Book X, 603–610

603a “Then the part of the soul that judges contrary to measurement cannot be the same as the part that judges according to it.”“Certainly not.”“And the part that trusts measure and calculation must be the best part of the soul.”“Of course.”“So the part opposed to it must be something base within us.”“Necessarily.”“This was the agreement I sought when I said that painting, and imitation generally, produce their work far from the truth, and associate with the part of us far from understanding 603b; they are its companions and friends, to no sound or truthful end.”“Entirely so,” he said.“Then imitation, being base and consorting with what is base, gives birth to base things.”“So it seems.”“Is that true,” I said, “only of imitation that appeals to sight, or also of imitation that appeals to hearing, which we call poetry?”“Presumably of that too,” he said.“Let us not, then,” I said, “trust only an inference from painting. Let us approach directly that part of the mind 603c with which poetic imitation associates, and see whether it is base or worthy.”“We must.”“Let us put it this way: imitation portrays people in action, whether their actions are forced or voluntary; they think their actions have turned out well or badly, and in every such circumstance they grieve or rejoice. Is there anything beyond these?”“Nothing.”“Now, in all these circumstances, is a person of one mind? 603d Or, just as in matters of sight he was divided against himself, holding contrary opinions at once about the same things, is he divided and at war with himself in action too? But I recall that there is no need for us to settle this now: in our earlier discussion we reached sufficient agreement on all these points—that our souls are filled with countless simultaneous conflicts of this kind.”“Right,” he said.“Yes, right,” I said. “But what we passed over then 603e now seems to me necessary to pursue.”“What is that?” he asked.“A decent man,” I said, “who meets such a fate as losing a son, or anything else he holds most dear, will, we said then, bear it more easily than others.”“Certainly.”“Let us now ask whether he will feel no pain at all, or whether that is impossible and instead he will somehow be moderate in his grief.”“The latter,” he said, “is nearer the truth.”

604a “Now tell me this about him: do you think he will fight his grief and hold out against it more when he is seen by his peers, or when he finds himself alone in solitude?”“He will behave very differently,” he said, “when he is seen.”“But when alone, I think he will dare to say many things he would be ashamed for anyone to hear, and do many things he would not bear for anyone to see him doing.”“That is so,” he said.“Then what bids him hold out is reason and law 604b, while what pulls him toward grief is the suffering itself?”“True.”“And when contrary impulses arise in a person at the same time about the same thing, we say there must be two distinct parts.”“Certainly.”“Is not one ready to obey the law wherever the law leads?”“How so?”“The law says, I believe, that it is noblest to remain as calm as possible in adversity and not to rebel against it: we do not know what is good or bad in such events; resentment brings no benefit for the future; nothing human 604c deserves great agitation; and grief obstructs the very thing that ought to come to our aid as soon as possible in such circumstances.”“What thing?” he asked.“Deliberation,” I said, “about what has happened; like a player after a throw of dice, we must arrange our affairs in response to the fall as reason chooses best. We must not, like children who have stumbled, clutch the hurt spot and spend our time crying out, but always train the soul to turn as quickly 604d as possible to healing and setting right what has fallen and fallen ill, using medicine to put an end to lamentation.”“That would certainly be the soundest way,” he said, “to face our fortunes.”“So we say that the best part of us wishes to follow this reasoning.”“Plainly.”“And the part that draws us toward memories of suffering and toward wailing, and cannot have its fill of them—shall we not call it unreasoning, idle, and friendly to cowardice?”“We shall indeed. 604e”“Now the resentful part admits of many varied imitations, whereas a wise and tranquil character, always much the same as itself, is neither easy to imitate nor, when imitated, easy to understand—least of all for a festival crowd of all sorts of people gathered in a theater. What is imitated is, I suppose, a state of feeling foreign to them.”

605a “Entirely so.”“Clearly, then, the imitative poet is not naturally directed toward this part of the soul, nor is his art framed to please it if he wants favor with the many. He turns instead to the resentful, changeable character, because it is easy to imitate.”“Clearly.”“We would be right, then, to take him to task and set him beside the painter as his counterpart: he resembles him in making things of little worth in relation to truth, and in associating with another such part 605b of the soul rather than the best. On these grounds they are alike. And so we would be justified in refusing him admission to a city destined to be well governed. He awakens that part of the soul and nourishes it, and, by making it strong, destroys the reasoning part—just as, in a city, someone who makes scoundrels powerful surrenders the city to them and ruins its finer citizens. So too, we shall say, the imitative poet establishes a bad constitution in each private soul, gratifying its senseless part 605c, which cannot distinguish greater from lesser, but thinks the same things great at one time and small at another. He makes images of images, and stands far removed from truth.”“Exactly.”“But we have not yet brought the gravest charge against poetry. Its ability to harm even decent people, apart from a very few, is terrible indeed.”“How could it not be, if it really does that?”“Listen and consider. When the best of us hear Homer or another tragic poet imitating 605d a hero in mourning, drawing out a long speech of lament, or even singing and beating his breast, you know that we take pleasure in it, yield ourselves to sympathy, and earnestly praise as a good poet the man who most powerfully moves us this way.”“I know it. How could I not?”“But when grief comes to one of us personally, you notice, in turn, that we pride ourselves on the opposite: on being able to stay quiet 605e and endure, thinking that conduct manly, and the conduct we praised before womanly.”“I do notice,” he said.“Then is such praise fitting,” I said, “when we look upon a man whom we ourselves would be ashamed to resemble, and instead of recoiling from him, delight in him and praise him?”“No, by Zeus,” he said, “it hardly seems reasonable.”

606a “Yes,” I said, “if you look at it from this direction.”“How?”“Consider that the part of us forcibly held in check in our own misfortunes—hungry to weep and wail to its heart’s content and to have its fill, because it is by nature eager for such things—is the very part that the poets satisfy and delight. Meanwhile the part of us that is best by nature, insufficiently schooled by reason or habit, lets down its guard over this 606b lamenting part. It is watching another’s suffering and sees no shame for itself in praising and pitying a man who claims to be good yet grieves without restraint. It thinks that it gains a reward, pleasure, and would not consent to lose it by despising the whole poem. Few people, I believe, can reason that what we take from others’ experiences must carry over into our own: once we have fed the appetite for pity on those experiences and made it strong, it is not easy to restrain it in our own sufferings. 606c”“Entirely true,” he said.“Does not the same account hold for the ridiculous? You may be ashamed to play the clown yourself, but when you hear clowning in a comedy or in private, you enjoy it greatly instead of hating it as something shameful. Are you not doing the same thing as with scenes of pity? The impulse to make jokes that you held in check by reason, fearing a reputation for buffoonery, you now release; after giving it free rein there, you often fail to notice how, in your own affairs, you are carried away into becoming a comic performer.”“Quite so,” he said. 606d“The same holds for sexual desires and anger, and for all the appetites, pains, and pleasures of the soul that, we say, attend our every action. Poetic imitation works this change in us: it nourishes and waters these things when they ought to wither, and establishes them as rulers over us when they ought to be ruled, so that we might become better and happier instead of worse and more miserable.”“I cannot say otherwise,” he replied. 606e“So, Glaucon,” I said, “when you meet admirers of Homer who say that this poet has educated Greece, and that for the conduct and education of human affairs he deserves to be taken up and studied, and that one should order one’s whole life according to him,

607a “you must be fond of these admirers and welcome them as the best people they can be; you must grant that Homer is the most poetic of poets and the first among makers of tragedy. But you must know that only hymns to the gods and praises of good people may be admitted as poetry into the city. If you admit the sweetened Muse in lyric song or epic verse, pleasure and pain will reign in your city instead of law and the reasoning that the community has always judged best.”“Entirely true,” he said. 607b“Let this be our defense, then,” I said, “now that we have recalled poetry: we had good reason to send her out of the city, being what she is; the argument compelled us. And let us tell her, lest she condemn us for harshness and lack of refinement, that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. ‘The yelping dog barking at its master,’ and ‘the great man among the empty talk of fools’ 607c, and ‘the crowd of wise men who prevail,’ and ‘those whose subtle thoughts leave them poor’—these and countless other signs attest to their ancient opposition. All the same, let it be said that if poetry devoted to pleasure and imitation can offer any argument why it ought to dwell in a well-governed city, we would gladly welcome it back. We know well enough that it casts a spell on us; yet it would be impious to betray what we believe to be true. My friend, are you not also under its spell 607d, especially when you see it in Homer?”“Very much so.”“Then it is only just that poetry return this way, if it can defend itself in song or some other meter.”“Certainly.”“And we might also allow its defenders, those who love poetry without being poets, to speak for it in prose and show that it is not merely delightful but beneficial to civic constitutions and human life. We shall listen with goodwill. 607e We shall gain something, after all, if poetry proves not only delightful but beneficial.”“How could we fail to gain?” he said.“But if it does not, dear friend, we must act like people once in love who, when they judge their love harmful, force themselves to abstain. Our upbringing under fine constitutions has planted a love for such poetry in us, and so we shall wish it to prove itself supremely good and true. But until it can defend itself,

608a “when we listen to it we shall recite to ourselves the argument we have made, like a counterspell, guarding against a return to the love of childhood and the multitude. We shall chant that this kind of poetry must not be taken seriously as though it touched truth and dealt with serious matters. Its listener must be on guard 608b, fearful for the constitution within himself, and hold fast to what we have said about poetry.”“I agree completely,” he said.“For the contest is great, dear Glaucon,” I said, “greater than it appears: whether we become good or bad. Neither honor nor money nor any office nor even poetry should tempt us to neglect justice and the rest of virtue.”“I agree,” he said, “after everything we have discussed. And I think anyone else would too. 608c”“And yet,” I said, “we have not discussed the greatest rewards of virtue, or the prizes set before it.”“You speak of an astonishing magnitude,” he said, “if there is anything greater than what we have discussed.”“What great thing,” I said, “could happen in a short time? All the time from childhood to old age is surely short compared with eternity.”“Nothing great,” he said.“What then? Do you think an immortal thing should concern itself with this span 608d rather than with all time?”“I do,” he said. “But what do you mean by this?”“Have you not realized,” I said, “that our soul is immortal and never perishes?”He looked at me in astonishment and said, “By Zeus, I have not. Can you establish that?”“Yes, unless I am mistaken,” I said. “And I think you can too; it is not difficult.”“For me it is,” he said. “But I would gladly hear this proof you call easy.”“Then you shall hear it,” I said.“Only speak,” he said.“Do you recognize,” I asked, “a thing called good and a thing called evil?”“I do. 608e”“And do you understand them as I do?”“In what sense?”“Whatever destroys and corrupts is evil; whatever preserves and benefits is good.”“I do,” he said.“What then? Do you speak of a particular evil and good for each thing? For example, 609a inflammation of the eyes, disease of the whole body, blight of grain, rot of wood, rust of bronze and iron—in short, an evil and a disease native to nearly everything?”

“I do,” he said.“And whenever one of these afflicts something, it makes that thing bad and finally dissolves and destroys it altogether?”“Of course.”“Then each thing is destroyed by its native evil and corruption; if that does not destroy it, nothing else 609b can corrupt it. For good certainly cannot destroy anything, nor can what is neither good nor evil.”“How could it?” he said.“Suppose, then, we find something that has an evil that makes it bad, but that evil cannot dissolve or destroy it. Shall we not know at once that there is no destruction for what is constituted this way?”“That seems likely,” he said.“Well then,” I said, “does the soul not have something that makes it bad?”“Very much so,” he said: “all the things we just went through— injustice 609c, lack of restraint, cowardice, ignorance.”“Does any of these dissolve and destroy it? Take care that we are not deceived into thinking that when an unjust and foolish man is caught doing wrong and put to death, injustice, the soul’s evil, has destroyed him. Look at it this way: bodily disease, an evil of the body, wastes and destroys the body until it is no body at all; and all the other things we mentioned 609d are brought to nothing when their own peculiar evil inhabits and assails them and corrupts them. Is that not so?”“Yes.”“Come then, examine the soul in the same way. Does injustice dwelling within it, and the rest of vice, corrupt and wither it by their presence and assault, until they bring it to death and part it from the body?”“Not in the least,” he said.“But surely,” I said, “it would be unreasonable for the evil of another thing to destroy something when its own evil does not.”“Unreasonable. 609e”“Consider, Glaucon,” I said, “that we do not even suppose that a body must be destroyed by the evil peculiar to food, whether staleness, decay, or any other such defect. If the evil of food produces in the body the body’s own evil, we shall say that because of the food the body was destroyed by its own evil, disease. But we shall never think it right to say that the body, which is one thing, is destroyed by the evil of food, which is another,

610a “an alien evil that has not brought about the body’s native evil.”“Again, you are quite right,” he said.“By the same reasoning,” I said, “if the body’s corruption does not produce corruption of the soul within the soul, we must never think that an alien evil destroys a soul without its own corruption—that the evil of one thing destroys another.”“That makes sense,” he said.“Then either let us refute this argument as unsound, or, 610b as long as it stands unrefuted, let us never say that fever or another disease or slaughter—or even cutting the whole body into the smallest pieces—has any greater power to destroy the soul, unless someone demonstrates that these afflictions of the body make the soul itself more unjust and impious. When an alien evil arises in one thing but the particular evil of another has not arisen in that other, 610c we must allow no one to say that a soul, or anything else, is destroyed.”“But surely,” he said, “no one will ever show that death makes the souls of those who die more unjust.”“But if someone,” I said, “dares to challenge the argument and claim that a dying person becomes more wicked and unjust, to avoid admitting that souls are immortal, then, if his claim is true, we shall require him to say that injustice is fatal to its possessor like a disease, and that those who contract it die by its own death-dealing nature 610d: the most unjust quickest, the less unjust more slowly—not as things stand now, when the unjust die at the hands of others who inflict a penalty on them for it.”“By Zeus,” he said, “injustice will not seem so terrible if it proves fatal to its possessor, since that would be a release from troubles. Rather, I think it will appear to do precisely the opposite: killing other people if it can, but making its possessor remarkably vigorous and, beyond vigorous, wakeful as well. So far, it seems, does it dwell from anything fatal. 610e”“Well said,” I replied. “If the soul’s own corruption and peculiar evil cannot kill and destroy it, an evil appointed to destroy something else will scarcely destroy the soul—or anything else except what it is appointed to destroy.”“Scarcely, as it seems likely,” he said.“So, since it perishes by no evil at all, neither

603a So the part of the soul that judges things to be out of proportion would not be the same as the part that judges them by measurement."No, it wouldn't.""And the part that trusts measurement and calculation would be the best part of the soul.""Of course.""Then the part that opposes it must be one of the poorer parts of us.""It must.""I wanted us to agree on this when I said that painting, and imitation in general, produces work that is far from the truth. It associates with the part of us that is far from good judgment 603b and becomes its companion and friend, with no healthy or truthful purpose.""Absolutely," he said."So imitation, being poor itself, joins with what is poor and produces poor things.""It seems so.""Does this apply only to imitation through sight," I asked, "or also through hearing, the kind we call poetry?""Probably to poetry too," he said."But let's not rely just on a probability drawn from painting," I said. "Let's turn to the very part of the mind 603c that poetic imitation associates with, and see whether it is poor or worthwhile.""We should.""Let's put it this way. We say that imitation represents people doing things, whether they act under compulsion or willingly. They think their actions have turned out well or badly, and in all these situations they feel pain or pleasure. Was there anything else besides that?""No.""Is a person of one mind through all of this? 603d Or does he have a conflict within himself in his actions, as he did in what he saw? There he held opposing beliefs about the same things at the same time. But I remember that we don't need to reach a fresh agreement about this. In our earlier discussion we agreed fully that our souls are full of countless such conflicts occurring at once.""That's right," he said."Yes," I said. "But there is something we left out then, and I think we need to go through it 603e now.""What is it?" he asked."We said, I believe, that when a decent man suffers a loss of this kind—losing a son, or something else he holds most dear—he bears it more easily than other people.""Certainly.""Now let's ask whether he feels no distress at all, or whether that's impossible and he instead keeps his grief within limits.""The second is closer to the truth," he said.

604a "Tell me this about him. Do you think he fights back against his grief more when people like him can see him, or when he is alone by himself?""It makes a great difference when people can see him," he said."When he's alone, I imagine, he will dare to say many things he would be ashamed for someone to hear, and he will do many things he would not want anyone to see.""That's true," he said."Then reason and custom tell him to resist, 604b while the feeling itself pulls him toward grief?""Yes.""And when a person is pulled in opposite directions over the same thing at the same time, we say there must be two parts at work in him.""Of course.""And one of them is ready to obey the law as it directs him?""In what way?""The law says that when disaster strikes, it is best to stay as calm as possible and not get angry. We cannot tell whether events of this kind are good or bad. Feeling miserable gets us nowhere afterward. Nothing human deserves too much concern. And grief gets in the way of the thing we need to do as quickly as possible in such cases. 604c""What thing do you mean?" he asked."We need to think about what has happened," I said, "and arrange our affairs in light of what has turned up, just as we play the dice as they have fallen. We must choose the course reason judges best. If we stumble, we shouldn't spend our time like children, clutching the hurt place and crying out. Instead, we must always train the soul to turn as quickly as it can 604d to healing and setting right what has fallen and what is sick. We must replace wailing with treatment.""That's certainly the best way to deal with misfortune," he said."Then, as we say, the best part of us is willing to follow this reasoning.""Clearly.""But the part that pulls us back to memories of the hurt and to cries of grief, and can never get enough of them—wouldn't we call that part irrational, idle, and a friend of cowardice?""We certainly would. 604e""The grieving, resentful part offers many varied things to imitate. But a sensible and calm character, which always stays much the same, is not easy to imitate. And when it is imitated, people do not easily understand it, especially a crowd of all kinds of people gathered at a theater festival. What is being imitated is a feeling foreign to them."

605a "Quite so.""It's clear, then, that an imitative poet does not naturally address that part of the soul. If he wants to be popular with the many, his skill is not aimed at pleasing it. He addresses the changeable and resentful character instead, because it is easy to imitate.""Clearly.""So we would now be right to criticize him and set him alongside the painter. Like the painter, he makes things of little value when measured against truth. And he associates with another part of the soul of the same low kind, 605b not with its best part. That is another way they are alike. We would therefore be right to refuse him entry to a city that is going to have good laws. He stirs up this part of the soul, feeds it, and makes it strong, destroying the rational part. This is just as if someone handed a city over to bad people by putting them in power and ruined its better citizens. In the same way, we will say that the imitative poet creates a bad government in each person's soul. He indulges its foolish part, 605c which cannot tell larger from smaller but considers the very same things large at one time and small at another. He makes images of images, far removed from the truth.""Certainly.""But we still haven't brought our strongest charge against poetry. The terrible thing is that it can corrupt even decent people, apart from a very few.""How could it fail to, if it does what you say?""Listen and consider. When even the best of us hear Homer or another tragedian imitate 605d a hero in mourning, giving a long speech of lament, or singing and beating his chest, you know we enjoy it. We give ourselves over to it and follow along, sharing the hero's feelings. We take the matter seriously and praise as a good poet the man who affects us most strongly in this way.""I know we do. How could I not?""But when one of us suffers a personal loss, notice that we pride ourselves on the opposite: being able to stay calm 605e and endure it. We think that is what a man does, while the behavior we praised earlier is what a woman does.""I see that," he said."Then is that praise proper?" I asked. "We see a man behaving in a way we ourselves would be ashamed to behave, but instead of being disgusted, we enjoy it and praise him.""No, by Zeus," he said. "That doesn't seem reasonable."

606a "Yes," I said, "especially if you look at it this way.""How?""When we suffer our own losses, we forcibly hold back the part of us that longs to cry and wail its fill. Its nature is to want these things. But that is exactly the part the poets satisfy and delight. Meanwhile, the naturally better part of us has not been trained well enough by reason and habit. So it lets down its guard against 606b this grieving part. It is watching someone else's suffering, and it thinks there is no shame in praising and pitying another man who claims to be good but mourns without restraint. It believes it is gaining something: pleasure. It would not agree to give up that pleasure by rejecting the whole poem. I think very few people stop to reason that feelings learned from watching others inevitably carry over into our own lives. Once we have fed the part that pities others and made it strong, it isn't easy to restrain it when we ourselves suffer. 606c""That's completely true," he said."Doesn't the same reasoning apply to what is funny? You would be ashamed to make certain jokes yourself, but you greatly enjoy hearing them in a comedy or in private and don't reject them as bad. Isn't this just what you do with displays of grief? You previously held back the part of yourself that wanted to make jokes, because you feared seeming crude. Now you let it loose. Once you've encouraged it there, you often find yourself carried away in your own life and acting like a comic performer.""Very much so," he said. 606d"The same goes for sex, anger, and all the desires, pains, and pleasures in our souls that, as we say, go along with every action. Poetic imitation has this effect on us. It waters and feeds these feelings when they should be allowed to dry out. It gives them control over us when they should be controlled. Otherwise we become worse and more miserable instead of better and happier.""I can't say otherwise," he said. 606e"So, Glaucon," I said, "when you meet people who admire Homer and say that this poet has educated Greece, and that he is worth studying for the management and education of human affairs, and that a person ought to shape his entire life by learning from him,

607a you should treat these people with affection and welcome them as the best people they can be. You may agree that Homer is the most gifted poet and the foremost of the tragic poets. But you must know that the only poetry we can admit into our city consists of hymns to the gods and praises of good people. If you admit the sweetened Muse, whether in song or verse, pleasure and pain will rule your city instead of law and the reasoning commonly held to be best.""That is entirely true," he said. 607b"Let this, then, be our defense when we remember our treatment of poetry. We had good reason to send it away from the city in its present form. Reason compelled us to. But to keep it from accusing us of harshness and lack of culture, let us add that the quarrel between philosophy and poetry is an old one. There are all those old lines: 'the yelping dog barking at her master,' 'the great man among the empty talk of fools,' 607c 'the crowd of overly wise men who rule,' and 'the people with their fine-spun worries because they are poor.' There are countless other signs of this ancient dispute. Still, we should say that if poetry and imitation aimed at pleasure can offer an argument for having a place in a well-governed city, we would gladly welcome them. We know that we ourselves are under poetry's spell. But it would be wrong to betray what we believe to be true. You too are under its spell, my friend, 607d aren't you, especially when you see it in Homer?""Very much.""Then it is only fair that poetry should return if it can make its case, whether in a song or in some other meter.""Certainly.""And I suppose we would let its defenders who love poetry, though they are not poets themselves, speak for it in plain prose. Let them argue that it is not only pleasant but useful for cities and for human life. We will listen sympathetically. 607e We would gain something if it proved not only pleasant but useful.""Of course we would gain something," he said."But if it cannot, my dear friend, we must do as people do when they have fallen in love and decide that the love is doing them no good. They give it up, reluctantly but firmly. Our upbringing under good political systems has given us a love of this kind of poetry. 608a We will be eager for it to prove as excellent and truthful as possible. But until it can defend itself, whenever we listen to it we will repeat to ourselves the argument we have given, like a protective chant. We must take care not to fall back into the love we had for it as children, and that most people still have. We will remind ourselves that poetry of this kind must not be taken seriously as something concerned with truth and important matters. A listener concerned for the government of his own soul must be on guard against it 608b and hold to what we have said about poetry.""I agree completely," he said."The contest is great, my dear Glaucon," I said, "greater than it seems. It is the contest over becoming a good or bad person. So no one should be lured by honor, money, power, or even poetry into neglecting justice and the other virtues.""I agree," he said, "on the basis of all we have discussed. I think anyone else would too. 608c""And yet," I said, "we haven't discussed the greatest rewards of virtue or the prizes set before it.""They must be unimaginably great," he said, "if there are greater ones than those we have discussed.""What great thing could come about in a short time?" I said. "All the time from childhood to old age is surely short compared with all time.""It is nothing at all," he said."Then do you think an immortal thing should concern itself with just that stretch 608d of time and not with all time?""I suppose not," he said. "But what do you mean?""Haven't you realized," I said, "that our soul is immortal and never dies?"He looked at me in surprise and said, "By Zeus, no. Can you really say that it is?""Yes, unless I am mistaken," I said. "And I think you can too. It isn't difficult.""It is for me," he said. "I'd be glad to hear this argument that you say isn't difficult.""Then listen," I said."Just tell me," he said."Do you speak of good and bad things?" I asked."I do. 608e""Do you think of them as I do?""What do you mean?""I call whatever destroys and corrupts something bad, and whatever preserves and benefits it good.""So do I," he said."And do you say that each thing has its own bad and good? Take inflammation of the eyes,

609a disease of the whole body, mildew in grain, rot in wood, and rust in bronze and iron. As I was saying, isn't there a natural evil and disease belonging to nearly everything?""Yes," he said."And when one of these attaches itself to something, it makes that thing defective, and in the end breaks it down completely and destroys it?""Of course.""So a thing's own natural evil and defect destroy it. If its own evil cannot destroy it, nothing else can. Good will certainly never destroy anything, 609b and neither will something that is neither good nor bad.""How could it?" he said."Then suppose we find something that has an evil which makes it defective, but that evil cannot break it down and destroy it. Wouldn't we know that a thing of this nature cannot be destroyed?""That seems likely," he said."Well," I said, "doesn't the soul have something that makes it bad?""Certainly," he said. "All the things we have just been going through: injustice, 609c lack of self-control, cowardice, and ignorance.""Does any of these break it down and destroy it? Be careful not to fool ourselves by thinking that an unjust and foolish man is destroyed by injustice, the soul's defect, when he is caught acting unjustly. Look at it this way instead. Disease is a defect of the body. It wears down and destroys the body until it is no longer a body. The other things we mentioned 609d are likewise reduced to nothing when their own particular defect takes hold of them, remains in them, and destroys them. Isn't that right?""Yes.""Now examine the soul in the same way. When injustice and the other evils are in it, do they destroy and waste it away by remaining there, until they bring it to death and separate it from the body?""Not at all," he said."Yet it would make no sense," I said, "for one thing to be destroyed by another thing's defect but not by its own.""No sense at all. 609e""Think about this, Glaucon. We don't believe that the body must be destroyed by a defect in food itself, whether the food has grown stale, gone rotten, or suffered any other defect. If the food's defect produces a defect in the body, then we will say that the body has died because of the food, but through its own defect, disease. We would never claim that the body, a different thing from food, was destroyed by the food's defect, which belongs to another thing, unless that defect produced the body's own natural evil.

610a "That's exactly right," he said."Then, by the same reasoning," I said, "unless the body's defect produces a defect in the soul, we must never claim that the soul is destroyed by an evil belonging to something else without developing its own defect. One thing cannot be destroyed by another thing's evil.""That makes sense," he said."Either we must refute this argument and show that it is wrong, or, as long as it stands, we must never say that fever, another disease, a violent killing, or even cutting the whole body into the tiniest pieces makes the soul any more likely to perish. First someone would have to show that these bodily injuries 610b make the soul itself more unjust and less holy. When an evil belonging to one thing arises in another, without the latter developing its own evil, we must allow no one to say that either a soul or anything else is destroyed. 610c""But no one will ever show," he said, "that the souls of those who die become more unjust because of death.""And if someone does dare to challenge the argument," I said, "and claims that a dying person becomes worse and more unjust just to avoid admitting that souls are immortal, we will insist that, if his claim is true, injustice must be as deadly to its possessor as a disease. People who have it must die from injustice's own killing power, the most unjust dying quickly and the less unjust more slowly. They must not die, as unjust people now do, because other people punish them for their actions. 610d""By Zeus," he said, "injustice wouldn't seem so terrible if it were deadly to the one who has it! Death would free him from his troubles. Rather, I think it will turn out to be quite the opposite. It kills other people, if it can, but makes its possessor very much alive. Besides keeping him alive, it keeps him awake. It seems to be very far from deadly. 610e""Well said," I replied. "If a soul's own defect and evil cannot kill and destroy it, an evil assigned to destroy something else will hardly destroy the soul or anything other than the thing it belongs to.""Hardly, as far as we can tell," he said."So if it is destroyed by no evil at all, neither