Republic

So now, Glaucon, I said, our argument after winding a long and weary way has at last made clear to us who are the philosophers or lovers of wisdom and who are not. Yes, he said, a shorter way is perhaps not feasible. Apparently not, I said. I, at any rate, think that the matter would have been made still plainer if we had had nothing but this to speak of, and if there were not so many things left which our purpose of discerning the difference between the just and the unjust life requires us to discuss. What, then, he said, comes next? What else, said I, but the next in order? Since the philosophers are those who are capable of apprehending that which is eternal and unchanging, while those who are incapable of this but lose themselves and wander amid the multiplicities of multifarious things, are not philosophers, which of the two kinds ought to be the leaders in a state? What, then, he said, would be a fair statement of the matter? Whichever, I said, appear competent to guard the laws and pursuits of society, these we should establish as guardians. Right, he said. Is this, then, said I, clear, whether the guardian who is to keep watch over anything ought to be blind or keen of sight? Of course it is clear, he said. Do you think, then, that there is any appreciable difference between the blind and those who are veritably deprived of the knowledge of the veritable being of things, those who have no vivid pattern in their souls and so cannot, as painters look to their models, fix their eyes on the absolute truth, and always with reference to that ideal and in the exactest possible contemplation of it establish in this world also the laws of the beautiful, the just and the good, when that is needful, or guard and preserve those that are established? No, by heaven, he said, there is not much difference. Shall we, then, appoint these blind souls as our guardians, rather than those who have learned to know the ideal reality of things and who do not fall short of the others in experience and are not second to them in any part of virtue? It would be strange indeed, he said, to choose others than the philosophers, provided they were not deficient in those other respects, for this very knowledge of the ideal would perhaps be the greatest of superiorities.