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?