Republic (6.506-6.508)

Least of all, he said. I fancy, at any rate, said I, that the just and the honorable, if their relation and reference to the good is not known,[*] will not have secured a guardian[*] of much worth in the man thus ignorant, and my surmise is that no one will understand them adequately before he knows this. You surmise well, he said. Then our constitution will have its perfect and definitive organization[*] only when such a guardian, who knows these things, oversees it. Necessarily, he said. But you yourself, Socrates, do you think that knowledge is the good or pleasure or something else and different? What a man it is, said I; you made it very plain[*] long ago that you would not be satisfied with what others think about it. Why, it does not seem right to me either, Socrates, he said, to be ready to state the opinions of others but not one’s own when one has occupied himself with the matter so long.[*] But then, said I, do you think it right to speak as having knowledge about things one does not know? By no means, he said, as having knowledge, but one ought to be willing to tell as his opinion what he opines. Nay, said I, have you not observed that opinions divorced from knowledge[*] are ugly things? The best of them are blind.[*] Or do you think that those who hold some true opinion without intelligence differ appreciably from blind men who go the right way? They do not differ at all, he said. Is it, then, ugly things that you prefer to contemplate, things blind and crooked, when you might hear from others what is luminous[*] and fair? Nay, in heaven’s name, Socrates, said Glaucon, do not draw back, as it were, at the very goal.[*] For it will content us if you explain the good even as you set forth the nature of justice, sobriety, and the other virtues. It will right well[*] content me, my dear fellow, I said, but I fear that my powers may fail and that in my eagerness I may cut a sorry figure and become a laughing-stock.[*] Nay, my beloved, let us dismiss for the time being the nature of the good in itself;[*] for to attain to my present surmise of that seems a pitch above the impulse that wings my flight today.[*] But of what seems to be the offspring of the good and most nearly made in its likeness[*] I am willing to speak if you too wish it, and otherwise to let the matter drop. Well, speak on, he said, for you will duly pay me the tale of the parent another time.

I could wish, I said, that I were able to make and you to receive the payment and not merely as now the interest. But at any rate receive this interest[*] and the offspring of the good. Have a care, however, lest I deceive you unintentionally with a false reckoning of the interest. We will do our best, he said, to be on our guard. Only speak on. Yes, I said, after first coming to an understanding with you and reminding you of what has been said here before and often on other occasions.[*] What? said he. We predicate to be[*] of many beautiful things and many good things, saying of them severally that they are, and so define them in our speech. We do. And again, we speak of a self-beautiful and of a good that is only and merely good, and so, in the case of all the things that we then posited as many, we turn about and posit each as a single idea or aspect, assuming it to be a unity and call it that which each really is.[*] It is so. And the one class of things we say can be seen but not thought, while the ideas can be thought but not seen. By all means. With which of the parts of ourselves, with which of our faculties, then, do we see visible things? With sight, he said. And do we not, I said, hear audibles with hearing, and perceive all sensibles with the other senses? Surely. Have you ever observed, said I, how much the greatest expenditure the creator[*] of the senses has lavished on the faculty of seeing and being seen?[*] Why, no, I have not, he said. Well, look at it thus. Do hearing and voice stand in need of another medium[*] so that the one may hear and the other be heard, in the absence of which third element the one will not hear and the other not be heard? They need nothing, he said. Neither, I fancy, said I, do many others, not to say that none require anything of the sort. Or do you know of any? Not I, he said. But do you not observe that vision and the visible do have this further need? How? Though vision may be in the eyes and its possessor may try to use it, and though color be present, yet without the presence of a third thing[*] specifically and naturally adapted to this purpose, you are aware that vision will see nothing and the colors will remain invisible.[*] What[*] is this thing of which you speak? he said. The thing, I said, that you call light. You say truly, he replied.

The bond, then, that yokes together visibility and the faculty of sight is more precious by no slight form[*] than that which unites the other pairs, if light is not without honor.It surely is far from being so, he said. Which one can you name of the divinities in heaven[*] as the author and cause of this, whose light makes our vision see best and visible things to be seen? Why, the one that you too and other people mean, he said; for your question evidently refers to the sun.[*] Is not this, then, the relation of vision to that divinity? What? Neither vision itself nor its vehicle, which we call the eye, is identical with the sun. Why, no. But it is, I think, the most sunlike[*] of all the instruments of sense. By far the most. And does it not receive the power which it possesses as an influx, as it were, dispensed from the sun? Certainly. Is it not also true that the sun is not vision, yet as being the cause thereof is beheld by vision itself? That is so, he said. This, then, you must understand that I meant by the offspring of the good[*] which the good begot to stand in a proportion[*] with itself: as the good is in the intelligible region to reason and the objects of reason, so is this in the visible world to vision and the objects of vision. How is that? he said; explain further. You are aware, I said, that when the eyes are no longer turned upon objects upon whose colors the light of day falls but that of the dim luminaries of night, their edge is blunted and they appear almost blind, as if pure vision did not dwell in them. Yes, indeed, he said. But when, I take it, they are directed upon objects illumined by the sun, they see clearly, and vision appears to reside in these same eyes. Certainly. Apply this comparison to the soul also in this way. When it is firmly fixed on the domain where truth and reality shine resplendent[*] it apprehends and knows them and appears to possess reason; but when it inclines to that region which is mingled with darkness, the world of becoming and passing away, it opines only and its edge is blunted, and it shifts its opinions hither and thither, and again seems as if it lacked reason. Yes, it does, This reality, then, that gives their truth to the objects of knowledge and the power of knowing to the knower, you must say is the idea[*] of good, and you must conceive it as being the cause of knowledge, and of truth in so far as known.[*] Yet fair as they both are, knowledge and truth, in supposing it to be something fairer still[*] than these you will think rightly of it.