Republic

“For the fact is, dear friend,” said I, “if you can discover a better way of life than office-holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are really rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness—a good and wise life. But if, being beggars and starvelings from lack of goods of their own, they turn to affairs of state thinking that it is thence that they should grasp their own good, then it is impossible. For when office and rule become the prizes of contention, such a civil and internecine strife destroys the office-seekers themselves and the city as well.” “Most true,” he said. “Can you name any other type or ideal of life that looks with scorn on political office except the life of true philosophers?” I asked. “No, by Zeus,” he said. “But what we require,” I said, “is that those who take office should not be lovers of rule. Otherwise there will be a contest with rival lovers.” Surely. “What others, then, will you compel to undertake the guardianship of the city than those who have most intelligence of the principles that are the means of good government and who possess distinctions of another kind and a life that is preferable to the political life?” “No others,” he said. “Would you, then, have us proceed to consider how such men may be produced in a state and how they may be led upward to the light even as some are fabled to have ascended from Hades to the gods?” “Of course I would.” “So this, it seems, would not be the whirling of the shell in the children’s game, but a conversion and turning about of the soul from a day whose light is darkness to the veritable day—that ascension to reality of our parable which we will affirm to be true philosophy.” “By all means.” “Must we not, then, consider what studies have the power to effect this?” Of course. “What, then, Glaucon, would be the study that would draw the soul away from the world of becoming to the world of being? A thought strikes me while I speak: Did we not say that these men in youth must be athletes of war” “We did.” “Then the study for which we are seeking must have this additional qualification.” “What one?” “That it be not useless to soldiers.” “Why, yes, it must,” he said, “if that is possible.” “But in our previous account they were educated in gymnastics and music.” “They were, he said. “And gymnastics, I take it, is devoted to that which grows and perishes; for it presides over the growth and decay of the body.” Obviously. “Then this cannot be the study that we seek.”