By this analogy, then,
said I, you must conceive what we too to the best of our ability were doing when we selected our soldiers and educated them in music Footnote 1Cf. 522 A, Philebus 17 B.
and exercises of the body. The sole aim of our contrivance was that they should be convinced and receive our laws like a dye as it were, so that their belief and faith might be Footnote 2γίγνοιτο is process; ἐκπλύναι (aorist) is a single event (μή). fast-colored both about the things that are to be feared and all other things because of the fitness of their nature and nurture, and that so their dyes might not be washed out by those lyes that have such dread Footnote 3δεινά: it is not fanciful to feel the unity of Plato’s imagination as well as of his thought in the recurrence of this word in the δεινὰ καὶ ἀναγκαῖα of the mortal soul in Timaeus 69 C. power to scour our faiths away, pleasure more potent than any detergent or abstergent to accomplish this, and pain and fear and desire more sure than any lye. This power in the soul, then, this unfailing conservation of right and lawful belief Footnote 4Cf. Protagoras 360 C-D, Laws 632 C, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1116 b 24. Strictly speaking, Plato would recognize four grades, (1) philosophic bravery, (2) the bravery of the ἐπίκουροι here defined, (3) casual civic bravery in ordinary states, (4) animal instinct, which hardly deserves the name. Cf. Laches 196 E, Mill, Nature, p. 47
Consistent courage is always the effect of cultivation,
etc., Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 46 and 77. about things to be and not to be feared is what I call and would assume to be courage, unless you have something different to say.No, nothing,
said he; for I presume that you consider mere right opinion about the same matters not produced by education, that which may manifest itself in a beast or a slave, Footnote 5Phaedo 69 B. to have little or nothing to do with law Footnote 6νόμιμον of the Mss. yields quite as good a meaning as Stobaeus’s μόνιμον. The virtuous habit that is inculcated by law is more abiding than accidental virtue. and that you would call it by another name than courage.
That is most true,
said I. Well then,
he said, I accept this as bravery.
Do so,
said I, and you will be right with the reservation Footnote 7γε marks a reservation as 415 E
στρατιωτικάς γε
, Politicus 30 E, Laws 710 A τὴν δημώδη γε
. Plotinus, unlike some modern commentators, perceived this. Cf. Enn. i. 2. 3. In Phaedo 82 A πολιτικήν
is used disparagingly of ordinary bourgeois virtue. In Xenophon Rep. Lac. 10. 7 and Aristotle Eth. Nic. iii. 8. 1 (1116 a 17) there is no disparagement. The word is often used of citizen soldiery as opposed to professional mercenaries. that it is the courage of a citizen. Some other time, Footnote 8This dismissal of the subject is sometimes fancifully taken as a promise of the Laches. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 77 and 603. if it please you, we will discuss it more fully. At present we were not seeking this but justice; and for the purpose of that inquiry I believe we have done enough.You are quite right,
he said.
Two things still remain,
said I, to make out in our city, soberness Footnote 9Matthew Arnold’s word. But cf. on 398 D and 430 E —
sobriety,
temperance,
Besonnenheit.
and the object of the whole inquiry, justice.Quite so.
If there were only some way to discover justice so that we need not further concern ourselves about soberness.
Well, I, for my part,
he said, neither know of any such way nor would I wish justice to be discovered first if that means that we are not to go on to the consideration of soberness. But if you desire to please me, consider this before that.
It would certainly be very wrong Footnote 10εἰ μὴ ἀδικῶ is idiomatic, I ought to. Cf. 608 D, 612, Menexenus 236 B. of me not to desire it,
said I. Go on with the inquiry then,
he said. I must go on,
I replied, and viewed from here it bears more likeness to a kind of concord and harmony than the other virtues did.
How so?
Soberness is a kind of beautiful order Footnote 11Cf. Gorgias 506 E ff. σωφροσύνη and σωφρονεῖν sometimes mean etymologically of sound mind or level head, with or without ethical suggestion, according to the standpoint of the spaeker. Cf. Protagoras 333 B-C. Its two chief meanings in Greek usage are given in 389 D-E: subordination to due authority, and control of appetite, both raised to higher significance in Plato’s definition. As in the case of bravery, Plato distinguishes the temperamental, the bourgeois, the disciplined, and the philosophical virtue. But he affects to feel something paradoxical in the very idea of self-control, as perhaps there is. Cf. Laws 626 E ff., 863 D, A.J.P. vol. xiii. pp. 361 f., Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 77 and 78. and a continence of certain pleasures and appetites, as they say, using the phrase
master of himself
I know not how; and there are other similar expressions that as it were point us to the same trail. Is that not so?Most certainly.
Book 4