[429d]
and
pleasures and in desires and fears and does not expel1 it from his soul. And I may illustrate it
by a similitude2 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,3 then and then only, dip it in the dye.
1 Cf. 412 E.
2 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. 3δικαιοσύνῃ 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.
3 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.
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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