xury will be
wanted. There will be dancers, painters, sculptors, musicians, cooks,
barbers, tire-women, nurses, artists; swineherds and neatherds too for
the animals, and physicians to cure the disorders of which luxury is the
source. To feed all these superfluous mouths we shall need a part of
our neighbour's land, and they will want a part of ours. And this is the
origin of war, which may be traced to the same causes as other political
evils. Our city will now require the slight addition of a camp, and
the citizen will be converted into a soldier. But then again our old
doctrine of the division of labour must not be forgotten. The art of
war cannot be learned in a day, and there must be a natural aptitude
for military duties. There will be some warlike natures who have this
aptitude--dogs keen of scent, swift of foot to pursue, and strong of
limb to fight. And as spirit is the foundation of courage, such natures,
whether of men or animals, will be full of spirit. But these spirited
natures are apt to bite and devour one another; the union of
gentleness to friends and fierceness against enemies appears to be an
impossibility, and the guardian of a State requires both qualities. Who
then can be a guardian? The image of the dog suggests an answer. For
dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. Your dog is a
philosopher who judges by the rule of knowing or not knowing; and
philosophy, whether in man or beast, is the parent of gentleness. The
human watchdogs must be philosophers or lovers of learning which will
make them gentle. And how are they to be learned without education?

But what shall their education be? Is any better than the old-fashioned
sort which is comprehended under the name of music and gymnastic? Music
includes literature, and literature is of two kinds, true and false.
'What do you mean?' he said. I mean that children hear stories before
they learn gymnastics, and that the stories are either untrue, or have
at most one or two grains of truth in a bushel of falsehood. Now early
life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they will
have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a censorship
of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others. Some of them are
very improper, as we may see in the great instances of Homer and Hesiod,
who not only tell lies but bad lies; stories about Uranus and Saturn,
which are immoral as well as false, and which should never be spoken o