Book III, 403–410

403a “Not at all.”

“And what of insolence and licentiousness?”

“More than anything.”

“Can you name a pleasure greater and more intense than sexual pleasure?”

“I cannot,” he said, “nor one more akin to madness.”

“But true love is by nature a temperate and harmonious love of what is orderly and beautiful?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“Then nothing mad or related to licentiousness must be admitted into true love?”

“Nothing must be admitted.” 403b

“Then this pleasure must not be admitted either, nor shared by a lover and his beloved if they love and are loved rightly?”

“No, by Zeus, Socrates,” he said, “it must not be admitted.”

“It seems, then, that you will lay down this law in the city we are founding: a lover may kiss his beloved, be with him, and touch him as a father might touch a son, for the sake of what is beautiful, if he has his consent; but in every other respect he must conduct himself toward one whom he cherishes so that no one will ever think he goes further 403c than this. Otherwise he will incur reproach for a want of refinement and an ignorance of beauty.”

“So I will,” he said.

“Well then,” I said, “does it seem to you too that our discussion of music and the arts has reached its end? At least it has ended where it must: the arts must end in the love of beauty.”

“I agree,” he said.

“After music and the arts, the young must be brought up in physical training.”

“Of course.”

“And here too they must be trained carefully from childhood throughout 403d life. This, I think, is how it stands; consider it yourself. I do not believe that a sound body makes the soul good through its own excellence, but rather that a good soul makes the body as sound as possible through its excellence. How does it seem to you?”

“The same way,” he said.

“Then if we care properly for the mind and entrust it with deciding the precise details concerning the body, while we ourselves offer only 403e an outline, so as not to go on at length, would we be doing right?”

“Certainly.”

“We said that they must abstain from drunkenness: a drunken guardian, of all people, can least afford not to know where on earth he is.”

“It would be ridiculous,” he said, “for a guardian to need a guardian.”

“And what about food? These men are athletes in the greatest contest, are they not?”

“Yes.”

404a “Then would the regimen of our present-day athletes be suitable for them?”

“Perhaps.”

“But it makes them sleepy,” I said, “and leaves their health precarious. Do you not see that these athletes sleep their lives away, and if they depart even a little from their prescribed diet, they become gravely ill?”

“I do.”

“Our athletes of war,” I said, “need a more discerning kind of training. Like dogs, they must remain alert and see and hear as keenly as possible; on campaign they will face repeated changes in water 404b and other food, in the sun's heat and winter's cold, without suffering a precarious state of health.”

“So it seems to me.”

“Would the best physical training, then, be something like a sister to the simple music and arts we described a little while ago?”

“What do you mean?”

“Simple, measured physical training—especially for those who go to war.”

“In what way?”

“We might learn such things even from Homer,” I said. “You know that when he gives feasts to the heroes in camp, he serves them neither fish, though they are by the sea 404c on the Hellespont, nor boiled meat, but only roast meat, the easiest thing for soldiers to prepare. For almost everywhere it is easier to use a fire itself than to carry cooking pots about.”

“Indeed.”

“Nor, I think, does Homer ever mention sauces and seasonings. Or do even ordinary athletes know this much: that anyone who wants a healthy body must abstain from all such things?”

“And rightly so,” he said; “they know it and abstain.” 404d

“So, my friend, you evidently do not approve of a Syracusan table and Sicilian variety in its dishes, if you think this is right.”

“I suppose I do not.”

“Then you also disapprove of Corinthian girls as lovers for men who wish to keep their bodies in good condition.”

“Most certainly.”

“And the reputed delights of Attic pastries too?”

“Necessarily.”

“For we would be right, I think, to compare this entire diet and manner of living to the composition of melodies and songs in every mode and every 404e rhythm.”

“How could we not?”

“In that case, variety in music produced licentiousness, and variety here produces disease, while simplicity in music produces temperance in the soul, and simplicity in physical training produces health in the body?”

“Entirely true,” he said.

405a “And when licentiousness and disease multiply in a city, do not courts and clinics open in great numbers, while law and medicine grow proud of their importance once many freeborn people devote themselves keenly to them?”

“How could they not?”

“Can you find a greater sign of a city's bad and shameful education than this: not only its common laborers and craftsmen but also those who profess to have been raised as gentlemen need accomplished doctors and judges? 405b Or do you not think it shameful, and a great sign of a lack of education, to have to borrow one's justice from others, as though they were one's masters and judges, because one has none of one's own?”

“It is the most shameful thing of all,” he said.

“And do you think this is even more shameful,” I said, “when a man not only wears away much of his life in court, now defending himself, now prosecuting another, but is so lacking in taste that he prides himself on just this: his skill at wrongdoing, his ability to twist and turn through every maneuver and wriggle through every escape 405c to avoid paying the penalty—all for trifles of no consequence, unaware how much finer and better it would be to order his life so as never to need a dozing judge?”

“No,” he said, “that is still more shameful than the other.”

“And needing medicine,” I said, “not for wounds or a passing seasonal illness, but because of 405d idleness and the diet we have described, filling up with fluids and vapors like stagnant pools, forcing the ingenious descendants of Asclepius to invent the names ‘flatulence’ and ‘catarrh’ for our ailments—is that not shameful?”

“Very much so,” he said. “These really are strange new names for diseases.”

“Names that did not exist, I think,” I said, “in Asclepius's day. 405e My evidence is this: at Troy, when his sons saw that someone had sprinkled plentiful barley meal into Pramnian wine 406a and grated cheese into it for the wounded Eurypylus—things thought to produce phlegm—they found no fault with the woman who gave it to him to drink, nor did they rebuke Patroclus for tending him.”

“And yet,” he said, “it was an odd drink to give a man in that condition.”

“Not if you consider,” I said, “that, according to tradition, the descendants of Asclepius did not practice our present art of nursing disease before Herodicus appeared. Herodicus was a trainer who fell ill; by mixing physical training 406b with medicine he tormented first and foremost himself, and afterward many others.”

“How so?” he asked.

“By making his death a long affair,” I said. “Keeping close watch on his mortal disease, he could not, I think, cure himself. Instead he spent his whole life attending to his health, to the exclusion of everything else, suffering whenever he deviated from his usual regimen; through the art of staving off death, he made it to old age.”

“A fine prize he won from his art,” he said. 406c

“The prize one would expect,” I said, “for a man who did not know that Asclepius withheld this kind of medicine from his descendants not out of ignorance or inexperience, but because he knew that in every well-governed city each person has an appointed task he must perform, and no one has the leisure to spend his whole life as an invalid under treatment. We recognize this, absurdly enough, in the case of craftsmen, but fail to recognize it in the case of the rich and those reputed to be happy.”

“How?” he asked. 406d

“A carpenter,” I said, “when he is sick, asks the doctor for a drug to drink that will make him vomit out his illness, or for a purge to clear him from below, or for cautery or a surgical cut to be rid of it. But if someone prescribes him a long regimen, wrapping woolen caps around his head and adding everything else that goes with them, he soon says he has no leisure to be ill, and that there is no profit in living this way, with his mind on his disease and his appointed work neglected. Then he bids 406e that kind of doctor goodbye, resumes his usual way of life, and, if he recovers, lives on and does his work. If his body cannot withstand it, he dies and is free of his troubles.”

“For such a man,” he said, “that seems the right way to use medicine.”

407a “Because he had a task to perform, and if he could not perform it, life held no profit for him?” I asked.

“Clearly,” he said.

“But the rich man, as we say, has no such appointed task from which he is forced to abstain on pain of finding life unlivable.”

“At any rate, none is commonly mentioned.”

“Have you not heard Phocylides,” I said, “say that once a man has a livelihood, he ought to practice virtue?”

“And before then too, I should think,” he said.

“Let us not quarrel with him about that,” I said. “Let us rather instruct ourselves whether the rich man must devote himself to this, 407b so that life without it is unlivable, or whether nursing a disease obstructs the carpenter's work and the other crafts by monopolizing the mind, but presents no obstacle to Phocylides's command.”

“By Zeus,” he said, “it obstructs that perhaps more than anything—the excessive care of the body that goes beyond physical training. It is troublesome for managing a household, serving in a campaign, and holding settled offices in the city. Above all, it makes any kind of learning and private thought and reflection 407c difficult: always suspecting a strain in the head or a spell of dizziness and blaming philosophy for it. So it hinders the practice and testing of virtue in every respect, for it makes a man think he is always sick and never lets him stop worrying over his body.”

“Naturally,” he said.

“Then shall we say that Asclepius understood this too,” I said, “and 407d devised medicine for those whose bodies are sound by nature and habit but harbor some distinct illness? For such people and such a constitution he drove out illness with drugs and surgery, and prescribed their customary way of life so as not to harm the affairs of the city. But as for bodies diseased through and through, he did not attempt to drain and refill them little by little through regimens, prolonging a person's life in misery and allowing them to beget, as one might expect, more children like themselves. Rather, he thought that one unable to live within 407e the ordinary course of life should not be treated, since this would benefit neither that person nor the city.”

“You describe a civic-minded Asclepius,” he said.

“Plainly so,” I said. “And his sons, because he was such a man, 408a do you not see how they distinguished themselves at Troy in war and practiced medicine as I describe? Do you not remember what they did for Menelaus after Pandarus wounded him?

“‘They sucked out the blood and sprinkled soothing drugs upon the wound.’

“They prescribed no more about what he should eat or drink after this than they did for Eurypylus. They considered the drugs enough to heal men who had been healthy before their wounds and orderly 408b in their habits, even if they happened to drink a barley-and-wine mixture at the moment. But a person diseased by nature and lacking self-control, they thought, would profit neither himself nor others by living; the healing art was not meant for such people, and they should not be treated, even if they were richer than Midas.”

“You make Asclepius's sons very wise,” he said.

“As they should be,” I said. “Yet the tragedians and Pindar disagree with us. They say that Asclepius was Apollo's son, but that gold induced him to heal a rich man already at the point of death, 408c and for this he was struck by lightning. In keeping with what we said earlier, we will not believe them on both counts. If he was a god's son, we will say, he was not greedy for sordid gain; if he was greedy, he was no god's son.”

“That is perfectly right,” he said. “But what do you say about this, Socrates? Should we not have good doctors in the city? The best, surely, will have dealt with the greatest number of healthy and sick people, just as the best judges will have associated with people of every sort of character. 408d”

“Yes,” I said, “I mean good doctors indeed. But do you know whom I consider good?”

“Tell me,” he said.

“I shall try,” I said. “But you have brought two unlike things together in a single question.”

“How so?” he asked.

“Doctors,” I said, “would become most skilled if, from childhood onward, besides learning their art, they were in contact with as many bodies as possible, especially the sickest, and suffered every kind of illness themselves, and were not by nature particularly healthy. 408e For they do not, I think, treat body with body—if they did, it could never be acceptable for their own bodies to be or become sick—but body with soul; and a soul that has itself become bad cannot treat anything well.”

“Right,” he said.

409a “But a judge, my friend, governs one soul with another. His soul cannot have been raised from youth among wicked souls and associated with them, nor can it have passed through every injustice by committing those acts itself, so as to infer other people's crimes swiftly from itself, like diagnosing bodily diseases. While young it must have remained innocent and untouched by vicious ways, if as a fine and good soul it is to judge justly with a sound mind. That is why decent people seem naive when young and are easily deceived 409b by the unjust: they have no patterns within themselves corresponding to the wicked.”

“Yes indeed,” he said, “that is precisely what happens to them.”

“And that,” I said, “is why a good judge must be old, not young: someone who has learned late what injustice is, not by finding it in his own soul, but by studying it as a stranger in other people's souls over a long period, coming to discern the nature of this evil by knowledge, not 409c through any experience of his own.”

“Such a judge seems a most honorable one,” he said.

“And a good one too,” I said, “which is what you asked for: a man with a good soul is good. But that cunning and suspicious fellow, who has committed many injustices and thinks himself crafty and wise, seems formidable among his own kind, because he is on guard and looks to the patterns within himself. Yet when he meets good and older people, he seems foolish in turn, distrustful at the wrong time and ignorant of a sound character, 409d because he has no pattern of it. But since he encounters bad people more often than good, he seems wise rather than ignorant both to himself and to others.”

“Entirely true,” he said.

“Then it is not this sort of man,” I said, “whom we must seek as our good and wise judge, but the former. For wickedness could never know either virtue or itself, but virtue, in a nature educated over time, will come to know both itself and wickedness. It is this man, it seems to me, who becomes wise, not the bad man. 409e”

“I agree,” he said.

“So you will establish in your city medicine of the kind we described, together with this kind of judging. They will care for the citizens 410a who are sound in body and soul; of those who are not, they will let those who are unsound in body die, while those whose souls are incurably bad they themselves will put to death?”

“That has proved best,” he said, “both for the sufferers themselves and for the city.”

“As for the young,” I said, “it is clear that they will take care not to need the courts, because they have practiced that simple music which we said instills temperance.”

“Of course,” he said. 410b

“And if a man trained in music follows the same path in physical training, will he not choose, if he wishes, to have no need of medicine except when necessity demands?”

“I think so.”

“And in the exercises and hardships themselves he will look to the spirited part of his nature, seeking to arouse that rather than mere strength. Unlike other athletes, he will not arrange his diet and exertions for the sake of bodily power.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“Then, Glaucon,” I said, “those who instituted an education in music and physical training did not do so for the reason some suppose: that one should care for the body and the other for the soul? 410c”

“Why else?” he asked.

“It seems they instituted both chiefly for the sake of the soul,” I said.

“How?”

“Have you not noticed,” I said, “what happens to the very minds of those who devote their lives to physical training but never touch music, or those who do the reverse?”

“What are you referring to?” he asked. 410d

“To savagery and harshness on the one hand, and softness and gentleness on the other,” I said.

“I have,” he said. “Those who practice physical training without anything to temper it grow more savage than they should, while those who devote themselves to music grow softer than is good for them.”

“Yet,” I said, “the spirited part of our nature can give rise to savagery: raised rightly it would be brave, but strained beyond measure it becomes hard and difficult, as we might expect.”

“So it seems to me,” he said. 410e

“And does not the philosophical part possess the gentler disposition? Relaxed too far, it becomes softer than it should be; properly raised, it becomes gentle and disciplined.”

“That is so.”

“And we say that the guardians must possess both of these natures.”

“They must.”

“Then the two must be brought into harmony with one another?”

“Of course.”

“And the person whose natures are harmonized has a temperate and brave

403a “Not at all.”

“And with arrogance and lack of self-control?”

“More than anything.”

“Can you name a pleasure greater and more intense than sexual pleasure?”

“No,” he said, “or one that drives people more out of their minds.”

“But proper love naturally loves what is orderly and beautiful, with self-control and a sense of what is fitting?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“So we must not bring anything wild or lacking in self-control into proper love?”

“We must not.” 403b

“Then we must not bring this pleasure into it either. A lover and the person he loves, if they love and are loved properly, must not share in it?”

“No, by Zeus, Socrates,” he said. “They must not.”

“So it seems you will make a law in the city we are founding. A lover may kiss the boy he loves, spend time with him, and touch him as a father would a son, for the sake of what is beautiful, if the boy agrees. In every other respect he must behave toward the person he cares for in such a way that no one will ever think their intimacy goes further 403c than this. Otherwise he will be blamed for lacking culture and any sense of what is beautiful.”

“That is how I would make the law,” he said.

“Now,” I said, “do you think we have finished our discussion of music and the arts? It has at least reached the point where it ought to end. These things should end in a love of beauty.”

“I agree,” he said.

“After music and the arts, then, the young people must be trained in physical exercise.”

“Of course.”

“And they must be trained carefully in this too, from childhood throughout 403d life. Here is how I see it; consider it yourself. I do not think a sound body makes the soul good by its own excellence. It is the other way around: a good soul, by its excellence, makes the body as good as it can be. What do you think?”

“I think so too,” he said.

“Then suppose we give the mind enough care and leave it to work out the details of caring for the body, while we offer only 403e an outline so that our discussion does not grow too long. Would that be right?”

“Certainly.”

“We have said that they must keep away from drunkenness. Anyone but a guardian might be allowed to get drunk and lose track of where on earth he is.”

“It would be absurd,” he said, “for a guardian to need a guardian.”

“And what about their food? These men are athletes in the greatest contest, aren't they?”

“Yes.”

404a “Then would the condition of today's athletes be suitable for them?”

“Perhaps.”

“But,” I said, “that kind of condition makes a person sleepy and puts health at risk. Don't you see that athletes sleep away their lives, and that if they stray even a little from their fixed diet they become seriously ill?”

“I do.”

“Our athletes of war,” I said, “need a more adaptable kind of training. Like dogs, they must stay alert and keep their sight and hearing as sharp as possible. On campaigns they will meet many changes in water, 404b food, heat from the sun, and winter weather. Their health must not be so fragile.”

“That seems right to me.”

“Then would the best physical training be a close relative of the simple music and arts we discussed just now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Training that is simple and sensible, especially for soldiers.”

“How would it work?”

“One could learn this sort of thing from Homer,” I said. “You know that when he gives his heroes meals on campaign, he does not serve them fish, though they are 404c beside the sea at the Hellespont. He does not give them boiled meat either, but only roasted meat, which would be easiest for soldiers to get. Nearly everywhere, it is easier to cook over a fire than to carry pots around.”

“Very true.”

“And I don't think Homer ever mentions seasonings. Don't other athletes also know that someone who wants to keep his body healthy must avoid all such things?”

“They know it,” he said, “and they are right to avoid them.” 404d

“So, my friend, if you agree with this, you apparently do not approve of a Syracusan banquet and the great variety of Sicilian delicacies.”

“I suppose I do not.”

“Then you also disapprove of men who want to stay physically fit taking a Corinthian girl as a lover.”

“Completely.”

“And of the supposed pleasures of Athenian pastries?”

“Necessarily.”

“For we would be right, I think, to compare this whole kind of food and way of life to songs and music composed in every possible mode and 404e rhythm.”

“Of course.”

“Variety produced a lack of self-control there, and it produces disease here. Simplicity in music and the arts produces self-control in the soul, and in physical training it produces health in the body.”

“Exactly,” he said.

405a “When a city is full of disorderly behavior and disease, don't law courts and doctors' offices spring up everywhere? Don't legal practice and medicine become important professions when even many free citizens devote themselves eagerly to them?”

“How could they not?”

“Can you find any clearer sign of a city's bad and shameful education than this: not just ordinary workers and craftsmen, but people who claim to have been brought up as free citizens, need expert doctors and judges? 405b Isn't it shameful, and a strong sign of poor education, when you lack your own sense of justice and have to bring in others to administer it to you, like masters and judges?”

“It is the most shameful thing of all,” he said.

“Or is this even more shameful?” I said. “A man spends most of his life in court, either defending himself or suing someone else. Worse, he has so little sense of what is fine that he takes pride in it. He thinks it impressive to be skilled at wrongdoing, to twist and turn through every possible escape route 405c and dodge punishment, all for trivial things of no worth. He does not know how much better and more honorable it is to arrange his life so that he never needs a half-asleep judge.”

“No,” he said. “That is even more shameful.”

“And isn't it shameful,” I said, “to need medical treatment, not for wounds or some seasonal illness that has struck, but because idleness and the lifestyle we described have filled a person, like a pool, with fluids and gases? They force the clever descendants of Asclepius to invent names such as ‘bloating’ and ‘catarrh’ for diseases.” 405d

“Yes, indeed,” he said. “These really are new and strange names for diseases.”

“I imagine there were no such diseases in Asclepius's day. 405e I judge this from the fact that when his sons were at Troy they did not criticize the woman who gave the wounded Eurypylus a drink of Pramnian wine with plenty of barley meal sprinkled over it

406a and cheese grated into it, even though these ingredients are supposed to produce phlegm. Nor did they criticize Patroclus, who was treating him.”

“Yet that was a strange drink for a man in his condition,” he said.

“Not if you remember,” I said, “that, as people say, the descendants of Asclepius did not use today's medicine, which nurses diseases along, before Herodicus came along. Herodicus was a physical trainer who became sickly. He mixed exercise 406b with medicine and wore out himself first and most of all, then many others after him.”

“How?” he asked.

“By drawing out his own death,” I said. “He watched his disease closely, though it was fatal. I don't think he could cure himself, and he spent his whole life occupied with treatment, distressed whenever he departed from his usual routine. Thanks to his skill at dying slowly, he made it to old age.”

“A fine prize for his art,” he said. 406c

“Just the prize you would expect for someone who did not understand why Asclepius failed to teach this kind of medicine to his descendants. It was not from ignorance or lack of experience. He knew that in every well-governed city, each person has an assigned job that must be done, and nobody has the leisure to spend a whole life sick and under treatment. We see the absurdity of such a life when it comes to craftsmen, but fail to see it when it comes to the rich and those thought to be fortunate.”

“How so?” he asked. 406d

“A carpenter falls ill,” I said, “and asks a doctor for a drug that will make him vomit out the illness. Or he wants to be purged from below, or cured by cautery or surgery. But if someone prescribes a long course of treatment, wraps little caps around his head, and goes on with more of the same, he quickly says he has no time to be sick. A life spent attending to his illness instead of his work is no use to him. So he says goodbye 406e to that doctor and returns to his usual way of life. If he gets well, he lives on and does his work. If his body cannot survive, he dies and is free of the trouble.”

“For someone like him,” he said, “that seems the right way to use medicine.”

407a “Isn't that because he had a job that made life not worth living if he couldn't do it?” I said.

“Clearly,” he said.

“But the rich man, as we say, has no such job that he must do for life to be worth living.”

“At least no one says he has.”

“Haven't you heard Phocylides say that once you have enough to live on, you must practice virtue?”

“I think you should practice it even before that,” he said.

“Let's not argue with him about it,” I said. “Let's ask ourselves whether a rich man must practice virtue and whether life is not worth living if he does not. Nursing an illness prevents a carpenter or any other worker from concentrating on work. Does it also prevent someone from following Phocylides' advice? 407b”

“By Zeus, yes,” he said. “This excessive concern with the body, going far beyond physical training, is perhaps the greatest obstacle of all. It makes managing a household, serving in the army, and holding an office in the city difficult.”

“Most of all, it interferes with every kind of learning, thinking, and private study. 407c A person is always on the lookout for tension in the head and dizziness and blames them on philosophy. Wherever someone practices and tests virtue this way, such worry gets in the way. It always makes him think he is sick and never stops him from worrying about his body.”

“That is likely,” he said.

“Then let's say Asclepius understood this too. He taught medicine for people whose bodies were healthy by nature and by their way of life, but who had developed a particular illness. 407d He drove the illness out with drugs and surgery, then prescribed their usual routine so he would not harm the city's affairs. But he did not try to treat bodies that were sick throughout. He would not keep draining and refilling them bit by bit through diets, giving people long, wretched lives and likely causing them to have children just as sick as themselves. He did not think he should treat someone who could not live through the normal course 407e of life, since that would benefit neither the person nor the city.”

“You make Asclepius sound like a doctor concerned with the city,” he said.

“Clearly he was,” I said. “And don't you see that his sons showed what kind of man he was?

408a At Troy they proved themselves good in war, and they practiced medicine as I have described it. Remember how, after Pandarus wounded Menelaus, they

‘sucked out the blood and applied soothing medicines.’

They did not tell him any more than they told Eurypylus what he should eat or drink afterward. They believed their medicines were enough to cure men who had been healthy before their wounds and had lived orderly lives, even if those men happened to drink a barley-and-wine mixture at the time. 408b But they thought it served neither the patient nor anyone else for a man who was sickly by nature and without self-control to stay alive. Their art was not meant for such men, and they would not treat them, even if they were richer than Midas.”

“You give Asclepius's sons a very impressive reputation,” he said.

“As they deserve,” I said. “The tragic poets and Pindar disagree with us, though. They say that Asclepius was the son of Apollo, but that gold persuaded him to heal a rich man who was already dying, and that he was struck by lightning for it. Based on what we have said, we won't accept both parts of their story. If he was a god's son, we will say, he was not greedy for a shameful profit. If he was greedy for such a profit, he was not a god's son.” 408c

“That is exactly right,” he said. “But what about this, Socrates? Don't we need good doctors in the city? The best doctors would surely be those who have treated the most healthy and sick people. And likewise the best judges would be those who have dealt with people of every kind.” 408d

“Yes,” I said, “I certainly mean good ones. But do you know which doctors and judges I consider good?”

“Tell me,” he said.

“I'll try,” I said. “But you have combined two different questions.”

“How?” he asked.

“Doctors might become most skilled,” I said, “if, from childhood, they learn their craft while dealing with as many bodies as possible, including the sickest ones, and if they themselves suffer every kind of illness and are not naturally very healthy. After all, I don't think doctors treat a body with their own bodies. If they did, their bodies could never be or become unhealthy. They treat bodies with their souls. A soul that has become sick and remains sick cannot treat anything well.” 408e

“Right,” he said.

409a “But a judge, my friend, rules one soul with another. His soul cannot grow up among bad souls or have close dealings with them from youth. Nor can he himself commit every kind of wrong so that he can quickly infer others' wrongs from his own experience, as he might recognize bodily diseases. When he is young, his soul must be innocent of and untainted by bad habits, if he is to become a decent man who judges questions of justice soundly. That is why decent people seem naive when they are young and are easily deceived 409b by unjust people. They have no examples of such wickedness within themselves.”

“That certainly happens to them,” he said.

“So,” I said, “a good judge must be old, not young. He must come to know injustice late in life. He must not discover it as something living in his own soul. Instead, over a long period he studies it as something foreign, in other people's souls. He comes to understand what kind of evil it is through knowledge, not through experience of wrongdoing himself.” 409c

“That kind of judge sounds like a very honorable man,” he said.

“And a good man too, which is what you asked for,” I said. “A person with a good soul is good. But consider the clever, suspicious man who has committed many wrongs and thinks himself cunning and wise. When he deals with people like himself, he appears sharp because he is on guard, using examples from his own mind. But when he meets good people, especially older ones, he seems foolish instead. He distrusts them at the wrong times and knows nothing of healthy character, because he has no example of it inside himself. 409d Yet he meets bad people more often than good ones, so both he and others think him wiser rather than more ignorant.”

“That is entirely true,” he said.

“Then the good and wise judge we seek must not be like him, but like the first man. Wickedness can never know either virtue or itself. But virtue, when its natural powers have been educated, will in time understand both itself and wickedness. It is this man, I think, who becomes wise, not the wicked man.” 409e

“I agree,” he said.

“So you will establish in the city the kind of medicine we described, together with the corresponding kind of judging. They will care for those of your citizens

410a whose bodies and souls are sound by nature. Those whose bodies are not sound they will let die, while those whose souls are naturally bad and beyond cure they will put to death themselves.”

“That,” he said, “seems best both for the people affected and for the city.”

“And your young people will clearly take care not to need a judge, since they practice the simple music and arts that we said produce self-control.”

“Of course,” he said. 410b

“And if someone educated in music and the arts follows the same path in physical training, won't he choose to live so that he needs medicine only when he must?”

“I think so.”

“In his exercises and hard work, he will aim more at awakening the spirited part of his nature than at building strength. Unlike other athletes, he will not arrange his meals and exercise just to increase his physical power.”

“Exactly,” he said.

“Glaucon,” I said, “those who established education in music and physical training may not have done it for the reason some people think. They did not mean to care for the body with the one and the soul with the other.” 410c

“Then what did they mean?” he asked.

“It seems they established both chiefly for the sake of the soul,” I said.

“How?”

“Haven't you noticed what happens to the minds of people who spend their whole lives on physical training but never touch music and the arts? Or what happens to those who do the opposite?”

“What are you referring to?” he asked. 410d

“To harshness and savagery on the one hand, and softness and gentleness on the other,” I said.

“I have noticed,” he said. “Those who practice nothing but physical training become more savage than they should, while those who practice only music and the arts become softer than is good for them.”

“And the savage quality may come from the spirited part of their nature,” I said. “If raised properly, it would become courage. If stretched too far, it would probably become harsh and difficult.”

“I think so,” he said. 410e

“What about gentleness? Wouldn't that belong to the nature that loves wisdom? If it is relaxed too far, wouldn't it become softer than it should, but if raised well, gentle and orderly?”

“Yes.”

“And we say the guardians must have both these natures.”

“We do.”

“Then they must be brought into harmony with one another.”

“Certainly.”

“And when they are in harmony, the