V.—Of Shadows and Realities
Let me speak a parable. Humanity—ourselves—are as people dwelling ever bound and fettered in a twilit cave, with our backs to the light. Behind us is a parapet, and beyond the parapet a fire; all that we see is the shadows thrown on the wall that faces us by figures passing along the parapet behind us; all we hear is the echo of their voices. Now, if some of us are turned round to face the light and look on the real figures, they will be dazzled at first, and much more if they are taken out into the light, and up to face the sun himself; but presently they will see perfectly, and have all the joy thereof. Now send them back into the cave, and they will be apparently much blinder than the folk who have been there all the time, and their talk of what they have seen will be taken for the babbling of fools, or worse. Small wonder that those who have beheld the light have but little mind to return to the twilight cave which is the common world. But remember—everyone in the cave possesses the faculty of sight if only his eyes be turned to the light. Loose the fetters of carnal desires which hold him with his back to the light, and every man may be converted and live. So we must select those who are most capable of facing the light, and see to it that they return to the cave, to give the cave-dwellers the benefit of their knowledge. And if this be for them a hardship, we must bear in mind as before, that the good of the whole is what matters, not whether one or another may suffer hardship for the sake of the whole.
How, then, shall we train them to the passage from darkness to light? For this, our education in music and gymnastic is wholly inadequate. We must proceed first to the science of numbers, then of geometry, then of astronomy. And after astronomy, there is the sister science of abstract harmonics—not of audible sounds. All of which are but the prelude to the ultimate supreme science of dialectic, which carries the intelligence to the contemplation of the idea of the good, the ultimate goal. And here to attempt further explanation would be vanity. This is the science of the pure reason, the coping-stone of knowledge.
We saw long ago that our rulers must possess every endowment of mind and body, all cultivated to the highest degree. From the select we must again select, at twenty, those who are most fit for the next ten years' course of education; and from them, at thirty, we shall choose those who can, with confidence, be taken to face the light; who have been tested and found absolutely steadfast, not shaken by having got beyond the conventional view of things. We will give them five or six years of philosophy; then fifteen years of responsible office in the state; and at fifty they shall return to philosophy, subject to the call upon them to take up the duties of rulership and of educating their successors.
VI.—Of State Types and Individual Types
Before this digression we were on the point of discussing the four vitiated forms of the state, and the corresponding individual types. The four types of state as we know them in Hellas, are: the Spartan, where personal ambition and honour rule, which we call timocracy; the oligarchical, where wealth rules; the democratic; and the arbitrary rule of the individual, which we call tyranny. The comparison of this last—the supremely unjust—with our own—the supremely just—will show whether justice or injustice be the more desirable.
The perfect state degenerates to timocracy when the state's numerical law of generation [an unsolved riddle] has not been properly observed, and inferior offspring have entered in consequence into the ruling body. The introduction of private property will cause them to assume towards the commonalty the attitude, not of guardians, but of masters, and to be at odds among themselves; also, in their education gymnastic will acquire predominance over music. Ambition and party spirit become the characteristic features. When, in an ill-ordered state a great man withdraws from the corruption of politics into private life, we see the corresponding individual type in the son of such a one, egged on by his mother and flattering companions, to win back for himself at all costs the prestige which his father had resigned; personal ambition becomes his dominant characteristic.
Oligarchy is the next outcome of the introduction of private property; riches outweigh virtue, love of money the love of honour, and the rich procure for themselves the legal monopoly of political power. Here the state becomes divided against itself—there is one state of the rich and another of the poor—and the poor will be divided into the merely incompetent and the actively dangerous or predatory. And your corresponding individual is he whose father had won honours which had not saved him from ultimate ruin; so that the son rejects ambition and makes money his goal, till, for the sake of money, he will compass any baseness, though still only under a cloak of respectability.
In the oligarchy the avaricious encourage and foster extravagance in their neighbours. Men, ruined by money-lenders, turn on their moneyed rulers, overthrow them, and give everyone a share in the government. The result is that the state is not one, nor two, but diverse. Folk say what they like and do what they like, and anyone is a statesman who will wave the national flag. That is democracy. Such is the son of your miserly oligarch; deprived of unnecessary pleasures, he is tempted to wild dissipation. He has no education to help him to distinguish, and the vices of dissipation assume the aspect and titles of virtue. He fluctuates from one point of view to another—is one thing to-day and another to-morrow.