Republic

Surely.Take the case of any four other things. If we were looking for any one of them in anything and recognized the object of our search first, that would have been enough for us, but if we had recognized the other three first, that in itself would have made known to us the thing we were seeking. For plainly there was nothing left for it to be but the remainder.Right, he said. And so, since these are four, we must conduct the search in the same way. Clearly. And, moreover, the first thing that I think I clearly see therein is the wisdom,[*](σοφία is wisdom par excellence. Aristotle, Met. i., traces the history of the idea from Homer to its identification in Aristotle’s mind with first philosophy for metaphysics. For Plato, the moralist, it is virtue and the fear of the Lord; for his political theory it is the political or royal art which the dramatic dialogues fail to distinguish from the special sciences and arts. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 17, n. 97, Protagoras 319 A, Euthydemus 282 E, 291 C, Gorgias 501 A-B, etc. In the unreformed Greek state its counterfeit counterpart is the art of the politician. In the Republic its reality will be found in the selected guardians who are to receive the higher education, and who alone will apprehend the idea of the good, which is not mentioned here simply because Plato, not Krohn, is writing the Republic.) and there is something odd about that, it appears. What? said he. Wise in very deed I think the city that we have described is, for it is well counselled, is it not? Yes. And surely this very thing, good counsel,[*](Protagoras, like Isocrates, professed to teach εὐβουλία (Protagoras 318 E), which Socrates identifies at once with the political art. Plato would accept Protagoras’s discrimination of this for the special arts (ibid. 318 ff.), but he does not believe that such as Protagoras can teach it. His political art is a very different thing from Protagoras’s εὐβουλία and is apprehended by a very different education from that offered by Protagoras. Cf. Plato’s Laws and the Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 348, n. 5, Euthydemus 291 B-C, Charmides 170 B, Protagoras 319 A, Gorgias 501 A-B, 503 D, Politicus 289 C, 293 D, 309 C.) is a form of wisdom. For it is not by ignorance but by knowledge that men counsel well. Obviously. But there are many and manifold knowledges or sciences in the city. Of course. Is it then owing to the science of her carpenters that a city is to be called wise and well advised? By no means for that, but rather mistress of the arts of building. Then a city is not to be styled wise because of the deliberations[*](βουλευομένη: Heindorf’s βουλευομένην is perhaps supported by ᾗ . . . βουλεύεται below, but in view of Plato’s colloquial anacloluthic style is unnecessary.) of the science of wooden utensils for their best production? No, I grant you. Is it, then, because of that of brass implements or any other of that kind? None whatsoever, he said. Nor yet because of the science of the production of crops from the soil, but the name it takes from that is agricultural. I think so. Then, said I, is there any science in the city just founded by us residing in any of its citizens which does not take counsel about some particular thing in the city but about the city as a whole and the betterment of its relations with itself[*](Cf. on 416 C.) and other states? Why, there is. What is it, said I, and in whom is it found? It is the science of guardianship or government and it is to be found in those rulers to whom we just now gave the name of guardians in the full sense of the word. And what term then do you apply to the city because of this knowledge? Well advised, he said, and truly wise. Which class, then, said I, do you suppose will be the more numerous in our city, the smiths or these true guardians? The smiths, by far, he said. And would not these rulers be the smallest of all the groups of those who possess special knowledge and receive distinctive appellations[*](Cf. Protagoras 311 E τί ὄνομα ἄλλο γε λεγόμενον περὶ Πρωταγόρου ἀκούομεν; ὥσπερ περὶ Φειδίου ἀγαλματοποιὸν καὶ περὶ Ὁμήρου ποιητήν.)? By far.

Then it is by virtue of its smallest class and minutest part of itself, and the wisdom that resides therein, in the part which takes the lead and rules, that a city established on principles of nature would be wise as a whole. And as it appears these are by nature the fewest, the class to which it pertains to partake of the knowledge which alone of all forms of knowledge deserves the name of wisdom.Most true, he said. This one of our four, then, we have, I know not how, discovered, the thing itself and its place in the state. I certainly think, said he, that it has been discovered sufficiently. But again there is no difficulty in seeing bravery itself and the part of the city in which it resides for which the city is called brave.[*](τοιαύτη such, that is, brave. The courage of a state, qua such, also resides in a small class, the warriors.) How so? Who, said I, in calling a city cowardly or brave would fix his eyes on any other part of it than that which defends it and wages war in its behalf? No one at all, he said. For the reason, I take it, said I, that the cowardice or the bravery[*](ἀνδρεῖοι ὄντες: the ab urbe condita construction. Cf. 421 A.) of the other inhabitants does not determine for it the one quality or the other.[*](τοίαν . . . ἢ τοίαν: cf. 437 E, Phaedrus 271 D, Laws 721 B.) It does not. Bravery too, then, belongs to a city by virtue of a part of itself owing to its possession in that part of a quality that under all conditions will preserve the conviction that things to be feared are precisely those which and such as the lawgiver[*](Cf. 442 C, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1129 b 19 προστάττει δ’ ὁ νόμος καὶ τὰ τοῦ ἀνδρείου ἔργα ποιεῖν.) inculcated in their education. Is not that what you call bravery? I don’t altogether understand[*](Cf. on 347 A.) what you said, he replied; but say it again. A kind of conservation, I said, is what I mean by bravery. What sort of a conservation[*](σωτηρίαν is the genus; Philebus 34 A, Def. Plat. 412 A-B. Hence ποίαν as often in the minor dialogues sometimes with a play on its idiomatic, contemptuous meaning. Cf. Laches 194 D.)? The conservation of the conviction which the law has created by education about fearful things—what and what sort of things are to be feared. And by the phrase under all conditions[*](In the Laches 191 D-E, and the Laws 633 D also, Plato generalizes courage to include resistance to the lure of pleasure.) I mean that the brave man preserves it both in pain and pleasures and in desires and fears and does not expel[*](Cf. 412 E.) it from his soul. And I may illustrate it by a similitude[*](The moral training of the guardians is likened to the dyeing of selected white wools with fast colors. Cf. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1105 a 2, Marc. Aurel. iii. 4. 3 δικαιοσύνῃ βεβαμμένον εἰς βάθος, Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, i. 9 Be what thou virtuously art, and let not the ocean wash away thy tincture. The idea that the underlying subsatnce must be of neutral quality may have been suggested to Plato by Anaxagoras. It occurs in the Timaeus 50 D-E, whence it passed to Aristotle’s psychology and Lucretius. Cf. my paper on Plato, Epicurus, and Lucretius, Harvard Studies, vol. xii. p. 204.) if you please. I do. You are aware that dyers when they wish to dye wool so as to hold the purple hue begin by selecting from the many colors there be the one nature of the white and then give it a careful preparatory treatment so that it will take the hue in the best way, and after the treatment,[*](For the technique cf. Blummer, Technologie, vol. i. pp. 227 ff. The θεράπευσις seems to be virtually identical with the προπαρασκευή, so that the aorist seems appropriate, unless with Adam’s earlier edition we transpose it immediately before οὕτω δή.) then and then only, dip it in the dye. And things that are dyed by this process become fast-colored[*](For δευσοποιός cf. L. and S., and Nauck, Ἀδέσποτα 441 τοῖς δευσοποιοῖς φαρμάκοις ξανθίζεται.) and washing either with or without lyes cannot take away the sheen of their hues. But otherwise you know what happens to them, whether[*](The two points of precaution are (1) to select white wool, not ἄλλα χρώματα, (2) to prepare by treatment even this.) anyone dips other colors or even these without the preparatory treatment. I know, he said, that they present a ridiculous and washed-out appearance.

By this analogy, then, said I, you must conceive what we too to the best of our ability were doing when we selected our soldiers and educated them in music[*](Cf. 522 A, Philebus 17 B.) and exercises of the body. The sole aim of our contrivance was that they should be convinced and receive our laws like a dye as it were, so that their belief and faith might be[*](γίγνοιτο is process; ἐκπλύναι (aorist) is a single event (μή).) fast-colored both about the things that are to be feared and all other things because of the fitness of their nature and nurture, and that so their dyes might not be washed out by those lyes that have such dread[*](δεινά: it is not fanciful to feel the unity of Plato’s imagination as well as of his thought in the recurrence of this word in the δεινὰ καὶ ἀναγκαῖα of the mortal soul in Timaeus 69 C.) power to scour our faiths away, pleasure more potent than any detergent or abstergent to accomplish this, and pain and fear and desire more sure than any lye. This power in the soul, then, this unfailing conservation of right and lawful belief[*](Cf. Protagoras 360 C-D, Laws 632 C, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1116 b 24. Strictly speaking, Plato would recognize four grades, (1) philosophic bravery, (2) the bravery of the ἐπίκουροι here defined, (3) casual civic bravery in ordinary states, (4) animal instinct, which hardly deserves the name. Cf. Laches 196 E, Mill, Nature, p. 47 Consistent courage is always the effect of cultivation, etc., Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 46 and 77.) about things to be and not to be feared is what I call and would assume to be courage, unless you have something different to say. No, nothing, said he; for I presume that you consider mere right opinion about the same matters not produced by education, that which may manifest itself in a beast or a slave,[*](Phaedo 69 B.) to have little or nothing to do with law[*](νόμιμον of the Mss. yields quite as good a meaning as Stobaeus’s μόνιμον. The virtuous habit that is inculcated by law is more abiding than accidental virtue.) and that you would call it by another name than courage. That is most true, said I. Well then, he said, I accept this as bravery. Do so, said I, and you will be right with the reservation[*](γε marks a reservation as 415 E στρατιωτικάς γε, Politicus 30 E, Laws 710 A τὴν δημώδη γε. Plotinus, unlike some modern commentators, perceived this. Cf. Enn. i. 2. 3. In Phaedo 82 A πολιτικήν is used disparagingly of ordinary bourgeois virtue. In Xenophon Rep. Lac. 10. 7 and Aristotle Eth. Nic. iii. 8. 1 (1116 a 17) there is no disparagement. The word is often used of citizen soldiery as opposed to professional mercenaries.) that it is the courage of a citizen. Some other time,[*](This dismissal of the subject is sometimes fancifully taken as a promise of the Laches. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 77 and 603.) if it please you, we will discuss it more fully. At present we were not seeking this but justice; and for the purpose of that inquiry I believe we have done enough. You are quite right, he said. Two things still remain, said I, to make out in our city, soberness[*](Matthew Arnold’s word. But cf. on 398 D and 430 E — sobriety, temperance, Besonnenheit.) and the object of the whole inquiry, justice. Quite so. If there were only some way to discover justice so that we need not further concern ourselves about soberness. Well, I, for my part, he said, neither know of any such way nor would I wish justice to be discovered first if that means that we are not to go on to the consideration of soberness. But if you desire to please me, consider this before that. It would certainly be very wrong[*](εἰ μὴ ἀδικῶ is idiomatic, I ought to. Cf. 608 D, 612, Menexenus 236 B.) of me not to desire it, said I. Go on with the inquiry then, he said. I must go on, I replied, and viewed from here it bears more likeness to a kind of concord and harmony than the other virtues did. How so? Soberness is a kind of beautiful order[*](Cf. Gorgias 506 E ff. σωφροσύνη and σωφρονεῖν sometimes mean etymologically of sound mind or level head, with or without ethical suggestion, according to the standpoint of the spaeker. Cf. Protagoras 333 B-C. Its two chief meanings in Greek usage are given in 389 D-E: subordination to due authority, and control of appetite, both raised to higher significance in Plato’s definition. As in the case of bravery, Plato distinguishes the temperamental, the bourgeois, the disciplined, and the philosophical virtue. But he affects to feel something paradoxical in the very idea of self-control, as perhaps there is. Cf. Laws 626 E ff., 863 D, A.J.P. vol. xiii. pp. 361 f., Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 77 and 78.) and a continence of certain pleasures and appetites, as they say, using the phrase master of himself I know not how; and there are other similar expressions that as it were point us to the same trail. Is that not so? Most certainly.