rse to paleness if appearing on the cheek of youth? In a word, there
is no excuse which you will not make, and nothing which you will not
say, in order not to lose a single flower that blooms in the spring-time
of youth.

If you make me an authority in matters of love, for the sake of the
argument, I assent.

And what do you say of lovers of wine? Do you not see them doing the
same? They are glad of any pretext of drinking any wine.

Very good.

And the same is true of ambitious men; if they cannot command an army,
they are willing to command a file; and if they cannot be honoured by
really great and important persons, they are glad to be honoured by
lesser and meaner people,--but honour of some kind they must have.

Exactly.

Once more let me ask: Does he who desires any class of goods, desire the
whole class or a part only?

The whole.

And may we not say of the philosopher that he is a lover, not of a part
of wisdom only, but of the whole?

Yes, of the whole.

And he who dislikes learning, especially in youth, when he has no power
of judging what is good and what is not, such an one we maintain not
to be a philosopher or a lover of knowledge, just as he who refuses his
food is not hungry, and may be said to have a bad appetite and not a
good one?

Very true, he said.

Whereas he who has a taste for every sort of knowledge and who is
curious to learn and is never satisfied, may be justly termed a
philosopher? Am I not right?

Glaucon said: If curiosity makes a philosopher, you will find many a
strange being will have a title to the name. All the lovers of sights
have a delight in learning, and must therefore be included. Musical
amateurs, too, are a folk strangely out of place among philosophers, for
they are the last persons in the world who would come to anything like
a philosophical discussion, if they could help, while they run about at
the Dionysiac festivals as if they had let out their ears to hear every
chorus; whether the performance is in town or country--that makes no
difference--they are there. Now are we to maintain that all these and
any who have similar tastes, as well as the professors of quite minor
arts, are philosophers?

Certainly not, I replied; they are only an imitation.

He said: Who then are the true philosophers?

Those, I said, who are lovers of the vision of truth.

That is also good, he said; but I should like to know what you mean?

To another, I replied, I might