Images wherever they are found, not slighting them either in small

things or great, but believing them all to be within the sphere of

one art and study.

Most assuredly.

And when a beautiful soul harmonises with a beautiful form, and the

two are cast in one mould, that will be the fairest of sights to him

who has an eye to see it?

The fairest indeed.

And the fairest is also the loveliest?

That may be assumed.

And the man who has the spirit of harmony will be most in love with

the loveliest; but he will not love him who is of an inharmonious

soul?

That is true, he replied, if the deficiency be in his soul; but if

there be any merely bodily defect in another he will be patient of

it, and will love all the same.

I perceive, I said, that you have or have had experiences of this

sort, and I agree. But let me ask you another question: Has excess

of pleasure any affinity to temperance?

How can that be? he replied; pleasure deprives a man of the use of

his faculties quite as much as pain.

Or any affinity to virtue in general?

None whatever.

Any affinity to wantonness and intemperance?

Yes, the greatest.

And is there any greater or keener pleasure than that of sensual love?

No, nor a madder.

Whereas true love is a love of beauty and order --temperate and harmonious?

Quite true, he said.

Then no intemperance or madness should be allowed to approach true

love?

Certainly not.

Then mad or intemperate pleasure must never be allowed to come near

the lover and his beloved; neither of them can have any part in it

if their love is of the right sort?

No, indeed, Socrates, it must never come near them.

Then I suppose that in the city which we are founding you would make

a law to the effect that a friend should use no other familiarity

to his love than a father would use to his son, and then only for

a noble purpose, and he must first have the other's consent; and this

rule is to limit him in all his intercourse, and he is never to be

seen going further, or, if he exceeds, he is to be deemed guilty of

coarseness and bad taste.

I quite agree, he said.

Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending; for what should be

the end of music if not the love of beauty?

I agree, he said.

After music comes gymnastic, in which our youth are next to be trained.

Certainly.

Gymnastic as well as music should begin in early years; the training

in it should be careful and should continue through life. Now my belief

is, --and this is a matter upon which I should like to have your opinion

in confirmation of my own, but my own belief is, --not that the good

body by any bodily excellence improves the soul, but, on the contrary,

that the good soul, by her own excellence, improves the body as far

as this may be possible. What do you say?

Yes, I agree.

Then, to the mind when adequately trained, we shall be right in handing

over the more particular care of the body; and in order to avoid prolixity

we will now only give the general outlines of the subject.

Very good.

That they must abstain from intoxication has been already remarked

by us; for of all persons a guardian should be the last to get drunk

and not know where in the world he is.

Yes, he said; that a guardian should require another guardian to take

care of him is ridiculous indeed.

But next, what shall we say of their food; for the men are in training

for the great contest of all --are they not?

Yes, he said.

And will the habit of body of our ordinary athletes be suited to them?

Why not?

I am afraid, I said, that a habit of body such as they have is but

a sleepy sort of thing, and rather perilous to health. Do you not

observe that these athletes sleep away their lives, and are liable

to most dangerous illnesses if they depart, in ever so slight a degree,

from their customary regimen?

Yes, I do.

Then, I said, a finer sort of training will be required for our warrior

athletes, who are to be like wakeful dogs, and to see and hear with

the utmost keenness; amid the many changes of water and also of food,

of summer heat and winter cold, which they will have to endure when

on a campaign, they must not be liable to break down in health.

That is my view.

The really excellent gymnastic is twin sister of that simple music

which we were just now describing.

How so?

Why, I conceive that there is a gymnastic which, like our music, is

simple and good; and especially the military gymnastic.

What do you mean?

My meaning may be learned from Homer; he, you know, feeds his heroes

at their feasts, when they are campaigning, on soldiers' fare; they

have no fish, although they are on the shores of the Hellespont, and

they are not allowed boiled meats but only roast, which is the food

most convenient for soldiers, requiring only that they should light

a fire, and not involving the trouble of carrying about pots and pans.

True.

And I can hardly be mistaken in saying that sweet sauces are nowhere

mentioned in Homer. In proscribing them, however, he is not singular;

all professional athletes are well aware that a man who is to be in

good condition should take nothing of the kind.

Yes, he said; and knowing this, they are quite right in not taking

them.

Then you would not approve of Syracusan dinners, and the refinements

of Sicilian cookery?

I think not.

Nor, if a man is to be in condition, would you allow him to have a

Corinthian girl as his fair friend?

Certainly not.

Neither would you approve of the delicacies, as they are thought,

of Athenian confectionery?

Certainly not.

All such feeding and living may be rightly compared by us to melody

and song composed in the panharmonic style, and in all the rhythms.

Exactly.

There complexity engendered license, and here disease; whereas simplicity

in music was the parent of temperance in the soul; and simplicity

in gymnastic of health in the body.

Most true, he said.

But when intemperance and disease multiply in a State, halls of justice

and medicine are always being opened; and the arts of the doctor and

the lawyer give themselves airs, finding how keen is the interest

which not only the slaves but the freemen of a city take about them.

Of course.

And yet what greater proof can there be of a bad and disgraceful state

of education than this, that not only artisans and the meaner sort

of people need the skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but

also those who would profess to have had a liberal education? Is it

not disgraceful, and a great sign of want of good-breeding, that a

man should have to go abroad for his law and physic because he has

none of his own at home, and must therefore surrender himself into

the hands of other men whom he makes lords and judges over him?

Of all things, he said, the most disgraceful.

Would you say 'most,' I replied, when you consider that there is a

further stage of the evil in which a man is not only a life-long litigant,

passing all his days in the courts, either as plaintiff or defendant,

but is actually led by his bad taste to pride himself on his litigiousness;

he imagines that he is a master in dishonesty; able to take every

crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole, bending like

a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for what? --in

order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not knowing that

so to order his life as to be able to do without a napping judge is

a far higher and nobler sort of thing. Is not that still more disgraceful?

Yes, he said, that is still more disgraceful.

Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound

has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just because,

by indolence and a habit of life such as we have been describing,

men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies were

a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names

for diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a

disgrace?

Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and newfangled names

to diseases.

Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such diseases