as agreed that they were to be lovers of
their country, and were to be tested in the refiner's fire of pleasures
and pains, and those who came forth pure and remained fixed in their
principles were to have honours and rewards in life and after death.
But at this point, the argument put on her veil and turned into another
path. I hesitated to make the assertion which I now hazard,--that our
guardians must be philosophers. You remember all the contradictory
elements, which met in the philosopher--how difficult to find them all
in a single person! Intelligence and spirit are not often combined with
steadiness; the stolid, fearless, nature is averse to intellectual toil.
And yet these opposite elements are all necessary, and therefore, as
we were saying before, the aspirant must be tested in pleasures and
dangers; and also, as we must now further add, in the highest branches
of knowledge. You will remember, that when we spoke of the virtues
mention was made of a longer road, which you were satisfied to leave
unexplored. 'Enough seemed to have been said.' Enough, my friend; but
what is enough while anything remains wanting? Of all men the guardian
must not faint in the search after truth; he must be prepared to take
the longer road, or he will never reach that higher region which is
above the four virtues; and of the virtues too he must not only get an
outline, but a clear and distinct vision. (Strange that we should be so
precise about trifles, so careless about the highest truths!) 'And what
are the highest?' You to pretend unconsciousness, when you have so often
heard me speak of the idea of good, about which we know so little, and
without which though a man gain the world he has no profit of it! Some
people imagine that the good is wisdom; but this involves a circle,--the
good, they say, is wisdom, wisdom has to do with the good. According to
others the good is pleasure; but then comes the absurdity that good is
bad, for there are bad pleasures as well as good. Again, the good must
have reality; a man may desire the appearance of virtue, but he will not
desire the appearance of good. Ought our guardians then to be ignorant
of this supreme principle, of which every man has a presentiment, and
without which no man has any real knowledge of anything? 'But, Socrates,
what is this supreme principle, knowledge or pleasure, or what? You may
think me troublesome, but I say that you have no business to be always
repeating the doctr