Timaeus — Plato

Anafysis 405-408. xlv with doctors and pleaders ; and law and medicine give themselves Republic in. airs as soon as the freemen of a State take an interest in them, analysis. But what can show a more disgraceful state of education than to have to go abroad for justice because you have none of your own at home ?

And yet there is a worse stage of the same disease — when men have learned to take a pleasure and pride in the twists and turns of the law ; not considering how much better it would be for them so to order their lives as to have no need of a nodding justice.

And there is a like disgrace in employing a physician, not for the cure of wounds or epidemic disorders, but because a man has by laziness and luxury contracted diseases which were unknown in the days of Asclepius. How simple is the Homeric practice of medicine.

Eurypylus after he has been wounded 406 drinks a posset of Pramnian wine, which is of a heating nature ; and yet the sons of Asclepius blame neither the damsel who gives him the drink, nor Patroclus who is attending on him.

The truth is that this modern system of nursing diseases was introduced by Herodicus the trainer; who, being of a sickly constitution, by a compound of training and medicine tortured first himself and then a good many other people, and lived a great deal longer than he had any right.

But Asclepius would not practise this art, because he knew that the citizens of a well-ordered State have no leisure to be ill, and therefore he adopted the 'kill or cure' method, which artisans and labourers employ. ' They must be at their business,' they say, ' and have no time for coddling : if they 407 recover, well; if they don't, there is an end of them. Whereas the rich man is supposed to be a gentleman who can afford to be ill.

Do you know a maxim of Phocylides — that 'when a man begins to be rich ' (or, perhaps, a little sooner) ' he should practise virtue ' ? But how can excessive care of health be inconsistent with an ordinary occupation, and yet consistent with that practice of virtue which Phocylides inculcates? When a student imagines that philosophy gives him a headache, he never does anything; he is always unwell.

This was the reason why Asclepius and his sons practised no such art. They were acting in the interest of the public, and did not wish to preserve useless lives, or raise up a puny offspring to wretched sires. Honest diseases they honestly 408 cured; and if a man was wounded, they applied the proper remedies, and then let hirh eat and drink what he liked. But 2xlvi A rialysis 408 -411. Republic III. they declined to treat intemperate and worthless subjects, even Analysis. though they might have made large fortunes out of them. As to the story of Pindar, that Asclepius was slain by a thunderbolt for restoring a rich man to life, that is a lie — following our old rule we must say either that he did not take bribes, or that he was not the son of a god.

Glaucon then asks Socrates whether the best physicians and the best judges will not be those who have had severally the greatest experience of diseases and of crimes. Socrates draws a distinction between the two professions. The physician should have had experience of disease in his own body, for he cures with his mind and not with his body. But the judge controls mind by mind ; 409 and therefore his mind should not be corrupted by crime.

Where then is he to gain experience? How is he to be wise and also innocent? When young a good man is apt to be deceived by evil-doers, because he has no pattern of evil in himself; and therefore the judge should be of a certain age; his youth should have been innocent, and he should have acquired insight into evil not by the practice of it, but by the observation of it in others.

This is the ideal of a judge ; the criminal turned detective is wonderfully suspicious, but when in company with good men who have experience, he is at fault, for he foolishly imagines that every one is as bad as himself. Vice may be known of virtue, but cannot know virtue.

This is the sort of medicine and this the sort of law which will prevail in our State ; they will be healing arts to better natures; but the evil body will be left to die by the 410 one, and the evil soul will be put to death by the other. And the need of either will be greatly diminished by good music which will give harmony to the soul, and good gymnastic which will give health to the body.

Not that this division of music and gymnastic Nreally corresponds to soul and body ; for they are both equally concerned with the soul, which is tamed by the one and aroused and sustained by the other. The two together supply our guardians with their twofold nature. The passionate disposition when it has too much gymnastic is hardened and brutalized, the gentle or philosophic temper which has too much music becomes enervated.

While a man is allowing music to pour like water through the 411 funnel of his ears, the edge of his soul gradually wears away, and the passionate or spirited element is melted out of him. Too little