have a better?

You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the
legislator, who 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 the State, and therefore benefactors of one another;
to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his
instruments in binding up the State.

True, he said, I had forgotten.

Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our
philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain
to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to
share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up
at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them.
Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a
culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into
the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other
citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they
have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty.
Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general
underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you
have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the
inhabitants of the den, and you will know what the several images are,
and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just
and good in their truth. And thus our State, which is also yours, will
be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit
unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about
shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in
their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which
the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most
quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.

Quite true, he replied.

And will our pupils, when they hear this, refuse to take their turn at
the toils of State, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of
their time with one another in the heavenly light?

Impossible, he answered; for they are just men, and the commands which
we impose upon them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of
them will take office as a stern neces