ot understand you.

I fear that I must have been talking darkly, like the tragedians. I only
mean that some men are changed by persuasion and that others forget;
argument steals away the hearts of one class, and time of the other; and
this I call theft. Now you understand me?

Yes.

Those again who are forced, are those whom the violence of some pain or
grief compels to change their opinion.

I understand, he said, and you are quite right.

And you would also acknowledge that the enchanted are those who change
their minds either under the softer influence of pleasure, or the
sterner influence of fear?

Yes, he said; everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

Therefore, as I was just now saying, we must enquire who are the best
guardians of their own conviction that what they think the interest
of the State is to be the rule of their lives. We must watch them from
their youth upwards, and make them perform actions in which they are
most likely to forget or to be deceived, and he who remembers and is
not deceived is to be selected, and he who fails in the trial is to be
rejected. That will be the way?

Yes.

And there should also be toils and pains and conflicts prescribed for
them, in which they will be made to give further proof of the same
qualities.

Very right, he replied.

And then, I said, we must try them with enchantments--that is the third
sort of test--and see what will be their behaviour: like those who take
colts amid noise and tumult to see if they are of a timid nature, so
must we take our youth amid terrors of some kind, and again pass them
into pleasures, and prove them more thoroughly than gold is proved in
the furnace, that we may discover whether they are armed against
all enchantments, and of a noble bearing always, good guardians of
themselves and of the music which they have learned, and retaining under
all circumstances a rhythmical and harmonious nature, such as will be
most serviceable to the individual and to the State. And he who at every
age, as boy and youth and in mature life, has come out of the trial
victorious and pure, shall be appointed a ruler and guardian of the
State; he shall be honoured in life and death, and shall receive
sepulture and other memorials of honour, the greatest that we have to
give. But him who fails, we must reject. I am inclined to think that
this is the sort of way in which our rulers and guardians should be
chosen and appointed. I speak gene