Book 4

SOCRATES’ NARRATION CONTINUES: Adeimantus interrupted: (419a) How will you defend yourself, Socrates, he said, if someone objects that you are not making these men very happy and, furthermore, that it is their own fault that they are not? I mean, the city really belongs to them, yet they derive no good from the city. Others own land, build ﬁne, big houses, acquire furnishings to go along with them, make their own private sacri- ﬁces to the gods, entertain guests, and also, of course, possess what you were talking about just now: gold and silver and all the things that those who are going to be blessedly happy are thought to require. Instead of that, he might say, they seem simply to be paid auxiliaries established in the city (420a) as a garrison, and nothing else.

SOCRATES: Yes, and what is more, they do it just for upkeep and get no wages in addition to their upkeep, as other men do. So, they won’t even be able to take a personal trip out of town if they want to, or give presents to their girlfriends, or spend money in whatever other ways they might wish, as people do who are considered happy.You have omitted these and a host of other similar facts from your list of charges.

ADEIMANTUS: Well, let them too be added to the charges. (b) SOCRATES: How will we defend ourselves? Is that what you are asking?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: I think we will discover what to say if we follow the same path as before.You see, our reply will be this: it would not be at all surprising if these people were happiest just as they are. However, in establishing our city, we are not looking to make any one group in it outstandingly happy, but to make the whole city so as far as possible. For we thought that we would be most likely to ﬁnd justice in such a city, and injustice, by contrast, in the one that is governed worst. And we thought that by observing both cities, we would be able to decide the question we have been inquiring into (c) for so long. At the moment, then, we take ourselves to be forming a happy city—not separating off a few happy people and putting them in it, but making the city as a whole happy. (We will look at the opposite city soon.)1 [1]: This discussion begins at 445c, but is interrupted and does not resume again until Book 8.

Suppose, then, that we were painting a statue2 and someone came up to us and started to criticize us, saying that we had not applied the most beau- tiful colors to the most beautiful parts of the statue; because the eyes, which are the most beautiful part, had been painted black rather than purple.We would think it reasonable to offer the following defense: “My amazing fel- (d) low, you must not expect us to paint the eyes so beautifully that they no longer look like eyes at all, nor the other parts either. On the contrary, you must look to see whether, by dealing with each part appropriately, we are making the whole thing beautiful. Similarly, in the present case, you must not force us to give our guardians the sort of happiness that would make (e) them something other than guardians.You see, we know how to clothe the farmers in purple robes, festoon them with gold jewelry, and tell them to work the land whenever they please.We know we could have our potters recline on couches from right to left in front of the ﬁre,3 drinking and feasting with their wheel beside them for whenever they have a desire to make pots. And we can make all the others happy in the same way, so that the whole city is happy. But please do not urge us to do this. For if we are persuaded by you, a farmer won’t be a farmer, nor a potter a potter, nor (421a) will any of the others from which a city is constituted remain true to type.

But for most of the others, it matters less: cobblers who become inferior and corrupt, and claim to be what they are not, do nothing terrible to the city. But if the guardians of our laws and city are not really what they seem to be, you may be sure that they will destroy the city utterly and, on the other hand, that they alone have the opportunity to govern it well and make it happy.” Now, if we are making genuine guardians, the sort least likely to do the (a) (b) city evil, and if our critic is making pseudo-farmers—feasters happy at festival, so to speak, not in a city—he is not talking about a city, but about something else. What we have to consider, then, is whether our aim in establishing the guardians is the greatest possible happiness for them, or whether—since our aim is to see this happiness develop for the whole (c) city—we should compel or persuade the auxiliaries and guardians to ensure that they, and all the others as well, are the best possible craftsmen at their own work; and then, with the whole city developing and being governed well, leave it to nature to provide each group with its share of happiness.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, I think what you say is right.

SOCRATES: Well, then, will you also think me reasonable if I say some- thing closely related?

[2]: Ancient Greek statues were painted and gilded.

[3]: At formal drinking parties (sumposia), the toastmaster (sumposiarchos) sat at the head of the table.The others sat in order of their importance, from his right counterclock- wise around the table to his left.

ADEIMANTUS: What exactly?

SOCRATES: Take the rest of the craftsmen again, and consider whether (d) these things corrupt them to such an extent that they actually become bad.

ADEIMANTUS: What things?

SOCRATES: Wealth and poverty.

ADEIMANTUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: This: do you think that a potter who has become wealthy will still be willing to devote himself to his craft?

ADEIMANTUS: Not at all.

SOCRATES: Won’t he become idler and more careless than he was?

ADEIMANTUS: Much more.

SOCRATES: Then won’t he become a worse potter?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, much worse.

SOCRATES: And surely if poverty prevents him from providing himself with tools, or any of the other things he needs for his craft, he will make poorer (e) products himself and worse craftsmen of his sons or anyone else he teaches.

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: So poverty and wealth make the products and the practitioners of the crafts worse.

ADEIMANTUS: Apparently.

SOCRATES: It seems, then, that we have found other things that our guardians must prevent in every way from slipping into the city undetected.

ADEIMANTUS: What things? (422a) SOCRATES: Wealth and poverty. For the former makes for luxury, idleness, and revolution; and the latter for illiberality, bad work, and revolution as well.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s right. But consider this, Socrates: how will our city be able to ﬁght a war if it has acquired no wealth—especially if it has to ﬁght a great and wealthy city?

SOCRATES: Obviously, it will be harder to ﬁght one such city, but easier to (b) ﬁght two.

ADEIMANTUS: How do you mean?

SOCRATES: First of all, if our city has to ﬁght a city of the sort you men- tion, won’t it be a case of warrior-athletes ﬁghting rich men?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, it will.

SOCRATES: Well, then, Adeimantus, don’t you think that a single boxer who has had the best possible training could easily ﬁght two non-boxers who are rich and fat?

ADEIMANTUS: Maybe not at the same time.

SOCRATES: Not even if he could start to run away and then turn and hit (c) the one who caught up with him ﬁrst, and could do this often, out in the stiﬂing heat of the sun? Couldn’t a man like that overcome even more than two such enemies?

ADEIMANTUS: It certainly would not be surprising if he could.

SOCRATES: Well, don’t you think that rich people have more knowledge and experience of boxing than of how to ﬁght a war?

ADEIMANTUS: I do.

SOCRATES: In all likelihood, then, our athletes will easily be able to ﬁght two or three times their number.

ADEIMANTUS: I will have to grant you that, since I think what you say is right. (d) SOCRATES: Well, then, what if they sent an envoy to another city with the following true message: “We use no gold or silver. It is against divine law for us to do so, but not for you. So join us in this war and you can have the property of our enemy.” Do you think that anyone who heard this message would choose to ﬁght hard, lean hounds, rather than to join the hounds in ﬁghting fat and tender sheep?

ADEIMANTUS: No, I do not. But if the wealth of all other cities were (e) amassed by a single one, don’t you think that would endanger your non- wealthy city?

SOCRATES: You are happily innocent if you think that any city besides the one we are constructing deserves to be called a city.

ADEIMANTUS: What should we call them, then?

SOCRATES: We will have to ﬁnd a “greater” title for the others because each of them is a great many cities, but not a city, as they say in the game.4 They contain two, at any rate, which are at war with one another: the city (423a) of the poor and that of the rich. And within each of these, there are a great many more. So if you treat them as one city, you will be making a big mis- take. But if you treat them as many and offer one the money, power, and the very inhabitants of another, you will always ﬁnd many allies and few [4]: The reference is obscure; it may be to a saying or proverb, or to a game like check- ers called poleis, or cities, in which the set of pieces on each side, or perhaps any sub- set of them, were called cities, while the individual members of the sets were called dogs.

enemies. And as long as your own city is temperately governed in the way we just arranged, it will be the greatest one—not in reputation; I do not mean that; but the greatest in fact—even if it has only a thousand soldiers to defend it. For you won’t easily ﬁnd one city so great among either Greeks or barbarians, though you will ﬁnd many that are reputed to be many times (b) greater. Or do you disagree?

ADEIMANTUS: No, by Zeus, I do not.

SOCRATES: This, then, would also provide our rulers with the best limit for determining the proper size of the city, and how much land they should mark off for a city that size, letting the rest go.

ADEIMANTUS: What limit is that?

SOCRATES: I think it is this: as long as it is willing to remain one city, it may continue to grow, but not beyond that point. (c) ADEIMANTUS: And it is a good one.

SOCRATES: Then we will also give our guardians this further order, that they are to guard in every possible way against the city’s being either small in size or great in reputation, rather than adequate in size and one in number.

ADEIMANTUS: No doubt, that will be a trivial instruction for them to follow!

SOCRATES: Here is another that is even more trivial.We mentioned it ear- lier as well.5 We said that if an offspring of the guardians is inferior, he must be sent off to join the other citizens, and that if the others have an excellent (d) offspring, he must join the guardians. This was meant to make clear that every other citizen, too, must be assigned to what naturally suits him, with one person assigned to one job so that, practicing his own pursuit, each of them will become not many but one, and the entire city thereby naturally grow to be one, not many.

ADEIMANTUS: Oh, yes, that is a more minor one!

SOCRATES: Really, my good Adeimantus, the orders we are giving them are neither as numerous nor as difﬁcult as one would think. Indeed, they are all insigniﬁcant provided, as the saying goes, they safeguard the one great thing—or rather not great but adequate.6 (e) ADEIMANTUS: What’s that?

SOCRATES: Their education and upbringing. For if a good education makes them moderate men, they will easily discover all this for them- selves—and everything else that we are now omitting, such as the posses- sion of women, marriages, and the procreation of children, and how all [5]: 415a–c.

[6]: See 423c4.

(424a) these must be governed as far as possible by the old proverb that friends share everything in common.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, that would be best.

SOCRATES: And surely once our constitution is well started, it will, as it were, go on growing in a circle. For good education and upbringing, if they are kept up, produce good natures; and sound natures, which in turn receive such an education, grow up even better than their predecessors in every respect—but particularly with respect to their offspring, as in the case (b) of all the other animals.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, probably so.

SOCRATES: To put it brieﬂy, then, what the overseers of our city must cling to, not allow to become corrupted without their noticing it, and guard against everything, is this: there must be no innovation in musical or physical training that goes against the established order. On the contrary, they must guard against that as much as they can. And they should dread to hear anyone say that “people think most of the song that ﬂoats newest from the singer’s lips,”7 in case someone happens to suppose that the poet means

(c) not new songs, but a new way of singing, and praises that. We should not praise such a claim, however, or take it to be what the poet meant.You see, (a) change to a new kind of musical training is something to beware of as wholly dangerous. For one can never change the ways of training people in music without affecting the greatest political laws. That is what Damon says, and I am convinced he is right.

ADEIMANTUS: You can also count me among those who are convinced. (d) SOCRATES: It seems, then, that it is in musical training that the guardhouse of our guardians must surely be built.

ADEIMANTUS: At any rate, this sort of lawlessness easily inserts itself unde- tected.

SOCRATES: Yes, because it is supposed to be only part of a game that, as such, can do no harm.

ADEIMANTUS: And it does not do any—except, of course, that when it has established itself there, it slowly and silently ﬂows over into people’s habits and practices. From these it travels forth with greater vigor into private contracts, and then from private contracts it advances with the utmost inso- (e) lence into the laws and constitution, Socrates, until in the end it overthrows everything public and private.

SOCRATES: Well, is that so?

ADEIMANTUS: I think it is.

[7]: Odyssey 1.351–2. Our text of Homer is slightly different.

SOCRATES: Then, as we were saying at the beginning, our children must take part in games that are more law-abiding right from the start, since, if their games become lawless and the children follow suit, isn’t it impossible (425a) for them to grow up into excellent and law-abiding men?

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: So whenever children play in a good way right from the start and absorb lawfulness from musical training, there is the opposite result: lawfulness follows them in everything and fosters their growth, correcting anything in the city that may have been neglected before.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s true.

SOCRATES: And so such people rediscover the seemingly insigniﬁcant conventional views their predecessors had destroyed.

ADEIMANTUS: Which sort?

SOCRATES: Those dealing with things like this: the silence appropriate for (b) younger people in the presence of their elders; the giving up of seats for them and standing up in their presence; the care of parents; hairstyles; clothing; shoes; the general appearance of the body; and everything else of that sort. Don’t you agree?

ADEIMANTUS: I do.

SOCRATES: To legislate about such things is naïve, in my view, since verbal or written decrees will never make them come about or last.

ADEIMANTUS: How could they?

SOCRATES: At any rate, Adeimantus, it looks as though the start of some- (c) one’s education determines what follows. Or doesn’t like always encourage like?

ADEIMANTUS: It does.

SOCRATES: And the ﬁnal outcome of education, I imagine we would say, is a single, complete, and fresh product that is either good or the opposite.

ADEIMANTUS: Of course.

SOCRATES: That is why I, for my part, would not try to legislate about such things.

ADEIMANTUS: And with good reason.

SOCRATES: Then, by the gods, what about all that marketplace business, the contracts people make with one another in the marketplace, for exam- (d) ple, and contracts with handicraftsmen, and slanders, injuries, indictments, establishing juries, paying or collecting whatever dues are necessary in mar- ketplace and harbors, and, in a word, the entire regulation of marketplace, city, harbor, or what have you—dare we legislate about any of these?

ADEIMANTUS: No, it would not be appropriate to dictate to men who are ﬁne and good. For they will easily ﬁnd out for themselves whatever needs (e) to be legislated about such things.

SOCRATES: Yes, my friend, provided that a god grants that the laws we have already described are preserved intact.

ADEIMANTUS: If not, they will spend their lives continually enacting and amending such laws in the hope of ﬁnding what is best.

SOCRATES: You mean they will live like those sick people who, because they are intemperate, are not willing to abandon their bad way of life.

ADEIMANTUS: That’s right. (426a) SOCRATES: Such people really do lead a charming life! Their medical treatment achieves nothing, except to make their illnesses worse and more complex, and they are always hoping that someone will recommend some new drug that will make them healthy.

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, that’s exactly what happens to invalids of this sort.

SOCRATES: And isn’t it another charming feature of theirs that they think their worst enemy of all is the one who tells them the truth—that until they give up drunkenness, overeating, sexual indulgence, and idleness, then (b) no drug, cautery, or surgery, no charms, amulets, or anything else of that sort will do them any good?

ADEIMANTUS: It is not charming at all. Being harsh to someone who tells the truth is not charming.

SOCRATES: You do not approve of such men, apparently.

ADEIMANTUS: No, by Zeus, I do not.

SOCRATES: Then nor will you approve of an entire city that behaves in the way we were just describing. Or don’t you think that such invalids behave in the very same way as cities where the following occurs? Because they are badly governed politically, the citizens are warned not to change the city’s (c) whole political system, and the one who does is threatened with the death penalty. But the one who serves these cities most pleasantly, while they remain politically governed in that way; who indulges them, ﬂatters them, anticipates their wishes, and is clever at fulﬁlling them; isn’t he, on that account, honored by them as a good man who is wise in the most impor- tant matters?

ADEIMANTUS: Yes, I think their behavior is the same and I do not approve of it at all.

SOCRATES: What about those who are willing and eager to provide treat- (d) ment for such cities? Don’t you approve of their courage and also their lighthearted irresponsibility?

ADEIMANTUS: I do indeed—except for those who are actually deluded and suppose themselves to be true men of politics because they are praised by the masses.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? Have you no sympathy for these men? Or do you think it is possible for a man who does not know how to measure anything not to believe that he is four cubits tall8 when many others, who (e) are similarly ignorant, tell him that he is?

ADEIMANTUS: No, I do not think that.

SOCRATES: Then do not be too hard on them.You see, such people are surely the most charming of all.They pass and amend the sorts of laws we (a) have just been describing, and are always expecting that they will ﬁnd way to put a stop to cheating on contracts, and the other evildoings I (a) mentioned just now, not realizing that they are really just cutting off Hydra’s head.9 (427a) ADEIMANTUS: Yet that is all they are really doing.

SOCRATES: I would have thought, then, that a true lawgiver should not bother with laws or constitutions of this kind, whether in a politically badly governed or in a politically well-governed city—in the one because it is useless and accomplishes nothing; in the other because some of them are discoverable by anyone, while the others follow automatically from the practices already described. (b) ADEIMANTUS: What remains for us to legislate, then?

SOCRATES: For us, nothing; but for the Delphic Apollo, there remain the greatest, ﬁnest, and ﬁrst of legislations.

ADEIMANTUS: What are they about?

SOCRATES: The establishing of temples and sacriﬁces, and other forms of service to gods, daimons, and heroes; the burial of the dead, and the ser- vices that ensure the favor of those who have gone to the other world. For we, of course, have no knowledge of these things and so, when we are founding a city, we won’t take anyone else’s advice, if we have any sense, or (c) employ any interpreter except our ancestral one. And in fact, this god—as he delivers his interpretations from his seat at the navel of the earth10—is the ancestral guide on these matters for the whole human race.

ADEIMANTUS: Well put.That is what we must do.

[8]: Roughly seven feet.A cubit is between seventeen and twenty-two inches long.

[9]: The Hydra was a mythical monster.When one of its heads was cut off, two or three new heads grew in its place. Heracles (or Hercules) had to slay the Hydra as one of his labors.

[10]: The oracle of Apollo at Delphi was traditionally consulted by all Greeks on reli- gious and other such matters.A stone there marked the supposed center of the earth.

SOCRATES: So then, son of Ariston, your city would now seem to be (d) founded. As the next step, look inside it, having got hold of an adequate light somewhere. Look yourself and invite your brother and Polemarchus and the rest of us to help you, to see where justice and injustice might be in it, how they differ from one another, and which of the two must be pos- sessed by the person who is going to be happy, whether that fact is hidden from all gods and humans or not.

And Glaucon said: That’s nonsense! You promised you would look for them yourself, because (e) you said it was impious for you not to defend justice in every way you could.11 SOCRATES: You are right to remind me, and I must do what I promised.

But you will have to help.

GLAUCON: We will.

SOCRATES: I expect, then, to ﬁnd justice in the following way. I think our city, if indeed it has been correctly founded, is completely good.

GLAUCON: Yes, it must be.

SOCRATES: Clearly, then, it is wise, courageous, temperate, and just.

GLAUCON: Clearly.

SOCRATES: Then if we ﬁnd any of these in it, what remains will be what we have not found? (428a) GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: Therefore, as in the case of any other four things, if we were looking for one of them in something and recognized it ﬁrst, that would be enough to satisfy us. But if we recognized the other three ﬁrst, that itself would enable us to recognize what we were looking for, since clearly it could not be anything other than the one that remains.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: So, since there also happen to be four things we are interested in, mustn’t we look for them in the same way?

GLAUCON: Clearly.

SOCRATES: Now, the ﬁrst thing I think I can see clearly in the city is wis- (b) dom. And there seems to be something odd about it.

GLAUCON: What? [11]: 368b7–c3.

SOCRATES: I think that the city we described is really wise. And that is because it is prudent,12 isn’t it?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: And surely it is clear that this very thing, prudence, is some sort of knowledge. I mean, it certainly is not through ignorance that people do the prudent thing, but through knowledge.

GLAUCON: Clearly.

SOCRATES: But there are, of course, many multifarious sorts of knowledge in the city.

GLAUCON: Certainly.

SOCRATES: So, is it because of the knowledge possessed by the carpenters that the city deserves to be described as wise and prudent? (c) GLAUCON: Not at all. It is called skilled in carpentry because of that.

SOCRATES: So a city shouldn’t be called wise because it has the knowledge that deliberates about how wooden things can be best.

GLAUCON: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: What about this, then? What about the knowledge of things made of bronze, or anything else of that sort?

GLAUCON: Not anything of that sort either.

SOCRATES: And not the knowledge of how to produce crops from the soil. On the contrary, it is skilled in farming because of that.

GLAUCON: That’s my view.

SOCRATES: Then is there some knowledge in the city we have just founded, which some of its citizens have, that does not deliberate about (d) some particular thing in the city, but about the city as a whole, and about how its internal relations and its relations with other cities will be the best possible.

GLAUCON: There is indeed.

SOCRATES: What is it and who has it?

GLAUCON: It is the craft of guardianship. And the ones who possess it are those rulers we just now called complete guardians.13 SOCRATES: Because it has this knowledge, then, how do you describe the city?

[12]: Euboulos: In Greek cities, the boulê was the council that had day-to-day responsi- bility for public affairs. In kingships it served as an advisory body to the kings; in democratic Athens it served as an advisory body and steering committee for the assembly of all the adult male citizens. [13]: 414b1–6.

GLAUCON: As prudent and really wise.

SOCRATES: Now, do you think that there will be more metalworkers in (e) the city, or more of these true guardians?

GLAUCON: There will be far more metalworkers.

SOCRATES: Of all those who are called by a certain name because they have some sort of knowledge, wouldn’t the true guardians be the fewest in number?

GLAUCON: By far.

SOCRATES: So, it is because of the smallest group or part of itself, and the knowledge that is in it—the part that governs and rules—that a city founded according to nature would be wise as a whole. And this class— which seems to be, by nature, the smallest—is the one that inherently pos- (429a) sesses a share of the knowledge that alone among all the other sorts of knowledge should be called wisdom.

GLAUCON: That’s absolutely true.

SOCRATES: So we have found—though I do not know how—this one of the four and its place in the city, too.

GLAUCON: It seems to me, at least, that it has been well and truly found.

SOCRATES: But surely courage and the part of the city it is in, and because of which the city is described as courageous, is not very difﬁcult to spot.

GLAUCON: How so? (b) SOCRATES: Who would describe a city as cowardly or courageous by looking at anything other than that part which defends it and wages war on its behalf?

GLAUCON: No one would look at anything else.

SOCRATES: Because, I take it, whether the others are courageous or cow- ardly doesn’t make it one or the other.

GLAUCON: No, it doesn’t.

SOCRATES: So courage, too, belongs to a city because of a part of itself— because it has in that part the power to preserve through everything its belief that the things, and the sorts of things, that should inspire terror are (c) the very things, and sorts of things, that the lawgiver declared to be such in the course of educating it. Or don’t you call that courage?

GLAUCON: I do not completely understand what you said. Would you mind repeating it?

SOCRATES: I mean that courage is a sort of preservation.

GLAUCON: What sort of preservation?

SOCRATES: The preservation of the belief, inculcated by the law through education, about what things, and what sorts of things, inspire terror. And by its preservation “through everything,” I mean preserving it though pains, (d) pleasures, appetites, and fears and not abandoning it. I will compare it to something I think it resembles, if you like.

GLAUCON: I would like that.

SOCRATES: You know, then, that when dyers want to dye wool purple, they ﬁrst select from wools of many different colors the ones that are natu- rally white.Then they give them an elaborate preparatory treatment, so that they will accept the color as well as possible. And only at that point do they dip them in the purple dye. When something is dyed in this way, it holds (e) the dye fast, and no amount of washing, whether with or without deter- gent, can remove the color. But you also know what happens when things are not dyed in this way, when one dyes wools of other colors, or even these white ones, without preparatory treatment.

GLAUCON: I know they look washed out and ridiculous.

SOCRATES: You should take it, then, that we too were trying as hard as we could to do something similar when we selected our soldiers and educated them in musical and physical training. It was contrived, you should sup- (430a) pose, for no purpose other than to ensure that—persuaded by us—they would absorb the laws in the best possible way, just like wool does a dye; that as a result, their beliefs about what things should inspire terror, and about everything else, would hold fast because they had the proper nature and rearing; so fast that the dye could not be washed out even by those detergents that are so terribly effective at scouring—pleasure, which is much more terribly effective at this than any chalestrian14 or alkali, and (b) pain and fear and appetite, which are worse than any detergent.This power, then, to preserve through everything the correct and law-inculcated belief about what should inspire terror and what should not is what I, at any rate, call courage. And I will assume it is this, unless you object.

GLAUCON: No, I have no objection. For I presume that the sort of correct belief about these same matters that you ﬁnd in animals and slaves, which is not the result of education and has nothing at all to do with law, is called something other than courage. (c) SOCRATES: You are absolutely right.

GLAUCON: Well, then, I accept your account of courage.

SOCRATES: Yes, do accept it, at any rate, as my account of political courage, and you will be right to accept it. If you like, we will discuss that more fully some other time.You see, at the moment, our inquiry is not about courage [14]: Carbonate of soda from Chalestra, a town and lake in Macedonia.

but about justice. And for the purpose of that inquiry, I think that what we have said is sufﬁcient.

GLAUCON: You are right.

SOCRATES: Two things, then, remain for us to ﬁnd in the city: temper- ance15 and—the goal of our entire inquiry—justice. (d) GLAUCON: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: How could we ﬁnd justice, then, so we won’t have to bother with temperance any further?

GLAUCON: Well I, for my part, do not know of any, nor would I want jus- tice to appear ﬁrst if that means that we are not going to investigate tem- perance any further. So if you want to please me, look for it before the other.

SOCRATES: Of course I want to. It would be wrong not to.16 (e) GLAUCON: Go ahead and look, then.

SOCRATES: I will.And seen from here, it is more like a sort of concord and harmony than the previous ones.

GLAUCON: How so?

SOCRATES: Temperance is surely a sort of order, the mastery of certain sorts of pleasures and appetites. People indicate as much when they use the term “self-mastery”—though I do not know in what way. This and other similar things are like tracks that temperance has left. Isn’t that so?

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Isn’t the term “self-mastery” ridiculous, though? For, of course, the one who is master of himself is also the one who is weaker, and the one who is weaker is also the one who masters. After all, the same per- (431a) son is referred to in all these descriptions.

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: It seems to me, however, that what this term is trying to indi- cate is that within the same person’s soul, there is a better thing and a worse one. Whenever the naturally better one masters the worse, this is called being master of oneself. At any rate, it is praised. But whenever, as a result of bad upbringing or associating with bad people, the smaller and better one is mastered by the inferior majority, this is blamed as a disgraceful thing (b) and is called being weaker than oneself, or being intemperate.

GLAUCON: Yes, that seems plausible.

[15]: See Glossary of Terms s.v. temperance.

[16]: See 427d8–e4.

SOCRATES: Now, then, take a look at our new city and you will ﬁnd one of these conditions present in it. For you will say that it is rightly described as master of itself, if indeed anything in which the better rules the worse is to be described as temperate and master of itself.

GLAUCON: I am looking, and what you say is true.

SOCRATES: Furthermore, pleasures, pains, and appetites that are numerous (c) and multifarious are things one would especially ﬁnd in children, women, household slaves, and in the so-called free members of the masses—that is, the inferior people.

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: But the pleasures, pains, and appetites that are simple and moderate, the ones that are led by rational calculation with the aid of understanding and correct belief, you would ﬁnd in those few people who are born with the best natures and receive the best education.

GLAUCON: That’s true.

SOCRATES: Don’t you see, then, that this too is present in your city, and that the appetites of the masses—the inferior people—are mastered there by (d) the wisdom and appetites of the few—the best people?

GLAUCON: I do.

SOCRATES: So, if any city is said to be master of its pleasures and appetites and of itself, it is this one.

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: So isn’t it also temperate because of all this?

GLAUCON: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: And moreover, if there is any city in which rulers and subjects (e) share the same belief about who should rule, it is this one. Or don’t you agree?

GLAUCON: Yes, I certainly do.

SOCRATES: And in which of them do you say temperance is located when they are in this condition? In the rulers or the subjects?

GLAUCON: In both, I suppose.

SOCRATES: Do you see, then, that the hunch we had just now—that tem- perance is like a sort of harmony—was quite plausible?

GLAUCON: Why is that?

SOCRATES: Because its operation is unlike that of courage and wisdom, each of which resides in one part and makes the city either courageous or (432a) wise. Temperance does not work like that, but has literally been stretched

throughout the whole, making the weakest, the strongest, and those in between all sing the same song in unison—whether in wisdom, if you like, or in physical strength, if you prefer; or, for that matter, in numbers, wealth, or anything else. Hence we would be absolutely right to say that this unanimity is temperance—this concord between the naturally worse and the naturally better, about which of the two should rule both in the city and in each individual. (b) GLAUCON: I agree completely.

SOCRATES: All right. We have now spotted three kinds of virtue in our city.What kind remains, then, that would give the city yet another share of virtue? For it is clear that what remains is justice.

GLAUCON: It is clear.

SOCRATES: So then, Glaucon, we must now station ourselves like hunters surrounding a wood and concentrate our minds, so that justice does not escape us and vanish into obscurity. For it is clear that it is around here (c) somewhere. Keep your eyes peeled and do your best to catch sight of it, and if you happen to see it before I do, show it to me.

GLAUCON: I wish I could help. But it is rather the case that if you use me as a follower who can see only what you point out to him, you will be using me in a more reasonable way.

SOCRATES: Pray for success, then, and follow me.

GLAUCON: I will.You have only to lead.

SOCRATES: And it truly seems to be an impenetrable place and full of shadows. It is dark, at any rate, and difﬁcult to search through. But all the same, we must go on. (d) GLAUCON: Yes, we must.

And then I caught sight of something and shouted: SOCRATES: Ah ha!17 Glaucon, it looks as though there is a track here, and I do not think our quarry will altogether escape us.

GLAUCON: That’s good news.

SOCRATES: Oh dear, what a stupid condition in which to ﬁnd ourselves!

GLAUCON: How so?

SOCRATES: It seems, blessed though you are, that the thing has been roll- ing around at our feet from the very beginning, and yet, like ridiculous fools, we could not see it. For just as people who are holding something in their hands sometimes search for the very thing they are holding, we did [17]: Iou iou: usually a cry of woe in tragedy, not (like iô iô) a cry of joy.

(e) not look in the right direction but gazed off into the distance, and perhaps that is the very reason we did not notice it.

GLAUCON: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: This: I think we have been talking and hearing about it all this time without understanding ourselves, or realizing that we were, in a way, talking about it.

GLAUCON: That was a long prelude! Now I want to hear what you mean!

SOCRATES: Listen, then, and see whether there is anything in what I say. (433a) You see, what we laid down at the beginning when we were founding our city, about what should be done throughout it—that, I think, or some form of that, is justice. And surely what we laid down and often repeated, if you remember, is that each person must practice one of the pursuits in the city, the one for which he is naturally best suited.

GLAUCON: Yes, we did say that.

SOCRATES: Moreover, we have heard many people say, and have often said ourselves, that justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what (b) is not one’s own.

GLAUCON: Yes, we have.

SOCRATES: This, then, my friend, provided it is taken in a certain way, would seem to be justice—this doing one’s own work. And do you know what I take as evidence of that?

GLAUCON: No, tell me.

SOCRATES: After our consideration of temperance, courage, and wisdom, I think that what remains in the city is the power that makes it possible for all of these to arise in it, and that preserves them when they have arisen for (c) as long as it remains there itself. And we did say that justice would be what remained when we had found the other three.18 GLAUCON: Yes, that must be so.

SOCRATES: Yet, surely, if we had to decide which of these will most con- tribute to making our city good by being present in it, it would be difﬁcult to decide. Is it the agreement in belief between the rulers and the subjects?

The preservation among the soldiers of the law-inculcated belief about what should inspire terror and what should not? The wisdom and guardian- (d) ship of the rulers? Or is what most contributes to making it good the fact that every child, woman, slave, free person, craftsman, ruler, and subject each does his own work and does not meddle with what is not?

GLAUCON: Of course it’s a difﬁcult decision. [18]: 428a2–9.

SOCRATES: It seems, then, that this power—which consists in everyone’s doing his own work—rivals wisdom, temperance, and courage in its con- tribution to the city’s virtue.

GLAUCON: It certainly does.

SOCRATES: And wouldn’t you say that justice is certainly what rivals them (e) in contributing to the city’s virtue?

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Look at it this way, too, if you want to be convinced. Won’t you assign to the rulers the job of judging lawsuits in the city?

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: And will they have any aim in judging other than this: that no citizen should have what is another’s or be deprived of what is his own?

GLAUCON: No, they will have none but that.

SOCRATES: Because that is just?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: So from that point of view, too, having and doing of one’s (434a) own, of what belongs to one, would be agreed to be justice.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: Now, see whether you agree with me about this: if a carpenter attempts to do the work of a shoemaker, or a shoemaker that of a carpenter, or they exchange their tools or honors with one another, or if the same person tries to do both jobs, and all other such exchanges are made, do you think that does any great harm to the city?

GLAUCON: Not really.

SOCRATES: But I imagine that when someone who is, by nature, a crafts- man or some other sort of moneymaker is puffed up by wealth, or by hav- (b) ing a majority of votes, or by his own strength, or by some other such thing, and attempts to enter the class of soldiers; or when one of the sol- diers who is unworthy to do so tries to enter that of judge and guardian, and these exchange their tools and honors; or when the same person tries to do all these things at once, then I imagine you will agree that these exchanges and this meddling destroy the city.

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: So, meddling and exchange among these three classes is the (c) greatest harm that can happen to the city and would rightly be called the worst evil one could do to it.

GLAUCON: Exactly.

SOCRATES: And wouldn’t you say that the worst evil one could do to one’s own city is injustice?

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: That, then, is what injustice is. But let’s put it in reverse: the opposite of this—when the moneymaking, auxiliary, and guardian class each do their own work in the city—is justice, isn’t it, and makes the city just? (d) GLAUCON: That’s exactly what I think too.

SOCRATES: Let’s not state it as ﬁxedly established just yet. But if this kind of thing is agreed by us to be justice in the case of individual human beings as well, then we can assent to it. For what else will there be for us to say?

But if it is not, we will have to look for something else. For the moment, however, let’s complete the inquiry in which we supposed that if we ﬁrst tried to observe justice in some larger thing that possessed it, that would make it easier to see what it is like in an individual human being.19 We (e) agreed that this larger thing is a city, and so we founded the best city we could, knowing well that justice would of course be present in one that was good. So, let’s apply what has come to light for us there to an individual, and if it is conﬁrmed, all will be well. But if something different is found in the case of the individual, we will go back to the city and test it there. And perhaps by examining them side by side and rubbing them together like (435a) ﬁre-sticks, we can make justice blaze forth and, once it has come to light, conﬁrm it in our own case.

GLAUCON: Well, the road you describe is the right one, and we should follow it.

SOCRATES: Well, then, if you call a bigger thing and a smaller thing by the same name, are they unalike in the respect in which they are called the same, or alike?

GLAUCON: Alike.

SOCRATES: So a just man won’t differ at all from a just city with respect to (b) the form of justice but will be like it.

GLAUCON: Yes, he will be like it.

SOCRATES: But now, the city, at any rate, was thought to be just because each of the three natural classes within it did its own job; and to be temper- ate, courageous, and wise, in addition, because of certain other conditions or states of these same classes.

GLAUCON: That’s true. [19]: 368c7–369a3.

SOCRATES: Then, my friend, we would expect an individual to have these same kinds of things in his soul, and to be correctly called by the same (c) names as the city because the same conditions are present in them both.

GLAUCON: Inevitably.

SOCRATES: Well, you amazing fellow, here is another trivial investigation20 we have stumbled into: does the soul have these three kinds of things in it or not?

GLAUCON: It does not look at all trivial to me. Perhaps, Socrates, there is some truth in the old saying that everything beautiful is difﬁcult.

SOCRATES: Apparently so. In fact, you should be well aware, Glaucon, that it is my belief we will never ever grasp this matter precisely by methods (d) of the sort we are now using in our discussions. However, there is in fact another longer and more time-consuming road that does lead there.21 But perhaps we can manage to come up to the standard of our previous state- ments and inquiries.

GLAUCON: Shouldn’t we be content with that? It would be enough for me, at least for now.

SOCRATES: Well, then, it will be quite satisfactory for me, too.

GLAUCON: Then do not weary, but go on with the inquiry. (e) SOCRATES: Well, isn’t it absolutely necessary for us to agree to this much: that the very same kinds of things and conditions exist in each one of us as exist in the city? After all, where else would they come from? You see, it would be ridiculous for anyone to think that spiritedness did not come to be in cities from the private individuals who are reputed to have this qual- ity, such as the Thracians, Scythians, and others who live to the north of us; or that the same is not true of the love of learning, which is mostly associ- (436a) ated with our part of the world; or of the love of money, which is said to be found not least among the Phoenicians and Egyptians.

GLAUCON: It certainly would.

SOCRATES: We may take that as being so, then, and it was not at all difﬁ- cult to discover.

GLAUCON: No, it certainly was not.

SOCRATES: But this, now, is difﬁcult. Do we do each of them with the same thing or, since there are three, do we do one with one and another with another: that is to say, do we learn with one, feel anger with another, and with yet a third have an appetite for the pleasures of food, sex, and [20]: See 423c5–e2.

[21]: See 504b1–c4 for an explanation.

those closely akin to them? Or do we do each of them with the whole of (b) our soul, once we feel the impulse? That is what is difﬁcult to determine in (a) way that is up to the standards of our argument.

GLAUCON: I think so, too.

SOCRATES: Well, then, let’s try in this way to determine whether they are the same as one another or different.

GLAUCON: What way?

SOCRATES: It is clear that the same thing cannot do or undergo opposite things; not, at any rate, in the same respect, in relation to the same thing, at the same time. So, if we ever ﬁnd that happening here, we will know that (c) we are not dealing with one and the same thing, but with many.

GLAUCON: All right.

SOCRATES: Consider, then, what I am about to say.

GLAUCON: Say it.

SOCRATES: Is it possible for the same thing, at the same time, and in the same respect, to be standing still and moving?

GLAUCON: Not at all.

SOCRATES: Let’s come to a more precise agreement, in order to avoid dis- putes later on.You see, if anyone said of a person who is standing still but moving his hands and head, that the same thing is moving and standing still at the same time, we would not consider, I imagine, that he should say that; but rather that in one respect the person is standing still, while in another (d) he is moving. Isn’t that so?

GLAUCON: It is.

SOCRATES: Then, if the one who said this became still more charming and (a) made the sophisticated point that spinning tops, at any rate, stand still as whole at the same time as they are also in motion, when, with the peg ﬁxed in the same place, they revolve, or that the same holds of anything else that moves in a circle on the same spot—we would not agree, on the grounds that in such situations it is not in the same respects that these objects are both moving and standing still. On the contrary, we would say (e) that these objects have both a straight axis and a circumference in them, and that with respect to the straight axis they stand still—since they do not wobble to either side—whereas with respect to the circumference they move in a circle. But if their straight axis wobbles to the left or right or front or back at the same time as they are spinning, we will say that they are not standing still in any way.

GLAUCON: And we would be right.

SOCRATES: No such objection will disturb us, then, or make us any more likely to believe that the same thing can—at the same time, in the same respect, and in relation to the same thing—undergo, be, or do opposite (437a) things.

GLAUCON: They won’t have that effect on me at least.

SOCRATES: All the same, in order to avoid going through all these objec- tions one by one and taking a long time to prove them all untrue, let’s hypothesize that what we have said is correct and carry on—with the understanding that if it should ever be shown to be incorrect, all the conse- quences we have drawn from it will be invalidated.

GLAUCON: Yes, that’s what we should do. (b) SOCRATES: Now, wouldn’t you consider assent and dissent, wanting to have something and rejecting it, taking something and pushing it way, as all being pairs of mutual opposites—whether of opposite doings or of opposite undergoings does not matter?

GLAUCON: Yes, they are pairs of opposites.

SOCRATES: What about thirst, hunger, and the appetites as a whole, and also wishing and willing? Would you include all of them somewhere among (c) the kinds of things we just mentioned? For example, wouldn’t you say that the soul of someone who has an appetite wants the thing for which it has an appetite, and draws toward itself what it wishes to have; and, in addition, that insofar as his soul wishes something to be given to it, it nods assent to itself as if in answer to a question, and strives toward its attainment?

GLAUCON: I would.

SOCRATES: What about not-willing, not-wishing, and not-having an appetite? Wouldn’t we include them among the very opposites, cases in which the soul pushes and drives things away from itself? (d) GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: Since that is so, won’t we say that there is a kind consisting of appetites, and that the most conspicuous examples of them are what we call hunger and thirst?

GLAUCON: We will.

SOCRATES: Isn’t the one for food, the other for drink?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: Now, insofar as it is thirst, is it an appetite in the soul for more than what we say it is for? I mean, is thirst a thirst for hot drink or cold, or much drink or little, or—in a word—for drink of a certain sort? Or isn’t it rather that if heat is present in addition to thirst, it causes the appetite to be (e) for something cold as well, whereas the addition of cold makes it an appetite

for something hot? And if there is much thirst, because of the presence of muchness, won’t it cause the desire to be for much drink, and where little for little? But thirst itself will never be for anything other than the very thing that it is in its nature to be an appetite for: namely, drink itself; and, similarly, hunger is for food.

GLAUCON: That’s the way it is. By itself, at any rate, each appetite is for its natural object only, while an appetite for an object of this or that sort depends on additions.

SOCRATES: No one should catch us unprepared, then, or disturb us by (438a) claiming that no one has an appetite for drink but rather for good drink, nor for food but rather for good food, since everyone’s appetite is for good things. And so, if thirst is an appetite, it will be an appetite for good drink or good whatever, and similarly for the other appetites.

GLAUCON: Yes, there might seem to be something in that objection.

SOCRATES: But surely, whenever things are related to something, those that are of a particular sort are related to a particular sort of thing, as it (b) seems to me, whereas those that are just themselves are related only to a thing that is just itself.

GLAUCON: I do not understand.

SOCRATES: Don’t you understand that the greater is such as to be greater than something?

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: Than the less?

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the much greater than the much less. Isn’t that so?

GLAUCON: Yes.

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

GLAUCON: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And doesn’t the same hold of the more in relation to the (c) fewer, the double to the half, and everything of that sort; and also of heavier to lighter and faster to slower; and, in addition, of hot to cold, and all other similar things?

GLAUCON: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: What about the various kinds of knowledge? Aren’t they the same way? Knowledge itself is of what can be learned itself (or of whatever we should take the object of knowledge to be), whereas a particular knowl- edge of a particular sort is of a particular thing of a particular sort. I mean

something like this: when knowledge of building houses was developed, it (d) differed from the other kinds of knowledge, and so was called knowledge of building. Isn’t that so?

GLAUCON: Of course.

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

GLAUCON: Yes.

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

GLAUCON: It is.

SOCRATES: Well, then, you should think of that as what I wanted to get across before—if you understand it now—when I said that whenever things are related to something, those that are just themselves are related to things that are just themselves, whereas those of a particular sort are related to things of a particular sort.And I do not at all mean that the sorts in question (e) have to be the same for them both—that the knowledge of health and dis- ease is healthy and diseased, or that that of good and bad things is good and bad. On the contrary, I mean that when knowledge occurred that was not just knowledge of the thing itself that knowledge is of, but of something of (a) particular sort, which in this case was health and disease, the result was that it itself became a particular sort of knowledge; and this caused it to be no longer called simply knowledge but, with the addition of the particular sort, medical knowledge.

GLAUCON: I understand and I think you are right.

SOCRATES: Returning to thirst, then, wouldn’t you include it among the (439a) things that are related to something just by being what they are? Surely thirst is related to. . . .

GLAUCON: I would. It is related to drink.

SOCRATES: So a particular sort of thirst is for a particular sort of drink.

Thirst itself, however, is not for much or little, good or bad, or, in a word, for drink of a particular sort; rather, thirst itself is, by nature, just for drink itself. Right?

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Hence the soul of the thirsty person, insofar as it is simply thirsty, does not want anything else except to drink, and this is what it (b) longs for and is impelled to do.

GLAUCON: Clearly.

SOCRATES: Then if anything in it draws it back when it is thirsty, wouldn’t it be something different from what thirsts and, like a beast, drives it to drink? For surely, we say, the same thing, in the same respect of itself, in relation to the same thing, and at the same time, cannot do oppo- site things.

GLAUCON: No, it cannot.

SOCRATES: In the same way, I imagine, it is not right to say of the archer that his hands at the same time push the bow away and draw it toward him.

On the contrary, we should say that one hand pushes it away, while the other draws it toward him. (c) GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Now, we would say, wouldn’t we, that some people are thirsty sometimes, yet unwilling to drink?

GLAUCON: Many people often are.

SOCRATES: What, then, should one say about them? Isn’t it that there is an element in their soul urging them to drink, and also one stopping them— something different that masters the one doing the urging?

GLAUCON: I certainly think so.

SOCRATES: Doesn’t the element doing the stopping in such cases arise— when it does arise—from rational calculation, while the things that drive (d) and drag are present because of feelings and diseases?

GLAUCON: Apparently so.

SOCRATES: It would not be unreasonable for us to claim, then, that there are two elements, different from one another; and to call the element in the soul with which it calculates, the rationally calculating element; and the one with which it feels passion, hungers, thirsts, and is stirred by other appetites, the irrational and appetitive element, friend to certain ways of being ﬁlled and certain pleasures.

GLAUCON: No, it would not. Indeed, it would be a very natural thing for (e) us to do.

SOCRATES: Let’s assume, then, that we have distinguished these two kinds of elements in the soul. Now, is the spirited element—the one with which we feel anger—a third kind of thing, or is it the same in nature as one of these others?

GLAUCON: As the appetitive element, perhaps.

SOCRATES: But I once heard a story and I believe it. Leontius, the son of Aglaeon, was going up from the Piraeus along the outside of the North Wall when he saw some corpses with the public executioner nearby. He had an appetitive desire to look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and turned himself away. For a while he struggled and put his hand over his eyes, (440a) but ﬁnally, mastered by his appetite, he opened his eyes wide and rushed toward the corpses, saying: “Look for yourselves, you evil wretches; take your ﬁll of the beautiful sight.”22 GLAUCON: I have also heard that story myself.

SOCRATES: Yet, surely, the story suggests that anger sometimes makes war against the appetites as one thing against another.

GLAUCON: Yes, it does suggest that.

SOCRATES: And don’t we often notice on other occasions that when (b) appetite forces someone contrary to his rational calculation, he reproaches himself and feels anger at the thing in him that is doing the forcing; and just as if there were two warring factions, such a person’s spirit becomes the ally of his reason? But spirit partnering the appetites to do what reason has decided should not be done—I do not imagine you would say that you had ever seen that, either in yourself or in anyone else.

GLAUCON: No, by Zeus, I would not.

SOCRATES: And what about when a person thinks he is doing some injus- (c) tice? Isn’t it true that the nobler he is, the less capable he is of feeling angry if he suffers hunger, cold, or the like at the hands of someone whom he believes to be inﬂicting this on him justly; and won’t his spirit, as I say, refuse to be aroused?

GLAUCON: It is true.

SOCRATES: But what about when a person believes he is being unjustly treated? Doesn’t his spirit boil then, and grow harsh and ﬁght as an ally of what he holds to be just? And even if it suffers hunger, cold, and every imposition of that sort, doesn’t it stand ﬁrm and win out over them, not (d) ceasing its noble efforts until it achieves its purpose, or dies, or, like a dog being called to heel by a shepherd, is called back by the reason alongside it and becomes gentle?

GLAUCON: Your simile is perfect. And, in fact, we did put the auxiliaries in our city to be like obedient sheepdogs for the city’s shepherdlike rulers.

SOCRATES: You have understood what I was trying to say very well. But have you also noticed something else about it? (e) GLAUCON: What?

[22]: A fragment of the comedy Kapêlides by Theopompus (410–370 BCE) tells us that (a) certain Leontinus (emended to Leontius because of Plato’s reference here) was known for his love of boys as pale as corpses. So his desire is probably sexual in ori- gin, and for that reason appetitive.The North and South Walls enclosed an area con- necting Athens to Piraeus.

SOCRATES: That it is the opposite of what we recently thought about the kind of thing spirit is.You see, then we thought of it as something appeti- tive.23 But now, far from saying that, we say that in the faction that takes place in the soul, it is far more likely to take arms on the side of the ratio- nally calculating element.

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Is it also different from this, then, or is it some kind of ratio- nally calculating element, so that there are not three kinds of things in the soul, but two—the rationally calculating element and the appetitive one?

Or rather, just as there were three classes in the city that held it together— (441a) the moneymaking, the auxiliary, and the deliberative—is there also this third element in the soul, the spirited kind, which is the natural auxiliary of the rationally calculating element, if it has not been corrupted by bad upbringing?

GLAUCON: There must be a third.

SOCRATES: Yes, provided, at any rate, that it can be shown to be as distinct from the rationally calculating element as it was shown to be from the appetitive one.

GLAUCON: But it is not difﬁcult to show that. After all, one can see it even in small children: they are full of spirit right from birth, but as for rational calculation, some of them seem to me never to possess it, while the masses (b) do so quite late.

SOCRATES: Yes, by Zeus, you put that really well. Besides, one can see in animals that what you say is true. But, in addition to that, our earlier quota- tion from Homer also bears it out: “He struck his chest and spoke to his heart.”24 You see, in it Homer clearly presents what has calculated about (c) better and worse, rebuking what is irrationally angry as though it were something different.

GLAUCON: That’s exactly right.

SOCRATES: Well, we have had a difﬁcult swim through all that, and we are pretty much agreed that the same classes as are in the city are in the soul of each individual, and an equal number of them too.

GLAUCON: That’s true.

SOCRATES: Then doesn’t it already necessarily follow that the private indi- vidual is wise in the same way and because of the same element as is the city?

GLAUCON: Of course. [23]: 439e5.

[24]: Odyssey 20.17. See 390d.

SOCRATES: And that the city is courageous in the same way and because (d) of the same element as is the private individual? And that in everything else that pertains to virtue, both are alike?

GLAUCON: Necessarily.

SOCRATES: And so, Glaucon, I take it we will also say that a man is just in exactly the same way as is a city.

GLAUCON: That too follows with absolute necessity.

SOCRATES: But we surely have not forgotten that the city was just because each of the three classes in it does its own work.

GLAUCON: I do not think we have.

SOCRATES: We should also bear in mind, then, that in the case of each one of us as well, the one in whom each of the elements does its own job will (e) be just and do his own job.

GLAUCON: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then isn’t it appropriate for the rationally calculating element to rule, since it is really wise and exercises foresight on behalf of the whole soul; and for the spirited kind to obey it and be its ally?

GLAUCON: Of course.

SOCRATES: Now, as we were saying, isn’t it a mixture of musical and phys- ical training that makes these elements concordant, tightening and nurtur- (442a) ing the ﬁrst with ﬁne words and learning, while relaxing, soothing, and making gentle the second by means of harmony and rhythm?

GLAUCON: Yes, exactly.

SOCRATES: And these two elements, having been trained in this way and having truly learned their own jobs and been educated, will be put in charge of the appetitive element—the largest one in each person’s soul and, by nature, the most insatiable for money.They will watch over it to see that it does not get so ﬁlled with the so-called pleasures of the body that it becomes big and strong, and no longer does its own job but attempts to (b) enslave and rule over the classes it is not ﬁtted to rule, thereby overturning the whole life of anyone in whom it occurs.

GLAUCON: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: And wouldn’t these two elements also do the ﬁnest job of guarding the whole soul and body against external enemies—the one by deliberating, the other by ﬁghting, following the ruler, and using its cour- age to carry out the things on which the former had decided?

GLAUCON: Yes, they would.

SOCRATES: I imagine, then, that we call each individual courageous because of the latter part—that is, when the part of him that is spirited in kind preserves through pains and pleasures the pronouncements of reason25 (c) about what should inspire terror and what should not.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: But we call him wise, surely, because of the small part that rules in him, makes those pronouncements, and has within it the knowl- edge of what is advantageous—both for each part and for the whole, the community composed of all three.

GLAUCON: Yes, indeed.

SOCRATES: What about temperance? Isn’t he temperate because of the friendly and concordant relations between these same things: namely, when both the ruler and its two subjects share the belief that the rationally calcu- (d) lating element should rule, and do not engage in faction against it?

GLAUCON: Temperance in a city and in a private individual is certainly nothing other than that.

SOCRATES: But surely, now, a person will be just because of what we have so often described and in the way we have so often described.

GLAUCON: Necessarily.

SOCRATES: Well, then, has our justice become in any way blurred? Does it look like anything other than the very thing we found in the city?

GLAUCON: It doesn’t seem so to me, at least.

SOCRATES: We could make perfectly sure, if there is still anything in our (e) souls that disputes this, by applying everyday tests to it.

GLAUCON: Which ones?

SOCRATES: For example, if we had to come to an agreement about whether a man similar in nature and training to this city of ours had embez- zled gold or silver he had accepted for deposit, who do you think would consider him more likely to have done so rather than men of a different (443a) sort?

GLAUCON: No one.

SOCRATES: And would he have anything to do with temple robberies,26 thefts, or betrayals of friends in private life or of cities in public life?

GLAUCON: No, nothing.

SOCRATES: And he would be in no way untrustworthy when it came to promises or other agreements.

[25]: Reading toË lÒgou with Adam.

[26]: See 344b3 note.

GLAUCON: How could he be?

SOCRATES: And surely adultery, disrespect for parents, and neglect of the gods would be more characteristic of any other sort of person than of this one.

GLAUCON: Of any other sort, indeed.

SOCRATES: And isn’t the reason for all this the fact that each element (b) within him does its own job where ruling and being ruled are concerned?

GLAUCON: Yes, that and nothing else.

SOCRATES: Are you still looking for justice to be something besides this power that produces men and cities of the sort we have described?

GLAUCON: No, by Zeus, I am not.

SOCRATES: The dream we had has been completely fulﬁlled, then—I mean the suspicion we expressed that right from the beginning, when we were founding the city, we had, with the help of some god, chanced to hit upon the origin and pattern of justice.27 (c) GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: So, Glaucon, it really was—which is why it was so helpful—a sort of image of justice, this principle that it is right for someone who is, by nature, a shoemaker to practice shoemaking and nothing else, for a carpen- ter to practice carpentry, and the same for all the others.

GLAUCON: Apparently so.

SOCRATES: And in truth, justice is, it seems, something of this sort.Yet it is not concerned with someone’s doing his own job on the outside. On the contrary, it is concerned with what is inside; with himself, really, and the (d) things that are his own. It means that he does not allow the elements in him each to do the job of some other, or the three sorts of elements in his soul to meddle with one another. Instead, he regulates well what is really his own, rules himself, puts himself in order, becomes his own friend, and har- monizes the three elements together, just as if they were literally the three deﬁning notes of an octave—lowest, highest, and middle—as well as any others that may be in between. He binds together all of these and, from (e) having been many, becomes entirely one, temperate and harmonious.Then and only then should he turn to action, whether it is to do something con- cerning the acquisition of wealth or concerning the care of his body, or even something political, or concerning private contracts. In all these areas, he considers and calls just and ﬁne the action that preserves this inner har- mony and helps achieve it,28 and wisdom the knowledge that oversees such

[28]: Cf. 338e1–339a4.

action; and he considers and calls unjust any action that destroys this har- mony, and ignorance the belief that oversees it.29 (444a) GLAUCON: That’s absolutely true, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Well, then, if we claim to have found the just man, the just city, and what justice really is in them, we won’t, I imagine, be thought to be telling a complete lie.

GLAUCON: No, by Zeus, we certainly won’t.

SOCRATES: Shall we claim it, then?

GLAUCON: Yes, let’s.

SOCRATES: So be it, then. I take it we must look for injustice next.

GLAUCON: Clearly. (b) SOCRATES: Mustn’t it, in turn, be a kind of faction among those three— (a) their meddling and interfering with one another’s jobs; the rebellion of part of the soul against the whole in order to rule in it inappropriately, since its nature suits it to be a slave of the ruling class.30 We will say something

like that, I imagine, and that their disorder and wandering is injustice, licentiousness, cowardice, ignorance, and, in a word, the whole of vice.

GLAUCON: That is precisely what they are. (c) SOCRATES: Doing unjust actions, then, and being unjust; and, the oppo- site, doing just ones—they all surely become clear at once, don’t they, pro- vided that both injustice and justice are also clear?

GLAUCON: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: That they do not differ in any way from healthy actions and unhealthy ones, that what the latter are in the body, they are in the soul.

GLAUCON: In what respect?

SOCRATES: Surely, healthy actions engender health, unhealthy ones disease.

GLAUCON: Yes.

SOCRATES: Well, doesn’t doing just actions also engender justice, unjust (d) ones injustice?

GLAUCON: Necessarily.

SOCRATES: But to produce health is to put the elements that are in the body in their natural relations of mastering and being mastered by one another; while to produce disease is to establish a relation of ruling and being ruled by one another that is contrary to nature.

[29]: The difference between knowledge (epistêmê) and belief (doxa) is explored at 475d1–480a13.

[30]: Reading douleÊein t“ toË érxikoË g°nouw with Adam.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: Doesn’t it follow, then, that to produce justice is to establish the elements in the soul in a natural relation of mastering and being mas- tered by one another, while to produce injustice is to establish a relation of ruling and being ruled by one another that is contrary to nature?

GLAUCON: Absolutely.

SOCRATES: Virtue, then, so it seems, is a sort of health, a ﬁne and good (e) state of the soul; whereas vice seems to be a shameful disease and weakness.

GLAUCON: That’s right.

SOCRATES: And don’t ﬁne practices lead to the possession of virtue, shameful ones to vice?

GLAUCON: Necessarily.

SOCRATES: So it now remains, it seems, for us to consider whether it is (445a) more proﬁtable to do just actions, engage in ﬁne practices, and be just, whether one is known to be so or not; or to do injustice and be unjust, provided that one does not have to pay the penalty and become a better person as a result of being punished.

GLAUCON: But, Socrates, that question seems to me, at least, to have become ridiculous, now that the two have been shown to be as we described. Life does not seem worth living when the body’s natural consti- tution is ruined, not even if one has food and drink of every sort, all the money in the world, and every political ofﬁce imaginable. So how—even if (b) one could do whatever one wished, except what would liberate one from vice and injustice and make one acquire justice and virtue—could it be worth living when the natural constitution of the very thing by which we live31 is ruined and in turmoil?

SOCRATES: Yes, it is ridiculous. All the same, since in fact we have reached (a) point from which we can see with the utmost clarity, as it were, that these things are so, we must not give up.

GLAUCON: That’s absolutely the last thing we should do.

SOCRATES: Come up here, then, so that you can see how many kinds of (c) vice there are—the ones, at any rate, that are worth seeing.

GLAUCON: I am following. Just tell me.32 SOCRATES: Well, from the vantage point, so to speak, that we have reached in our argument, it seems to me that there is one kind of virtue and an unlimited number of kinds of vice, four of which are worth mentioning.

[31]: I.e., the soul. See 353d9–10.

[32]: See 432c3–4.

GLAUCON: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: It seems likely that there are as many types of soul as there are types of political constitution of a speciﬁc kind.

GLAUCON: How many is that? (d) SOCRATES: Five types of constitution, and ﬁve of soul.

GLAUCON: Tell me what they are.

SOCRATES: I will tell you that one type would be the constitution we have been describing. However, there are two ways of referring to it: if one out- standing man emerges among the rulers, it is called a kingship; if more than one, it is called an aristocracy.

GLAUCON: That’s true.

SOCRATES: Well, then, that is one of the kinds I had in mind.You see, whether many arise or just one, they won’t change any of the laws of the (e) city that are worth mentioning, since they will have been brought up and educated in the way we described.

GLAUCON: No, they probably won’t.

Book 4 ​

Book 4