14. Selection of Rulers: The Guardian's Manner of
Living
Very good, I said; then what is the next question?
Must we not ask who are to be rulers and who subjects?
Certainly.
There can be no doubt that the elder must rule the
younger.
Clearly.
And that the best of these must rule.
That is also clear.
Now, are not the best farmers those who are most
devoted to farming?
Yes.
And as we are to have the best of guardians for our
city, must they not be those who have most the character of guardians?
Yes.
And to this end they ought to be wise and efficient,
and to have a special care of the State?
True.
And a man will be most likely to care about that
which he loves?
To be sure.
And he will be most likely to love that which he
regards as having the same interests with himself, and that of which the good
or evil fortune is supposed by him at any time most to affect his own?
Very true, he replied.
Then there must be a selection.
Let us note among the guardians those who in their whole life show the greatest
eagerness to do what is for the good of their country, and the greatest
repugnance to do what is against her interests.
Those are the right men.
And they will have to be watched at every age, in
order that we may see whether they preserve their resolution, and never, under
the influence either of force or enchantment, forget or cast off their sense of
duty to the State.
How cast off? he said.
I will explain to you, I replied. A resolution may go
out of a man's mind either with his will or against his will; with his will
when he gets rid of a falsehood and learns better, against his will whenever he
is deprived of a truth.
I understand, he said, the willing loss of a
resolution; the meaning of the unwilling I have yet to learn.
Why, I said, do you not see that men are unwillingly
deprived of good, and willingly of evil? Is not to have lost the truth an evil,
and to possess the truth a good? and you would agree that to conceive things as
they are is to possess the truth?
Yes, he replied; I agree with you
in thinking that mankind are deprived of truth against their will.
And is not this involuntary deprivation caused either
by theft, or force, or enchantment?
Still, he replied, I do not understand you.
I fear that I must have been talking darkly, like the
tragedians. I only mean that some men
are changed by persuasion and that others forget; argument steals away the
hearts of one class, and time of the other; and this I call theft. Now you
understand me?
Yes.
Those again who are forced are those whom the
violence of some pain or grief compels to change their opinion.
I understand, he said, and you are quite right.
And you would also acknowledge that the enchanted are
those who change their minds either under the softer influence of pleasure, or
the sterner influence of fear?
Yes, he said; everything that deceives may be said to
enchant.
Therefore, as I was just
now saying, we must enquire who are the best guardians of their own conviction
that what they think the interest of the State is to be the rule of their
lives. We must watch them from their youth upwards, and make them perform
actions in which they are most likely to forget or to be deceived, and he who
remembers and is not deceived is to be selected, and he who fails in the trial
is to be rejected. That will be the way?
Yes.
And there should also be toils and pains and
conflicts prescribed for them, in which they will be made to give further proof
of the same qualities.
Very right, he replied.
And then, I said, we must try them with enchantments
-- that is the third sort of test -- and see what will be their behaviour: like
those who take colts amid noise and tumult to see if they are of a timid
nature, so must we take our youth amid terrors of some kind, and again pass
them into pleasures, and prove them more thoroughly than gold is proved in the
furnace, that we may discover whether they are armed against all enchantments,
and of a noble bearing always, good guardians of themselves and of the music
which they have learned, and retaining under all circumstances a rhythmical and
harmonious nature, such as will be most serviceable to the individual and to
the State. And he who at every age, as boy and youth and in mature life, has
come out of the trial victorious and pure, shall be appointed a ruler and
guardian of the State; he shall be honoured in life and death, and shall
receive sepulture and other memorials of honour, the greatest that we have to
give. But him who fails, we must reject. I am inclined to think that this is
the sort of way in which our rulers and guardians should be chosen and
appointed. I speak generally, and not with any pretension to exactness.
And, speaking generally, I agree with you, he said.
And perhaps the word "guardian" in the
fullest sense ought to be applied to this higher class only who preserve us
against foreign enemies and maintain peace among our citizens at home, that the
one may not have the will, or the others the power, to harm us. The young men
whom we before called guardians may be more properly designated auxiliaries and
supporters of the principles of the rulers.
I agree with you, he said.
How then may we devise one of
those needful falsehoods of which we lately spoke -- just one magnificent myth
which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of
the city?
What sort of myth? he said.
Nothing new, I replied; only an old Phoenician tale
of what has often occurred before now in other places, (as the poets say, and
have made the world believe,) though not in our time, and I do not know whether
such an event could ever happen again, or could now even be made probable, if
it did.
How your words seem to hesitate on your lips!
You will not wonder, I replied, at my hesitation when
you have heard.
Speak, he said, and fear not.
Well then, I will speak, although I really know not
how to look you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction,
which I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the
soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be told that their youth was a
dream, and the education and training which they received from us, an
appearance only; in reality during all that time they were being formed and fed
in the womb of the earth, where they themselves and their arms and
appurtenances were manufactured; when they were completed, the earth, their
mother, sent them up; and so, their country being their mother and also their
nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and to defend her against
attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the earth and their
own brothers.
You had good reason, he said, to be ashamed of the
lie which you were going to tell.
True, I replied, but there is more coming; I have
only told you half. Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are
brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of
command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also
they have the greatest honour; others he has made of silver, to be auxilaries;
others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass
and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. But as
all are of the same original stock, a golden parent will sometimes have a
silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims as a first
principle to the rulers, and above all else, that there is nothing which should
so anxiously guard, or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the
purity of the race. They should observe what elements mingle in their
offspring; for if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of
brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the
ruler must not be pitiful towards the child because he has to descend in the
scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be sons of artisans
who having an admixture of gold or silver in them are raised to honour, and
become guardians or auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass or
iron guards the State, it will be destroyed. Such is the tale; is there any
possibility of making our citizens believe in it?
Not in the present generation, he replied; there is no way of accomplishing
this; but their sons may be made to believe in the tale, and their sons' sons,
and posterity after them.
In the context of the extract, explain what you understand by all three. (Help)