d, but his keen sight is taken into
the service of evil, and he is dangerous in proportion to his
intelligence?

Very true, he said.

But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days
of their youth; and they had been severed from the leaden weights, as
I may call them, with which they are born into the world, which lead
on to sensual pleasures, such as those of eating and drinking, and
drag them down and turn the vision of their souls about the things
that are below--if, I say, these natures had been released from these
tendencies and turned round to the truth, the very same faculty in
these very same persons would have seen the other as keenly as they
now see that on which the eye is fixt.

That is very likely.

Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely, or rather a
necessary inference from what has proceeded, that neither the
uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make
an end of their education, will be able ministers of state; not the
former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of
their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they
will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are
already in the islands of the blest.

Very true, he replied.

Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the state
will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which has
been already declared by us to be the greatest of all--to that
eminence they must ascend and arrive at the good, and when they have
ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.

What do you mean?

I mean that they remain in the upper world; but this must not be
allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the
den, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth
having or not.

But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them an inferior
life, when they might have a superior one?

You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the
legislator; he did not aim at making any one class in the state happy
above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole state, and he
held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them
benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not that they
should please themselves, but they were to be his instruments in
binding up the state.

True, he said, I had forgotten that.

FOOTNOTE