Republic

“Are you satisfied, then,” said I, “as before, to call the first division science, the second understanding, the third belief, and the fourth conjecture or picture-thought—and the last two collectively opinion, and the first two intellection, opinion dealing with generation and intellection with essence, and this relation being expressed in the proportion: as essence is to generation, so is intellection to opinion; and as intellection is to opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to image-thinking or surmise? But the relation between their objective correlates and the division into two parts of each of these, the opinable, namely, and the intelligible, let us dismiss, Glaucon, lest it involve us in discussion many times as long as the preceding.” Well, he said, “I agree with you about the rest of it, so far as I am able to follow.” “And do you not also give the name dialectician to the man who is able to exact an account of the essence of each thing? And will you not say that the one who is unable to do this, in so far as he is incapable of rendering an account to himself and others, does not possess full reason and intelligence about the matter?” “How could I say that he does?” he replied. “And is not this true of the good likewise—that the man who is unable to define in his discourse and distinguish and abstract from all other things the aspect or idea of the good, and who cannot, as it were in battle, running the gauntlet of all tests, and striving to examine everything by essential reality and not by opinion, hold on his way through all this without tripping in his reasoning—the man who lacks this power, you will say, does not really know the good itself or any particular good; but if he apprehends any adumbration of it, his contact with it is by opinion, not by knowledge; and dreaming and dozing through his present life, before he awakens here he will arrive at the house of Hades and fall asleep for ever?” “Yes, by Zeus,” said he, “all this I will stoutly affirm.” “But, surely,” said I, “if you should ever nurture in fact your children whom you are now nurturing and educating in word, you would not suffer them, I presume, to hold rule in the state, and determine the greatest matters, being themselves as irrational as the lines so called in geometry.” “Why, no,” he said. “Then you will provide by law that they shall give special heed to the discipline that will enable them to ask and answer questions in the most scientific manner?” “I will so legislate,” he said, “in conjunction with you.”