YOUNG SOCRATES: We cannot deny it.
YOUNG SOCRATES: To, be sure.
STRANGER: And returning to the enquiry with STRANGER: Then the true and natural art of states-which we began, have we not found that consider-manship will never allow any State to be formed by able portions of virtue are at variance with one an-a combination of good and bad men, if this can be other, and give rise to a similar opposition in the avoided; but will begin by testing human natures in characters who are endowed with them?
play, and after testing them, will entrust them to proper teachers who are the ministers of her pur-YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
poses—she will herself give orders, and maintain authority; just as the art of weaving continually gives STRANGER: Let us consider a further point.
orders and maintains authority over the carders and all the others who prepare the material for the work, YOUNG SOCRATES: What is it?
commanding the subsidiary arts to execute the works which she deems necessary for making the web.
STRANGER: I want to know, whether any constructive art will make any, even the most trivial thing, out YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.
of bad and good materials indifferently, if this can be helped? does not all art rather reject the bad as far as STRANGER: In like manner, the royal science ap-possible, and accept the good and fit materials, and pears to me to be the mistress of all lawful educators from these elements, whether like or unlike, gather-and instructors, and having this queenly power, will ing them all into one, work out some nature or idea?
not permit them to train men in what will produce 136
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characters unsuited to the political constitution which gether; taking on the one hand those whose natures she desires to create, but only in what will produce tend rather to courage, which is the stronger ele-such as are suitable. Those which have no share of ment and may be regarded as the warp, and on the manliness and temperance, or any other virtuous in-other hand those which incline to order and gentle-clination, and, from the necessity of an evil nature, ness, and which are represented in the figure as spun are violently carried away to godlessness and inso-thick and soft, after the manner of the woof—these, lence and injustice, she gets rid of by death and exile, which are naturally opposed, she seeks to bind and and punishes them with the greatest of disgraces.
weave together in the following manner: YOUNG SOCRATES: That is commonly said.
YOUNG SOCRATES: In what manner?
STRANGER: But those who are wallowing in igno-STRANGER: First of all, she takes the eternal ele-rance and baseness she bows under the yoke of sla-ment of the soul and binds it with a divine cord, to very.
which it is akin, and then the animal nature, and binds that with human cords.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite right.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand what STRANGER: The rest of the citizens, out of whom, you mean.
if they have education, something noble may be made, and who are capable of being united by the STRANGER: The meaning is, that the opinion statesman, the kingly art blends and weaves to-about the honourable and the just and good and 137
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their opposites, which is true and confirmed by rea-this truth becomes civilized, and rendered more son, is a divine principle, and when implanted in capable of partaking of justice; but when not par-the soul, is implanted, as I maintain, in a nature of taking, is inclined to brutality. Is not that true?
heavenly birth.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; what else should it be?
STRANGER: And again, the peaceful and orderly STRANGER: Only the Statesman and the good leg-nature, if sharing in these opinions, becomes tem-islator, having the inspiration of the royal muse, perate and wise, as far as this may be in a State, but can implant this opinion, and he, only in the rightly if not, deservedly obtains the ignominious name of educated, whom we were just now describing.
silliness.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Likely enough.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Quite true.
STRANGER: But him who cannot, we will not des-STRANGER: Can we say that such a connexion as ignate by any of the names which are the subject of this will lastingly unite the evil with one another or the present enquiry.
with the good, or that any science would seriously think of using a bond of this kind to join such ma-YOUNG SOCRATES: Very right.
terials?
STRANGER: The courageous soul when attaining YOUNG SOCRATES: Impossible.