Republic

”For that is how it is, my friend,” I said. “If you discover a life better than ruling for those who are going to rule, it is possible for you to have a well-governed city. For in it alone will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold but in what a happy person must be rich in, a good and prudent life. But if those who are poor and starving for private goods go to public affairs, thinking that they must snatch the good from there, it is not possible. For when ruling becomes a thing fought over, such a war, being domestic and internal, destroys both them and the rest of the city.” “Most true,” he said. ”Do you have, then,” I said, “any other life that despises political offices than that of true philosophy?” “No, by Zeus,” he said. “But indeed, those who are not lovers of ruling must go to it; otherwise, their rivals will fight.” “How could it be otherwise?” “Whom else, then, will you compel to go to the guard of the city than those who are most prudent about those things through which a city is best governed, and who have other honors and a life better than the political one?” “No others,” he said. ”Would you like us now to consider this: in what way such people will arise, and how one will lead them up into the light, just as some are said to have gone up from Hades to the gods?” “How indeed could I not wish it?” he said. “This, as it seems, would not be the turning of a shell, but the turning around of a soul from a kind of night-like day to a true day, being an ascent to what is, which we shall say is true philosophy.” “Most certainly.” “Must we not, then, consider which of the studies has such a power?” “How could we not?” “What study, then, Glaucon, would be a drawer of the soul from that which becomes to that which is? And I think of this as I speak: did we not say that these people must necessarily be athletes of war when they are young?” “For we did say so.” “Then this study we are seeking must also have this additional quality besides that one.” “What sort of quality?” “Not to be useless to warlike men.” “It must indeed,” he said, “if it is possible.” “Now, they were educated previously by us in gymnastics and music.” ”They were,” he said. “And gymnastics, I suppose, is concerned with what becomes and perishes, for it presides over the growth and decay of the body.” “So it appears.” “This, then, would not be the study we are seeking.”

”No indeed.” “But is it music, as much of it as we went through before?” “But that,” he said, “was, if you remember, the counterpart of gymnastics, educating the guardians by habits, transmitting by harmony a certain well-harmonized state, not knowledge, and by rhythm a well-rhythmed state, and having in its discussions other habits akin to these, both in the stories that were mythical and those that were truer. But a study leading to something of the sort which you are now seeking was not in it at all.” “Most precisely,” I said, “you remind me. For in truth it had nothing of the kind. But, my wonderful Glaucon, what could be of this kind? For all the arts seemed to be vulgar.” “How indeed could they not? But what other study is left, separated from music, gymnastics, and the arts?” “Come,” I said, “if we have nothing else left to take outside of these, let us take something of those that extend to everything.” “What sort of thing?” ”For example, this common thing which all arts, understandings, and sciences make use of—which indeed everyone must learn among the very first things.” “What sort of thing?” he said. “This ordinary thing,” I said, “to distinguish the one, the two, and the three. I mean this, in short, as number and calculation. Or is it not so about these, that every art and science is forced to become a sharer in them?” “Very much so,” he said. “Therefore,” I said, “warfare too?” “Of great necessity,” he said. ”At any rate, Palamedes in the tragedies always represents Agamemnon as a completely ridiculous general,” I said. “Or have you not noticed that he says, having found number, he set up the ranks for the army at Ilium and numbered the ships and all other things, as if before this they were unnumbered, and Agamemnon, as it seems, did not even know how many feet he had, if indeed he did not know how to count? Yet what sort of general do you think he was?” “An absurd one, indeed,” he said, “in my opinion, if this was true.” ”Shall we, then,” I said, “set down as a necessary study for a warlike man the ability to calculate and count?” “Most of all,” he said, “if he is to understand anything at all of military arrangements, or rather, if he is to be even a human being.” “Do you notice, then,” I said, “about this study what I do?” “What sort of thing?”