114 PLATO
without insight seem to you to be any different from blind people who travel along the
right road?”
“No different,” he said.
“Then do you want to gaze on ugly things, blind and crooked, when you’ll be able
to hear bright and beautiful ones from others?”
“Before Zeus, Socrates,” said Glaucon, “you’re not going to stand down as if you
were at the end. It’ll be good enough for us if, the same way you went over what has to
do with justice and moderation and the other things, you also go over what has to do with
the good.”
“For me too, comrade,” I said, “and more than good enough. But I’m afraid
I won’t be capable of it, but I’ll make a fool of myself in my eagerness and pay for it in
ridicule. But, you blessed fellows, let’s leave aside for the time being what the good
itself is, since it appears to me to be beyond the trajectory of the impulse we’ve got at
present to reach the things that now seem to me to be the case. But I’m willing to speak
about what appears to be an offspring of the good and most like it, if that’s also conge-
nial to you folks, or if not, to let it go.”
“Just speak,” he said, “and some other time you’ll pay off the balance with a
description of the father.”
“I’d like to have the power to pay it in full and for you folks to receive it, and not
just the interest on it as you will now. Give a reception, then, to this dividend and off-
spring of the good itself. Be on your guard, though, in case I unintentionally deceive
you by paying my account with counterfeit interest.”
“We’ll be on guard according to our power,” he said, “so just speak.”
“After I’ve gotten your agreement,” I said, “and reminded you of things men-
tioned in the previous discussion and often spoken of before now elsewhere.”
“What sort of things?” he said.
“We claim that there are many beautiful things,” I said, “and many good things,
and the same way for each kind, and we distinguish them in speech.”
“We do.”
“But also a beautiful itself, and a good itself, and the same way with everything
we were then taking as many, we go back the other way and take according to a single
look of each kind, as though there is only one, and we refer to it as what each kind is.”
“That’s it.”
“And we claim that the former are seen but not thought, while the ‘looks’ in turn
are thought but not seen.”
“Completely and totally so.”
“And by which of the things within ourselves do we see the ones that are seen?”
“By sight,” he said.
“And perceive the things heard by hearing, and all the perceptible things by the
other senses?” I said.
“Of course.”
“Well,” I said, “have you reflected about the craftsman of the senses, how he was
by far the most bountiful in crafting the power of seeing and being seen?”
“Not at all,” he said.
“Then look at it this way: for one thing to hear and another to be heard, is there
any need for another kind of thing in addition to the sense of hearing and a sound,
such that, if that third thing isn’t present, the first won’t hear and the second won’t be
heard?”
“There’s nothing like that,” he said.de507a
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