self the
exact criterion in these matters--how to make a perfectly safe choice.
And, do you listen.

--I will; there may be something worth knowing in what you will say.

--Well!--only don't laugh if I seem a little fumbling in my efforts.
The fault is yours, in refusing to share your lights with me. Let
Philosophy, then, be like a city--a city whose citizens within it are a
happy people, as your master would tell you, having lately come thence,
as we suppose. All the virtues are theirs, and they are little less
than gods. Those acts of violence which happen among us are not to be
seen in their streets. They live together in one mind, very seemly;
the things which beyond [153] everything else cause men to contend
against each other, having no place upon them. Gold and silver,
pleasure, vainglory, they have long since banished, as being
unprofitable to the commonwealth; and their life is an unbroken calm,
in liberty, equality, an equal happiness.

--And is it not reasonable that all men should desire to be of a city
such as that, and take no account of the length and difficulty of the
way thither, so only they may one day become its freemen?

--It might well be the business of life:--leaving all else, forgetting
one's native country here, unmoved by the tears, the restraining hands,
of parents or children, if one had them--only bidding them follow the
same road; and if they would not or could not, shaking them off,
leaving one's very garment in their hands if they took hold on us, to
start off straightway for that happy place! For there is no fear, I
suppose, of being shut out if one came thither naked. I remember,
indeed, long ago an aged man related to me how things passed there,
offering himself to be my leader, and enrol me on my arrival in the
number of the citizens. I was but fifteen--certainly very foolish: and
it may be that I was then actually within the suburbs, or at the very
gates, of the city. Well, this aged man told me, among other things,
that all the citizens were wayfarers from afar. Among them were
barbarians and slaves, poor [154] men--aye! and cripples--all indeed
who truly desired that citizenship. For the only legal conditions of
enrolment were--not wealth, nor bodily beauty, nor noble
ancestry--things not named among them--but intelligence, and the desire
for moral beauty, and earnest labour. The last comer, thus qualified,
was made equal to the rest: master and slave, patrician, ple