r form and beauty as well as for
their strength and success in games, or, again, for their birth and the
qualities of their ancestors; and some who were the reverse of famous
for the opposite qualities. And of women likewise; there was not,
however, any definite character them, because the soul, when choosing a
new life, must of necessity become different. But there was every
other quality, and the all mingled with one another, and also with
elements of wealth and poverty, and disease and health; and there were
mean states also. And here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme peril of
our human state; and therefore the utmost care should be taken. Let
each one of us leave every other kind of knowledge and seek and follow
one thing only, if peradventure he may be able to learn and may find
some one who will make him able to learn and discern between good and
evil, and so to choose always and everywhere the better life as he has
opportunity. He should consider the bearing of all these things which
have been mentioned severally and collectively upon virtue; he should
know what the effect of beauty is when combined with poverty or wealth
in a particular soul, and what are the good and evil consequences of
noble and humble birth, of private and public station, of strength and
weakness, of cleverness and dullness, and of all the soul, and the
operation of them when conjoined; he will then look at the nature of
the soul, and from the consideration of all these qualities he will be
able to determine which is the better and which is the worse; and so he
will choose, giving the name of evil to the life which will make his
soul more unjust, and good to the life which will make his soul more
just; all else he will disregard. For we have seen and know that this
is the best choice both in life and after death. A man must take with
him into the world below an adamantine faith in truth and right, that
there too he may be undazzled by the desire of wealth or the other
allurements of evil, lest, coming upon tyrannies and similar
villainies, he do irremediable wrongs to others and suffer yet worse
himself; but let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes
on either side, as far as possible, not only in this life but in all
that which is to come. For this is the way of happiness.

And according to the report of the messenger from the other world this
was what the prophet said at the time: 'Even for the last comer, if he
cho