practised no such art. They were acting in the interest of
the public, and did not wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a
puny offspring to wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly cured;
and if a man was wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let
him eat and drink what he liked. But they declined to treat intemperate
and worthless subjects, even though they might have made large fortunes
out of them. As to the story of Pindar, that Asclepius was slain by a
thunderbolt for restoring a rich man to life, that is a lie--following
our old rule we must say either that he did not take bribes, or that he
was not the son of a god.

Glaucon then asks Socrates whether the best physicians and the best
judges will not be those who have had severally the greatest experience
of diseases and of crimes. Socrates draws a distinction between the two
professions. The physician should have had experience of disease in
his own body, for he cures with his mind and not with his body. But
the judge controls mind by mind; and therefore his mind should not be
corrupted by crime. Where then is he to gain experience? How is he to be
wise and also innocent? When young a good man is apt to be deceived by
evil-doers, because he has no pattern of evil in himself; and therefore
the judge should be of a certain age; his youth should have been
innocent, and he should have acquired insight into evil not by the
practice of it, but by the observation of it in others. This is
the ideal of a judge; the criminal turned detective is wonderfully
suspicious, but when in company with good men who have experience, he is
at fault, for he foolishly imagines that every one is as bad as himself.
Vice may be known of virtue, but cannot know virtue. This is the sort of
medicine and this the sort of law which will prevail in our State; they
will be healing arts to better natures; but the evil body will be left
to die by the one, and the evil soul will be put to death by the other.
And the need of either will be greatly diminished by good music which
will give harmony to the soul, and good gymnastic which will give
health to the body. Not that this division of music and gymnastic really
corresponds to soul and body; for they are both equally concerned with
the soul, which is tamed by the one and aroused and sustained by the
other. The two together supply our guardians with their twofold nature.
The passionate disposition when it has too much gymnas