309
Str. In the same way I think the kingly art, keeping for itself the function of supervision, will not allow the duly appointed teachers and foster fathers to give any training, unless they can thereby produce characters suitable to the constitution it is creating, but in these things only it exhorts them to give instruction. And those men who have no capacity for courage and self-restraint and the other qualities which tend towards virtue, but by the force of an evil nature are carried away into godlessness, violence, and injustice, it removes by inflicting upon them the punishments of death and exile and deprivation of the most important civic rights.
309
Y. Soc. That is about what people say, at any rate.
309
Str. And those in turn who wallow in ignorance and craven humility it places under the yoke of slavery.
309
Y. Soc. Quite right.
309
Str. As for the rest of the people, those whose natures are capable, if they get education, of being made into something fine and noble and of uniting with each other as art requires, the kingly art takes those natures which tend more towards courage, considering that their character is sturdier, like the warp in weaving, and those which incline towards decorum, for these, to continue the simile, are spun thick and soft like the threads of the woof, and tries to combine these natures of opposite tendencies and weave them together in the following manner.
309
Y. Soc. In what manner?
309
Str. First it binds the eternal part of their souls with a divine bond, to which that part is akin, and after the divine it binds the animal part of them with human bonds.
309
Y. Soc. Again I ask What do you mean?
309
Str. I mean that really true and assured opinion about honor, justice, goodness and their opposites is divine, and when it arises in men’s souls, it arises in a godlike race.
309
Y. Soc. That would be fitting, at any rate.
