m to
visit the house of an aged friend of his, Cephalus, whom he does not
visit too often. Him he finds seated in his court, crowned, as the
custom was, for the celebration of a family sacrifice, and beholds
beaming on his face the peace of a life well spent and reconciled.
They talk of the happiness that comes in old age to those who have done
good and not evil, and who are not too severely {147} tried in the
matter of worldly cares. Life to this good old man seems a very simple
matter; duty to God, duty to one's neighbours, each according to what
is prescribed and orderly; this is all, and this is sufficient.

Then comes in the questioning Socrates, with his doubts and
difficulties as to what is one's duty in special circumstances; and the
discussion is taken up, not by the good old man, "who goes away to the
sacrifice," but by his son, who can quote the authorities; and by
Thrasymachus, the Sophist, who will have nothing to do with authority,
but maintains that _interest_ is the only real meaning of justice, and
that Might is Right. Socrates, by analogy of the arts, shows that
Might absolutely without tincture of justice is mere weakness, and that
there is honour even among thieves. Yet the exhibition of the 'law
working in the members' seems to have its weak side so long as we look
to individual men, in whom there are many conflicting influences, and
many personal chances and difficulties, which obscure the relation
between just action and happiness.

Socrates therefore will have justice 'writ large' in the community as a
whole, first pictured in its simpler, and then in its more complex and
luxurious forms. The relation of the individual to the community is
represented chiefly as one of education and training; and many strange
theories--as of the equal {148} training of men and women, and the
community of wives, ideas partially drawn from Sparta--are woven into
the ideal structure. Then the dialogue rises to a larger view of
education, as a preparation of the soul of man, not for a community on
earth, but for that heavenly life which was suggested above (p. 144) in
the myth of the steeds.

The purely earthly unideal life is represented as a life of men tied
neck and heels from birth in a cave, having their backs to the light,
and their eyes fixed only on the shadows which are cast upon the wall.
These they take for the only realities, and they may acquire much skill
in interpreting the shadows. Turn these