Republic (6.506)

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.