Section 489

With such goings-on aboard ship do you not think that the real pilot would in very deed 1 be called a star-gazer, an idle babbler, a useless fellow, by the sailors in ships managed after this fashion? Quite so, said Adeimantus. You take my meaning, I presume, and do not require us to put the comparison to the proof 2 and show that the condition 3 we have described is the exact counterpart of the relation of the state to the true philosophers. It is indeed, he said. To begin with, then, teach this parable 4 to the man who is surprised that philosophers are not honored in our cities, and try to convince him that it would be far more surprising if they were honored. I will teach him, 5 he said. And say to him further: You are right in affirming that the finest spirit among the philosophers are of no service to the multitude. But bid him blame for this uselessness, 6 not the finer spirits, but those who do not know how to make use of them. For it is not the natural 7 course of things that the pilot should beg the sailors to be ruled by him or that wise men should go to the doors of the rich. 8 The author of that epigram 9 was a liar. But the true nature of things is that whether the sick man be rich or poor he must needs go to the door of the physician, and everyone who needs to be governed 10 to the door of the man who knows how to govern, not that the ruler should implore his natural subjects to let themselves be ruled, if he is really good for anything. 11 But you will make no mistake in likening our present political rulers to the sort of sailors we are just describing, and those whom these call useless and star-gazing ideologists to the true pilots. Just so, he said. Hence, and under these conditions, we cannot expect that the noblest pursuit should be highly esteemed by those whose way of life is quite the contrary. But far the greatest and chief disparagement of philosophy is brought upon it by the pretenders 12 to that way of life, those whom you had in mind when you affirmed that the accuser of philosophy says that the majority of her followers 13 are rascals and the better sort useless, while I admitted 14 that what you said was true. Is not that so? Yes. Have we not, then, explained the cause of the uselessness of the better sort? We have. Shall we next set forth the inevitableness of the degeneracy of the majority, and try to show if we can that philosophy is not to be blamed for this either? By all means.