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bthe benefit with which each sort is capable of improving the community; the law doesn’t
produce men of this sort in the city to allow them to turn whichever way each one wants
but so that it may make full use of them for the binding together of the city.”
“That’s true,” he said; “that did slip my mind.”
“Then consider, Glaucon,” I said, “that we won’t be doing any injustice anyway to
the philosophers who arise among us, but we’ll be asking just things of them in requiring
them also to care for the other people and watch over them. We’ll tell them that when peo-
ple of their sort come along in other cities, it’s reasonable for them not to share the bur-
dens in those cities, since they spring up spontaneously in each of them against the will of
the polity, and something that grows up on its own, not owing its upbringing to anyone,
has just cause not to be too keen on paying for its support. ‘But we’ve bred you both for
yourselves and for the rest of the city like the rulers and kings in beehives, to be educated
in a better and more complete way than the others and more capable of taking part in both
ways of life. So it’s necessary for each of you in turn to go down into the communal
dwelling and to get used to gazing at dark objects with the others, because when you’re
used to it you’ll see thousands of times better than the people there, and recognize each
sort of image for what it is and what it’s an image of, from having seen the truth about
beautiful and just and good things. And so the city will be governed by you and by us wide
awake, and not in a dream the way most are governed now by people who fight with each
other over shadows and form factions over ruling, as though that were some great good.
But the truth is surely this: that city in which those who are going to rule are least eager to
rule is necessarily governed best and with the least divisiveness, while the one that gets the
opposite sort of rulers is governed in the opposite way.’”
“Quite so,” he said.
“Then do you imagine those who’ve been brought up will be unpersuaded by us
when they hear these things, and be unwilling to share, each in turn, in the labors of the
city while dwelling among themselves a lot of the time in the pure region?”
“It’s not possible,” he said, “because we’ll be giving just obligations to people
who are just. More than anything, each of them will go into ruling as something
unavoidable, which is opposite to what those who rule in each city now do.”
“That’s how it is, my comrade,” I said; “if you find a way of life better than ruling
for those who are going to rule, there’s a possibility for a well-governed city to come
into being for you, because only in it will the rulers be those who are rich in their very
being, not in gold but in that in which someone who’s happy needs to be rich: a good
and intelligent life. But if beggars and people hungry for private goods go into public
life imagining that’s where they need to go to steal off with the good, there’s no possi-
bility, because when ruling becomes something that’s fought over, since that sort of war,
being domestic and internal, destroys them and the rest of the city.”
“Very true,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “do you know of any way of life other than that of true philosophy
that looks down on political offices?”
“No, by Zeus,” he said.
“It’s necessary, though, for people who aren’t in love with ruling to go after it; if
they don’t, the rival lovers will do battle.”
“Certainly.”
“And who else are you going to require to go into guarding the city than the peo-
ple who are most thoughtful about those things by which a city is governed best, and
who have other honors and a better life than the political sort?”
“None other than they,” he said.