Book V, 473–480

473a “Can anything be done exactly as it is described? Or is it in the nature of action to come nearer to truth in speech than in deed, even if someone thinks otherwise? Do you agree, or not?”

“I agree,” he said.

“Then do not compel me to show that everything we have described in speech must happen in precisely the same way in practice. If we can discover how a city might be governed as closely as possible to what we have said, then say that we have 473b discovered how the things you demand can be possible. Will you not be satisfied with that? I know I would.”

“And so would I,” he said.

“Next, it seems, we must try to discover and show what now goes wrong in cities and prevents them from being governed in this way, and what smallest change could bring a city to this kind of constitution—preferably a single change, or if not that, two, or if not, the fewest in number and the slightest in force. 473c”

“Certainly,” he said.

“I think we can show that one change would transform a city,” I said, “though it is neither small nor easy. It is possible, however.”

“What change?” he asked.

“Here I am,” I said, “at what we likened to the greatest wave. I shall speak, even if the wave of laughter and disrepute is about to overwhelm me altogether. Hear what I have to say.”

“Speak,” he said.

“Unless,” I said, “the philosophers become kings 473d in our cities, or those who are now called kings and rulers genuinely and adequately pursue philosophy, and these two things—political power and philosophy—come together, while the many natures that now pursue one or the other separately are forcibly excluded, there can be no end to troubles for our cities, my dear Glaucon, nor, I think, 473e for the human race. Nor will the constitution we have now described in speech ever be born into the realm of possibility and see the light of the sun. This is what has long made me reluctant to speak: I see how contrary to expectation it will sound. For it is hard to see that neither a person nor a city can be happy in any other way.”

And he said, “Socrates, you have hurled out a claim and an argument that, once uttered, will bring against you a great many people, and no mean ones either. Picture them now flinging off their cloaks,

474a seizing whatever weapon comes to hand, and charging naked at full stretch to work wonders on you. If you cannot fend them off with argument and escape, you will indeed pay the penalty in mockery.”

“Are you not the cause of this predicament?” I asked.

“And glad of it,” he said. “Still, I shall not abandon you. I shall defend you as best I can—with goodwill and encouragement, and perhaps with answers more apt than another’s. With such an ally, 474b try to show those who doubt you that what you say is possible.”

“I must try,” I said, “since you offer so powerful an alliance. If we are to escape the people you speak of, I think we must distinguish for them which philosophers we mean when we dare say that philosophers must rule. Once they are clearly identified, we can defend ourselves by showing 474c that some are naturally suited to engage in philosophy and lead in a city, while the others should not engage in it but should follow a leader.”

“It is time to draw that distinction,” he said.

“Come then, follow me along this path, if we can find some adequate way to explain it.”

“Lead on,” he said.

“Shall I need to remind you,” I said, “or do you remember that when we say someone loves a thing, if the claim is right, he must be seen to love not one part of it and reject another, but to cherish all of it? 474d”

“You will have to remind me,” he said. “I do not quite follow.”

“Another man might say that, Glaucon,” I replied, “but it does not suit a man of passion to forget that every youth in the bloom of beauty somehow stings and stirs a lover of boys, seeming worthy of his attention and affection. Is that not how you lovers act toward the beautiful? One boy, because his nose is snub, you praise as charming; another’s hooked nose you call regal; the one whose nose lies between them you say has the finest proportions. You call dark boys manly to look upon and fair ones children of the gods. And ‘honey-pale’—do you think that name 474e was invented by anyone but a lover, speaking fondly and making light of pallor if it appears in a boy in his prime? In short, you invent every sort of excuse

475a and use every sort of expression so as not to reject a single boy in the flower of youth.”

“If you choose to use me as your example when describing the ways of lovers,” he said, “I shall allow it for the sake of the argument.”

“What about lovers of wine?” I said. “Do you not see them do the same thing, welcoming every wine on every pretext?”

“Indeed.”

“And you see, I think, that lovers of honor, if they cannot command an army, will command a third of a tribe, and if they cannot receive honor from men of greater 475b and higher standing, they are glad to receive it from lesser and humbler men, since it is honor itself they desire.”

“Exactly.”

“Now tell me whether you affirm or deny this: when we call someone a lover of a thing, shall we say he desires the whole kind, or one part and not another?”

“The whole,” he said.

“Then shall we not also say that the philosopher desires wisdom, not one part of it and not another, but all of it?”

“True.”

“So a man who resents learning, especially 475c while young and still unable to judge what is useful and what is not, we will not call a lover of learning or a philosopher. Just as we do not say that a man who is particular about his food is hungry or desires food or loves eating: he is a poor eater, not a lover of food.”

“And rightly so,” he said.

“But the man who is willing to taste every kind of learning, gladly turns toward it, and cannot get enough of it—this man we may rightly call a philosopher. Is that not so? 475d”

And Glaucon said, “Then you will have many strange philosophers. All those who love spectacles seem to me to fit your description, because they enjoy learning about what they see. And those who love to listen are very odd candidates for philosophers: they would never willingly attend arguments and discussions of this kind, but as if they had leased out their ears to hear every chorus, they rush about to the Dionysian festivals, missing none in city or village. Shall we call all these people philosophers, and those who study such things and the petty crafts as well? 475e”

“By no means,” I said. “They resemble philosophers, but are not.”

“Whom do you mean by the true philosophers?” he asked.

“Those who love to behold the truth,” I said.

“That is right enough,” he said. “But what do you mean by it?”

“It would not be easy to explain to anyone else,” I said, “but I think you will agree with me on this.”

“On what?”

“Since the beautiful is opposite to the ugly, they are two.”

476a “Of course.”

“And since there are two, each is one?”

“That too.”

“And the same account applies to the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and all the Forms. Each is itself one; but through its association with actions and bodies and with the other Forms, each appears everywhere in many manifestations.”

“You are right,” he said.

“Here, then,” I said, “is my distinction: on one side are those you just mentioned, lovers of sights, lovers of arts, and practical men; on the other are those we are discussing, the only people rightly called philosophers. 476b”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The lovers of sounds and sights,” I said, “welcome beautiful voices, colors, shapes, and all the works fashioned from them. But their thought cannot see or welcome the nature of the beautiful itself.”

“That is certainly so,” he said.

“And those who can approach the beautiful itself and see it by itself—would they not be rare? 476c”

“Very rare.”

“Then consider someone who recognizes beautiful things but does not recognize beauty itself, and who cannot follow anyone who guides him toward knowledge of it. Does he seem to you to live awake or in a dream? Think about it. Is not dreaming, whether asleep or awake, the taking of a likeness not as a likeness but as the very thing it resembles?”

“I would certainly say,” he replied, “that such a person is dreaming.”

“And the man who takes the opposite view—who believes there is beauty itself 476d and can discern both it and the things that share in it, without mistaking the participants for beauty itself or beauty itself for the participants—does he seem to live awake or in a dream?”

“Very much awake,” he said.

“Would it not be right, then, to call this man’s thought knowledge, since he knows, and the other man’s thought opinion, since he only holds an opinion?”

“Certainly.”

“What if the man whom we say has opinion rather than knowledge grows angry with us and disputes the truth of our account? 476e Could we find a way to soothe and gently persuade him, while concealing from him that he is unwell?”

“We must,” he said.

“Come, consider what we should say to him. Or shall we question him this way: tell him that if he knows anything we do not begrudge him his knowledge, but would be glad to see him know something. Then ask him this: does a man who knows know something, or nothing? Answer on his behalf.”

“I shall answer,” he said, “that he knows something.”

“Something that is, or something that is not?”

477a “Something that is. For how could anything that is not be known?”

“So do we have sufficient ground for this, however many ways we might examine it: that what fully is is fully knowable, and what in no way is is wholly unknowable?”

“More than sufficient.”

“Very well. If there is something that both is and is not, would it not lie between that which purely is and that which in no way is?”

“Between them.”

“Then, since knowledge belongs to what is, and ignorance necessarily to what is not, we must seek for this intermediate thing something intermediate 477b between ignorance and knowledge, if there is such a thing.”

“Certainly.”

“Do we say that there is such a thing as opinion?”

“Of course.”

“Is it a different power from knowledge, or the same?”

“A different one.”

“Then opinion is set over one thing and knowledge over another, each according to its own power.”

“Yes.”

“And knowledge is by nature directed toward what is, to know what it is like. But perhaps I must first make a distinction another way.”

“How? 477c”

“We shall say that powers are a kind of thing that exists: by them we are able to do what we can, and so is everything else that has an ability. Sight and hearing, for example, are powers, if you understand the kind of thing I mean.”

“I do understand,” he said.

“Then hear how they appear to me. In a power I see no color, no shape, none of the features that I see in many other things, by looking at which I distinguish some things from others. With a power, 477d I look only to what it is directed toward and what it accomplishes. On that basis I have named each one a power. Those directed toward the same object and accomplishing the same thing I call the same power; those directed toward something different and accomplishing something different I call different powers. What do you do?”

“The same,” he said.

“Come back to our subject then, my good friend,” I said. “Do you say that knowledge itself is a power, or in what class do you place it?”

“In that class,” he said, “as the strongest of all powers. 477e”

“And shall we place opinion among the powers, or in some other class?”

“Among the powers, of course,” he said. “For opinion is precisely that by which we are able to form opinions.”

“But a little while ago you agreed that knowledge and opinion were not the same.”

“How could anyone with any sense,” he said, “identify what cannot err with what can err?”

“Well said,” I replied. “Clearly, then, we agree that opinion is different from knowledge.”

478a “Different.”

“So each of them naturally has a different object and accomplishes a different thing?”

“It must.”

“Knowledge, surely, is directed toward what is, to know how it is?”

“Yes.”

“And opinion, we say, forms opinions?”

“Yes.”

“About the very same thing that knowledge knows? Will the knowable and the object of opinion be the same? Or is that impossible?”

“Impossible, by what we have agreed,” he said. “If different powers naturally have different objects, and both opinion 478b and knowledge are powers, each different from the other, as we say, it follows that the knowable and the object of opinion cannot be the same.”

“So if what is is knowable, the object of opinion must be something other than what is?”

“Something other.”

“Does opinion then concern what is not? Or is it impossible even to form an opinion about what is not? Consider: does not a person forming an opinion direct his opinion toward something? Can one form an opinion and yet form it about nothing?”

“That is impossible.”

“So the person who forms an opinion has an opinion about some one thing?”

“Yes.”

“But what is not would most correctly be called not some one thing, but nothing at all. 478c”

“Certainly.”

“And we necessarily assigned ignorance to what is not, and knowledge to what is?”

“Rightly,” he said.

“So opinion concerns neither what is nor what is not?”

“No.”

“Then opinion would be neither ignorance nor knowledge?”

“So it seems.”

“Does it lie outside both, surpassing knowledge in clarity or ignorance in obscurity?”

“Neither.”

“Does opinion, then,” I asked, “seem to you darker than knowledge but brighter than ignorance?”

“Much brighter,” he said. 478d

“And does it lie between the two?”

“Yes.”

“Then opinion would be between them.”

“Exactly.”

“Did we not say earlier that if anything should appear to be and not to be at once, it would lie between what purely is and what in no way is; and that neither knowledge nor ignorance would be directed toward it, but whatever appeared between ignorance and knowledge?”

“Right.”

“And now what we call opinion has appeared between these two?”

“It has. 478e”

“What remains for us, it seems, is to discover what partakes of both being and not being, and could not rightly be called either in its pure form. Then, if it appears, we may justly call it the object of opinion, assigning extremes to the extremes and what lies between to what lies between. Is that not so?”

“So it is.”

“Given these points, let that fine fellow tell me,” I shall say, “and answer me:

479a he who believes in no beautiful itself, no single Form of beauty that remains always the same, but recognizes many beautiful things—that lover of spectacles who cannot bear to hear anyone say that beauty is one, or justice one, and likewise the rest. ‘Among these many beautiful things, my good man,’ we shall ask him, ‘is there any that will not also appear ugly? Among the just things, any that will not appear unjust? Among the holy, any that will not appear unholy?’ 479b”

“No,” he said. “They must appear in some respect beautiful and ugly, and likewise with everything else you ask about.”

“And the many things that are double: do they appear any less half than double?”

“Not at all.”

“And the things we call large and small, light and heavy: will they be called by these names any more than by their opposites?”

“No,” he said. “Each will always have both descriptions.”

“Then is each of these many things any more what one says it is than it is not?”

“They resemble those ambiguous sayings at banquets,” he said, 479c “and the children’s riddle about the eunuch and the bat—what he threw at her and what he threw it from. These things, too, have both aspects. One cannot firmly conceive any of them either as being or as not being, as both, or as neither.”

“What, then, will you do with them?” I asked. “Can you put them anywhere better than between being and not being? They surely will not appear more obscure than what is not and thus less real than that, 479d nor brighter than what is and thus more real than that.”

“Quite true,” he said.

“So it seems we have found that the many conventional judgments held by the many concerning beauty and the other things roll about somewhere between what is not and what purely is.”

“We have found it.”

“And we agreed beforehand that if anything of that sort appeared, it should be called the object of opinion, not of knowledge, since the intermediate power grasps what wanders in between.”

“We agreed. 479e”

“Therefore, those who behold many beautiful things but do not see the beautiful itself, nor can follow someone who leads them to it, and who see many just things but not the just itself, and so with everything else—these people, we shall say, have opinions about all these things but know none of the things they hold opinions about.”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“And what of those who behold the things themselves, each always remaining the same? Must they not know them, rather than merely hold opinions?”

“That too must be so.”

“Then shall we say that the latter cherish and love the things

480a over which knowledge has power, and the former the things over which opinion has power? Do we not remember saying that those people love and behold beautiful sounds and colors and the like, yet cannot bear to admit that the beautiful itself exists?”

“We remember.”

“Will we be wrong, then, to call them lovers of opinion rather than philosophers, lovers of wisdom? Will they be very angry with us if we say so?”

“Not if they listen to me,” he said. “For no one ought to be angry with the truth.”

“Then those who cherish each thing that itself is must be called philosophers, not lovers of opinion?”

“Absolutely.”

473a “Can anything ever be done exactly as it is described? Or is it in the nature of action to come less close to truth than words do, even if someone disagrees? Do you agree or not?”

“I agree,” he said.

“Then don't make me prove that everything we've described in words must happen in action exactly as described. If we can find a way for a city to be governed as nearly as possible in the way we've said, let's say we've found how what you demand could happen. 473b Wouldn't that satisfy you? It would satisfy me.”

“It would satisfy me too,” he said.

“Next, it seems, we must try to find out what's going wrong in cities now that prevents them from being governed this way. Then we must identify the smallest change that could bring a city to this form of government: preferably a single change; if not, two; or, failing that, as few changes as possible, with as little impact as possible. 473c”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“I think we can show that one change would bring it about,” I said. “But it's neither a small change nor an easy one. It is possible, though.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Now I've come,” I said, “to what we compared to the largest wave. I'll say it, even if a wave of laughter and disapproval is going to flood over me. Listen to what I mean.”

“Go on,” he said.

“Unless philosophers rule as kings in 473d cities, or those now called kings and powerful rulers take up philosophy genuinely and well, so that political power and philosophy come together, there will be no end to troubles for cities, my dear Glaucon, or, I think, for the human race. This also requires barring the many people who now pursue one or the other separately. Until then, the political system we've described 473e will never have a chance to grow and see the light of day. I've been reluctant to say this for some time because I could see how surprising it would sound. It's hard to see that neither individuals nor communities can be happy in any other way.”

“Socrates,” he said, “you've thrown out such an extraordinary statement and argument that you should expect a great crowd of capable people to rush at you. Imagine them throwing off their cloaks, grabbing whatever weapons are at hand, and charging to do you some spectacular harm. 474a If you don't defend yourself with an argument and escape, they'll laugh you to pieces as punishment.”

“And isn't that your fault?” I asked.

“It is, and I was right to do it,” he said. “But I won't abandon you. I'll defend you as best I can, with my goodwill and encouragement. Perhaps I'll also answer your questions more helpfully than someone else would. 474b With such a helper, try to show the doubters that things are as you say.”

“I must try,” I said, “since you offer such strong support. If we're going to escape the people you describe, I think we have to define for them whom we mean by ‘philosophers’ when we dare to say philosophers should rule. Once that's clear, we can defend our position by showing 474c that some people are naturally suited to practice philosophy and lead the city, while the rest should leave philosophy alone and follow the leader.”

“It's time to define them,” he said.

“Then follow me this way, if we can give a good enough explanation.”

“Lead on,” he said.

“Will I need to remind you,” I said, “or do you remember that if we rightly say someone loves a thing, he must love the whole of it, not one part but not another? 474d”

“You'll have to remind me,” he said. “I don't quite understand.”

“Another man might say that, Glaucon,” I said, “but not a lover. You shouldn't forget that every boy in his prime somehow catches the interest of a man who loves boys. Each seems worth paying attention to and being fond of. Isn't this how you lovers treat handsome boys? You'll praise a boy with a flat nose for being charming, call another's hooked nose majestic, and say that a nose between the two is perfectly proportioned. Dark-skinned boys look manly to you, and fair-skinned boys look like children of the gods. And who but a lover invented the pet name ‘honey-pale’ to excuse a boy's paleness, so long as he's in the prime of youth? 474e In short, you'll find every excuse and use every expression to avoid turning away any boy at the height of his youth. 475a”

“If you want to use me as your example when speaking of how lovers behave,” he said, “I'll agree for the sake of the argument.”

“Don't you see wine lovers acting the same way?” I asked. “They welcome every kind of wine on any pretext.”

“Of course.”

“And you've seen, I think, what people who love honor do. If they can't be generals, they'll serve as officers over a small unit. And if they can't be honored by the important and respected, they'll be glad to receive honor from less important people. That's because they want honor of any kind. 475b”

“Exactly.”

“Now tell me whether you agree: if we say someone desires a thing, do we mean he desires everything of that kind, or some of it but not the rest?”

“Everything,” he said.

“Then we'll say a philosopher desires wisdom in its entirety, not one part but not another?”

“That's true.”

“So we won't call someone who dislikes learning a lover of learning or a philosopher. That's especially true of a young person who can't yet judge what is useful and what isn't. If a person dislikes food, we don't say he's hungry, or that he desires food, or that he loves eating. We say he's a fussy eater. 475c”

“And we'd be right.”

“But someone who is willing to taste every kind of learning, gladly goes to learn, and can never get enough of it—that person we'd be right to call a philosopher, wouldn't we? 475d”

Then Glaucon said, “You'll have many strange people in that category. All the people who love watching performances seem to me to enjoy learning what they see. And those who love listening are particularly odd candidates for philosophers. They would never willingly come to a discussion like ours. Yet they run from place to place at the festivals of Dionysus as if they'd rented out their ears to hear every chorus. They miss none of the performances, whether in cities or villages. Are we going to call all these people philosophers, along with people eager to learn similar things and enthusiasts for minor crafts? 475e”

“Not at all,” I said. “They're only like philosophers.”

“Then who are the real ones?” he asked.

“Those who love to look at the truth,” I said.

“That sounds right,” he said. “But what do you mean?”

“It wouldn't be easy to explain to someone else,” I said. “But I think you'll agree to this.”

“To what?”

“Since the beautiful is the opposite of the ugly, they are two distinct things.”

476a “Of course.”

“And since they're two, each is also one thing?”

“Yes.”

“The same holds for the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and all the Forms. Each Form is itself one thing. But because it is involved with actions, bodies, and the other Forms, it appears in many places and seems to be many things.”

“That's right,” he said.

“This is the distinction I make,” I said. “On one side are the people you just mentioned, who love watching, admire the arts, and are active in practical affairs. On the other are the people we're discussing, the only ones properly called philosophers. 476b”

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“The people who love hearing and watching welcome beautiful sounds, colors, shapes, and everything made from them. But their minds can't see or welcome the nature of beauty itself.”

“That's true,” he said.

“And those who can approach beauty itself and see it on its own must be rare, mustn't they? 476c”

“Very rare.”

“Suppose someone recognizes beautiful things but doesn't recognize beauty itself, and can't follow a guide who would lead him to understand it. Is he living in a dream or awake? Think about it. Doesn't dreaming mean mistaking the likeness of something for the thing it resembles, whether you're asleep or awake?”

“I would say such a person is dreaming,” he said.

“Now take the opposite sort of person. He recognizes that beauty itself exists and can see both it and the things that share in it. He doesn't mistake those things for beauty itself or beauty itself for those things. Would you say he lives awake or in a dream? 476d”

“Definitely awake,” he said.

“Then we'd be right to call the thinking of the person who sees it knowledge, and the other's thinking opinion, since he merely holds an opinion?”

“Certainly.”

“What if the person we say holds an opinion but doesn't know gets angry and disputes what we've said? Can we soothe him and gently persuade him without telling him he's not thinking clearly? 476e”

“We ought to,” he said.

“Let's see what we'll tell him. We could ask him a question and say we're not jealous if he knows something; we'd be glad to meet someone who does. But tell us this: does a person who knows know something, or nothing? Answer for him, please.”

“I'll answer that he knows something,” he said.

“Something that is, or something that is not?”

477a “Something that is. How could anyone know something that is not?”

“So can we take this as settled, however many ways we might examine it? What completely is can be completely known; what is not in any way cannot be known at all.”

“We certainly can.”

“Well, if something both is and is not, wouldn't it fall between what purely is and what in no way is?”

“Between them.”

“Knowledge, then, concerns what is, while ignorance must concern what is not. For what lies between the two, we must look for something between ignorance and knowledge, 477b if there is such a thing.”

“Certainly.”

“Do we say there is such a thing as opinion?”

“Of course.”

“Is it the same capacity as knowledge, or a different one?”

“A different one.”

“Then opinion has its own object, and knowledge has another, since each has its own capacity.”

“Yes.”

“And knowledge naturally concerns what is, knowing how what is actually is. But I think we first need to make another distinction.”

“What distinction? 477c”

“We'll say that capacities are a kind of thing that exists. They're what let us do whatever we're capable of doing, and let everything else do what it's capable of doing. Sight and hearing, for example, are capacities. Do you see what kind of thing I mean?”

“I do,” he said.

“Then listen to how I understand them. I can't see a capacity's color, shape, or anything like that. Those are the features I can look at to distinguish many other things from one another. For a capacity, 477d I look only at what it applies to and what it does. That's how I identify each capacity. If two capacities apply to the same thing and do the same work, I call them the same. If they apply to different things and do different work, I call them different. What do you do?”

“The same,” he said.

“Let's go back, then, my friend,” I said. “Would you say knowledge is a capacity, or would you put it in some other class?”

“In that class,” he said, “as the strongest of all capacities. 477e”

“And shall we put opinion among the capacities, or in some other class?”

“Among the capacities,” he said. “The power we use to form opinions is nothing other than opinion.”

“But a moment ago you agreed that knowledge and opinion aren't the same.”

“Of course,” he said. “How could anyone with sense equate what cannot be wrong with what can?”

“Good,” I said. “It's clear, then, that 478a we agree opinion differs from knowledge.”

“It does.”

“Then each naturally applies to a different thing and can do something different?”

“It must.”

“Knowledge, I take it, applies to what is, so that it can know what it is like?”

“Yes.”

“And opinion, we say, forms opinions?”

“Yes.”

“About the very thing that knowledge knows? Would what is known and what is the object of opinion be the same thing? Or is that impossible?”

“It's impossible on the basis of what we've agreed,” he said. “If different capacities naturally apply to different things, and knowledge and opinion are both capacities but differ from one another, as we say, then what is known can't be the same as what is the object of opinion. 478b”

“If what is can be known, the object of opinion must be something other than what is?”

“Yes.”

“Then does opinion concern what is not? Or is it impossible even to form an opinion about what is not? Think about it. Doesn't a person who has an opinion direct it toward something? Or can a person hold an opinion about nothing?”

“That's impossible.”

“A person with an opinion has an opinion about some one thing, then?”

“Yes.”

“But what is not would be most accurately called not a thing at all, but nothing. 478c”

“Yes.”

“And we assigned ignorance to what is not, and knowledge to what is?”

“Right,” he said.

“Then opinion is about neither what is nor what is not?”

“No.”

“So opinion would be neither ignorance nor knowledge?”

“It seems not.”

“Does it lie beyond both? Is it clearer than knowledge or less clear than ignorance?”

“Neither.”

“Then does opinion seem darker to you than knowledge, but clearer than ignorance?” I asked.

“Much clearer,” he said. 478d

“And it lies between them?”

“Yes.”

“So opinion falls between the two.”

“Exactly.”

“Didn't we say earlier that if something appeared to both be and not be, it would lie between what purely is and what is not at all? Neither knowledge nor ignorance would apply to it; rather, the thing between ignorance and knowledge would.”

“Right.”

“And what we call opinion has now turned out to be between those two?”

“Yes, it has. 478e”

“So it seems we still have to find what shares in both being and not being, without properly being called either of them in its pure form. If we find it, we can rightly call it the object of opinion. In that way, we'd assign the extremes to the extremes, and what lies between to what lies between. Wouldn't we?”

“We would.”

“Given that,” I said, “let that fine fellow answer me:

479a the man who doesn't believe there is beauty itself, a Form of beauty that always stays the same, but who believes there are many beautiful things. I mean the man who loves to watch and can't bear it when someone says there is one beautiful itself, one just itself, and likewise for the others. We'll ask him: ‘My friend, among all these many beautiful things, is there one that won't also appear ugly? Among the just things, one that won't appear unjust? Among the holy things, one that won't appear unholy?’ 479b”

“No,” he said. “They must appear beautiful in one respect and ugly in another, and the same goes for the rest of your examples.”

“And the many things called double: won't each also appear to be half as much?”

“Yes, it will.”

“And things called big and small, or light and heavy: will they be called what we say any more than they'll be called the opposite?”

“No,” he said. “Each will always admit both descriptions.”

“So does each of these many things really have the property someone says it has, any more than it doesn't?”

“They're like the ambiguous jokes people tell at parties,” he said, “and the children's riddle about a eunuch throwing something at a bat: what did he throw, and what was it sitting on? 479c These things, too, go both ways. You can't settle clearly whether any one of them is or isn't, or both, or neither.”

“What can you do with them, then?” I asked. “Could you put them anywhere better than between being and not being? They won't appear darker than what is not, as if they had less being. Nor will they appear clearer than what is, as if they had more. 479d”

“That's entirely true,” he said.

“So it seems we've found that ordinary people's many beliefs about beauty and the other things keep rolling around somewhere between what isn't and what purely is.”

“We have.”

“And we agreed beforehand that if something like that appeared, we must call it an object of opinion, not of knowledge. The capacity in between grasps the wandering thing in between.”

“We did. 479e”

“So we'll say that people who see many beautiful things but don't see beauty itself, and can't follow a guide who leads them to it, and who see many just things but not justice itself—and similarly with everything else—have opinions about all these things, but know nothing of what they hold opinions about.”

“We must,” he said.

“And what about people who see each thing itself as it always remains the same? Won't we say they know, rather than merely hold opinions?”

“We must say that too.”

“And won't we say that these people welcome and love what knowledge concerns,

480a while the others love what opinion concerns? Don't you remember our saying that the others love looking at beautiful sounds, colors, and the like, but can't even bear the thought that beauty itself exists?”

“I remember.”

“Then would we be wrong to call them lovers of opinion rather than lovers of wisdom? Will they be very angry if we say that?”

“Not if they listen to me,” he said. “It isn't right to be angry at the truth.”

“And we should call those who welcome each thing that truly is lovers of wisdom, not lovers of opinion?”

“Absolutely.”