REPUBLIC(BOOKIV) 89
“But the city seemed to be just because each of the three classes of natures present
in it did what properly belonged to it, while it seemed also to be moderate, courageous,
and wise on account of certain other attributes and characteristic activities of these same
classes.”
“True,” he said.
“Therefore, my friend, we’ll regard a single person in this way too, as having
these same forms in his soul, and as rightly deserving to have the same names applied to
them as in the city as a result of the same attributes.”
“There’s every need to,” he said.
“It’s certainly a light question about the soul we’ve landed ourselves into now,
you strange fellow,” I said, “whether it has these three forms in it or not.”
“It’s not quite such a light one we seem to me to be in,” he said. “It’s probably
because the saying is true, Socrates, that beautiful things are difficult.”
“So it appears,” I said. “And know for sure, Glaucon, that it’s my opinion we’ll
never get hold of this in a precise way along the sorts of paths we’re now taking in our
arguments, because there’s another, longer and more rigorous road that leads to it.
Maybe, though, we can get hold of it in a way worthy, at least, of the things that have
already been said and considered.”
“Isn’t that something to be content with?” he said. “For me, at present anyway, it
would be good enough.”
“Yes, certainly,” I said, “that will be quite sufficient for me too.”
“Don’t get tired, then,” he said; “just examine it.”
“Well then,” I said, “isn’t there a great necessity for us to agree that the same
forms and states of character are present in each of us as are in the city? Because pre-
sumably they didn’t get there from anywhere else. It would be ridiculous if anyone
imagined the spirited character didn’t come to be in the cities from particular people
who also have this attribute, like those in Thrace and Scythia, and pretty generally in the
northern region, or similarly with the love of learning, which one might attribute espe-
cially to the region round about us, or the love of money that one might claim to be not
least round about the Phoenicians and those in Egypt.”
“Very much so,” he said.
“That’s just the way it is,” I said, “and it’s not difficult to recognize.”
“Certainly not.”
“But this now is difficult: whether we act each way by means of the same thing,
or in the different ways by means of different things, of which there are three—whether
we learn by means of one of the things in us, become spirited by means of another, and
feel desires in turn by means of a third for the pleasures having to do with nourishment
and procreation and as many things as are closely related to these, or whether we act by
means of the whole soul in each of them, once we’re aroused. These are the things that
will be difficult to determine in a manner worthy of the discussion.”
“It seems that way to me too,” he said.
“Then let’s try to mark out whether they’re the same as one another or different,
in this way.”
“How?”
“It’s obvious that the same thing isn’t going to put up with doing or undergoing
opposite things in the same respect and in relation to the same thing at the same time, so
presumably if we find that happening in the things in question, we’ll know that they’re
not the same but more than one thing.”
“Okay.”
“Then consider what I say.”
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