84 PLATO
“But as for courage, it and the part of the city it lies in, and through which the city
is called courageous, are surely not very hard to see.”
“How so?”
“Who,” I said, “would say a city was cowardly or courageous by looking to any-
thing other than that part of it which defends it and takes the field on its behalf?”
“No one,” he said, “would look to anything else.”
“Because I don’t imagine,” I said, “that whether the other people in it are cowards
or courageous would be what determines it to be the one sort or the other.”
“No.”
“Then a city is also courageous by means of a certain part of itself, by its having
in it a power such that it will safeguard through everything its opinion about what’s
to be feared, that it’s the same things or the sorts of things that the lawgiver passed on to
them in their education. Or isn’t that what you call courage?”
“I haven’t quite understood what you’re saying,” he said; “just say it again.”
“I mean,” I said, “that courage is a certain kind of preservation.”
“What kind of preservation exactly?”
“Of the opinion instilled by law through education about what things and what sorts
of things are to be feared. By preserving it through everything I meant keeping it intact
when one is in the midst of pains and pleasures and desires and terrors and not dropping
it. I’m willing to make an image of what it seems to me to be like if you want me to.”
“I want you to.”
“You know, don’t you,” I said, “that dyers, when they want to dye wool so it will
be purple, first select, from among the many colors, wool of the single nature belonging
to white things, and then prepare it in advance, taking care with no little preparation that
it will accept the pigment as much as possible, and only so dip it in the dye? And what
is dyed in this way becomes impervious to fading, and washing it, whether without
soaps or with them, has no power to remove the color from it, but what is not done that
way—well, you know what it comes out like, whether one dyes it with other colors or
this one without having taken care in advance.”
“I know,” he said, “that it’s washed out and laughable.”
“Then understand,” I said, “that we too were doing something like that to the extent
of our power when we were selecting the soldiers and educating them with music and gym-
nastic training. Don’t imagine that we devised that for any reason other than so they,
persuaded by us, would take the laws into themselves like a dye in the most beautiful way
possible, so that their opinion about what’s to be feared, and about everything else, would
become impervious to fading, because they’d had the appropriate nature and upbringing,
and the dye couldn’t be washed out of them by those soaps that are so formidable at scour-
ing, either pleasure, which is more powerful at doing that than every sort of lye and alkaline
ash, or pain, terror, and desire, more powerful than any other soaps. This sort of power and
preservation through everything of a right and lawful opinion about what is and isn’t to be
feared, I for my part call courage, and I set it down as such unless you say otherwise.”
“No,” he said, “I don’t say anything different, because it seems to me that you’re
considering the right opinion about these same things that comes about without educa-
tion, as animal-like or slavish, and not entirely reliable, and that you’d call it something
other than courage.”
“Entirely true,” I said, “as you say.”
“Then I accept this as being courage,” he said.
“Yes, do accept it,” I said, “but as a citizen’s courage, and you’ll be accepting
it the right way. We’ll go over something still more beautiful in connection with it laterbcde430a
bc