bject. With him a word must answer to an idea; and he could not
conceive of an opinion which was an opinion about nothing. The influence
of analogy led him to invent 'parallels and conjugates' and to overlook
facts. To us some of his difficulties are puzzling only from their
simplicity: we do not perceive that the answer to them 'is tumbling out
at our feet.' To the mind of early thinkers, the conception of not-being
was dark and mysterious; they did not see that this terrible apparition
which threatened destruction to all knowledge was only a logical
determination. The common term under which, through the accidental use
of language, two entirely different ideas were included was another
source of confusion. Thus through the ambiguity of (Greek) Plato,
attempting to introduce order into the first chaos of human thought,
seems to have confused perception and opinion, and to have failed to
distinguish the contingent from the relative. In the Theaetetus the
first of these difficulties begins to clear up; in the Sophist the
second; and for this, as well as for other reasons, both these dialogues
are probably to be regarded as later than the Republic.

BOOK VI. Having determined that the many have no knowledge of true
being, and have no clear patterns in their minds of justice, beauty,
truth, and that philosophers have such patterns, we have now to ask
whether they or the many shall be rulers in our State. But who can doubt
that philosophers should be chosen, if they have the other qualities
which are required in a ruler? For they are lovers of the knowledge of
the eternal and of all truth; they are haters of falsehood; their meaner
desires are absorbed in the interests of knowledge; they are spectators
of all time and all existence; and in the magnificence of their
contemplation the life of man is as nothing to them, nor is death
fearful. Also they are of a social, gracious disposition, equally free
from cowardice and arrogance. They learn and remember easily; they have
harmonious, well-regulated minds; truth flows to them sweetly by nature.
Can the god of Jealousy himself find any fault with such an assemblage
of good qualities?

Here Adeimantus interposes:--'No man can answer you, Socrates; but every
man feels that this is owing to his own deficiency in argument. He is
driven from one position to another, until he has nothing more to say,
just as an unskilful player at draughts is reduced to his last move by
a more skill