Republic

And shall we not believe Hesiod[*](Cf. Stewart, Myths of Plato, p. 437.) who tells us that when anyone of this race dies, so it is that they become

1. Hallowed spirits dwelling on earth, averters of evil,
2. Guardians watchful and good of articulate-speaking mortals?

And again, we will not take weapons to the temples for dedicatory[*](For the practice cf. Aeschylus Septem 275-279 and Agamemnon 577-579. Italian cities and American states have restored to one another the flags so dedicated from old wars. Cf. Cicero De inventione ii. 70 at tamen aeternum inimicitiarum monumentum Graios de Graiis statuere non oportet.) offerings, especially the weapons of Greeks, if we are at all concerned to preserve friendly relations with the other Greeks. Rather we shall fear that there is pollution in bringing such offerings to the temples from our kind unless in a case where the god bids otherwise[*](For similar caution cf. on 427 B-C.).Most rightly, he said. And in the matter of devastating the land of Greeks and burning their houses, how will your soldiers deal with their enemies. I would gladly hear your opinion of that. In my view, said I, they ought to do neither, but confine themselves to taking away the annual harvest. Shall I tell you why? Do. In my opinion, just as we have the two terms, war and faction, so there are also two things, distinguished by two differentiae.[*](I have so translated in order to imply that the Plato of the Republic is already acquainted with the terminology of the Sophist. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, notes 375 and 377, followed by Wilamowitz, Platon, i. p. 504. But most editors take διαφορά here as dissension, and construe applied to the disagreements of two things, which may be right. Cf. Sophist 228 A στάσιν . . . τὴν τοῦ φύσει συγγενοῦς ἔκ τινος διαφθορᾶς διαφοράν.) The two things I mean are the friendly and kindred on the one hand and the alien and foreign on the other. Now the term employed for the hostility of the friendly is faction, and for that of the alien is war. What you say is in nothing beside the mark, he replied. Consider, then, if this goes to the mark. I affirm that the Hellenic race is friendly to itself and akin, and foreign and alien to the barbarian. Rightly, he said. We shall then say that Greeks fight and wage war with barbarians, and barbarians with Greeks, and are enemies by nature,[*](Plato shared the natural feeling of Isocrates, Demosthenes, and all patriotic Greeks. Cf. Isocrates Panegyricus 157, 184, Panath. 163; Menexenus 237 ff., Laws 692 C and 693 A. It is uncritical then with Newman (op. cit. p. 430) and many others to take as a recantation of this passage the purely logical observation in Politicus 262 D that Greek and barbarinan is an unscientific dichotomy of mankind. Cf. on the whole question the dissertation of Friedrich Weber, Platons Stellung zu den Barbaren.) and that war is the fit name for this enmity and hatred. Greeks, however, we shall say, are still by nature the friends of Greeks when they act in this way, but that Greece is sick in that case and divided by faction, and faction is the name we must give to that enmity. I will allow you that habit of speech, he said. Then observe, said I, that when anything of this sort occurs in faction, as the word is now used, and a state is divided against itself, if either party devastates the land and burns the houses of the other such factional strife is thought to be an accursed thing and neither party to be true patriots. Otherwise, they would never have endured thus to outrage their nurse and mother.[*](Cf. 414 E, Menexenus 237 E, Timaeus 40 B, Laws 740 A, Aeschylus Septem 16.) But the moderate and reasonable thing is thought to be that the victors shall take away the crops of the vanquished, but that their temper shall be that of men who expect to be reconciled and not always to wage war. That way of feeling, he said, is far less savage than the other. Well, then, said I, is not the city that you are founding to be a Greek city? It must be, he said. Will they then not be good and gentle? Indeed they will. And won’t they be philhellenes,[*](Cf. Epistles 354 A, Herodotus ii. 178, Isocrates Phil. 122, Panegyricus 96, Evagoras 40, Panath. 241. The word is still significant for international politics, and must be retained in the translation.) lovers of Greeks, and will they not regard all Greece as their own and not renounce their part in the holy places common to all Greeks ? Most certainly.

Will they not then regard any difference with Greeks who are their own people as a form of faction and refuse even to speak of it as war?Most certainly.And they will conduct their quarrels always looking forward to a reconciliation?By all means.They will correct them, then, for their own good, not chastising them with a view to their enslavement[*](Cf. Newman, op. cit. p. 143.) or their destruction, but acting as correctors, not as enemies.They will, he said. They will not, being Greeks, ravage Greek territory nor burn habitations, and they will not admit that in any city all the population are their enemies, men, women and children, but will say that only a few at any time are their foes,[*](The same language was frequently used in the recent World War, but the practice was sometimes less civilized than that which Plato recommends. Hobhouse (Mind in Evolution, p. 384), writing earlier, said, Plato’s conclusions (Republic 469-471) show how narrow was the conception of humanitarian duties in the fourth century. It is, I think, only modern fancy that sees irony in the conclusion: treating barbarians as Greeks now treat Greeks.) those, namely, who are to blame for the quarrel. And on all these considerations they will not be willing to lay waste the soil, since the majority are their friends, nor to destroy the houses, but will carry the conflict only to the point of compelling the guilty to do justice by the pressure of the suffering of the innocent. I, he said, agree that our citizens ought to deal with their Greek opponents on this wise, while treating barbarians as Greeks now treat Greeks. Shall we lay down this law also, then, for our guardians that they are not to lay waste the land or burn the houses? Let us so decree, he said, and assume that this and our preceding prescriptions are right. But[*](It is a mistaken ingenuity that finds a juncture between two distinct versions here.) I fear, Socrates,that if you are allowed to go on in this fashion, you will never get to speak of the matter you put aside in order to say all this, namely, the possibility of such a polity coming into existence, and the way in which it could be brought to pass. I too am ready to admit that if it could be realized everything would be lovely[*](πάντ’ . . . ἀγαθά: idiomatically colloquial. Cf. Politicus 284 B, Laws 711 D, 757 D, 780 D, Aristophanes Acharnians 978, 982, Frogs 302.) for the state that had it, and I will add what you passed by, that they would also be most successful in war because they would be least likely to desert one another, knowing and addressing each other by the names of brothers, fathers, sons. And if the females should also join in their campaigns, whether in the ranks or marshalled behind to intimidate the enemy,[*](Cf. Laws 806 B.) or as reserves in case of need, I recognize that all this too would make them irresistible. And at home, also, I observe all the benefits that you omit to mention. But, taking it for granted that I concede these and countless other advantages, consequent on the realization of this polity, don’t labor that point further; but let us at once proceed to try to convince ourselves of just this, that it is possible and how it is possible, dismissing everything else.

This is a sudden assault,[*](ὥσπερ marks the figurative use as τινα in Aeschines, Tim. 135 τινα καταδρομήν.) indeed, said I, that you have made on my theory, without any regard for my natural hesitation. Perhaps you don’t realize that when I have hardly escaped the first two waves, you are now rolling up against me the great third wave[*](Cf. Introduction p. xvii. The third wave, sometimes the ninth, was proverbially the greatest. Cf. Euthydemus 293 A, Lucan v. 672 decimus dictu mirabile fluctus, and Swineburne: Who swims in sight of the third waveThat never a swimmer shall cross or climb.) of paradox, the worst of all. When you have seen and heard that, you will be very ready to be lenient,[*](συγγνώμην: L. and S. wrongly with ὅτι, to acknowledge that . . .) recognizing that I had good reason after all for shrinking and fearing to enter upon the discussion of so paradoxical a notion. The more such excuses you offer, he said, the less you will be released by us from telling in what way the realization of this polity is possible. Speak on, then, and do not put us off. The first thing to recall, then, I said, is that it was the inquiry into the nature of justice and injustice that brought us to this pass.[*](Cf. Introduction p. xii. and note d. Plato seems to overlook the fact that the search was virtually completed in the fourth book.) Yes; but what of it? he said. Oh, nothing,[*](οὐδέν: idiomatic, like the English of the translation. Cf. Charmides 164 A, Gorgias 498 A, 515 E. The emphatic statement that follows of the value of ideals as ideals is Plato’s warning hint that he does not expect the literal realization of his Utopia, though it would be disillusionizing to say so too explicitly. Cf. introduction p. xxxi-xxxii, and my paper on Plato’s Laws, Class. Phil. ix. (1914) pp. 351 and 353. This is one of the chief ideas that Cicero derived from Plato. He applies it to his picture of the ideal orator, and the mistaken ingenuity of modern scholarship has deduced from this and attributed to the maleficent influence of Plato the post-Renaissancee and eighteenth-century doctrine of fixed literary kinds. Cf. my note in the New York Nation, vol. ciii. p. 238, Sept. 7, 1916.) I replied, only this: if we do discover what justice is, are we to demand that the just man shall differ from it in no respect, but shall conform in every way to the ideal? Or will it suffice us if he approximate to it as nearly as possible and partake of it more than others? That will content us, he said. A pattern, then, said I, was what we wanted when we were inquiring into the nature of ideal justice and asking what would be the character of the perfectly just man, supposing him to exist, and, likewise, in regard to injustice and the completely unjust man. We wished to fix our eyes upon them as types and models, so that whatever we discerned in them of happiness or the reverse would necessarily apply to ourselves in the sense that whosoever is likest them will have the allotment most like to theirs. Our purpose was not to demonstrate the possibility of the realization of these ideals. In that, he said, you speak truly. Do you think, then, that he would be any the less a good painter,[*](An ideal in the plastic arts is used to illustrate the thought. Cf. Aristotle Poetics 1461 b 14, Politics 1281 b 10, Cicero, Orator ii. 3, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 10, Finsler, Platon u. d. aristotelische Poetik, p. 56. Polyb. vi. 47. 7 gives a different turn to the comaprison of the Republic to a statue. Plato is speaking from the point of view of ordinary opinion, and it is uncritical to find here and in 501 an admission that the artist copies the idea, which is denied in Book X. 597 E ff. Apelt, Platonische Aufsätze, p. 67.) who, after portraying a pattern of the ideally beautiful man and omitting no touch required for the perfection of the picture, should not be able to prove that it is actually possible for such a man to exist? Not I, by Zeus, he said. Then were not we, as we say, trying to create in words the pattern of a good state? Certainly. Do you think, then, that our words are any the less well spoken if we find ourselves unable to prove that it is possible for a state to be governed in accordance with our words? Of course not, he said. That, then, said I, is the truth[*](Cf. 372 E.) of the matter. But if, to please you, we must do our best to show how most probably and in what respect these things would be most nearly realized, again, with a view to such a demonstration, grant me the same point.[*](The point is so important that Plato repeats it more specifically.) What?

Is it possible for anything to be realized in deed as it is spoken in word, or is it the nature of things that action should partake of exact truth less than speech, even if some deny it[*](Plato is contradicting the Greek commonplace which contrasts the word with the deed. Cf. Apology 32 A, Sophist 234 E, Euripides frag. Alcmene λόγος γὰρ τοὔργον οὐ νικᾷ ποτε, and perhaps Democritus’s λόγος ἔργου σκιή. Cf. A.J.P. xiii. p. 64. The word is the expression of the thought. It is more plastic (588 D, Laws 736 B) and, as Goethe says, von einem Wort lässt sich kein Iota rauben.)? Do you admit it or not?I do, he said. Then don’t insist, said I, that I must exhibit as realized in action precisely what we expounded in words. But if we can discover how a state might be constituted most nearly answering to our description, you must say that we have discovered that possibility of realization which you demanded. Will you not be content if you get this? I for my part would. And I too, he said. Next, it seems, we must try to discover and point out what it is that is now badly managed in our cities, and that prevents them from being so governed, and what is the smallest change that would bring a state to this manner of government, preferably a change in one thing, if not, then in two, and, failing that, the fewest possible in number and the slightest in potency. By all means, he said. There is one change, then, said I, which I think that we can show would bring about the desired transformation. It is not a slight or an easy thing but it is possible. What is that? said he. I am on the very verge, said I, of what we likened to the greatest wave of paradox. But say it[*](εἰρήσεται: so used by the orators to introduce a bold statement. Cf. Aeschines ii. 22, Demosthenes xix. 224, xi. 17, xiv. 24, xxi. 198, etc.) I will, even if, to keep the figure, it is likely to wash[*](More literally deluge or overwhelm with ridicule.) us away on billows of laughter and scorn. Listen. I am all attention, he said. Unless, said I, either philosophers become kings[*](This is perhaps the most famous sentence in Plato. Cf. for the idea 499 B, 540 D, Laws 711 D, 712 A, 713 E ff. It is paraphrased by the author of the seventh Epistle (324 B, 326 A-B, 328 A-B) who perhaps quotes Plato too frequently to be Plato himself. Epistle ii. 310 E, though sometimes quoted in this connection, is not quite the same thought. It is implied in the Phaedrus 252 E φιλόσοφος καὶ ἡγεμονικός, and Politicus 293 C, and only seems to be contradicted in Euthydemus 306 B. Aristotle is said to have contradicted it in a lost work (fr. 79, 1489 b 8 ff.). It is paraphrased or parodied by a score of writers from Polybius xii. 28 to Bacon, Hobbes, More, Erasmus, and Bernard Shaw. Boethius transmitted it to the Middle Ages (Cons. Phil. i. 4. 11). It was always on the lips of Marcus Aurelius. Cf. Capitol, Aurelius i. 1 and iv. 27. It was a standardized topic of compliment to princes in Themistius, Julian, the Panegyrici Latini, and many modern imitators. Among the rulers who have been thus compared with Plato’s philosophic king are Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, Arcadius, James I., Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. There is a partial history of the commonplace in T. Sinko’s Program, Sententiae Platonicae de philophis regnantibus fata quae fuerint, Krakow, 1904, in the supplementary article of Karl Praechter, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, xiv. (1905) pp. 4579-491, and in the dissertation of Emil Wolff, Francis Bacons Verhaltnis zu Platon, Berlin, 1908, pp. 60 ff.) in our states or those whom we now call our kings and rulers take to the pursuit of philosophy seriously and adequately, and there is a conjunction of these two things, political power and philosophic intelligence, while the motley horde of the natures who at present pursue either apart from the other are compulsorily excluded, there can be no cessation of troubles, dear Glaucon, for our states, nor, I fancy, for the human race either. Nor, until this happens, will this constitution which we have been expounding in theory ever be put into practice within the limits of possibility and see the light of the sun. But this is the thing that has made me so long shrink from speaking out, because I saw that it would be a very paradoxical saying. For it is not easy[*](Plato’s condescension to the ordinary mind that cannot be expected to understand often finds expression in this form. Cf. 366 C, 489 C, Theaetetus 176 C, and Republic 495 E ἀνάγκη.) to see that there is no other way of happiness either for private or public life.

Whereupon he, Socrates, said he, after hurling at us such an utterance and statement as that, you must expect to be attacked by a great multitude of our men of light and leading,[*](Lit. many and not slight men.) who forthwith will, so to speak, cast off their garments[*](Cf. Hipponax, fr. 74 (58), Theophrast. Char. 27, Aristophanes Wasps 408.) and strip and, snatching the first weapon that comes to hand, rush at you with might and main, prepared to do[*](Cf. Apology 35 A, Theaetetus 151 A.) dreadful deeds. And if you don’t find words to defend yourself against them, and escape their assault, then to be scorned and flouted will in very truth[*](τῷ ὄντι verifies the strong word τωθαζόμενος.) be the penalty you will have to pay. And isn’t it you, said I, that have brought this upon me and are to blame? And a good thing, too, said he; but I won’t let you down, and will defend you with what I can. I can do so with my good will and my encouragement, and perhaps I might answer your questions more suitably[*](Cf. Theaetetus 162 A 7. The dialectician prefers a docile respondent. Cf. Sophist 217 C, Parmenides 137 B.) than another. So, with such an aid to back you, try to make it plain to the doubters that the truth is as you say. I must try, I replied, since you proffer so strong an alliance. I think it requisite, then, if we are to escape the assailants you speak of, that we should define for them whom we mean by the philosophers, who we dare to say ought to be our rulers. When these are clearly discriminated it will be possible to defend ourselves by showing that to them by their very nature belong the study of philosophy and political leadership, while it befits the other sort to let philosophy alone and to follow their leader. It is high time, he said, to produce your definition. Come, then, follow me on this line, if we may in some fashion or other explain our meaning. Proceed, he said. Must I remind you, then, said I, or do you remember, that when we affirm that a man is a lover of something, it must be apparent that he is fond of all of it? It will not do to say that some of it he likes and some[*](τὸ δὲ μή: for the idiom Cf. Philebus 22 A, Laws 797 E, 923 C, Demodocus’s epigram on the Chians, Aeschylus Persae 802, Sophocles O. C. 1671.) does not. I think you will have to remind me, he said, for I don’t apprehend at all. That reply, Glaucon, said I, befitted another rather than you. It does not become a lover to forget that all adolescents in some sort sting and stir the amorous lover of youth and appear to him deserving of his attention and desirable. Is not that your reaction to the fair? One, because his nose is tip-tilted,[*](Another of the famous sentences that would be worth a monograph. Cf. Lucretius iv. 1160, Molière, Misanthrope, ii. 5, Horace, Satire i. 338. F. Brunetière, Les Epoques du théâtre francÿais, p. 76, thinks that Molière took it from Scarron, not from Lucretius. Shakespeare Much Ado, III. i. reverses the conceit, Santayana, Reason in Society, p. 25, writes prettily about it.) you will praise as piquant, the beak of another you pronounce right-royal, the intermediate type you say strikes the harmonious mean, the swarthy are of manly aspect, the white are children of the gods divinely fair, and as for honey-hued, do you suppose the very word is anything but the euphemistic invention of some lover who can feel no distaste for sallowness when it accompanies the blooming time of youth?

And, in short, there is no pretext you do not allege and there is nothing you shrink from saying to justify you in not rejecting any who are in the bloom of their prime.If it is your pleasure, he said, to take me as your example of this trait in lovers, I admit it for the sake of the argument. Again, said I, do you not observe the same thing in the lovers of wine?[*](Cf. Aristotle Eth. i. 8. 10 ἑκάστῳ δ’ ἐστὶν ἡδὺ πρὸς ὃ λέγεται φιλοτοιοῦτος. Cf. the old Latin hexameters—si bene quid memini causae suant quinque bibendi:Hospitis adventus, praesens sitis atque futura,Aut vini bonitas, aut quaelibet altera causa.) They welcome every wine on any pretext. They do, indeed. And so I take it you have observed that men who are covetous of honor,[*](Cf. Theophrastus, Char. 21 (Loeb) μικροφιλοτιμίας, petty pride.) if they can’t get themselves elected generals, are captains of a company.[*](τριττυαρχοῦσι, command the soldiers of a trittys or third of one of the ten tribes.) And if they can’t be honored by great men and dignitaries, are satisfied with honor from little men and nobodies. But honor they desire and must have. Yes, indeed. Admit, then, or reject my proposition. When we say a man is keen about something, shall we say that he has an appetite for the whole class or that he desires only a part and a part not? The whole, he said. Then the lover of wisdom, too, we shall affirm, desires all wisdom, not a part and a part not. Certainly. The student, then, who is finical[*](δυσχεραίνοντα, squeamish, particular, choicy. Cf. 391 E, 426 D, and Pope, Essay on Criticism, 288—Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.) about his studies, especially when he is young and cannot yet know by reason what is useful and what is not, we shall say is not a lover of learning or a lover of wisdom, just as we say that one who is dainty about his food is not really hungry, has not an appetite for food, and is not a lover of food, but a poor feeder. We shall rightly say so. But the one who feels no distaste in sampling every study, and who attacks his task of learning gladly and cannot get enough of it, him we shall justly pronounce the lover of wisdom, the philosopher, shall we not? To which Glaucon replied,[*](Plato as usual anticipates objections and misunderstandings. Cf. e.g. on 487 B.) You will then be giving the name to a numerous and strange band, for all the lovers of spectacles[*](Cf. the argument in the first sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics that men’s pleasure in sense-perception is a form of their love of knowledge.) are what they are, I fancy, by virtue of their delight in learning something. And those who always want to hear some new thing[*](φιλήκοοι: the word, like curiosity in Ruskin’s interpretation, may have a higher and lower meaning. It is used half technically of intellectual interests generally. Cf. Euthydemus 304 B.The abstract φιληκοΐα became a virtual synonym of culture and reading.) are a very queer lot to be reckoned among philosophers. You couldn’t induce them to attend a serious debate or any such entertainment,[*](Cf. on 498 A, and in Parmenides 126 E, Antiphon, who studied Eleatic dialectic in his youth, but now gives his time to horses. The word διατριβή has a long history in philosophy and literature, starting from such passages as Charmides 153 A and Lysis 204 A.) but as if they had farmed out their ears to listen to every chorus in the land, they run about to all the Dionysiac festivals,[*](In addition to the presentation of new plays at the city Dionysia, there were performances at the Peiraeus and in the demes.) never missing one, either in the towns or in the country-villages. Are we to designate all these, then, and similar folk and all the practitioners of the minor arts as philosophers? Not at all, I said; but they do bear a certain likeness[*](Cf. Theaetetus 201 B 3, Sophist 240 B οὐδαμῶς ἀληθινόν γε, ἀλλ’ ἐοικὸς μέν.) to philosophers. Whom do you mean, then, by the true philosophers? Those for whom the truth is the spectacle of which they are enamored,[*](Cf. Aristotle Eth. 1098 a 32 θεατὴς γὰρ τἀληθοῦς.) said I. Right again,[*](Cf. 449 C.) said he; but in what sense do you mean it? It would be by no means easy to explain it to another, I said, but I think that you will grant me this. What? That since the fair and honorable is the opposite of the base and ugly, they are two.

Of course.And since they are two, each is one.[*](Plato is merely restating the theory of Ideas to prepare for his practical distinction between minds that can and minds that cannot apprehend abstractions. He does not here enter into the metaphysics of the subject. But he does distinctly show that he is already aware of the difficulties raised in the Parmenides, 131 B ff., and of the misapprehension disposed of in the Sophist 252 ff. that the metaphysical isolation of the Ideas precludes their combination and intermingling in human thought and speech. For the many attempts to evade ἀλλήλων κοινωνία Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 244, and add now Wilamowitz, Platon, i. p. 567, who, completely missing the point, refers to 505 A, which is also misunderstood. He adds mit den Problemen des Sophistes hat das gar nichts zu tun; sie waren ihm noch nicht aufgestossen, which begs the question.)That also.And in respect of the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and all the ideas or forms, the same statement holds, that in itself each is one, but that by virtue of their communion with actions and bodies and with one another they present themselves everywhere, each as a multiplicity of aspects.Right, he said. This, then, said I, is my division. I set apart and distinguish those of whom you were just speaking, the lovers of spectacles and the arts, and men of action, and separate from them again those with whom our argument is concerned and who alone deserve the appellation of philosophers or lovers of wisdom. What do you mean? he said. The lovers of sounds and sights, I said, delight in beautiful tones and colors and shapes and in everything that art fashions out of these, but their thought is incapable of apprehending and taking delight in the nature of the beautiful in itself. Why, yes, he said, that is so. And on the other hand, will not those be few[*](Le petit nombre des élus is a common topic in Plato. Cf. on 494 A.) who would be able to approach beauty itself and contemplate it in and by itself? They would, indeed. He, then, who believes in beautiful things, but neither believes in beauty itself nor is able to follow when someone tries to guide him to the knowledge of it—do you think that his life is a dream or a waking[*](The dream state is a very different thing for Plato from what it is for some modern sentimental Platonists. Cf. 520 C-D, Phaedrus 277 D, Timaeus 52 B, and 71 E, if rightly interpreted.)? Just consider. Is not the dream state, whether the man is asleep or awake, just this: the mistaking of resemblance for identity? I should certainly call that dreaming, he said. Well, then, take the opposite case: the man whose thought recognizes a beauty in itself, and is able to distinguish that self-beautiful and the things that participate in it, and neither supposes the participants to be it nor it the participants—is his life, in your opinion, a waking or a dream state? He is very much awake, he replied. Could we not rightly, then, call the mental state of the one as knowing, knowledge, and that of the other as opining, opinion? Assuredly. Suppose, now, he who we say opines but does not know should be angry and challenge our statement as not true. Can we find any way of soothing him and gently[*](ἠρέμα: Cf. Symposium 221 B. Plato’s humorous use of this word is the source of Emerson’s humorous use of gently.) winning him over, without telling him too plainly that he is not in his right mind? We must try, he said. Come, then, consider what we are to say to him, or would you have us question him in this fashion—premising that if he knows anything, nobody grudges it him, but we should be very glad to see him knowing something—but tell[*](For the humor of the sudden shift to the second person cf. Juvenal, Satire i. profer, Galla, caput.) us this: Does he who knows know something or nothing? Do you reply in his behalf. I will reply, he said, that he knows something. Is it something that is or is not[*](To understand what follows it is necessary (1) to assume that Plato is not talking nonsense; (2) to make allowance for the necessity that he is under of combating contemporary fallacies and sophisms which may seem trivial to us (Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, pp. 50 ff.); (3) to remember the greater richness of the Greek language in forms of the verb to be; and the misunderstandings introduced by the indiscriminate use of the abstract verbal noun being in English—a difficulty which I have tried to meet by varying the terms of the translation; (4) to recognize that apart from metaphysics Plato’s main purpose is to insist on the ability to think abstractly as a prerequisite of the higher education; (5) to observe the qualifications and turns of phrase which indicate that Plato himself was not confused by the double meaning of is not, but was already aware of the distinctions explicitly explained in the Sophist. (Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, pp. 53 ff. nn. 389 ff.))?

That is. How could that which is not be known?We are sufficiently assured of this, then, even if we should examine it from every point of view, that that which entirely[*](παντελῶς: cf. μηδαμῇ and 478 D πάντως. Not foreseeing modern philology Plato did not think it necessary to repeat these qualifying adverbs in 478 B ἢ ἀδύνατον καὶ δοξάσαι τὸ μὴ ὄν, which is still sometimes quoted to prove that Plato was yet naively unaware of the distinction between is-not-at-all (does not exist) and is-not-this-or-that.)is is entirely knowable, and that which in no way is is in every way unknowable.Most sufficiently.Good. If a thing, then, is so conditioned as both to be and not to be, would it not lie between that which absolutely and unqualifiedly is and that which in no way is?Between.Then if knowledge pertains to that which is and ignorance of necessity to that which is not, for that which lies between we must seek for something between nescience and science, if such a thing there be.By all means.Is there a thing which we call opinion?Surely.Is it a different faculty from science or the same?A different.Then opinion is set over one thing and science over another, each by virtue of its own distinctive power or faculty.That is so.May we say, then, that science is naturally related to that which is,[*](Apart from the metaphysical question of the relativity of all knowledge, the word ἐπιστήμη in Greek usage connotes certainty, and so Plato and Aristotle always take it. But more specifically that which (always) is, for Plato, is the idea which is not subject to change and therefore always is what it is, while a particular material thing subject to change and relativity both is and is not any and every predicate that can be applied to it. And since knowledge in the highest sense is for Plato knowledge of abstract and general ideas, both in his and in our sense of the word idea, knowledge is said to be of that which is. It is uncritical to ignore Plato’s terminology and purpose and to talk condescendingly of his confusing subjective with objective certainty in what follows.) to know that and how that which is is? But rather, before we proceed, I think we must draw the following distinctions.What ones?Shall we say that faculties,[*](The history of the word δύναμις has been studied in recent monographs and its various meanings, from potentiality to active power, discriminated. Cf. J. Souilhé, Etude sur le terme δύναμις dans les Dialogues de Platon, Paris, 1919, pp. 96, 163 ff. But Plato makes his simple meaning here quite plain, and it would be irrelevant to bring in modern denunciations of the old faculty psychology.) powers, abilities are a class of entities by virtue of which we and all other things are able to do what we or they are able to do? I mean that sight and hearing, for example, are faculties, if so be that you understand the class or type that I am trying to describe.I understand, he said. Hear, then, my notion about them. In a faculty I cannot see any color or shape or similar mark such as those on which in many other cases I fix my eyes in discriminating in my thought one thing from another. But in the case of a faculty I look to one thing only—that to which it is related and what it effects,[*](Cf. my note on Simplic. De An. 146. 21, Class. Phil . xvii. p. 143.) and it is in this way that I come to call[*](Cf. Ion 537 D οὕτω καλῶ τὴν μὲν ἄλλην, τὴν δὲ ἄλλην τέχνην.) each one of them a faculty, and that which is related to[*](ἐπί: Cf. Parmenides 147 D-E ἕκαστον τῶν ὀνομάτων οὐκ ἐπί τινι καλεῖς;) the same thing and accomplishes the same thing I call the same faculty, and that to another I call other. How about you, what is your practice? The same, he said. To return, then, my friend, said I, to science or true knowledge, do you say that it is a faculty and a power, or in what class do you put it? Into this, he said, the most potent of all[*](Cf. Protagoras 352 B, Aristotle Eth. 1145 b 24.) faculties. And opinion—shall we assign it to some other class than faculty. By no means, he said, for that by which we are able to opine is nothing else than the faculty of opinion.[*](For the various meanings of δόξα Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 47 the word δόξα may be used in this neutral, psychological sense; it may be taken unfavorably to denote mere opinion as opposed to knowledge, or favorably when true opinions and beliefs are set in antithesis to the appetites and instincts.) But not long ago you agreed that science and opinion are not identical. How could any rational man affirm the identity of the infallible with the fallible?

Excellent, said I, and we are plainly agreed that opinion is a different[*](Plato reaffirms this strongly Timaeus 51 E, where, however, νοῦς is used, not ἐπιστήμη. Of course where distinctions are irrelevant Plato may use many of the terms that denote mental processes as virtual synonyms. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought pp. 47-49.) thing from scientific knowledge. Yes, different. Each of them, then, since it has a different power, is related to a different object. Of necessity. Science, I presume, to that which is, to know the condition of that which is. But opinion, we say, opines. Yes. Does it opine the same thing that science knows, and will the knowable and the opinable be identical, or is that impossible? Impossible by our admissions,[*](Cf. Symposium 200 B, 201 D.) he said. If different faculties are naturally related to different objects and both opinion and science are faculties, but each different from the other, as we say—these admissions do not leave place for the identity of the knowable and the opinable. Then, if that which is is knowable, something other than that which is would be the opinable.[*](Cf. on 447 C.) Something else. Does it opine that which is not,[*](Plato is, of course, aware that this is true only if μὴ ὄν be taken in the absolute sense. We cannot suppose that he himself is puzzled by a fallacy which he ironically attributes to the Sophists and to Protagoras (Theaetetus 167 A), and ridicules in the Cratylus 188 D and Euthydemus 286 C. Cf. Unity of Platos’ Thought, pp. 53, 54. As Aristotle explicitly puts it, De interpr. 11. 11 τὸ δὲ μὴ ὂν ὅτι δοξαστὸν οὐκ ἀληθὲς εἰπεῖν ὄν τι· δόξα γὰρ αὐτοῦ ἐστιν, οὐχ ὅτι ἔστιν ἀλλ’ ὅτι οὐκ ἔστι.) or is it impossible even to opine that which is not? Reflect: Does not he who opines bring his opinion to bear upon something or shall we reverse ourselves and say that it is possible to opine, yet opine nothing? That is impossible. Then he who opines opines some one thing. Yes. But surely that which is not could not be designated as some one thing, but most rightly as nothing at all. To that which is not we of necessity assigned nescience, and to that which is, knowledge. Rightly, he said. Then neither that which is nor that which is not is the object of opinion. It seems not. Then opinion would be neither nescience nor knowledge. So it seems. Is it then a faculty outside of these, exceeding either knowledge in lucidity or ignorance in obscurity? It is neither. But do you deem opinion something darker than knowledge but brighter than ignorance? Much so, he said. And does it lie within the boundaries of the two? Yes. Then opinion would be between the two. Most assuredly. Were we not saying a little while ago[*](Cf. 477 A.) that if anything should turn up[*](Cf. 477 A-B. This is almost a standardized method with Plato. Cf. 609 B, Charmides 168 B, Gorgias 496 C, 346 B, Philebus 11 D, 66 E, Laws 896 C.) such that it both is and is not, that sort of thing would lie between that which purely and absolutely is and that which wholly is not, and that the faculty correlated with it would be neither science or nescience, but that which should appear to hold a place correspondingly between nescience and science. Right. And now there has turned up between these two the thing that we call opinion. There has. It would remain, then, as it seems, for us to discover that which partakes of both, of to be and not to be, and that could not be rightly designated either in its exclusive purity; so that, if it shall be discovered, we may justly pronounce it to be the opinable, thus assigning extremes to extremes and the intermediate to the intermediate. Is not that so? It is.

This much premised, let him tell me, I will say, let him answer me, that good[*](Ironical. Cf. Phaedrus 266 E.) fellow who does not think there is a beautiful in itself or any[*](τινὰ does not mean that the theory of Ideas is a novelty here or that the terminology is new and strange. It merely says that the type of mind that is absorbed in the concrete cannot apprehend any general aspect of things. αὐτό and κατὰ ταὐτά are the technical designation of the Idea here. Cf. my note on Philebus 64 A, Class. Phil. xx. (1925) p. 347.) idea of beauty in itself always remaining the same and unchanged, but who does believe in many beautiful things—the lover of spectacles, I mean, who cannot endure to hear anybody say that the beautiful is one and the just one, and so of other things—and this will be our question: My good fellow, is there any one of these many fair-and-honorable things that will not sometimes appear ugly and base[*](Plato consciously uses mere logic to lend the emphasis and dignity of absolute metaphysics to his distinction between the two types of mind, which is for all practical purposes his main point here. If you cannot correctly define the beautiful, all your imperfect definitions will be refuted by showing that they sometimes describe what is ugly. Cf. Hippias Major 289 C and note on Republic i. 333 E. The many concrete objects are this and are not that, and so with conscious use of the ambiguity of the copula may be said to tumble about between being and not-being. That this is the consciously intended meaning may be inferred from the fact that in Timaeus 37 E, where Plato must have had in mind the conclusions of the Sophist, he still avails himself of this ambiguity to suggest an absolute being behind phenomena. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, pp. 55, 56, 60, De Platonis Idearum Doctrina pp. 48, 49.)? And of the just things, that will not seem unjust? And of the pious things, that will not seem impious?No, it is inevitable, he said, that they would appear to be both beautiful in a way and ugly, and so with all the other things you asked about. And again, do the many double things[*](Cf. on 524 A, B.) appear any the less halves than doubles? None the less. And likewise of the great and the small things, the light and the heavy things—will they admit these predicates any more than their opposites? No, he said, each of them will always hold of, partake of, both. Then is each of these multiples rather than it is not that which one affirms it to be? They are like those jesters who palter with us in a double sense at banquets, he replied, and resemble the children’s riddle[*](The scholiast (Hermann vi. 34) quotes the riddle in two forms. It might run in English—A tale there is, a man not yet a man,Seeing, saw not, a bird and not a bird,Perching upon a bough and not a bough,And hit it—not, with a stone and not a stone. The key words of the answer are eunuch, bat, reed, pumice-stone. Cf. also Athenaeus 448 E, 452 E, Gifford on Euthydemus 300 D. It was used in the Stoic schools of logic, and Epicurus is said to have used it to disprove Plato’s statement that either the negative or the affirmative of a proposition must be true or false. Cf. Usener, Epicurea, p. 348.) about the eunuch and his hitting of the bat—with what and as it sat on what they signify that he struck it. For these things too equivocate, and it is impossible to conceive firmly[*](Cf. Theaetetus 157 A.) any one of them to be or not to be or both or neither. Do you know what to do with them, then? said I, and can you find a better place to put them than that midway between existence or essence and the not-to-be? For we shall surely not discover a darker region than not-being[*](Cf. Sophist 254 A εἰς τὴν τοῦ μὴ ὄντος σκοτεινότητα.) that they should still more not be, nor brighter than being that they should still more be. Most true, he said. We would seem to have found, then, that the many conventions[*](A further thought is developed here, suggested in 479 A, B. Just as the many particular horses, trees, or tables shift and change, and are and are not in comparision with the unchanging multitude of each, so the many opinions of the multitude about justice and the good and the beautiful and other moral conceptions change, and both are and are not in comparison with the unalterable ideas of justice and beauty, which the philosopher more nearly apprehends. Thus, for the purposes of this contrast, notions, opinions, and what English usage would call ideas, fall into the same class as material objects. Cf. Euthyphro 6 D, Phaedo 78 D, Parmenides 131 D, Gorgias 488 D τὰ τῶν πολλῶν ἄρα νόμιμα, Laws 715 B τὰ τούτων δίκαια, 860 C τοῖς μὲν τοίνυν πολλοῖς etc., 962 D τὰ τῶν πόλεων (of states) νόμιμα. The practical truth of this distinction is unaffected by our metaphysics. Plato is speaking of what he elsewhere calls the εἴδωλα of justice, beauty and the like. Cf. 517 D, 532 D, Theaetetus 150 B, and The Idea of Good in Plato’s Republic, University of Chicago Studies in Classical Philology, i. p. 238.) of the many about the fair and honorable and other things are tumbled about in[*](Cf. Phaedrus 275 E, Phaedo 81 C, 82 E. Isocrates uses καλινδέομαι in similar contemptuous connotation, v. 82, xiii. 20, xv. 30.) the mid-region between that which is not and that which is in the true and absolute sense. We have so found it. But we agreed in advance that, if anything of that sort should be discovered, it must be denominated opinable, not knowable, the wanderer between being caught by the faculty that is betwixt and between. We did. We shall affirm, then, that those who view many beautiful things but do not see the beautiful itself and are unable to follow another’s guidance[*](Cf. Aristotle Metaphysics 989 a 33 τοῖς ἐπάγουσιν αὐτόν.) to it, and many just things, but not justice itself, and so in all cases—we shall say that such men have opinions about all things, but know nothing of the things they opine. Of necessity. And, on the other hand, what of those who contemplate the very things themselves in each case, ever remaining the same and unchanged—shall we not say that they know and do not merely opine? That, too, necessarily follows.

Shall we not also say that the one welcomes to his thought and loves the things subject to knowledge and the other those to opinion? Do we not remember that we said that those loved and regarded tones and beautiful colours and the like, but they could not endure the notion of the reality of the beautiful itself?We do remember.Shall we then offend their ears if we call them doxophilists[*](Plato coins a word which means lovers of opinion.) rather than philosophers and will they be very angry if we so speak?Not if they heed my counsel, he said, for to be angry with truth is not lawful. Then to those who in each and every kind welcome the true being, lovers of wisdom and not lovers of opinion[*](Isocrates xv. 271 is conceivably an answer to this.) is the name we must give. By all means.