REPUBLIC(BOOKII) 77
“Certainly I know it.”
“Therefore,” I said, “this is possible, and it’s not against nature for the guardian to
be of the sort we’re looking for.”
“It doesn’t seem like it.”
“Well then, does it seem to you that there’s still a further need for this in the one
who’ll be fit for guarding, that in addition to being spirited he also needs to be a
philosopher by nature?”
“How’s that?” he said. “I don’t get it.”
“You’ll notice this too in dogs,” I said, “which is also worth wondering at in the
beast.”
“What sort of thing?”
“That when it sees someone it doesn’t know, it gets angry, even when it hasn’t
been treated badly by that person before, while anyone familiar it welcomes eagerly,
even when nothing good has ever been done to it by that one. Or haven’t you ever won-
dered at this?”
“Till this moment,” he said, “I haven’t paid it any mind at all. That they do this,
though, is certainly obvious.”
“But surely it shows an appealing attribute of its nature and one that’s philosophic
in a true sense.”
“In what way?”
“In that it distinguishes a face as friend or enemy,” I said, “by nothing other than
the fact that it has learned the one and is ignorant of the other. And indeed, how could it
not be a lover of learning when it determines what’s its own and what’s alien to it by
means of understanding and ignorance?”
“There’s no way it couldn’t,” he said.
“But surely,” I said, “the love of learning and the love of wisdom are the same
thing?”
“They’re the same,” he said.
“Then shall we have the confidence to posit for a human being too, that if he’s
going to be at all gentle to his own people and those known to him, he needs to be by
nature a lover of wisdom and of learning?”
“Let’s posit it.”
“So someone who’s going to be a beautiful and good guardian of our city will be
philosophic, spirited, quick, and strong by nature.”
“Absolutely so,” he said.
“So he’d start out that way. But now in what manner will they be brought up and
educated by us? And if we examine it, is there anything that gets us forward toward
catching sight of the thing for the sake of which we’re examining all this, the manner in
which justice and injustice come into being in a city? The point is that we might not
allow enough discussion, or we might go through a long one.”
And Glaucon’s brother said, “For my part, I expect this examination to be one that
gets us very far along into that.”
“By Zeus, Adeimantus my friend,” I said, “it’s not to be given up then, even if it
happens to be overlong.”
“Not at all.”
“Come then, and just as if they were in a story and we were telling the story and
remaining at leisure, let’s educate the men in our speech.”
“We should do just that.”
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