6.10
Moreover, since the crops grow and the cattle on a farm graze outside the walls, husbandry seemed to us to help in some measure to make the workers valiant. And so this way of making a living appeared to be held in the highest estimation by our states, because it seems to turn out the best citizens and most loyal to the community.
6.11
I have already heard enough, I think, Socrates, to convince me that it is in the highest degree honourable, good and pleasant to get a living by husbandry. But you told me that you have discovered the reasons why some farmers are so successful that husbandry yields them all they need in abundance, and others are so inefficient that they find farming unprofitable. I should like to hear the reasons in each case, in order that we may do what is good and avoid what is harmful.
6.12
Well then, Critobulus, I propose to give you a complete account of an interview I once had with a man whom I took to be really one of those who are justly styled gentlemen. I should greatly like to hear it, Socrates, for I long to deserve that title myself.
6.13
Then I will tell you how I came to take note of him. For it took me a very little time to visit our good builders, good smiths, good painters, good sculptors, and other people of the kind, and to inspect those of their works that are declared to be beautiful;
6.14
but I felt a desire to meet one of those who are called by that grand name gentleman, which implies beautiful as well as good, in order to consider what they did to deserve it.
6.15
And, first, because the epithet beautiful is added to good, I went up to every person I noticed, and tried to discover whether I could anywhere see goodness in combination with beauty.
6.16
But after all, it was not so: I thought I discovered that some who were beautiful to look at were thoroughly depraved in their minds. So I decided to let good looks alone, and to seek out someone known as a gentleman.
