[520]
True, he said, “I did forget it.” “Observe, then, Glaucon,” said I, “that we shall not be wronging, either, the philosophers who arise among us, but that we can justify our action when we constrain them to take charge of the other citizens and be their guardians.
1
520b
For we will say to them that it is natural that men of similar quality who spring up in other cities should not share in the labors there. For they grow up spontaneously
2
from no volition of the government in the several states, and it is justice that the self-grown, indebted to none for its breeding, should not be zealous either to pay to anyone the price of its nurture.
3
But you we have engendered for yourselves and the rest of the city to be, as it were, king-bees
4
and leaders in the hive. You have received a better
520c
and more complete education
5
than the others, and you are more capable of sharing both ways of life. Down you must go
6
then, each in his turn, to the habitation of the others and accustom yourselves to the observation of the obscure things there. For once habituated you will discern them infinitely
7
better than the dwellers there, and you will know what each of the
idols
8
is and whereof it is a semblance, because you have seen the reality of the beautiful, the just and the good. So our city will be governed by us and you with waking minds, and not, as most cities now which are inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream
9
by men who fight one another
520d
for shadows
10
and wrangle for office as if that were a great good, when the truth is that the city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office
11
must needs be best administered and most free from dissension, and the state that gets the contrary type of ruler will be the opposite of this.” “By all means,” he said. “Will our alumni, then, disobey us when we tell them this, and will they refuse to share in the labors of state each in his turn while permitted to dwell the most of the time with one another in that purer world
12
?”
520e
Impossible, he said: “for we shall be imposing just commands on men who are just. Yet they will assuredly approach office as an unavoidable necessity,
13
and in the opposite temper from that of the present rulers in our cities.”
Republic. Plato. Paul Shorey (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-37.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.