t which is seldom seen among men.

Rare indeed.

And what numberless and powerful causes tend to destroy these rare
natures!

What causes?

In the first place there are their own virtues, their courage,
temperance, and the rest of them, every one of which praise worthy
qualities (and this is a most singular circumstance) destroys and
distracts from philosophy the soul which is the possessor of them.

That is very singular, he replied.

Then there are all the ordinary goods of life--beauty, wealth,
strength, rank, and great connections in the State--you understand the
sort of things--these also have a corrupting and distracting effect.

I understand; but I should like to know more precisely what you mean
about them.

Grasp the truth as a whole, I said, and in the right way; you will then
have no difficulty in apprehending the preceding remarks, and they will
no longer appear strange to you.

And how am I to do so? he asked.

Why, I said, we know that all germs or seeds, whether vegetable or
animal, when they fail to meet with proper nutriment or climate or
soil, in proportion to their vigour, are all the more sensitive to the
want of a suitable environment, for evil is a greater enemy to what is
good than what is not.

Very true.

There is reason in supposing that the finest natures, when under alien
conditions, receive more injury than the inferior, because the contrast
is greater.

Certainly.

And may we not say, Adeimantus, that the most gifted minds, when they
are ill-educated, become pre-eminently bad? Do not great crimes and
the spirit of pure evil spring out of a fulness of nature ruined by
education rather than from any inferiority, whereas weak natures are
scarcely capable of any very great good or very great evil?

There I think that you are right.

And our philosopher follows the same analogy-he is like a plant which,
having proper nurture, must necessarily grow and mature into all
virtue, but, if sown and planted in an alien soil, becomes the most
noxious of all weeds, unless he be preserved by some divine power. Do
you really think, as people so often say, that our youth are corrupted
by Sophists, or that private teachers of the art corrupt them in any
degree worth speaking of? Are not the public who say these things the
greatest of all Sophists? And do they not educate to perfection young
and old, men and women alike, and fashion them after their own hearts?

When is this accompl