of the people and will be spoiled by them. Many a noble Athenian has
been ruined in this way. For the demus of the great-hearted Erechteus is
of a fair countenance, but you should see him naked; wherefore observe
the caution which I give you.

ALCIBIADES: What caution?

SOCRATES: Practise yourself, sweet friend, in learning what you ought to
know, before you enter on politics; and then you will have an antidote
which will keep you out of harm's way.

ALCIBIADES: Good advice, Socrates, but I wish that you would explain to
me in what way I am to take care of myself.

SOCRATES: Have we not made an advance? for we are at any rate tolerably
well agreed as to what we are, and there is no longer any danger, as
we once feared, that we might be taking care not of ourselves, but of
something which is not ourselves.

ALCIBIADES: That is true.

SOCRATES: And the next step will be to take care of the soul, and look
to that?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Leaving the care of our bodies and of our properties to
others?

ALCIBIADES: Very good.

SOCRATES: But how can we have a perfect knowledge of the things of the
soul?--For if we know them, then I suppose we shall know ourselves.
Can we really be ignorant of the excellent meaning of the Delphian
inscription, of which we were just now speaking?

ALCIBIADES: What have you in your thoughts, Socrates?

SOCRATES: I will tell you what I suspect to be the meaning and lesson
of that inscription. Let me take an illustration from sight, which I
imagine to be the only one suitable to my purpose.

ALCIBIADES: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Consider; if some one were to say to the eye, 'See thyself,'
as you might say to a man, 'Know thyself,' what is the nature and
meaning of this precept? Would not his meaning be:--That the eye should
look at that in which it would see itself?

ALCIBIADES: Clearly.

SOCRATES: And what are the objects in looking at which we see ourselves?

ALCIBIADES: Clearly, Socrates, in looking at mirrors and the like.

SOCRATES: Very true; and is there not something of the nature of a
mirror in our own eyes?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Did you ever observe that the face of the person looking into
the eye of another is reflected as in a mirror; and in the visual organ
which is over against him, and which is called the pupil, there is a
sort of image of the person looking?

ALCIBIADES: That is quite true.

SOCRATES: Then the eye, looking at