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[456d] the nature which we hand over to it is the same.” “There will be no difference.” “How are you minded, now, in this matter?” “In what?” “In the matter of supposing some men to be better and some worse,1 or do you think them all alike?” “By no means.” “In the city, then, that we are founding, which do you think will prove the better men, the guardians receiving the education which we have described or the cobblers educated by the art of cobbling2?” “An absurd question,” he said.

1 This is only a more complicated case of the point of style noted on 349 D. Cf. Cratylus 386 A, Sophist 247 A.

2 Cf. on 421 A. We should not press this incidental phrase to prove that Plato would not educate all the citizens, as he in fact does in the Laws and by implication in the Politicus.

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