I must, next to the God, thank Dionysios, because, though many wished to make an end of me, he prevented them and paid some proper respect to my situation. LETTERS LETTER VII

The same applies to straight as well as to circular form, to colours, to the GOOD, the, beautiful, the just, to all bodies whether manufactured or coming into being in the course of nature, to fire, water, and all such things, to every living being, to character in souls, and to all things done and suffered. For in the case of all these, no one, if he has not some how or other got hold of the four things first mentioned, can ever be completely a partaker of knowledge of the fifth. Further, on account of the weakness of language, these (i.e., the four) attempt to show what each thing is like, not less than what each thing is. For this reason no man of intelligence will venture to express his philosophical views in language, especially not in language that is unchangeable, which is true of that which is set down in written characters. LETTERS LETTER VII

You are right, he replied ; they are not convinced : and there is something in what they say ; not, however, so much as they imagine. I might answer them as Themistocles answered the Seriphian who was abusing him and saying that he was famous, not for his own merits but because he was an Athenian : “If you had been a native of my country or I of yours, neither of us would have been famous.” And to those who are not rich and are impatient of old age, the same reply may be made ; for to the GOOD poor man old age cannot be a light burden, nor can a bad rich man ever have peace with himself. THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

“for the GOOD of friends and for the harm of enemies” THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Then to them the GOOD will be enemies and the evil will be their friends ? True. THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

And in that case they will be right in doing GOOD to the evil and evil to the GOOD ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

But the GOOD are just and would not do an injustice ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

You would argue that the GOOD are our friends and the bad our enemies ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Deteriorated, that is to say, in the GOOD qualities of horses, not of dogs ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

And dogs are deteriorated in the GOOD qualities of dogs, and not of horses ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

And can the just by justice make men unjust, or speaking generally, can the GOOD by virtue make them bad ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Nor can the GOOD harm anyone ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

And the just is the GOOD ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Then, I continued, no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers his own GOOD in what he prescribes, but the GOOD of his patient ; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere money-maker ; that has been admitted ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Because you fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens or tends the sheep or oxen with a view to their own GOOD and not to the GOOD of himself or his master ; and you further imagine that the rulers of States, if they are true rulers, never think of their subjects as sheep, and that they are not studying their own advantage day and night. Oh, no ; and so entirely astray are you in your ideas about the just and unjust as not even to know that justice and the just are in reality another’s GOOD ; that is to say, the interest of the ruler and stronger, and the loss of the subject and servant ; and injustice the opposite ; for the unjust is lord over the truly simple and just : he is the stronger, and his subjects do what is for his interest, and minister to his happiness, which is very far from being their own. Consider further, most foolish Socrates, that the just is always a loser in comparison with the unjust. First of all, in private contracts : wherever the unjust is the partner of the just you will find that, when the partnership is dissolved, the unjust man has always more and the just less. Secondly, in their dealings with the State : when there is an income-tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income ; and when there is anything to be received the one gains nothing and the other much. Observe also what happens when they take an office ; there is the just man neglecting his affairs and perhaps suffering other losses, and getting nothing out of the public, because he is just ; moreover he is hated by his friends and acquaintance for refusing to serve them in unlawful ways. But all this is reversed in the case of the unjust man. I am speaking, as before, of injustice on a large scale in which the advantage of the unjust is most apparent ; and my meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that highest form of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men, and the sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most miserable — that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away the property of others, not little by little but wholesale ; comprehending in one, things sacred as well as profane, private and public ; for which acts of wrong, if he were detected perpetrating any one of them singly, he would be punished and incur great disgrace — they who do such wrong in particular cases are called robbers of temples, and man-stealers and burglars and swindlers and thieves. But when a 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. THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Heaven forbid ! I said ; I would only ask you to be consistent ; or, if you change, change openly and let there be no deception. For I must remark, Thrasymachus, if you will recall what was previously said, that although you began by defining the true physician in an exact sense, you did not observe a like exactness when speaking of the shepherd ; you thought that the shepherd as a shepherd tends the sheep not with a view to their own GOOD, but like a mere diner or banqueter with a view to the pleasures of the table ; or, again, as a trader for sale in the market, and not as a shepherd. Yet surely the art of the shepherd is concerned only with the GOOD of his subjects ; he has only to provide the best for them, since the perfection of the art is already insured whenever all the requirements of it are satisfied. And that was what I was saying just now about the ruler. I conceived that the art of the ruler, considered as a ruler, whether in a State or in private life, could only regard the GOOD of his flock or subjects ; whereas you seem to think that the rulers in States, that is to say, the true rulers, like being in authority. THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

And we have admitted, I said, that the GOOD of each art is specially confined to the art ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Then now, Thrasymachus, there is no longer any doubt that neither arts nor governments provide for their own interests ; but, as we were before saying, they rule and provide for the interests of their subjects who are the weaker and not the stronger — to their GOOD they attend and not to the GOOD of the superior. THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

And for this reason, I said, money and honor have no attraction for them ; GOOD men do not wish to be openly demanding payment for governing and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly helping themselves out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves. And not being ambitious they do not care about honor. Wherefore necessity must be laid upon them, and they must be induced to serve from the fear of punishment. And this, as I imagine, is the reason why the forwardness to take office, instead of waiting to be compelled, has been deemed dishonorable. Now the worst part of the punishment is that he who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself. And the fear of this, as I conceive, induces the GOOD to take office, not because they would, but because they cannot help — not under the idea that they are going to have any benefit or enjoyment themselves, but as a necessity, and because they are not able to commit the task of ruling to anyone who is better than themselves, or indeed as GOOD. For there is reason to think that if a city were composed entirely of GOOD men, then to avoid office would be as much an object of contention as to obtain office is at present ; then we should have plain proof that the true ruler is not meant by nature to regard his own interest, but that of his subjects ; and everyone who knew this would choose rather to receive a benefit from another than to have the trouble of conferring one. So far am I from agreeing with Thrasymachus that justice is the interest of the stronger. This latter question need not be further discussed at present ; but when Thrasymachus says that the life of the unjust is more advantageous than that of the just, his new statement appears to me to be of a far more serious character. Which of us has spoken truly ? And which sort of life, Glaucon, do you prefer ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

Then an evil soul must necessarily be an evil ruler and superintendent, and the GOOD soul a GOOD ruler ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK I

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 ; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants ; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice ; it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation ; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a GOOD, but as the lesser evil, and honored by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist ; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice. THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more : There is another side to Glaucon’s argument about the praise and censure of justice and injustice, which is equally required in order to bring out what I believe to be his meaning. Parents and tutors are always telling their sons and their wards that they are to be just ; but why ? not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of character and reputation ; in the hope of obtaining for him who is reputed just some of those offices, marriages, and the like which Glaucon has enumerated among the advantages accruing to the unjust from the reputation of justice. More, however, is made of appearances by this class of persons than by the others ; for they throw in the GOOD opinion of the gods, and will tell you of a shower of benefits which the heavens, as they say, rain upon the pious ; and this accords with the testimony of the noble Hesiod and Homer, the first of whom says that the gods make the oaks of the just — THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

And the GOOD is advantageous ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

It follows, therefore, that the GOOD is not the cause of all things, but of the GOOD only ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

Then God, if he be GOOD, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to men. For few are the GOODs of human life, and many are the evils, and the GOOD is to be attributed to God alone ; of the evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him. THE REPUBLIC BOOK II

But shall we be right in getting rid of them ? Reflect : our principle is that the GOOD man will not consider death terrible to any other GOOD man who is his comrade. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Because, if I am not mistaken, we shall have to say that about men ; poets and story-tellers are guilty of making the gravest misstatements when they tell us that wicked men are often happy, and the GOOD miserable ; and that injustice is profitable when undetected, but that justice is a man’s own loss and another’s gain — these things we shall forbid them to utter, and command them to sing and say the opposite. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Suppose, I answered, that a just and GOOD man in the course of a narration comes on some saying or action of another GOOD man — I should imagine that he will like to personate him, and will not be ashamed of this sort of imitation : he will be most ready to play the part of the GOOD man when he is acting firmly and wisely ; in a less degree when he is overtaken by illness or love or drink, or has met with any other disaster. But when he comes to a character which is unworthy of him, he will not make a study of that ; he will disdain such a person, and will assume his likeness, if at all, for a moment only when he is performing some GOOD action ; at other times he will be ashamed to play a part which he has never practised, nor will he like to fashion and frame himself after the baser models ; he feels the employment of such an art, unless in jest, to be beneath him, and his mind revolts at it. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

But shall our superintendence go no further, and are the poets only to be required by us to express the image of the GOOD in their works, on pain, if they do anything else, of expulsion from our State ? Or is the same control to be extended to other artists, and are they also to be prohibited from exhibiting the opposite forms of vice and intemperance and meanness and indecency in sculpture and building and the other creative arts ; and is he who cannot conform to this rule of ours to be prevented from practising his art in our State, lest the taste of our citizens be corrupted by him ? We would not have our guardians grow up amid images of moral deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed upon many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by little, until they silently gather a festering mass of corruption in their own soul. Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of the beautiful and graceful ; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the GOOD in everything ; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful ; and also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the GOOD, and becomes noble and GOOD, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why ; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Certainly. Gymnastics as well as music should begin in early years ; the training in it should be careful and should continue through life. Now my belief is — and this is a matter upon which I should like to have your opinion in confirmation of my own, but my own belief is — not that the GOOD body by any bodily excellence improves the soul, but, on the contrary, that the GOOD soul, by her own excellence, improves the body as far as this may be possible. What do you say ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Yes, I replied, and he will be a GOOD man (which is my answer to your question) ; for he is GOOD who has a GOOD soul. But the cunning and suspicious nature of which we spoke — he who has committed many crimes, and fancies himself to be a master in wickedness — when he is among his fellows, is wonderful in the precautions which he takes, because he judges of them by himself : but when he gets into the company of men of virtue, who have the experience of age, he appears to be a fool again, owing to his unseasonable suspicions ; he cannot recognize an honest man, because he has no pattern of honesty in himself ; at the same time, as the bad are more numerous than the GOOD, and he meets with them oftener, he thinks himself, and is by others thought to be, rather wise than foolish. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Then the GOOD and wise judge whom we are seeking is not this man, but the other ; for vice cannot know virtue too, but a virtuous nature, educated by time, will acquire a knowledge both of virtue and vice : the virtuous, and not the vicious, man has wisdom — in my opinion. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

And he will be most likely to love that which he regards as having the same interests with himself, and that of which the GOOD or evil fortune is supposed by him at any time most to affect his own ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

Then there must be a selection. Let us note among the guardians those who in their whole life show the greatest eagerness to do what is for the GOOD of their country, and the greatest repugnance to do what is against her interests. THE REPUBLIC BOOK III

If we proceed along the old path, my belief, I said, is that we shall find the answer. And our answer will be that, even as they are, our guardians may very likely be the happiest of men ; but that our aim in founding the State was not the disproportionate happiness of any one class, but the greatest happiness of the whole ; we thought that in a State which is ordered with a view to the GOOD of the whole we should be most likely to find justice, and in the ill-ordered State injustice : and, having found them, we might then decide which of the two is the happier. At present, I take it, we are fashioning the happy State, not piecemeal, or with a view of making a few happy citizens, but as a whole ; and by and by we will proceed to view the opposite kind of State. Suppose that we were painting a statue, and someone came up to us and said : Why do you not put the most beautiful colors on the most beautiful parts of the body — the eyes ought to be purple, but you have made them black — to him we might fairly answer : Sir, you would not surely have us beautify the eyes to such a degree that they are no longer eyes ; consider rather whether, by giving this and the other features their due proportion, we make the whole beautiful. And so I say to you, do not compel us to assign to the guardians a sort of happiness which will make them anything but guardians ; for we too can clothe our husbandmen in royal apparel, and set crowns of gold on their heads, and bid them till the ground as much as they like, and no more. Our potters also might be allowed to repose on couches, and feast by the fireside, passing round the wine-cup, while their wheel is conveniently at hand, and working at pottery only as much as they like ; in this way we might make every class happy — and then, as you imagine, the whole State would be happy. But do not put this idea into our heads ; for, if we listen to you, the husbandman will be no longer a husbandman, the potter will cease to be a potter, and no one will have the character of any distinct class in the State. Now this is not of much consequence where the corruption of society, and pretension to be what you are not, are confined to cobblers ; but when the guardians of the laws and of the government are only seeming and not real guardians, then see how they turn the State upside down ; and on the other hand they alone have the power of giving order and happiness to the State. We mean our guardians to be true saviours and not the destroyers of the State, whereas our opponent is thinking of peasants at a festival, who are enjoying a life of revelry, not of citizens who are doing their duty to the State. But, if so, we mean different things, and he is speaking of something which is not a State. And therefore we must consider whether in appointing our guardians we would look to their greatest happiness individually, or whether this principle of happiness does not rather reside in the State as a whole. But if the latter be the truth, then the guardians and auxiliaries, and all others equally with them, must be compelled or induced to do their own work in the best way. And thus the whole State will grow up in a noble order, and the several classes will receive the proportion of happiness which nature assigns to them. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

We will not, I said, be over-positive as yet ; but if, on trial, this conception of justice be verified in the individual as well as in the State, there will be no longer any room for doubt ; if it be not verified, we must have a fresh inquiry. First let us complete the old investigation, which we began, as you remember, under the impression that, if we could previously examine justice on the larger scale, there would be less difficulty in discerning her in the individual. That larger example appeared to be the State, and accordingly we constructed as GOOD a one as we could, knowing well that in the GOOD State justice would be found. Let the discovery which we made be now applied to the individual — if they agree, we shall be satisfied ; or, if there be a difference in the individual, we will come back to the State and have another trial of the theory. The friction of the two when rubbed together may possibly strike a light in which justice will shine forth, and the vision which is then revealed we will fix in our souls. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

An easy question ! Nay, rather, Socrates, the proverb holds that hard is the GOOD. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Such is the GOOD and true City or State, and the GOOD and true man is of the same pattern ; and if this is right every other is wrong ; and the evil is one which affects not only the ordering of the State, but also the regulation of the individual soul, and is exhibited in four forms. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

But when experience showed that to let all things be uncovered was far better than to cover them up, and the ludicrous effect to the outward eye had vanished before the better principle which reason asserted, then the man was perceived to be a fool who directs the shafts of his ridicule at any other sight but that of folly and vice, or seriously inclines to weigh the beautiful by any other standard but that of the GOOD. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

I mean, I replied, that our rulers will find a considerable dose of falsehood and deceit necessary for the GOOD of their subjects : we were saying that the use of all these things regarded as medicines might be of advantage. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

The proper officers will take the offspring of the GOOD parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter ; but the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Shall we try to find a common basis by asking of ourselves what ought to be the chief aim of the legislator in making laws and in the organization of a State — what is the greatest GOOD, and what is the greatest evil, and then consider whether our previous description has the stamp of the GOOD or of the evil ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

And the reason why the GOOD are useless has now been explained ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

The question how the study of philosophy may be so ordered as not to be the ruin of the State : All great attempts are attended with risk ; “hard is the GOOD,” as men say. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Nay, I said, ask if you will ; but I am certain that you have heard the answer many times, and now you either do not understand me or, as I rather think, you are disposed to be troublesome ; for you have often been told that the idea of GOOD is the highest knowledge, and that all other things become useful and advantageous only by their use of this. You can hardly be ignorant that of this I was about to speak, concerning which, as you have often heard me say, we know so little ; and, without which, any other knowledge or possession of any kind will profit us nothing. Do you think that the possession of all other things is of any value if we do not possess the GOOD ? or the knowledge of all other things if we have no knowledge of beauty and GOODness ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

You are further aware that most people affirm pleasure to be the GOOD, but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

And you are aware too that the latter cannot explain what they mean by knowledge, but are obliged after all to say knowledge of the GOOD ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Yes, I said, that they should begin by reproaching us with our ignorance of the GOOD, and then presume our knowledge of it — for the GOOD they define to be knowledge of the GOOD, just as if we understood them when they use the term “GOOD” — this is of course ridiculous. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Further, do we not see that many are willing to do or to have or to seem to be what is just and honorable without the reality ; but no one is satisfied with the appearance of GOOD — the reality is what they seek ; in the case of the GOOD, appearance is despised by everyone. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

I am sure, I said, that he who does not know how the beautiful and the just are likewise GOOD will be but a sorry guardian of them ; and I suspect that no one who is ignorant of the GOOD will have a true knowledge of them. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Of course, he replied ; but I wish that you would tell me whether you conceive this supreme principle of the GOOD to be knowledge or pleasure, or different from either ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Still, I must implore you, Socrates, said Glaucon, not to turn away just as you are reaching the goal ; if you will only give such an explanation of the GOOD as you have already given of justice and temperance and the other virtues, we shall be satisfied. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Yes, my friend, and I shall be at least equally satisfied, but I cannot help fearing that I shall fail, and that my indiscreet zeal will bring ridicule upon me. No, sweet sirs, let us not at present ask what is the actual nature of the GOOD, for to reach what is now in my thoughts would be an effort too great for me. But of the child of the GOOD who is likest him, I would fain speak, if I could be sure that you wished to hear — otherwise, not. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

And this is he whom I call the child of the GOOD, whom the GOOD begat in his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation to sight and the things of sight, what the GOOD is in the intellectual world in relation to mind and the things of mind : THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of GOOD, and this you will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the latter becomes the subject of knowledge ; beautiful too, as are both truth and knowledge, you will be right in esteeming this other nature as more beautiful than either ; and, as in the previous instance, light and sight may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not to be the sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be deemed to be like the GOOD, but not the GOOD ; the GOOD has a place of honor yet higher. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

What a wonder of beauty that must be, he said, which is the author of science and truth, and yet surpasses them in beauty ; for you surely cannot mean to say that pleasure is the GOOD ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

In like manner the GOOD may be said to be not only the author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being and essence, and yet the GOOD is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already ; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or, in other words, of the GOOD. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all — they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the GOOD ; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

And you would say the same of the conception of the GOOD ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

After this manner : A city which is thus constituted can hardly be shaken ; but, seeing that everything which has a beginning has also an end, even a constitution such as yours will not last forever, but will in time be dissolved. And this is the dissolution : In plants that grow in the earth, as well as in animals that move on the earth’s surface, fertility and sterility of soul and body occur when the circumferences of the circles of each are completed, which in short-lived existences pass over a short space, and in long-lived ones over a long space. But to the knowledge of human fecundity and sterility all the wisdom and education of your rulers will not attain ; the laws which regulate them will not be discovered by an intelligence which is alloyed with sense, but will escape them, and they will bring children into the world when they ought not. Now that which is of divine birth has a period which is contained in a perfect number, but the period of human birth is comprehended in a number in which first increments by involution and evolution (or squared and cubed) obtaining three intervals and four terms of like and unlike, waxing and waning numbers, make all the terms commensurable and agreeable to one another. The base of these (3) with a third added (4), when combined with five (20) and raised to the third power, furnishes two harmonies ; the first a square which is 100 times as great (400 = 4 x 100), and the other a figure having one side equal to the former, but oblong, consisting of 100 numbers squared upon rational diameters of a square (i.e., omitting fractions), the side of which is five (7 x 7 = 49 x 100 = 4900), each of them being less by one (than the perfect square which includes the fractions, sc. 50) or less by two perfect squares of irrational diameters (of a square the side of which is five = 50 + 50 = 100) ; and 100 cubes of three (27 x 100 = 2700 + 4900 + 400 = 8000). Now this number represents a geometrical figure which has control over the GOOD and evil of births. For when your guardians are ignorant of the law of births, and unite bride and bridegroom out of season, the children will not be GOODly or fortunate. And though only the best of them will be appointed by their predecessor, still they will be unworthy to hold their father’s places, and when they come into power as guardians they will soon be found to fail in taking care of us, the muses, first by undervaluing music ; which neglect will soon extend to gymnastics ; and hence the young men of your State will be less cultivated. In the succeeding generation rulers will be appointed who have lost the guardian power of testing the metal of your different races, which, like Hesiod’s, are of gold and silver and brass and iron. And so iron will be mingled with silver, and brass with gold, and hence there will arise dissimilarity and inequality and irregularity, which always and in all places are causes of hatred and war. This the muses affirm to be the stock from which discord has sprung, wherever arising ; and this is their answer to us. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

Well, I said, and how does the change from oligarchy into democracy arise ? Is it not on this wise : the GOOD at which such a State aims is to become as rich as possible, a desire which is insatiable ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

The GOOD which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it was maintained was excess of wealth — am I not right ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

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 ; and if they have anyhow found a way in, then he should have them and their cells cut out as speedily as possible. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

Yes, I said, and these are the new citizens whom he has called into existence, who admire him and are his companions, while the GOOD hate and avoid him. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

Then if the GOOD and just man be thus superior in pleasure to the evil and unjust, his superiority will be infinitely greater in propriety of life and in beauty and virtue ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX

And so, when we hear persons saying that the tragedians, and Homer, who is at their head, know all the arts and all things human, virtue as well as vice, and divine things too, for that the GOOD poet cannot compose well unless he knows his subject, and that he who has not this knowledge can never be a poet, we ought to consider whether here also there may not be a similar illusion. Perhaps they may have come across imitators and been deceived by them ; they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances only and not realities ? Or, after all, they may be in the right, and poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

Then, I said, we must put a question to Homer ; not about medicine, or any of the arts to which his poems only incidentally refer : we are not going to ask him, or any other poet, whether he has cured patients like Asclepius, or left behind him a school of medicine such as the Asclepiads were, or whether he only talks about medicine and other arts at second-hand ; but we have a right to know respecting military tactics, politics, education, which are the chiefest and noblest subjects of his poems, and we may fairly ask him about them. “Friend Homer,” then we say to him, “if you are only in the second remove from truth in what you say of virtue, and not in the third — not an image maker or imitator — and if you are able to discern what pursuits make men better or worse in private or public life, tell us what State was ever better governed by your help ? The GOOD order of Lacedaemon is due to Lycurgus, and many other cities, great and small, have been similarly benefited by others ; but who says that you have been a GOOD legislator to them and have done them any GOOD ? Italy and Sicily boast of Charondas, and there is Solon who is renowned among us ; but what city has anything to say about you ?” Is there any city which he might name ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

Then the user of them must have the greatest experience of them, and he must indicate to the maker the GOOD or bad qualities which develop themselves in use ; for example, the fluteplayer will tell the flute-maker which of his flutes is satisfactory to the performer ; he will tell him how he ought to make them, and the other will attend to his instructions ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

And now we may fairly take him and place him by the side of the painter, for he is like him in two ways : first, inasmuch as his creations have an inferior degree of truth — in this, I say, he is like him ; and he is also like him in being concerned with an inferior part of the soul ; and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason. As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the GOOD are put out of the way, so in the soulsoul of man, as we maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small — he is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

But we have not yet brought forward the heaviest count in our accusation : the power which poetry has of harming even the GOOD (and there are very few who are not harmed), is surely an awful thing ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

Would you agree with me in thinking that the corrupting and destroying element is the evil, and the saving and improving element the GOOD ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

At her love of wisdom. Let us see whom she affects, and what society and converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal and eternal and divine ; also how different she would become if, wholly following this superior principle, and borne by a divine impulse out of the ocean in which she now is, and disengaged from the stones and shells and things of earth and rock which in wild variety spring up around her because she feeds upon earth, and is overgrown by the GOOD things in this life as they are termed : then you would see her as she is, and know whether she have one shape only or many, or what her nature is. Of her affections and of the forms which she takes in this present life I think that we have now said enough. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

When Er and the spirits arrived, their duty was to go at once to Lachesis ; but first of all there came a prophet who arranged them in order ; 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 honors or dishonors her he will have more or less of her ; the responsibility is with the chooser — God is justified.” When the Interpreter had thus spoken he scattered lots indifferently among them all, and each of them took up the lot which fell near him, all but Er himself (he was not allowed), and each as he took his lot perceived the number which he had obtained. Then the Interpreter placed on the ground before them the samples of lives ; and there were many more lives than the souls present, and they were of all sorts. There were lives of every animal and of man in every condition. And there were tyrannies among them, some lasting out the tyrant’s life, others which broke off in the middle and came to an end in poverty and exile and beggary ; and there were lives of famous men, some who were famous for their form and beauty as well as for their strength and success in games, or, again, for their birth and the qualities of their ancestors ; and some who were the reverse of famous for the opposite qualities. And of women likewise ; there was not, however, any definite character in them, because the soul, when choosing a new life, must of necessity become different. But there was every other quality, and they 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. Let each one of us leave every other kind of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only, if peradventure he may be able to learn and may find someone who will make him able to learn and discern between GOOD and evil, and so to choose always and everywhere the better life as he has opportunity. He should consider the bearing of all these things which have been mentioned severally and collectively upon virtue ; he should know what the effect of beauty is when combined with poverty or wealth in a particular soul, and what are the GOOD and evil consequences of noble and humble birth, of private and public station, of strength and weakness, of cleverness and dullness, and of all the natural and acquired gifts of the soul, and the operation of them when conjoined ; he will then look at the nature of the soul, and from the consideration of all these qualities he will be able to determine which is the better and which is the worse ; and so he will choose, giving the name of evil to the life which will make his soul more unjust, and GOOD to the life which will make his soul more just ; all else he will disregard. For we have seen and know that this is the best choice both in life and after death. A man must take with him into the world below an adamantine faith in truth and right, that there too he may be undazzled by the desire of wealth or the other allurements of evil, lest, coming upon tyrannies and similar villanies, he do irremediable wrongs to others and suffer yet worse himself ; but let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible, not only in this life but in all that which is to come. For this is the way of happiness. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X

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 ; his mind having been darkened by folly and sensuality, he had not thought out the whole matter before he chose, and did not at first sight perceive that he was fated, among other evils, to devour his own children. But when he had time to reflect, and saw what was in the lot, he began to beat his breast and lament over his choice, forgetting the proclamation of the prophet ; for, instead of throwing the blame of his misfortune on himself, he accused chance and the gods, and everything rather than himself. Now he was one of those who came from heaven, and in a former life had dwelt in a well-ordered State, but his virtue was a matter of habit only, and he had no philosophy. And it was true of others who were similarly overtaken, that the greater number of them came from heaven and therefore they had never been schooled by trial, whereas the pilgrims WhO came from earth, having themselves suffered and seen others suffer, were not in a hurry to choose. And owing to this inexperience of theirs, and also because the lot was a chance, many of the souls exchanged a GOOD destiny for an evil or an evil for a GOOD. For if a man had always on his arrival in this world dedicated himself from the first to sound philosophy, and had been moderately fortunate in the number of the lot, he might, as the messenger reported, be happy here, and also his journey to another life and return to this, instead of being rough and underground, would be smooth and heavenly. Most curious, he said, was the spectacle — sad and laughable and strange ; for the choice of the souls was in most cases based on their experience of a previous life. There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of women, hating to be born of a woman because they had been his murderers ; he beheld also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale ; birds, on the other hand, like the swans and other musicians, wanting to be men. The soul which obtained the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion, and this was the soul of Ajax the son of Telamon, who would not be a man, remembering the injustice which was done him in the judgment about the arms. The next was Agamemnon, who took the life of an eagle, because, like Ajax, he hated human nature by reason of his sufferings. About the middle came the lot of Atalanta ; she, seeing the great fame of an athlete, was unable to resist the temptation : and after her there followed the soul of Epeus the son of Panopeus passing into the nature of a woman cunning in the arts ; and far away among the last who chose, the soul of the jester Thersites was putting on the form of a monkey. There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former toils had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no cares ; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody else ; and when he saw it, he said that he would have done the same had his lot been first instead of last, and that he was delighted to have it. And not only did men pass into animals, but I must also mention that there were animals tame and wild who changed into one another and into corresponding human natures — the GOOD into the gentle and the evil into the savage, in all sorts of combinations. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X