Then, said I, such a one must go around the longer way and must labor no less in studies than in the exercises of the body, or else, as we were just saying, he will never come to the end of the greatest study and that which most properly belongs to him.
Why, are not these things the greatest? said he. But is there still something greater than justice and the other virtues we described?
There is not only something greater, I said, but of these very things we need not merely to contemplate an outline as now, but we must omit nothing of their most exact elaboration. Or would it not be absurd to strain every nerve to attain to the utmost precision and clarity of knowledge about other things of trifling moment and not to demand the greatest precision for the greatest matters?
It would indeed, he said, but do you suppose that anyone will let you go without asking what is the greatest study and with what you think it is concerned?
By no means, said I, but do you ask the question. You certainly have heard it often, but now you either do not apprehend or again you are minded to make trouble for me by attacking the argument. I suspect it is rather the latter. For you have often heard that the greatest thing to learn is the idea of good by reference to which just things and all the rest become useful and beneficial. And now I am almost sure you know that this is what I am going to speak of and to say further that we have no adequate knowledge of it. And if we do not know it, then, even if without the knowledge of this we should know all other things never so well, you are aware that it would avail us nothing, just as no possession either is of any avail without the possession of the good. Or do you think there is any profit in possessing everything except that which is good, or in understanding all things else apart from the good while understanding and knowing nothing that is fair and good?
No, by Zeus, I do not, he said.
But, furthermore, you know this too, that the multitude believe pleasure to be the good, and the finer spirits intelligence or knowledge.
Certainly.
And you are also aware, my friend, that those who hold this latter view are not able to point out what knowledge it is but are finally compelled to say that it is the knowledge of the good.
Most absurdly, he said.
Is it not absurd, said I, if while taunting us with our ignorance of good they turn about and talk to us as if we knew it? For they say it is the knowledge of the good, as if we understood their meaning when they utter the word 'good.'
Most true, he said.
Well, are those who define the good as pleasure infected with any less confusion of thought than the others? Or are not they in like manner compelled to admit that there are bad pleasures?
Most assuredly.
The outcome is, I take it, that they are admitting the same things to be both good and bad, are they not?
Certainly.
Then is it not apparent that there are many and violent disputes about it?
Of course.
And again, is it not apparent that while in the case of the just and the honorable many would prefer the semblance without the reality in action, possession, and opinion, yet when it comes to the good nobody is content with the possession of the appearance but all men seek the reality, and the semblance satisfies nobody here?
Quite so, he said.
That, then, which every soul pursues and for its sake does all that it does, with an intuition of its reality, but yet baffled and unable to apprehend its nature adequately, or to attain to any stable belief about it as about other things, and for that reason failing of any possible benefit from other things--in a matter of this quality and moment, can we, I ask you, allow a like blindness and obscurity in those best citizens to whose hands we are to entrust all things?
Least of all, he said.
I fancy, at any rate, said I, that the just and the honorable, if their relation and reference to the good is not known, will not have secured a guardian of much worth in the man thus ignorant, and my surmise is that no one will understand them adequately before he knows this.
You surmise well, he said.
Then our constitution will have its perfect and definitive organization only when such a guardian, who knows these things, oversees it.
Necessarily, he said. But you yourself, Socrates, do you think that knowledge is the good or pleasure or something else and different?
What a man it is, said I. You made it very plain long ago that you would not be satisfied with what others think about it.
Why, it does not seem right to me either, Socrates, he said, to be ready to state the opinions of others but not one's own when one has occupied himself with the matter so long.
But then, said I, do you think it right to speak as having knowledge about things one does not know?
By no means, he said, as having knowledge, but one ought to be willing to tell as his opinion what he opines.
Nay, said I, have you not observed that opinions divorced from knowledge are ugly things? The best of them are blind. Or do you think that those who hold some true opinion without intelligence differ appreciably from blind men who go the right way?
They do not differ at all, he said.
Is it, then, ugly things that you prefer to contemplate, things blind and crooked, when you might hear from others what is luminous and fair?
Nay, in heaven's name, Socrates, said Glaucon, do not draw back, as it were, at the very goal. For it will content us if you explain the good even as you set forth the nature of justice, sobriety, and the other virtues.
It will right well content me, my dear fellow, I said, but I fear that my powers may fail and that in my eagerness I may cut a sorry figure and become a laughingstock. Nay, my beloved, let us dismiss for the time being the nature of the good in itself, for to attain to my present surmise of that seems a pitch above the impulse that wings my flight today. But of what seems to be the offspring of the good and most nearly made in its likeness I am willing to speak if you too wish it, and otherwise to let the matter drop.
Well, speak on, he said, for you will duly pay me the tale of the parent another time.
I could wish, I said, that I were able to make and you to receive the payment and not merely as now the interest. But at any rate receive this interest and the offspring of the good. Have a care, however, lest I deceive you unintentionally with a false reckoning of the interest.
We will do our best, he said, to be on our guard. Only speak on.
Yes, I said, after first coming to an understanding with you and reminding you of what has been said here before and often on other occasions.
What? said he.
We predicate 'to be' of many beautiful things and many good things, saying of them severally that they are, and so define them in our speech.--[We do.]--And again, we speak of a self-beautiful and of a good that is only and merely good, and so, in the case of all the things that we then posited as many, we turn about and posit each as a single idea or aspect, assuming it to be a unity and call it that which each really is.
It is so.
And the one class of things we say can be seen but not thought, while the ideas can be thought but not seen.
By all means.
With which of the parts of ourselves, with which of our faculties, then, do we see visible things?
With sight, he said.
And do we not, I said, hear audibles with hearing, and perceive all sensibles with the other senses?
Surely.
Have you ever observed, said I, how much the greatest expenditure the creator of the senses has lavished on the faculty of seeing and being seen?
Why, no, I have not, he said.
Well, look at it thus. Do hearing and voice stand in need of another medium so that the one may hear and the other be heard, in the absence of which third element the one will not hear and the other not be heard?
They need nothing, he said.
Neither, I fancy, said I, do many others, not to say that none require anything of the sort. Or do you know of any?
Not I, he said.
But do you not observe that vision and the visible do have this further need?
How?
Though vision may be in the eyes and its possessor may try to use it, and though color be present, yet without the presence of a third thing specifically and naturally adapted to this purpose, you are aware that vision will see nothing and the colors will remain invisible.
What is this thing of which you speak? he said.
The thing, I said, that you call light.
You say truly, he replied.
The bond, then, that yokes together visibility and the faculty of sight is more precious by no slight form than that which unites the other pairs, if light is not without honor.
It surely is far from being so, he said.
Which one can you name of the divinities in heaven as the author and cause of this, whose light makes our vision see best and visible things to be seen?
Why, the one that you too and other people mean, he said, for your question evidently refers to the sun.
Is not this, then, the relation of vision to that divinity?
What?
Neither vision itself nor its vehicle, which we call the eye, is identical with the sun.
Why, no.
But it is, I think, the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense.
By far the most.
And does it not receive the power which it possesses as an influx, as it were, dispensed from the sun?
Certainly.
Is it not also true that the sun is not vision, yet as being the cause thereof is beheld by vision itself?
That is so, he said.
This, then, you must understand that I meant by the offspring of the good which the good begot to stand in a proportion with itself. As the good is in the intelligible region to reason and the objects of reason, so is this in the visible world to vision and the objects of vision.
How is that? he said. Explain further.
You are aware, I said, that when the eyes are no longer turned upon objects upon whose colors the light of day falls but that of the dim luminaries of night, their edge is blunted and they appear almost blind, as if pure vision did not dwell in them.
Yes, indeed, he said.
But when, I take it, they are directed upon objects illumined by the sun, they see clearly, and vision appears to reside in these same eyes.
Certainly.
Apply this comparison to the soul also in this way. When it is firmly fixed on the domain where truth and reality shine resplendent it apprehends and knows them and appears to possess reason, but when it inclines to that region which is mingled with darkness, the world of becoming and passing away, it opines only and its edge is blunted, and it shifts its opinions hither and thither, and again seems as if it lacked reason.
Yes, it does.
This reality, then, that gives their truth to the objects of knowledge and the power of knowing to the knower, you must say is the idea of good, and you must conceive it as being the cause of knowledge, and of truth in so far as known. Yet fair as they both are, knowledge and truth, in supposing it to be something fairer still than these you will think rightly of it. But as for knowledge and truth, even as in our illustration it is right to deem light and vision sunlike, but never to think that they are the sun, so here it is right to consider these two their counterparts, as being like the good or boniform, but to think that either of them is the good is not right. Still higher honor belongs to the possession and habit of the good.
An inconceivable beauty you speak of, he said, if it is the source of knowledge and truth, and yet itself surpasses them in beauty. For you surely cannot mean that it is pleasure.
Hush, said I, but examine the similitude of it still further in this way.
How?
The sun, I presume you will say, not only furnishes to visibles the power of visibility but it also provides for their generation and growth and nurture though it is not itself generation.
Of course not.
In like manner, then, you are to say that the objects of knowledge not only receive from the presence of the good their being known, but their very existence and essence is derived to them from it, though the good itself is not essence but still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power.
And Glaucon very ludicrously said, Heaven save us, hyperbole can no further go.
The fault is yours, I said, for compelling me to utter my thoughts about it.
And don't desist, he said, but at least expound the similitude of the sun, if there is anything that you are omitting.
Why, certainly, I said, I am omitting a great deal.
Well, don't omit the least bit, he said.
I fancy, I said, that I shall have to pass over much, but nevertheless so far as it is at present practicable I shall not willingly leave anything out.
Do not, he said.
Conceive then, said I, as we were saying, that there are these two entities, and that one of them is sovereign over the intelligible order and region and the other over the world of the eyeball, not to say the sky-ball, but let that pass. You surely apprehend the two types, the visible and the intelligible.
I do.
Represent them then, as it were, by a line divided into two unequal sections and cut each section again in the same ratio--the section, that is, of the visible and that of the intelligible order--and then as an expression of the ratio of their comparative clearness and obscurity you will have, as one of the sections of the visible world, images. By images I mean, first, shadows, and then reflections in water and on surfaces of dense, smooth, and bright texture, and everything of that kind, if you apprehend.
I do.
As the second section assume that of which this is a likeness or an image, that is, the animals about us and all plants and the whole class of objects made by man.
I so assume it, he said.
Would you be willing to say, said I, that the division in respect of reality and truth or the opposite is expressed by the proportion--as is the opinable to the knowable so is the likeness to that of which it is a likeness?
I certainly would.
Consider then again the way in which we are to make the division of the intelligible section.
In what way?
By the distinction that there is one section of it which the soul is compelled to investigate by treating as images the things imitated in the former division, and by means of assumptions from which it proceeds not up to a first principle but down to a conclusion, while there is another section in which it advances from its assumption to a beginning or principle that transcends assumption, and in which it makes no use of the images employed by the other section, relying on ideas only and progressing systematically through ideas.
I don't fully understand what you mean by this, he said.
Well, I will try again, said I, for you will better understand after this preamble. For I think you are aware that students of geometry and reckoning and such subjects first postulate the odd and the even and the various figures and three kinds of angles and other things akin to these in each branch of science, regard them as known, and, treating them as absolute assumptions, do not deign to render any further account of them to themselves or others, taking it for granted that they are obvious to everybody. They take their start from these, and pursuing the inquiry from this point on consistently, conclude with that for the investigation of which they set out.
Certainly, he said, I know that.
And do you not also know that they further make use of the visible forms and talk about them, though they are not thinking of them but of those things of which they are a likeness, pursuing their inquiry for the sake of the square as such and the diagonal as such, and not for the sake of the image of it which they draw? And so in all cases. The very things which they mold and draw, which have shadows and images of themselves in water, these things they treat in their turn as only images, but what they really seek is to get sight of those realities which can be seen only by the mind.
True, he said.
This then is the class that I described as intelligible, it is true, but with the reservation first that the soul is compelled to employ assumptions in the investigation of it, not proceeding to a first principle because of its inability to extricate itself from and rise above its assumptions, and second, that it uses as images or likenesses the very objects that are themselves copied and adumbrated by the class below them, and that in comparison with these latter are esteemed as clear and held in honor.
I understand, said he, that you are speaking of what falls under geometry and the kindred arts.
Understand then, said I, that by the other section of the intelligible I mean that which the reason itself lays hold of by the power of dialectic, treating its assumptions not as absolute beginnings but literally as hypotheses, underpinnings, footings, and springboards so to speak, to enable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is the starting point of all, and after attaining to that again taking hold of the first dependencies from it, so to proceed downward to the conclusion, making no use whatever of any object of sense but only of pure ideas moving on through ideas to ideas and ending with ideas.
I understand, he said, not fully, for it is no slight task that you appear to have in mind, but I do understand that you mean to distinguish the aspect of reality and the intelligible, which is contemplated by the power of dialectic, as something truer and more exact than the object of the so-called arts and sciences whose assumptions are arbitrary starting points. And though it is true that those who contemplate them are compelled to use their understanding and not their senses, yet because they do not go back to the beginning in the study of them but start from assumptions you do not think they possess true intelligence about them although the things themselves are intelligibles when apprehended in conjunction with a first principle. And I think you call the mental habit of geometers and their like mind or understanding and not reason because you regard understanding as something intermediate between opinion and reason.
Your interpretation is quite sufficient, I said. And now, answering to these four sections, assume these four affections occurring in the soul--intellection or reason for the highest, understanding for the second, belief for the third, and for the last, picture thinking or conjecture--and arrange them in a proportion, considering that they participate in clearness and precision in the same degree as their objects partake of truth and reality.
I understand, he said. I concur and arrange them as you bid.
END OF BOOK VI