Republic

How so? he said; I don’t apprehend your meaning. This too, said I, is something that you will discover in dogs and which is worth our wonder in the creature. What? That the sight of an unknown person angers him before he has suffered any injury, but an acquaintance he will fawn upon though he has never received any kindness from him. Have you never marvelled at that? I never paid any attention to the matter before now, but that he acts in some such way is obvious. But surely that is an exquisite trait of his nature and one that shows a true love of wisdom.[*](φιλόσοφον: etymologically here, as ὡς ἀληθῶς indicates. Your dog now is your only philosopher, says Plato, not more seriously than Rabelais (Prologue): Mais vistes vous oncques chien rencontrant quelque os medullaire: c’est comme dit Platon, lib. ii. de Rep., la beste du monde plus philosophe. Cf. Huxley, Hume , p. 104: The dog who barks furiously at a beggar will let a well-dressed man pass him without opposition. Has he not a general idea of rags and dirt associated with the idea of aversion? Dummler and others assume that Plato is satirizing the Cynics, but who were the Cynics in 380-370 B.C.?) In what respect, pray? In respect, said I, that he distinguishes a friendly from a hostile aspect by nothing save his apprehension of the one and his failure to recognize the other. How, I ask you,[*](καίτοι πῶς: humorous oratorical appeal. Cf. 360 C καίτοι.) can the love of learning be denied to a creature whose criterion of the friendly and the alien is intelligence and ignorance? It certainly cannot, he said. But you will admit, said I, that the love of learning and the love of wisdom are the same? The same, he said. Then may we not confidently lay it down in the case of man too, that if he is to be in some sort gentle to friends and familiars he must be by nature a lover of wisdom and of learning? Let us so assume, he replied. The love of wisdom, then, and high spirit and quickness and strength will be combined for us in the nature of him who is to be a good and true guardian of the state. By all means, he said. Such, then, I said, would be the basis[*](Cf. 343 E. ὑπάρχοι marks the basis of nature as opposed to teaching.) of his character. But the rearing of these men and their education, how shall we manage that? And will the consideration of this topic advance us in any way towards discerning what is the object of our entire inquiry—the origin of justice and injustice in a state—our aim must be to omit nothing of a sufficient discussion, and yet not to draw it out to tiresome length? And Glaucon’s brother replied, Certainly, I expect that this inquiry will bring us nearer to that end. Certainly, then, my dear Adeimantus, said I, we must not abandon it even if it prove to be rather long. No, we must not. Come, then, just as if we were telling stories or fables[*](Cf. Introduction pp. xxi-xxii, and Phaedrus 276 E.) and had ample leisure,[*](Plato likes to contrast the leisure of philosophy with the hurry of business and law. Cf. Theaetetus 172 C-D.) let us educate these men in our discourse. So we must. What, then, is our education?[*](For the abrupt question cf. 360 E. Plato here prescribes for all the guardians, or military class, the normal Greek education in music and gymnastics, purged of what he considers its errors. A higher philosophic education will prepare a selected few for the office of guardians par excellence or rulers. Quite unwarranted is the supposition that the higher education was not in Plato’s mind when he described the lower. Cf. 412 A, 429 D-430 C, 497 C-D, Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 650.) Or is it hard to find a better than that which long time has discovered?[*](For this conservative argument Cf. Politicus 300 B, Laws 844 A.) Which is, I suppose, gymnastics for the body[*](Qualified in 410 C. μουσική is playing the lyre, music, poetry, letters, culture, philosophy, according to context.) and for the soul music. It is. And shall we not begin education in music earlier than in gymnastics? Of course. And under music you include tales, do you not? I do. And tales are of two species, the one true and the other false[*](A slight paradox to surprise attention.)? Yes.

And education must make use of both, but first of the false?I don’t understand your meaning.Don’t you understand, I said, that we begin by telling children fables, and the fable is, taken as a whole, false, but there is truth in it also? And we make use of fable with children before gymnastics. That is so. That, then, is what I meant by saying that we must take up music before gymnastics. You were right, he said. Do you not know, then, that the beginning in every task is the chief thing,[*](Cf. Laws 753 E, 765 E, Antiphon, fr. 134 Blass.) especially for any creature that is young and tender[*](Cf. Laws 664 B, and Shelley’s Specious names,Learned in soft childhood’s unsuspecting hour, perhaps derived from the educational philosophy of Rousseau.)? For it is then that it is best molded and takes the impression[*](The image became a commonplace. Cf. Theaetetus 191 D, Horace Epistles ii. 32. 8, the Stoic τύπωσις ἐν ψυχῇ, and Byron’s Wax to receive and marble to retain.) that one wishes to stamp upon it. Quite so. Shall we, then, thus lightly suffer[*](Cf. the censorship proposed in Laws 656 C. Plato’s criticism of the mythology is anticipated in part by Euripides, Xenophanes, Heracleitus, and Pythagoras. Cf. Decharme, Euripides and the Spirit of his Dramas, translated by James Loeb, chap. ii. Many of the Christian Fathers repeated his criticism almost verbatim.) our children to listen to any chance stories fashioned by any chance teachers and so to take into their minds opinions for the most part contrary to those that we shall think it desirable for them to hold when they are grown up? By no manner of means will we allow it. We must begin, then, it seems, by a censorship over our storymakers, and what they do well we must pass and what not, reject. And the stories on the accepted list we will induce nurses and mothers to tell to the children and so shape their souls by these stories far rather than their bodies by their hands. But most of the stories they now tell we must reject. What sort of stories? he said. The example of the greater stories, I said, will show us the lesser also. For surely the pattern must be the same and the greater and the less must have a like tendency. Don’t you think so? I do, he said; but I don’t apprehend which you mean by the greater, either. Those, I said, that Hesiod[*](Theogony 154-181.) and Homer and the other poets related. These, methinks, composed false stories which they told and still tell to mankind. Of what sort? he said; and what in them do you find fault? With that, I said, which one ought first and chiefly to blame, especially if the lie is not a pretty one. What is that? When anyone images badly in his speech the true nature of gods and heroes, like a painter whose portraits bear no resemblance to his models. It is certainly right to condemn things like that, he said; but just what do we mean and what particular things?