Republic

Is it then distinct from this too, or is it a form of the rational, so that there are not three but two kinds in the soul, the rational and the appetitive, or just as in the city there were three existing kinds that composed its structure, the moneymakers, the helpers, the counsellors, so also in the soul there exists a third kind, this principle of high spirit, which is the helper of reason by nature unless it is corrupted by evil nurture? We have to assume it as a third, he said. Yes, said I, provided it shall have been shown to be something different from the rational, as it has been shown to be other than the appetitive. That is not hard to be shown, he said; for that much one can see in children, that they are from their very birth chock-full of rage and high spirit, but as for reason, some of them, to my thinking, never participate in it, and the majority quite late. Yes, by heaven, excellently said, I replied; and further, one could see in animals that what you say is true. And to these instances we may add the testimony of Homer quoted above: He smote his breast and chided thus his heart. Hom. Od. 20.17 For there Homer has clearly represented that in us which has reflected about the better and the worse as rebuking that which feels unreasoning anger as if it were a distinct and different thing. You are entirely right, he said. Through these waters, then, said I, we have with difficulty made our way and we are fairly agreed that the same kinds equal in number are to be found in the state and in the soul of each one of us. That is so. Then does not the necessity of our former postulate immediately follow, that as and whereby the state was wise so and thereby is the individual wise? Surely. And so whereby and as the individual is brave, thereby and so is the state brave, and that both should have all the other constituents of virtue in the same way? Necessarily. Just too, then, Glaucon, I presume we shall say a man is in the same way in which a city was just. That too is quite inevitable. But we surely cannot have forgotten this, that the state was just by reason of each of the three classes found in it fulfilling its own function. I don’t think we have forgotten, he said. We must remember, then, that each of us also in whom the several parts within him perform each their own task—he will be a just man and one who minds his own affair. We must indeed remember, he said. Does it not belong to the rational part to rule, being wise and exercising forethought in behalf of the entire soul, and to the principle of high spirit to be subject to this and its ally? Assuredly.