me, and their talk of what they have seen will be
taken for the babbling of fools, or worse. Small wonder that those who
have beheld the light have but little mind to return to the twilight
cave which is the common world. But remember--everyone in the cave
possesses the faculty of sight if only his eyes be turned to the light.
Loose the fetters of carnal desires which hold him with his back to the
light, and every man _may_ be converted and live. So we must select
those who are most capable of facing the light, and see to it that they
return to the cave, to give the cave-dwellers the benefit of their
knowledge. And if this be for them a hardship, we must bear in mind as
before, that the good of the whole is what matters, not whether one or
another may suffer hardship for the sake of the whole.

How, then, shall we train them to the passage from darkness to light?
For this, our education in music and gymnastic is wholly inadequate. We
must proceed first to the science of numbers, then of geometry, then of
astronomy. And after astronomy, there is the sister science of abstract
harmonics--not of audible sounds. All of which are but the prelude to
the ultimate supreme science of dialectic, which carries the
intelligence to the contemplation of the idea of the good, the ultimate
goal. And here to attempt further explanation would be vanity. This is
the science of the pure reason, the coping-stone of knowledge.

We saw long ago that our rulers must possess every endowment of mind and
body, all cultivated to the highest degree. From the select we must
again select, at twenty, those who are most fit for the next ten years'
course of education; and from them, at thirty, we shall choose those who
can, with confidence, be taken to face the light; who have been tested
and found absolutely steadfast, not shaken by having got beyond the
conventional view of things. We will give them five or six years of
philosophy; then fifteen years of responsible office in the state; and
at fifty they shall return to philosophy, subject to the call upon them
to take up the duties of rulership and of educating their successors.

_VI.--Of State Types and Individual Types_

Before this digression we were on the point of discussing the four
vitiated forms of the state, and the corresponding individual types. The
four types of state as we know them in Hellas, are: the Spartan, where
personal ambition and honour rule, which we call timocracy; the
ol