Republic

You certainly have heard it often, but now you either do not apprehend or again you are minded to make trouble for me by attacking the argument. I suspect it is rather the latter. For you have often heard that the greatest thing to learn is the idea of good by reference to which just things and all the rest become useful and beneficial. And now I am almost sure you know that this is what I am going to speak of and to say further that we have no adequate knowledge of it. And if we do not know it, then, even if without the knowledge of this we should know all other things never so well, you are aware that it would avail us nothing, just as no possession either is of any avail without the possession of the good. Or do you think there is any profit in possessing everything except that which is good, or in understanding all things else apart from the good while understanding and knowing nothing that is fair and good? No, by Zeus, I do not, he said. But, furthermore, you know this too, that the multitude believe pleasure to be the good, and the finer spirits intelligence or knowledge. Certainly. And you are also aware, my friend, that those who hold this latter view are not able to point out what knowledge it is but are finally compelled to say that it is the knowledge of the good. Most absurdly, he said. Is it not absurd, said I, if while taunting us with our ignorance of the good they turn about and talk to us as if we knew it? For they say it is the knowledge of the good, as if we understood their meaning when they utter the word good. Most true, he said. Well, are those who define the good as pleasure infected with any less confusion of thought than the others? Or are not they in like manner compelled to admit that there are bad pleasures? Most assuredly. The outcome is, I take it, that they are admitting the same things to be both good and bad, are they not? Certainly. Then is it not apparent that there are many and violent disputes about it? Of course. And again, is it not apparent that while in the case of the just and the honorable many would prefer the semblance without the reality in action, possession, and opinion, yet when it comes to the good nobody is content with the possession of the appearance but all men seek the reality, and the semblance satisfies nobody here? Quite so, he said. That, then, which every soul pursues and for its sake does all that it does, with an intuition of its reality, but yet baffled and unable to apprehend its nature adequately, or to attain to any stable belief about it as about other things, and for that reason failing of any possible benefit from other things,— in a matter of this quality and moment, can we, I ask you, allow a like blindness and obscurity in those best citizens to whose hands we are to entrust all things?