gument--unless he can do
all this, you would say that he knows neither the idea of good nor any
other good; he apprehends only a shadow, if anything at all, which is
given by opinion and not by science;--dreaming and slumbering in this
life, before he is well awake here, he arrives at the world below, and
has his final quietus.

In all that I should most certainly agree with you.

And surely you would not have the children of your ideal State, whom
you are nurturing and educating--if the ideal ever becomes a
reality--you would not allow the future rulers to be like posts, having
no reason in them, and yet to be set in authority over the highest
matters?

Certainly not.

Then you will make a law that they shall have such an education as will
enable them to attain the greatest skill in asking and answering
questions?

Yes, he said, you and I together will make it.

Dialectic, then, as you will agree, is the coping-stone of the
sciences, and is set over them; no other science can be placed
higher--the nature of knowledge can no further go?

I agree, he said.

But to whom we are to assign these studies, and in what way they are to
be assigned, are questions which remain to be considered?

Yes, clearly.

You remember, I said, how the rulers were chosen before?

Certainly, he said.

The same natures must still be chosen, and the preference again given
to the surest and the bravest, and, if possible, to the fairest; and,
having noble and generous tempers, they should also have the natural
gifts which will facilitate their education.

And what are these?

Such gifts as keenness and ready powers of acquisition; for the mind
more often faints from the severity of study than from the severity of
gymnastics: the toil is more entirely the mind's own, and is not
shared with the body.

Very true, he replied.

Further, he of whom we are in search should have a good memory, and be
an unwearied solid man who is a lover of labour in any line; or he will
never be able to endure the great amount of bodily exercise and to go
through all the intellectual discipline and study which we require of
him.

Certainly, he said; he must have natural gifts.

The mistake at present is, that those who study philosophy have no
vocation, and this, as I was before saying, is the reason why she has
fallen into disrepute: her true sons should take her by the hand and
not bastards.

What do you mean?

In the first place, her vot