78 PLATO
BOOKIII
“Okay,” I said, “what would be the next thing after that for us to distinguish?
Wouldn’t it be which of these same people will rule and which will be ruled?”
“Sure.”
“And it’s clear that the older ones should be the rulers and the younger should
be ruled?”
“That’s clear.”
“And that it should be the best among them?”
“That too.”
“And aren’t the best farmers the ones most adept at farming?”
“Yes.”
“But since in this case they need to be the best among the guardians, don’t they
need to be the most adept at safeguarding the city?”
“Yes.”
“So don’t they need, to start with, to be intelligent at that as well as capable, and
also protective of the city?”
“That’s so.”
“But someone would be most protective of that which he happened to love.”
“Necessarily.”
“And surely someone would love that thing most which he regarded as having the
same things advantageous to it as to himself, and believed that when it fared well it fol-
lowed that he himself fared well, and the other way around when it didn’t.”
“That’s the way it is,” he said.
“Therefore the men who need to be selected from among the rest of the guardians
are those who appear to us, when we examine the whole course of their lives, as if they
most of all would do wholeheartedly whatever they’d regard as advantageous to the city,
and who wouldn’t be willing in any way to do what was not.”
“They’d be suited to it,” he said.
“It seems to me, then, that they need to be observed in all stages of life to see if
they’re adept guardians of this way of thinking, and don’t drop it when they’re
bewitched or subjected to force, forgetting their opinion that they ought to do what’s
best for the city.”
“What do you mean by dropping?” he said.
“I’ll tell you,” I said. “It appears to me that an opinion goes away from one’s
thinking either willingly or unwillingly. A false one goes away willingly from someone
who learns differently, but every true one unwillingly.”
“The case of the willing dropping I understand,” he said, “but I need to learn
about the unwilling case.”
“What?” I said. “Don’t you too believe human beings are deprived of good things
unwillingly but of bad ones willingly? Isn’t it a bad thing to think falsely about the truth
and a good thing to think truly? Or doesn’t believing things that are seem to you to be
thinking truly?”
“You’re certainly speaking rightly,” he said, “and it does seem to me that people
are unwilling to be deprived of the truth.”
“And don’t they suffer this by being robbed, bewitched, or overpowered?”412b
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