"Then it is by virtue of its smallest class and minutest part of itself, and the wisdom that resides therein, in the part which takes the lead and rules, that a city established on principles of nature would be wise as a whole. And as it appears these are by nature the fewest, the class to which it pertains to partake of the knowledge which alone of all forms of knowledge deserves the name of wisdom." "Most true," he said. "This one of our four, then, we have, I know not how, discovered, the thing itself and its place in the state." "I certainly think," said he, "that it has been discovered sufficiently."
"But again there is no difficulty in seeing bravery itself and the part of the city in which it resides for which the city is called brave.*τοιαύτη such, that is, brave. The courage of a state, qua such, also resides in a small class, the warriors." "How so?" "Who," said I, "in calling a city cowardly or brave would fix his eyes on any other part of it than that which defends it and wages war in its behalf?" "No one at all," he said. "For the reason, I take it," said I, "that the cowardice or the bravery*ἀνδρεῖοι ὄντες: the ab urbe condita construction. Cf. 421 A. of the other inhabitants does not determine for it the one quality or the other.*τοίαν . . . ἢ τοίαν: cf. 437 E, Phaedrus 271 D, Laws 721 B." "It does not." "Bravery too, then, belongs to a city by virtue of a part of itself owing to its possession in that part of a quality that under all conditions will preserve the conviction that things to be feared are precisely those which and such as the lawgiver*Cf. 442 C, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1129 b 19 προστάττει δ’ ὁ νόμος καὶ τὰ τοῦ ἀνδρείου ἔργα ποιεῖν. inculcated in their education. Is not that what you call bravery?" "I don’t altogether understand*Cf. on 347 A. what you said," he replied; "but say it again." "A kind of conservation," I said, "is what I mean by bravery." "What sort of a conservation*σωτηρίαν is the genus; Philebus 34 A, Def. Plat. 412 A-B. Hence ποίαν as often in the minor dialogues sometimes with a play on its idiomatic, contemptuous meaning. Cf. Laches 194 D.?" "The conservation of the conviction which the law has created by education about fearful things—what and what sort of things are to be feared. And by the phrase "under all conditions*In the Laches 191 D-E, and the Laws 633 D also, Plato generalizes courage to include resistance to the lure of pleasure." I mean that the brave man preserves it both in pain and pleasures and in desires and fears and does not expel*Cf. 412 E. it from his soul. And I may illustrate it by a similitude*The moral training of the guardians is likened to the dyeing of selected white wools with fast colors. Cf. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1105 a 2, Marc. Aurel. iii. 4. 3 δικαιοσύνῃ βεβαμμένον εἰς βάθος, Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, i. 9 Be what thou virtuously art, and let not the ocean wash away thy tincture. The idea that the underlying subsatnce must be of neutral quality may have been suggested to Plato by Anaxagoras. It occurs in the Timaeus 50 D-E, whence it passed to Aristotle’s psychology and Lucretius. Cf. my paper on Plato, Epicurus, and Lucretius, Harvard Studies, vol. xii. p. 204. if you please." "I do." "You are aware that dyers when they wish to dye wool so as to hold the purple hue begin by selecting from the many colors there be the one nature of the white and then give it a careful preparatory treatment so that it will take the hue in the best way, and after the treatment,*For the technique cf. Blummer, Technologie, vol. i. pp. 227 ff. The θεράπευσις seems to be virtually identical with the προπαρασκευή, so that the aorist seems appropriate, unless with Adam’s earlier edition we transpose it immediately before οὕτω δή. then and then only, dip it in the dye. And things that are dyed by this process become fast-colored*For δευσοποιός cf. L. and S., and Nauck, Ἀδέσποτα 441 τοῖς δευσοποιοῖς φαρμάκοις ξανθίζεται. and washing either with or without lyes cannot take away the sheen of their hues. But otherwise you know what happens to them, whether*The two points of precaution are (1) to select white wool, not ἄλλα χρώματα, (2) to prepare by treatment even this. anyone dips other colors or even these without the preparatory treatment." "I know," he said, "that they present a ridiculous and washed-out appearance."