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ministration of public affairs, poor and hungering after the' own private advantage, thinking that hence they are to snatch the chief good, order there can never be; for they will be fighting about office, and the civil and domestic broils which thus arise will be the ruin of the rulers themselves and of the whole State. Most true, he replied. And the only life which looks down upon the life of political ambition is that of true philosophy. Do you know of any other? Indeed, I do not, he said. And those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight. No question. Who then are those whom we shall compel to be guardians? Surely they will be the men who are wisest about affairs of State, and by whom the State is best administered, and who at the same time have other honours and another and a better life than that of politics? They are the men, and I will choose them, he replied. And now shall we consider in what way such guardians will be produced, and how they are to be brought from darkness to light,--as some are said to have ascended from the world below to the gods? By all means, he replied. The process, I said, is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the turning round of a soul passing from a day which is little better than night to the true day of being, that is, the ascent from below, which we affirm to be true philosophy? Quite so. And should we not enquire what sort of knowledge has the power of effecting such a change? Certainly. What sort of knowledge is there which would draw the soul from becoming to being? And another consideration has just occurred to me: You will remember that our young men are to be warrior athletes Yes, that was said. Then this new kind of knowledge must have an additional quality? What quality? Usefulness in war. Yes, if possible. There were two parts in our former scheme of education, were there not? Just so. There was gymnastic which presided over the growth and decay of the body, and may therefore be regarded as having to do with generation and corruption? True. Then that is not the knowledge which we are seeking to discover? No. But what do you say of music, which also entered to a certain extent into our former scheme? Music, he said, as you will remember, was the counterpart of gymnastic, and trained the guardians by the influences of habit, by
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