[590d]
of that
best man1 who has within himself the
divine governing principle, not because we suppose, as Thrasymachus2 did in the case of
subjects, that the slave should be governed for his own harm, but on the
ground that it is better for everyone to be governed by the divine and the
intelligent, preferably indwelling and his own, but in default of that
imposed from without, in order that we all so far as possible may be akin
and friendly because our governance and guidance are the same?”
“Yes, and rightly so,” he said.
1 For the idea that it is better to be ruled by a better man Cf. Alc. I. 135 B-C, Polit. 296 B-C, Democr.fr. 75 (Diels ii.3 p. 77), Xen.Mem. i. 5. 5δουλεύοντα δὲ ταῖς τοιαύταις ἡδοναῖς ἱκετευτέον τοὺς θεοὺς δεσποτῶν ἀγαθῶν τυχεῖν, Xen.Cyr. viii. 1. 40βελτίονας εἶναι. Cf. also Laws 713 D-714 A, 627 E, Phaedo 62 D-E, and Laws 684 C. Cf. Ruskin, Queen of the Air, p. 210 (Brantwood ed., 1891): “The first duty of every man in the world is to find his true master, and, for his own good, submit to him; and to find his true inferior, and, for that inferior's good, conquer him.” Inge, Christian Ethics, p. 252: “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.” Carlyle (apud M. Barton and O. Sitwell, Victoriana): “Surely of all the rights of man the right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be gently or forcibly held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest.” Plato's idea is perhaps a source of Aristotle's theory of slavery, though differently expressed. Cf. Aristot.Pol. 1254 b 16 f., Newman i. pp. 109-110, 144 f., 378-379, ii. p. 107. Cf. also Polit. 309 A f., Epist. vii. 335 D, and Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, iii. p. 106.
2 Cf. 343 B-C.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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